Hills Like Black Elephants

I'm taking a short story writing workshop class at UNM Continuing Education. Last week the teacher put us in groups of three and gave each group an assignment. My group's assignment was to write a short story similar to Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants." He asked us if we knew the story; two of us did, one of us did not. So the other woman who knew the story started to explain it to the woman who did not know it. She said, "It's about this guy and girl who travel all around together. The guy's about 35 and the girl's about 19. The girl just had an abortion and she's really not particularly happy about having done it, but she accepts that she did, because she wants him to be happy with her and he wanted her to do it; it took a lot of pressuring on his part but she finally did it."

That wasn't at all how I remembered the story, other than it being about a man and a woman traveling, and talking about the landscape and talking about the woman getting an abortion. As I listened to her, I thought, "huh?", as if she had just tried to convince me that the story was called "Hills Like Black Elephants." I just re-read it and it turns out I was "right"-- there's no mention of the couple's respective ages; the woman hasn't had an abortion yet; the man definitely wants her to, and she wants to make him happy, but he repeatedly tells her not to do it if she doesn't want to.

But was I really "right" about what happens in the story? My classmate remembered it one way--not the way it really was, but how it is in her memory and what the story means to her. That was her version of the story, at that moment, and as I read it again, I began to see that it was in fact a very plausible version.

To me, that's what makes a good short story; every reader approaches it and individualizes it in his or her own way. My classmate obviously cared enough about these characters to give them ages; she cared enough about this story to remember what happened in it, even if her memory of the sequence of events was slightly askew. And the funny thing is, she is probably "right" in her interpretation of the story, if only that she read into the story more than what was written, but what was really there. I'd bet you anything this guy's quite a bit older than this girl, who comes across as very inexperienced when she asks what Anis del Toro is and whether he will love her again and will like how she compares white hills to elephants after she has an abortion. And he is pressuring her to get it, even if his words are saying otherwise. (At the very least, he won't stop talking about it when she repeatedly asks him to, which is a form of pressure if I've ever read it.) And she probably does end up getting the abortion and not being happy about it. So my classmate's version could be very accurate; she was just telling about events that weren't mentioned in the story but that are clearly there, at least according to how she sees the story.

And that is why I love literature. From the moment it was published or given to someone else to read, "Hills Like White Elephants" no longer belonged to Hemingway, but to the reader. It doesn't belong only to me, just because I've read it. And my memory of it and feelings about it won't necessarily remain the same. Years from now I may remember it a different way, or I may have adopted my classmate's version as the story I chose to remember. The story belongs to me, and to her, and to everyone who reads it, and to whatever ways we end up personalizing it and remembering it. So if you haven't read "Hills Like White Elephants," or haven't re-read it lately, I encourage you to do so... because until you do, you won't know what the story means to you, or means to you this time, in this moment.

Book Review: The Wife and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov

I've been wanting to read Chekhov' short stories for quite some time. I was finally prompted to start when Francine Prose, in her excellent book Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them wrote that Chekhov's short stories were her favorite and that all aspiring writers should read them. Prose wrote a lot about Chekhov's stories, especially about their well-crafted language, character descriptions, and how they broke common rules.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was a tad disappointed with The Wife, and Other Stories. I do admire Chekhov's character description and his description of nature, particularly the Russian landscape. For me, though, a lot of his plots fell short. Some of the stories in The Wife, and Other Stories had no real beginning and no real ending. Rather they were inter-connected parts of other stories that were included in the volume, and read like a novel told in serials, with one short story picking up where another left off. It was interesting to read about the day in the life of a 19th-century Russian official, and to read his philosophical meanderings related to peasantry and education and the like, but some of the stories consisted of only that, and after awhile parts of them became rather redundant and boring. To me Tolstoi's Anna Karenina, which I have been reading off and on for some time (way too long!) now, contains everything that most of these short stories did, and more, because it sticks with the same engaging characters and has a moving plot, even if some of it gets bogged down with the same philosophical meanderings. Perhaps if I hadn't read Tolstoi or Dostoevsky I would have really loved Chekhov, I'm not sure. At this point in time, though, although I liked him, I didn't like him as much as those two authors.

