This new thing the kids are doing

A student recommended Mary Miller's Big World to me the other day; we were at a bar and she brandished it like a pack of the best cigarettes anyone has ever smoked.  It's about the size of a pack of cigarettes, too, and has an ashtray on the cover.  I bought it and am reading it now, and it's pretty good.

It does this thing, though.  Amelia Gray does it also, with mixed success, in her recent book that I reviewed in the NYTBR.  And the student who recommended the book to me does it, and so do a couple guys in my recent undergraduate workshops.  It's partially a McSweeney's thing, I think, although my student would probably bristle at that; she's not a fan of the mag.  And it's also kind of neo-Carverian.  It's minimalist, sort of, and sometimes it's selfconsciously odd.  It employs serendipity and timely pop cultural references and short unadorned sentences.

I'm not sure I like it.  I like some of it, of course--my student is very good at it, I think, and I liked parts of the Gray book and the Miller book.  (Oddly, I like Gray's twitter feed better than most of her stories: her tweets are genuine non-sequiturs, intended as non-sequiturs, and are really funny.)

But what is it exactly?  I think it's this: there's a new breed of minimalist writers who appear confident that passing something through their particular consciousness, however seemingly banal that thing is, will lend it sufficient weight to justify its inclusion in a story.  Some of these Miller stories are nothing but that: rambling lists of banal acts and observations.  And damned if she doesn't pull it off half the time.  These things do take on weight in each other's presence, and rendered in her lazily precise prose.

The other half of the time, though, stories like this just seem precious, or random, like stuff you find in somebody's dead grandma's glovebox.  You read them and you think, I guess you had to know grandma.  Or they feel like a night spent smoking pot in your sister's apartment with her grad school friends.  You know they're smart, and you know you're as smart as they are, but you don't understand a thing they're saying.  It's not for you: it's an insider code.  The context is missing.

It would seem that the key to doing this thing right would be to provide that context without appearing to do so: giving the reader the key on the sly.  Letting the reader be inside and outside at once.  A neat trick, if you can figure out how to do it.

O. Henry Prize Stories, Then and Now

I recently got the new O. Henry Prize collection and read the whole thing, cover to cover. I liked some of the stories, very much unliked others, but there was one thing I couldn't help but notice: pretty much every story has a death in it. The first one in the collection, which is by Annie Proulx, is about some 19th century western pioneers who die (miserably), the Wendell Berry story has people dying left and right, the William Trevor has a murder, the Daniel Alarcon has blind people falling to their deaths off a bridge, Peter Cameron's story (maybe my favorite in the collection) has another fatal fall, etc. One story is actually in the form of an obituary.

It got me thinking about a potential blog post! Because if I remember my favorite stories of years past, none of them were about death. Were they? I mean, Charles Baxter's "Gryphon" or "Saul and Patsy are Getting Comfortable in Michigan" didn't hinge on grief, nor did all those Ann Beattie stories full of yuppies and Cuisinarts (I love Ann Beattie, but it's true: so many of her stories have people making salads or pesto), or most of Raymond Carver's stories (the execrable "A Small Good Thing" being a notable exception), etc. So then I (re)read the O. Henry from 1989 (don't have the 1990) and guess what? Yeah, there are just as many dead people in those stories as in today's.

So -- feh. I guess killing off characters to give your story emotional weight is a long-standing tradition, not just some post-9-11 tic, or whatever. Not that I haven't done it myself (in practically everything I've written, ha ha) or that it's necessarily bad. It isn't. The deaths of other people are life-altering, powerful experiences, so of course we want to write and read about them. But it got so that by the time I was 2/3 of the way through the 2010 collection, I could feel the death coming up. And in some stories the ghoulish death scene feels tacked on, as if the writers and editors thought that a nice juicy death could turn a regular story into Literature.

So, did I come to any actual conclusions after reading all these stories? Not really. It's hard to compare old O. Henry stories with new ones, because the old ones were chosen by a single old guy, William Abrahams, who had a pretty conservative sensibility. It could have been at least partly his personal taste that make the 1989 stories seem sort of less colorful -- more intellectual and upper west-sidey -- than the new stories, which are, of course, more multi-culti. One of the 1989 stories that stands out is "Here and There" by David Foster Wallace. It's the best story in the collection by about 1000 times (and no dead people). Rick Bass's "The Watch" is also in that collection -- not a perfect story but an interesting one. It got me thinking about how around that time there began a flood of cartoony-realist stories, like those of T. C. Boyle, George Saunders, and Ralph Lombreglia, though Rick Bass himself went in the Western Regionalism direction soon thereafter.

I should probably say something more, though, about multi-culturalism, which is the most obvious difference between the stories of today and twenty years ago. Around half the stories in the newer edition are about non-American people. There is definitely a sense, these days, that we've come close to exhausting the literary possibilities American culture offers, and that it's time to pay more attention to other cultures. True enough! I do think, though, that some writers depend too heavily on novelty and write stories that teach us about other cultures/cuisines/climates but don't say much about the inner lives of other people. My main complaint about some of "other culture" stories in the 2010 anthology is that the writers stand too far outside their characters. Of course, plenty of American stories are the same, especially stories about Southerners, poor people, or outsiders. And plenty of other culture stories do inner lives brilliantly.

