I’m five stories into this, and the main reason I broke my rule about catching up from the past to the present is because another MetaxuCafe member, gzreads, is also reading this now. It’ll be interesting to compare notes.
The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face, by Tom Perrotta, may be the same old dad’s side of the divorce story, but there is some deeper insight here into the feelings of fatherhood itself as well as human nature. The narrator is trying to impress his ex-wife and son and win them back, while a father who is watching his talented daughter play Little League baseball shows no reaction to her amazing skill or the game in general until she is beaned by a ball and he races to her side, getting himself arrested for going after the coach who instructed his player to take her out. The interesting part is that the narrator lost his family because he couldn’t accept his son’s gay leanings. The father of the girl playing on a boys’ team showed respect for her decision to play by showing up at each game, was not overly surprised at her ability, and thus more accepting of who she was. Good action (even though I dislike baseball) that built up on the game. This was a true example of Aristotle’s belief that character will be displayed in its reaction to events or action (Poetics).
Dennis LeHane’s Until Gwen is another well written action story, although the action is based upon plenty of flashback as a man coming out of prison is picked up by his father and driven around in the hope that he’ll remember where he hid a large diamond that he and his lady, Gwen, had stolen just before he was caught and imprisoned. The ending is bizarre but well done.
I don’t have any idea why A Taste of Dust by Lynne Sharon Schwartz was first published in Ninth Letter never mind being chosen by Michael Chabon as one of twenty stories to include in this BASS issue. The writing is mediocre, the story is old–bitter divorced woman who doesn’t get over it, and the ending is tell all, just in case the reader didn’t get it. Quick briefing: A woman is invited to dinner with her ex-husband’s and his new wife and family to celebrate the birth of a new grandchild, that of her and her ex’s own son. The conflicts build up only via little faux pas on the part of the husband, and the ex-wife’s aren’t-you-sorry looks of empathy, and the climax is the new baby throwing up on him. Honest. And here’s the moral, as promised, in the closing:
He owned all the misery his risks had earned; he was in the thicket of his mistakes, impaled, fending off an excess of feeling, even if it was remorse. He life was dense and palpitating. She was clean and dry as old bones. (Bass, p. 42)
Old Friends by Thomas McGuane is okay. Well written, interesting, and enough action in a linear narrative with enough backstory to develop the plot. Nothing I was particularly moved or unsettled by but it was enjoyable enough.
The next story deserves a post of its own.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Regarding “About Gwen.” You summarize the story: The narrator and his father are looking for a large diamond. The story ends. What became of the diamond?
Normally in my reviews, I don’t include the spoiler, so here’s briefly what happened: His father, while the son was in prison, killed his son’s girlfriend because he figured she had the diamond. And she did; she had swallowed it and so it was buried with her.
Thanks. I agree that was Lehane’s intent. But the narrator tells Gwen to GO — put as much country between her and his father as she could. She seemed like a savvy gal. Yet the father must have got hold of her awfully quick for the diamond to still be in her stomach.
And the diamond is described as being so big (filling the “entire center” of a man’s palm). Somthing hard like that — how can you swallow it? (Or void it.)
This may sound like quibbling, but for me the story was full of fault lines. I got tired of stepping over them. For example, Lehane is determined to put in the reader’s mind the idea that the father killed the hooker (instead of taking her home). Did he stash her body under the motel room bed? Toss it in a dumpster?
Even your monsters can’t kill everybody they come into contact with, Dennis.
Give me a day to reread it. It’s telling, however, that if these “flaws” jarred you out of the story, then it’s beyond asking the reader for suspension of belief in a reality-based story (which technically, every story is). In 100 Years of Solitude by Marquez, I loved the part where Remedios suddenly ascends into the sky and didn’t question it. Same thing with Octavio Paz’s short story, The Wave, where the girlfriend was either a metaphor or really and truly an ocean wave.
Did you know, by the way, that this same story (Until Gwen) was also selected for the Best American Mystery Stories 2005? It’s not one of my favorites, and it really surprised me to find it make both compilations.
Lehane is a big name now, especially since the movie version of Mystic River.
I believe every good literary work establishes its own terms. Then it must live by them. I accept the terms set by Garcia Marquez in 100 Years.
A mystery (at least the kind Lehane wrote in “Until Gwen”) must be ruled by logic. If it’s weak there, it fails. Lehane very expertly glosses over the improbabilities. (Actually, I was not convinced of the authenticity of anything in his story, including the love between Gwen and Bobby.)
In some of Garcia Marquez’s work (such as In Evil Hour) the terms are such that nobody is going to rise up in the sky; the characters are all land-locked.
I don’t think Lehane is worth our time; but I too am reading through the BASS.
Good, I think we agree and don’t feel like rereading it anyhow. I think that my favorite two in this issue are Hart and Book and Justice Shiva Ram Murthy.