I liked the stories contained in the beginning of The Wife, and Other Stories more than the stories at the end; perhaps it was due to the redundancy factor. My favorite was "The Grasshopper," which was about a young woman who was married to a rather boring, older doctor, but her heart was with the theater and with the dramatic and famous people she hung out with. Eventually she has an affair and leaves her husband, and in many way this is a timeless story about relationships, that could have been told yesterday as much as it could have been told in Chekhov's time. The story seemed so realistic that I did some research into Chekhov's life and found that he married an actress named Olga (which is the name of the wife in the story) and that there were many other similarities between his life with her and the life of the couple in the story.

I will read more short stories by Chekhov and thus far my conclusion is that I really enjoy some of them and I don't really enjoy others. So it may be one of those experiences where I read everything to find the gems. I did enjoy The Wife, and Other Stories although I didn't love it as much as I was expecting to. I give it 3.5 stars.

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Book Review: Glimmer Train Stories, Fall 2003, Issue 48

It's hard to "review" an issue of a literary journal because all the stories are so different. So this "review" more constitutes my notes and impressions on this particular issue. I'm a big fan of Glimmer Train in general and have been since I was in high school.

I'm obviously way behind on my Glimmer Train issues. I devoured this one from cover to cover. Still, I found many of the stories lacking. I think it may be because I rather recently read Best New American Voices 2006 and I've decided I usually like more of an experimental, shocking, grab-me-by-my-throat-and-surprise-me style more than a traditional realist style, which most of these stories were. If a story is pure realism, then I at least want something to happen. Many of these stories seemed more like glimpses or scenes than actual stories.

For example, J. Patrice Whetsell's "The Coconut Lady" is about a girl going off to college and remembering how her mother taught her how to cook. It is mostly full of memories of her mother's cooking and what her mother would talk about when it came to food. There is a very small hint of a story--in which it is revealed that the mother's marriage did not work out--that peeps its head out, but then it's back to shaking coconuts, or whatever. I just don't understand the point of a "story" all about food, with no real plot.

I enjoyed "Mother Knows" by Diane Chang, although the plot could have been thicker for me. It's about a woman who finds out that her son, a medical school student, is in the hospital with a concussion after a Frisbee accident that happened during his school's orientation. She reminisces about leaving him in China when she and her husband first came to the U.S. On the way home from visiting her son in the hospital, she gets her very first speeding ticket, ever. Her husband is basically useless, but she still loves him. It was pretty good writing and it kept me interested, and I do understand that stories can show a slice of life instead of needing to have a pat conflict/ climax/ resolution, but, again, if it's overly realistic and nothing much happens and not much of a conclusion is reached, then I feel like I've wasted my time reading it, unless it's very well written or there's something particularly unique about it. Otherwise I feel like I could have just talked to a friend about an event like this; it doesn't stir me the way I think an excellent story should.

Many of these stories were about families, and death, and loss. After awhile they collectively started to seem a bit depressing and repetitive. Barry Lyga's "Trading Worlds" had quite a different format, involving a bunch of different dream sequences, but I didn't really like it. It was about the after-math of 9/11 and how one man was dealing with it in his personal life. I thought it was a rather over-the-top attempt to show that one really can't wrap one's head around something so huge and devastating. Bilal Dardai's "The Empty Bowl" had a very experimental format, to the point that I didn't even understand what it was trying to do.

One of my favorite stories in this issue was Virgil Saurez's "Lalo's Skin," which was about a man remembering a friend his father had had throughout the man's childhood, who was a liar and a thief, but whom his dad nonetheless continued to help. I also enjoyed Doreen Baingana's "Lost in Los Angeles," about a woman who comes to L.A. from East Africa. Both of these stories, as well as Jonathan Wei's "Mr. Lee's Study"--about an old professor close to retiring, which I rather liked as well--could be categorized as realistic slice-of-life vignettes, but the writing in all of them was very good and the "plots"-- or as much of a plot as each one had-- were interesting. I also enjoyed the interview of Carol Roh-Spaulding, although I haven't read anything she's written.

Karen Kovacik's "Madrigals for a Bauhaus Baby"--about a childless woman whose co-worker miscarried-- and Elizabeth Gallu's "At the Garden"--kind of a "day in the life" of a woman and her husband in Germany--were okay, in my opinion. Nancy Zafris's "Prix Fixe"--about a washed-up cook who used to be a chef in Paris--was okay but it felt much longer than it needed to be. I could not get into Christopher Bundy's "Morning Prayers" at all; I was confused about what was happening and where the characters were, and it just felt rather boring to me, so I stopped reading it. Quang Huynh's "Dust Falling in Daylight"--about a bomb that explodes and kills someone--was unremarkable, in my opinion. Jennifer Oh's "January," about a South Korean woman who loses her daughter during their flight from North Korea's attacks, was interesting and I liked it.