Because that's what it's all about, for me: the inner lives of human beings. Is that what it's all about for you? Or am I weird?

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

This week's blogging caesura is attributable to work and an unfortunate pedestrian incident, but we are back in action with this bouquet of praise for Wells Tower's amazing new story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. I first came across Tower's fiction in The New Yorker, which published his story "Leopard." I thought it was pretty good, but not good enough to make me go scrambling for this book when it hit the shelves--indeed, in retrospect it seems to me to be the weakest in the collection. But then Ed Skoog was in town and insisted I buy the book, saying that it was the best debut in a decade, reminiscent of Jesus' Son, etc etc, and as usual, Skoog was right.

The collection is indeed reminiscent of Denis Johnson's collection, in its brevity, directness, and wild energy; it also evokes Raymond Carver, for its convincing portrayals of working-class angst. It's a guy book, for sure--that is, a book that is masculine in tone, not a book that women won't like--with flawed male protagonists brooding over their failures and indulging their eccentricities. But it eschews the trappings of simplistic self-destruction narratives and chooses instead to wallow in the weirdness of life. Characters are strange, very strange, but very convincingly strange--never do you feel you're reading something that's quirky for quirkiness's sake. The Wacky is nowhere in evidence.

Here's a passage from "Down Through the Valley," a story in which a man is convinced by his ex-wife to drive their daughter and her injured current boyfriend back to town from the new age retreat where he hurt himself. Barry is some kind of earthy herbal therapist.

I asked a lot of people about Barry when Jane got mixed up with him. I knew a lady who'd legged down with him one time. She said the weird stink of him had been a problem, which I was pleased to hear. She also said that he had a huge banana, that he did breathing exercises beforehand, and that afterwards he'd gone in the kitchen and whipped up a big beet salad.

You've got to love the word choices here--"lady," "legged down," "the weird stink of him," "banana"--and the way the beet salad serves as a kind of subtle exclamation point at the end of the paragraph. Tower's language is just great--highly original, seemingly effortless.

There are many standout stories here, but people seem to talk the most about the title piece (also the last in the book), which takes the easy, workingman's poetry of the other stories and applies it to what appear to be Viking marauders. You'd think the result would come off as Donald Barthleme lite, but instead it's extremely fitting, very funny, and deeply disturbing. A neat trick to top off a winning collection.

Am I an asshole to hope he's writing a novel? I really do, though I will happily accept more stories.

Are You Buying Fewer Books?

So it looks like my bookstore isn't quite giving up the ghost yet. Which is good for me, since I have no other job skills, and also good for Ithaca. I have to say, though: where did all the customers go? The last couple of months have been deadly dull. No one comes in! No rousing chit chat. No nothing. Does it have anything to do with that $3.96 we're paying for gas around here?

How about you? Are you buying fewer new books? Is this a temporary trend, or a long-term one?

I've cut back a bit, mostly because I'm putting all my cash into my garden this month. But I've read some good stuff. The new O. Henry Awards collection isn't bad; I bought it because there's a story by a guy I know in it (Alexi Zentner, who's a student at Cornell and one of the stalwart Bookery II customers) and an Alice Munro story. Haven't read Alexi's yet, Munro's is good, of course, but I was quite taken by Michael Faber's "Bye Bye Natalia," about a Ukranian woman who's trying to decide whether to become a mail order bride. I liked it so much I bought his collection of stories, Vanilla Bright Like Eminem. I think that's an awful title, but it shows some guts.

Also, did anyone else read the Joyce Carol Oates story in the new Harper's? It's called "Suicide by Fitness Center" and it's creepy, especially knowing that JCO's husband recently died. I have mixed feelings about her, and think she ought to write more slowly and let someone else have some shelf space, but when she's good she's awfully good.

The Short Story Tide

It seems that certain art forms rise and fall over time -- or maybe all art forms do. The 60's were great for rock music, the 1600's for painting, etc. The 80's were definitely a wonderful time for the short story. Kicked off by Carver, the decade really just exploded with new and interesting voices: Laurie Moore, Charles Baxter, Amy Hempel, Grace Paley, Ann Beattie, Rick Bass, Richard Ford, etc.

Or do I just think that because I started reading short stories then, and was all pre-cynical and loving everything?

I feel like short stories are at a low ebb now, though there are some signs of strength and originality, like the quasi-science fiction stuff by Kelly Link. I'm not sure if the lack of short story energy is on the part of writers, readers, or publishers, or if it's just one of those cyclical things. Another possible explanation is that the personal essay and memoir have largely eclipsed fiction. If that's the case, then I guess that memoir has about two or three years to run its course, and then fiction -- including short fiction -- will rise again. (Hmm... that has a kind of "famous last words" ring about it...)

Meanwhile, according to the very cool blog Syntax of Things, February is SoTShoStoWriMo, or Syntax of Things Short Story Writing Month. I have been enjoying NaNoWriMo for a couple of years now, so maybe I'll give it a try. In any case, I highly suggest checking out the blog, as well as the other literary blogs we've linked to.

I certainly would love to see a short story renaissance.