Chamber Four

Edited by Dennis Lehane

Akashic Books, 2009

Filed Under: Thrillers, Short Stories, Mystery

The Boston Noir collection marks our fair city’s induction in the roving city-themed noir series, “Book Noir,” from Akashic Books. Already the series has seen collections from Brooklyn, San Francisco, Baltimore, and Phoenix, among others. Dennis Lehane is an obvious choice as editor -I’d be be hard-pressed to come up with a close second in terms of Boston crime novelists. He proves a smart choice, as well, and has put together a collection of noir stories as he defines them: working-class tragedies. In this collection, Lehane explores not only crime, or, as he calls it “skuzzy people doing skuzzy things to other skuzzy people,” but explores what the Boston means to the people who live in, and more often just-outside, New England’s second-place city. …
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Put aside everything you’re doing and read The Knife Thrower and Other Stories, by Steven Millhauser, immediately. (See the other entries in this series here.)

For the record,  my favorite, favorite book ever and a book I truly think any reader should drop everything for is Lolita. But I’ve harped on it on this site again and again already. I read a lot of books, though, and there are a ton I think every reader should read. Steven Millhauser has written a number of these and The Knife Thrower and Other Stories is my favorite of his. Read it now.

Millhauser was one of a handful of excellent professors I had in college, so I’m a little biased. If you’re reading this site, I’d be a little surprised you’ve never heard of him. But if somehow you haven’t read him, you should. He is undeniably one of the most precise and imaginative writers writing today. He is a fabulist and a natural storyteller with a knack for writing stories that are at once cerebral and accessible. …
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Author: Steve Almond

2010 (self-published)

Filed Under Literary, Short Stories, Nonfiction

(Note: to the best of my knowledge this book is only available through on-demand publishing via an Espresso Book Machine. There is one at the Harvard Bookstore)

This is a tiny little book, split into two parts of about 40 small pages each. It really won’t take but a minute to read, well, maybe an hour. One side is titled “Essays” and the other “Stories” and they are flipped 180 degrees, so neither (or both I guess) comes first. There are three separate covers to choose from, and Almond has already revised it once since the initial printing. I think I’m a fan of this new fangled on demand printing thing.

Seeing as I really only know of Almond as a fiction writer (I very much enjoyed his 2005 collection, The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories), I opted to open with the “Stories” half first.  These are all short shorts, none longer than 4-5 paragraphs. There’s no plot thread connecting these and not much of a thematic line. Short shorts aren’t really a form I’m all that into. I read it like I do poetry, mostly for language and not so much for substance. I enjoyed these, but it’s not really the type of thing I tend to go back to. Almond is a talented writer, and the language is quite good:

This is where the cranes come to sleep, the ripped out yard-by-gravel mile between the bus terminal and the freeway still unconstructed, its fading gray ramps into nothing. They bundle here under night, clanking, steel thread and iron, the hard things of this world. Neglected by their soft owners, the cranes huddles and murmur old jokes, somber, worn, from the duties of lifting and sniffing on each other the perfume of oil going black. They know not to nod their giant necks, not to run their hooks against loose rebar. This is the hour of rest, when nothing is built or remembered. The wind through their loose parts is idle syncopation and notes whistle up, a song made with every measure of grace, as where honest labor has been done and fellowship means beast and machine. Sleep, good citizens, it is not yours to hear this sweet offering.

The “Essays” side of the book is the one I’d assumed I’d like less. Almond, however, surprised me with one of the best guides to writing I’ve come across to date.

Unlike the stories, Almond’s essays follow a sequence of questions and answers, almost as if he’s inserting his own responses into a writerly catechism.  It’s really written for students (enrolled in a program or otherwise) of writing. But anyone who entertains writing fiction or is interested at all in the writing process should defintiely give this a read. And, speaking from many dreadful workshop experiences: writing teachers should read this, as well as a few of the books I’ve suggested below.

Almond’s now-recognizable voice comes through especially clear in these essays. He reminds me a lot of George Saunders: biting and sarcastic and a little insane, yet undeniably wise. He writes in a funny yet serious tone that screams authority but doesn’t demand it. Writers should read this book, and everybody should read Steve Almond.