It's strange because although I felt disappointed with many of the stories in this issue, and very few made me feel deeply moved, overall I enjoyed reading the issue and I couldn't put it down. Reading Glimmer Train always inspires me to write and to think, and this issue was no exception. So I give it three stars. Of course I would give certain stories more stars than others, but overall it averages out to three.


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Book Review: Best New American Voices 2006

Fresh is Right: The Unique Stories in Best New American Voices 2006
Edited by Jane Smiley
Series Editors: John Kulka and Natalie Danford



This is the first book I've read in the Best New American Voices series, which I didn't know existed until I was at Borders with my mom in Pennsylvania in June and I saw it on the dollar clearance rack. This series accepts entries from top writing programs and workshops around the country, and chooses the best--in this book there are 15 stories--to publish. I started reading this book on July 25, 2009. A week later, during a camping trip at Vallecito Lake, Colorado, I finished it. Having been a big fan of the Best American Short Stories series for a long time, I was a little skeptical about the Best New American Voices series, thinking, "these writers were just in graduate school when they wrote these stories, how can they be as good as the stories from long-established writers?"

Boy, was I wrong. Granted, some of the stories show signs of amateurism; but then I wondered, "would I even think that if they weren't in this book?" I don't know. Other stories to me seemed to come from tried and true "professional" writers (whatever that means), and I was surprised to know that the authors were just emerging.

Overall, I like this book even better than some of the Best American series I've read, and almost every story grabbed my attention from beginning to end. Sometimes I feel jaded about the Best American stories, which the series editor supposedly picks without knowing the author's name but which happen to feature particular authors over and over again. Sometimes, especially--it seems--depending on the series editor, I think, "what in the world is this story doing in here? It's not even good." But the stories in Best New American Voices were obviously chosen without regard for who the author was, as long as she or he was in a writing program or workshop.

I think my favorite story in this collection is "Alice's House", by Jamie Keene from the University of Oregon. It's about a man who has recently divorced his wife and is getting ready to sell their house and move in with his girlfriend, when his ex wife comes to his house for an unannounced midnight visit. I also liked "Lyndon", by Amber Dermont from the University of Houston, about a young woman whose father recently died. The narrator continues her and her father's tradition of visiting the birth places of U.S. presidents with her mother, with whom she has a strained relationship.

Some of the stories feature quite unique formats, such as "The Jupiter's In", by Sarah Blackman from the University of Alabama, in which each scene starts and ends with missing words or letters, much like the sign on the run-down inn. This story features colorful, unique characters and has a distinctly southern feel. "Begin With an Outline" by Kaui Hart Hemmings from Stanford University is about a narrator attempting to tell an emotional story in a forced outline format. The setting for that story, or at least its background, is Hawaii, and the imagery is very vivid and gripping. "Useless Beauty, or, Notes on Esquire's 'Things a Man Should Never Do After the Age of 30'" by Albert E. Martinez from New Mexico State University (of particular note to me, since I live in New Mexico) is a story told interspersed with excerpts from the article, such as "own a futon," "live with someone you don't sleep with," and "use the word 'party' as a verb." The story itself involves a guy who just turned 30 and who is still hung up on his ex girlfriend. It is set in San Fransisco and, to me anyway, is a commentary on the late 20's/early 30's urbanites who live there.

There are many stories in this collection told from the point of view of a child or young adult, such as Michelle Regalado Deatrick's "Backfire" and Matt Freidson's "Liberty." There are also many stories about the death of a parent, such as Jennifer Shaff's "Leave of Absence", Amber Dermott's "Lyndon", and Sian M. Jones' "Pilot". Story notes from each story follow below, but because they may contain mild spoilers, I've saved them for the very bottom of the page.

All the stories in this series fit the title, being fresh and invigorating reads. I hope to find and read more books in this series and would recommend it to anyone who likes short stories and anyone who wants to read the newest works coming out of America's writing programs.

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Story Notes:

1. Leave of Absence, by Jennifer Shaff -- Emerson College
Spock comes to visit a young woman whose parents died in a car crash, while she is on leave from her teaching job due to grief, slowly turning into madness.
Setting: Evanston, Wisconsin.
Character's profession: Teacher.
Jewish characters.
Themes: Sibling bond (brother/ sister), Death of parent (both), Sports - Packers football.
Very far-fetched yet unique.
7/10 - I liked it. Very unique.

2. Lyndon, by Amber Dermott -- University of Houston.
Girl's father dies and she thinks her mother is pregnant with another man's baby. Mother and daughter continue the former father/daughter tradition of visiting birthplaces of presidents.
Setting: New Jersey and Johnson City, Texas
Character's career: Investment baker
Working moms
Themes: Death of parent (father), father/ daughter relationship, mother/ daughter relationship
Anxiety/ night terrors/ nightmares
8/10 - I really liked it.

3. A New Kind of Gravity by Andrew Foster Altschul -- Stanford University
Guard in women's domestic abuse shelter befriends the young daughter of a resident.
Character's profession -- guard
Domestic violence. Children.
9/10 -- I loved it.

4. The Rust Preventer by Jessica Anthony - George Mason University
Man is stuck in the jungle after war is over, forgotten.
Animals - monkey
Wars - World War II
Setting: Malay Archipelago
Death - main character's
8/10 -- I liked it. Very unique.

5. Trampoline by Vanya Rainova - University of San Francisco
Family living in post-communist Bulgaria has trampoline business at beach. Son falls in love with woman who has cancer and a young daughter.
Setting: Bulgaria - Slancher Briag
Beach
Love Family
Cancer
Music
9/10 - I loved it. Unique.

6. Watermark By Melanie Westerberg - California College of the Arts
Girls whose twin sister disappeared visits the shark room of the aquarium where she works, in the middle of the night.
Animals - Octopus, shark
Bad dreams
Sports - swimming, diving
Character's professions - Aquarium worker
5/10 - I didn't really like it.

7. Useless Beauty, or Notes on Esquire's Things a Man Should Never Do After the Age of 30
By Albert Martinez - New Mexico State University
Man who just turned 30 lives rather cliched social urbanite existence, trying to get over a recent break-up.
Setting - San Fransisco
Breaking up
8/10 - I really liked it. Pretty unique.

8. The Jupiter's In by Sarah Blackman - University of Alabama
A playful experiment with style, where the first words or so keep dropping more and more off the beginning of each sentence of every section, mimicking the letters fading from the sign on the inn owned by Miss Flora Jean. Her son is lazy and is purposefully gaining weight, with the goal of becoming the fattest astronaut in space. His girlfriend is pregnant. A tragedy occurs with a guest at the inn.
Setting -- South (never says where, but it's obviously in the South)
Characters' occupation - Innkeeper
Obesity
children
Relationship with parent - mother/ son
8/10 - I really liked it. Very unique.

9. Alice's House by Jamie Keene - University of Oregon
Breaking up
Divorce
Houses
10/10 - I loved it.

10. Liberty by Matt Freidson - Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing
Teenage boy in delinquent youth's prison in Vietnam falls in love.
Setting: Vietnam - Hanoi
Love
Music
Friendship - men
Teenagers
Prostitutes
8/10 - I really liked it.

11. Twinless by Gregory Plemmons - Sewanee Writers' Conference
Sister locks twin brother in cellar before going to their father's wedding after their mother's death, so he can't ruin the wedding. Then he disappears.
Siblings - twins, brother/ sister
Teenagers
Death of parent - mother
Wedding - of parent
7/10 - I liked it okay.

12. Backfire by Michelle Regalado Deatrick - University of Michigan
Young boy's friend sets fire to his own house, killing the boy's sister, and the boy is blamed for it, although it was not his fault.
Siblings - brother/ sister
Death - of sibling
Character's profession: Insurance industry
Setting - Sacramento, California
Children
Fire
8/10 - I liked it.

13. Begin With an Outline by Kaui Hart Hemmings - Stanford University
A young woman is questioned during the investigation of her father for selling/ growing pot. She tries to establish a relationship with him but can't.
Father/ daughter relationship
Setting - Hawaii
Character's occupation - college student
Drugs
8/10 - I really liked it.

14. Going After Lovely by Sean Ennis - University of Mississippi
A young boy's sister runs away. He stays with his dysfunctional family, featuring a well-meaning but over-reaching and hapless father, and crazy mother.
Family - dysfunctional
Mental health
Siblings - sister/ brother
Father/ son relationship
Unhappy marriage - parents'
9/10 - I loved it.