Similar Reads: Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut (Vonnegut), On Writing (King), Eats, Shoots, & Leaves (Truss), The Evil B.B. Chow (Almond), The Braindead Megaphone (Saunders)

Author: Robert Stone

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010

Filed under: Literary, Short Stories

In this collection, Stone is at his best when he’s dallying. Whether it’s an old lush sitting around, freaking people out, or a foolhardy suburban warrior stumbling drug-addled toward some quixotic goal, Stone excels at the second act. He runs into problems after that.

For most of these stories, Stone uses an odd pattern to build twisting, dogleg plots. We start with a man, a lawyer or a writer or a professor, who’s an incorrigible womanizer and a drunk or a druggie. After a length of time establishing a premise (and dallying magnificently), the story veers off in some wild way and leaves that premise—and often the main character—behind.

Sometimes the veering off involves a new point of view, sometimes a new location, sometimes an entire set of new characters. A couple of the stories here, most notably the title piece, “Fun With Problems,” succeed (more or less) with their cutback plot twists. More often, though, the narrative runs off the track, gets lost, and then lays down and dies.

So, while Stone’s writing, and especially his dialogue, are characteristically excellent, Fun With Problems is unsatisfying because the stories’ arcs so often bewilderingly abandon their first halves.

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Author: Gao Xingjian, translated from the Chinese by Mabel Lee

2004, HarperCollins

Filed under Literary, Short Stories

Gao Xingjian is apparently an important and influential Chinese literary figure. He lived through the Cultural Revolution before expatriating to France. He has since earned a Nobel Prize in Literature, for his fiction, poetry, and drama.  His stature, history, and skill are evident in his writing. However in this book they seem to overshadow the storytelling. There are only a few stories contained within this book, and none are particularly long. And while I quite enjoyed this as a collection, no one story really stands out. It’s definitely not the type of collection to pick and choose from.

Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather follows a consistent thematic thread. These are essentially stories about people who cannot connect, with others or with their world. In each story the characters are surrounded by many others just like themselves, and in each story there is a noticeable lack in social understanding, or even communication. Selfish egocentrism reigns, and empathy is nowhere to be found.

I am regrettably ignorant of modern Chinese culture, though I’ve read that Gao Xingjian is critical of his native society (not to be misconstrued as unloving). This book contains a lot of characters solely interested in their own selves; it is a book populated by “me”s. The main character in the title story, for instance, sees his grandfather much less as person than as a figure in his own life.

This is perhaps most noticeable in “The Accident” where people speak over the corpse of a man hit and killed by a human vehicle as if he were little more than news, thus dehumanizing him and realizing him merely as a part of their own existences. Of course this is really no different than the turned heads at an accident in any country, so Xingjian clearly isn’t criticizing solely the Chinese. The newlyweds in “The Temple” partake in one sided conversation with a villager where they are honeymooning, much as the former lovers in “In The Park” both speak at each other while neither listens.

Still, the writing is strong, with plenty of exposition that carefully dips into the emotional undercurrent of each story and utilizes descriptions efficiently:

The lid of the coffin is open and he almost guesses that the corpse in the coffin, with its head wrapped in the shroud, is himself. Apparently confused, he turns and looks around, although he doesn’t know what it is he is looking for. However, he sees behind him two big heavy doors that are half-open, and outside in the sun, on the stone steps, a little wooden bucket with peeling paint. A lizard is crawling on the stone step in front of the wooden bucket.

This is a very short collection that builds a strong emotional swell,  and well worth the read. However much of its strength resides in what the stories speak to contextually and how they work as a collection, so no singular story within stands out as particularly great. If you’re up for a collection of quick and heady short stories, definitely give this a read in a sitting or two, but if you are looking to nibble on a story or two between other readings, this may not be your best bet.