15. Pilot by Sian M. Jones - Mills College
A young woman thinks she hears her mother talking to her after her mother had a stroke.
Stroke
Death of parent - mother
Grief
Siblings - sister/ brother
Religion - atheism
7/10 - I liked it.

(Book was read in July 2009 - camping at Lake Vallecito, on bus on way home from work, etc.)

Book Review: Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Step Right In and Come of Age in the Early Twentieth Century:
A Book Review of The Genius of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Flappers and Philosophers ( 8 Short Stories) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This little book of eight short stories took me about a week to read, and now I’m very sorry that it’s over. All of the stories were very entertaining and vivid. In between reading it, I would feel I was a nineteen-year-old girl in the first or second decade of the twentieth century. Many of the stories in this book are focused on girls of that age, and I thought it was quite strange that Fitzgerald could write so well about them. Almost all of the stories can be classified as "coming of age" stories in the early twentieth century.

The book starts off with a strong and rebellious nineteen-year-old girl in “The Offshore Pirate.” That first story was probably my favorite. My second favorite was probably “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” which was also about a nineteen-year-old who was figuring herself out a lot more than the heroine from the first story, who knew exactly who she was and what she wanted. I also liked “The Ice Palace” in which a very vivacious teenager named Sally Carroll visits a Northeastern city in the hopes of marrying, and finds out that she misses the colorful southern town where she grew up.

The last story in the collection, “The Four Fists,” features a manly man who gets knocked down by four punches in his lifetime, each of which teaches him an important lesson, and the story takes him from New York to the oil fields of Texas and the ranches of New Mexico. It’s rather refreshing to read a burly story after all the quite feminine ones, but I truly liked them all. The second-to-last story, “Dalyrimple Goes Wrong,” also features a male character and his descent into shadiness. What I noticed is how differently Fitzgerald writes about male characters than female characters – there’s less internal monologue and descriptions of thoughts and conversations, and more action at a swiftly moving pace. One story, “Head and Shoulders” does a beautiful job of explaining a role reversal of sorts, in which the female character shines and the male character withers.

To read this book was to be transported back to a totally different time – anywhere from the 1890’s to the 19-teens, and to totally different places – usually New England towns, Ivy League educational institutions, and country clubs. I enjoyed the scenes about fox trots and flappers and jazz music and I wished, sometimes, that I could have lived back then. But Fitzgerald had great sympathy for his female characters – “The Cut-Glass Bowl” featured a downfall of one of them, and the strong character of Marjorie in “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” explains how they can become withered and unloved housewives, many of whom are disapprovingly interspersed into that story.

In fact, if I carry one thing away from Flappers and Philosophers other than hours of entertaining reading, it is a remark on the position of young women in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The stories feature girls at the cusp of womanhood who wear rose-tinted glasses and think that life is about dances and social events. Yet the men are the ones getting an education, seeing the world and taking part in all of the action (again with the exception of the uniquely witty “Heads and Shoulders” plot). In this sense I am very happy to be living in the 21^st century and just reading about these female characters in the early 20^th century.

Quotes from Flappers and Philosophers:

“I distrust people who can be intense at this hour in the morning! Morning’s the time to sleep, swim and be careless!” (From “The Offshore Pirate”)

“All life is just a procession towards – and then a recession from – one phrase: ‘I love you.’” (From “The Offshore Pirate”)

“I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.” (From “The Ice Palace”)

“There’s two sides to me, you see. There’s the sleepy old side you love; and there’s the sort of energy – the feeling that makes me do wild things. That’s the part of me that may be useful somewhere, that’ll last when I’m not beautiful anymore.” (From “The Ice Palace”)

“Every person I’ve met on the streets since I met you has made me jealous because they knew what love was before I did.” (From “Head and Shoulders”)

“When you open your door at the rap of life, you let in many things.” (From “Head and Shoulders”)

“At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.” (From “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”)

“Snobbishness is merely good breeding grown dictatorial.” (From “The Four Fists”)

Categories of Stories in Flappers and Philosophers:

Coming of Age Stories: (*Note: Really almost every story in this collection touches on this to some
extent, but these are the ones that entirely focus on coming of age):

The Offshore Pirate
The Ice Palace

Bernice Bobs Her Hair

Dalyrimple Goes Wrong

Stories About War:

The Cut-Glass Bowl
Dalyrimple Goes Wrong

Stories About Love:

The Offshore Pirate

Head and Shoulders

Stories About Affairs:

The Cut-Glass Bowl

The Four Fists

Stories About Displacement:

The Ice Palace

Stories About Family:
Sister and brother – Benediction

Cousins – Bernice Bobs Her Hair

Stories About Religion:

Benediction

Stories About Home:

The Ice Palace

Cities/ Regions:

Florida – The Offshore Pirate

New York City – Head and Shoulders, The Four Fists

New Mexico – The Four Fists

Baltimore – Benediction

Georgia/ the South – The Ice Palace

[Read from April 26 - May 3, 2009]

Book Review: The Best American Short Stories, 1991

A Grab Bag of Great Stories:
A Book Review of The Best American Short Stories 1991
Edited by Alice Adams and Katrina Kenison
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company

You may wonder why I am reviewing, in 2009, a book compiling these editors' choices for the best short stories published in 1991. The short answer is that I am very, very far behind. The long answer is that I used to read this series a lot, in high school and college (both of which were post-1991) but I stopped that habit, which I now find unfortunate. I've decided to continue reading as many short stories as I can, to improve my own writing of them, and because collections of short stories make good reading for me. I can bring the book with me wherever I go, whether to dentist appointments or on road trips, and read one story at a time. It's much easier to pick up where I left off than it is with a novel!

In the Forward to this book, Series Editor Katrina Kenison makes the following observation, which is in line with why I decided to start re-reading short story collections: "Alice Adams reveals in her introduction that reading a good story often provokes her to go and write one of her own. Perhaps we should all give thanks, then, for the inspiration writers draw from each other - one good story begets another."

There are many, many good stories in this book, some of which I found inspirational for my own writing and some in which I simply lost myself. My top three favorite reads, which I hope to go back to again and again, were the following:

1. Charles D'Ambrosio, Jr.'s "The Point." In this story a man reminisces about helping his mom's friends home after parties thrown by his mother at their house. He has memories of very interesting characters, most of them sad alcoholics, yet he seems to have turned out just fine.

2. Charles Baxter's "The Disappeared." In this story a Swedish businessman visits Detroit and meets a religious-crazed American girl who temporarily steals his heart. The main character in the story, however, is truly the city of Detroit. It's amazing how Baxter captures the pulse of a dying city, and makes dreadfully accurate predictions regarding its fate.

3. Elizabeth Graver's "The Body Shop." In this story a man looks back on his adolescent years of helping his creative and entrepreneurial mother run her mannequin design business. It is touching and very realistic.

I also enjoyed Amy Bloom's "Love is Not a Pie," Kate Braverman's "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta," Millicent Dillon's "Oil and Water," David Jauss' "Glossolalia," Francine Prose's "Dog Stories," and Leonard Michaels' "Viva La Tropicana," a very entertaining and far-fetched yet somehow believable story about a young man who gets caught up with the escapades of his uncle, a former Cuban revolutionist-turned-gangster.

There are stories by some other usual "giants" in this collection - Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, John Updike - but I didn't enjoy them as much as the others I've mentioned. I haven't read much from Munro but I usually like reading Oates and Updike. Both of their pieces in this collection, however, seemed wordy and cumbersome to me, and I couldn't pay much attention. Munro's story was the most interesting to me, and I also like parts of Updike's piece, and feel that perhaps if I read it when I had more time and patience, I would like it more. Perhaps it had something to do with it being the last story in the book!

Although the subject matters of the stories in this collection obviously vary, there are themes that run through some stories, seeming to accidentally connect them. Here are a few that I noticed:

1. Wars. Especially the Vietnam War. And soldiers. And woman, working during wartime. And memories of wars and lingering questions after they are over. Stories with this theme include Kate Braverman's "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta," Millicent Dillon's "Oil and Water" and John Updike's "A Sandstone Farmhouse."

2. Adults looking back on childhood and family, often after the death of a parent. Stories with this theme from this collection include Amy Bloom's "Love is Not a Pie," Charles D'Ambrosio, Jr.'s "The Point," Elizabeth Graver's "The Body Shop," David Jauss' "Glossolalia," Alice Munro's "Friend of My Youth" and John Updike's "A Sandstone Farmhouse."

3. Dogs. (Always a favorite theme of mine)! This category includes Rick Bass' "The Legend of Pig-Eye," John Updike's "A Sandstone Farmhouse" and Francine Prose's "Dog Stories" (Obviously. This is also a wedding story, which I also usually enjoy. Alice Munro's "Friend of My Youth" also features a wedding, albeit a rather simple one.)

4. Mothers and sons. Including Charles D'Ambrosia, Jr.'s "The Point," Mary Gordon's "Separation," Elizabeth Graver's "The Body Shop," and John Updike's "A Sandstone Farmhouse."

5. In semi-related themes about parents and children, Amy Bloom's "Love is Not a Pie" is a story about a father and daughter, and to some extent, also about a mother and daughter (while additionally touching heavily on the relationship between sisters), while David Jauss' "Glossolalia" is a heart-breakingly sad story about a father and son, and Alice Munro's "Friend of My Youth" is a story told by the narrator about her mother. Harriet Doerr's "Another Short Day in La Luz" is ultimately also about the relationship between a mother and daughter.

6. Americans abroad. And people escaping/ hiding from shady characters in strange situations. Or running to them because they are strangely intrigued by them! And, of course, the seemingly ever-present theme of displacement. These stories include Charles Baxter's "The Disappeared," Kate Braverman's "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta," Robert Olen Butler's "The Trip Back," Millicent Dillon's "Oil and Water," Mary Gordon's "Separation," Mikhail Iossel's "Bologoye," Leonard Michaels' "Viva La Tropicana," Lorri Moore's "Willing," and Joyce Carol Oates' "American, Abroad."

7. Friendship: This isn't as common a theme throughout these stories as one might expect, but Rick Bass' "The Legend of Pig-Eye" could be categorized as such, in that it tells the story of a teenage boxer being "raised" and trained by a couple to whom he relates half as friends, half as parents. And Millicent Dillon's "Oil and Water" is about a friendship, as is Deborah Eisenberg's "The Custodian."

8. Romance: Again, surprisingly not a common theme, but Charles Baxter's "The Disappeared" touches on this, as well as Kate Braverman's "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta," Millicent Dillon's "Oil and Water," Leonard Michaels' "Viva La Tropicana," Lorrie Moore's "Willing" and Francine Prose's "Dog Stories." In the realm of affairs, where "romance" always reigns supreme, there's Alice Munro's "Friend of My Youth" and Amy Bloom's "Love is Not a Pie," Well, now that I look at it, I guess romance is a theme that often runs subliminally underneath all the other themes.

Here are some quotes I liked from the book:

From Rick Bass' "Legend of Pig-Eye" (I replace the word "fight" in this quote with the word "write," or "read"): "I felt that if I could not fight, I might stop breathing, or I might go down: I imagined that it was like drowning; like floating in the lake, and then exhaling all my air, and sinking, and never being heard from again."

From Charles Baxter's "The Disappointed"(There have been some men in my life in my past, that I should have said this to): "We? There is no 'we'... there's you and then there's me. We're not a couple."

From the same story (Ditto the above! And it reminds me of that Pink Floyd "fish bowl" song): "Oh come on... we're just two blind people who staggered into each other and we're about to stagger off in different directions. That's all."

From Francine Prose's Contributors' Notes regarding "Dog Stories" (Interesting observation!): "People never talk about nothing, not even when they seem to. There are always secret and interesting reasons for the stories they decide to tell and for the moments at which they choose to tell them."

From Charles D'Ambrosio, Jr.'s "The Point" (I've noticed this when among drunken friends... maybe they've noticed it about me, too!): "Often drunks seemed on the verge of sobering up, and then, just as soon as they got themselves nicely balanced, they plunged off the other side, into depression."

From Alice Munro's "Friend of My Youth" (I think all brides must feel this way during the stress of wedding-planning): "This getting married is even more of a nuisance than I thought!"

From John Updike's "A Sandstone Farmhouse" (This rings true to me, a pat-rack through and through): "He recognized in this accumulation a superstition he had to fight within himself - the belief that everything has value. The birds in the trees, the sunflower at the edge of the orchard, the clumsily pasted-up valentine received years ago from a distant grandchild - all have a worth that might at any moment be called into account. It was a way of saying that one's own life was infinitely precious."

(There are more quotes, about writing, from this collection located in the "Quotes About Writing" post.)

Look at me quoting from some of the same stories I just I didn't enjoy as much as others, which I didn't quote from! Oh well. At the end of it all, I'm glad I picked up this "old" book and I plan to read many more short story collections in the coming months. I love the variety as well as the convenience. It is so easy to escape into a short story, come back out of it, and then get lost in the next one!

Click to browse or buy The Best American Short Stories 1991.