Similar reads: Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (Kawabata), Twilight of the Superheroes (Eisenberg), The Diving Pool (Ogawa)

Author: Lord Dunsany

Public Domain, 1912

Best ebook deal: free

Filed under Literary, Fantasy, Short Stories

It’s always great when a book turns out to be nothing at all what you were expecting, and all the better for it. I’d never heard of Lord Dunsany (aka Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany) before, but apparently he’s a big deal in fantasy. This collection is ecclectic and creative, with stories that delve into many wonderous locales and involve a wide spectrum of characters and situations. Though there are centaurs and man-eating gibbelins and fantastical locales such as The City of Never, the fantasy Dunsany presents is not of the sword and sorcery variety I expected to encounter. …
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Author: Jim Shepard

2007, Knopf

Best ebook deal: Barnes & Noble

Filed Under: Literary, Short Stories

Throughout this collection, Jim Shepard demonstrates his expertise in writing varied stories, playing with voice and mood, and delivering an array of diverse tales. Whether you approach the stories in the presented order or pick at them like a buffet, the first thing you’ll notice when beginning the second story you read is how different the voice is from the previous story.

Sometimes when writers work in this mode the authorial voice becomes washy or, worse, lost amid the competing characters. Other times when collections rely on a diversity of voices, the strength of a collection can be diminished by a few weaker entries in an otherwise competent assortment of character studies.

Thankfully, though he employs a wide range of characters, eras, and voices, neither of these are the case in Like You’d Understand, Anyway. …
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Author: Maile Meloy

2009, Riverhead

Best ebook deal: Sony

Filed under: Short Stories, Literary

Meloy’s oddly styled first novel, Liars and Saints, consisted almost entirely of plot summary, something verboten by the old writers’ group adage about showing and not telling. Liars and Saints covered decades in just a few hundred pages, and rarely paused long enough to let a full scene play out.

Both Ways has the vestiges of that technique, but Meloy shows signs of moving toward a more traditional dose of dramatization to go with her narration. Still, Both Ways has a broad, could-go-anywhere feel to it, and Meloy keeps her penchant for packing years into paragraphs.

As a reader, this means that you’re never quite sure, for better or for worse, what you’re reading about. The story that begins with a man’s parents dying might never mention them again, instead focusing on his crappy construction job years later.

In this collection, the strongest stories are those that feature more scene than summary, but Meloy’s tendency and ability to take stories on long, snaking left turns gives them a wild-card feel and a persistent, compelling undercurrent of danger.

However, Meloy hasn’t quite mastered this mix of dramatization and narration―sometimes she plays out scenes that have no real weight, and she often stops short of pushing her characters into the pit of drama they can so clearly sense.

Ultimately, Both Ways is connective tissue in the muscular body of work of a very good writer. She’s taking the next step in her career, and while she’s not there yet, she’s definitely an author to keep an eye on.

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This book has been chosen as a Great Read.

Author: Donald Ray Pollock

Doubleday, 2008

Best ebook deal: Public library

The current Wikipedia entry for Knockemstiff, Ohio labels the community a “ghost town.” While its handful of corporeal residents would dispute the tag, Donald Ray Pollock’s short story collection won’t make you want to drop by and discuss with them the vagaries of collaborative reference guides—even if the writer does claim that his depraved, nightmarish characters are not based on real Knockemstiffers.

Pollock grew up in Knockemstiff, a loose collection of houses and trailers sixty miles south of Columbus, and worked for thirty-two years in a nearby paper mill, spending much of his free time in and out of marriages and rehab centers. In his mid-forties, he earned a Bachelor’s in English, enrolled in (“The”) Ohio State University’s MFA program, and began writing about characters who struggle with issues that Pollock himself admits to having shared addictions, go-nowhere jobs, a sense of rural entrapment, and constant imbroglios with the opposite sex.

Pollock’s grotesque drunks and brawlers, speed freaks and dealers, sexual deviants and rape victims (the animate ones, at least) stumble bleary-eyed through the “holler” that they just cannot escape, carrying with them heavy regrets and bleak futures. “Sometimes it scares me to think I will probably spend the rest of my days wishing I’d blown a rabbit’s guts clear across Harry Frey’s orchard when I was six years old,” one character reflects, while another, looking ahead, thinks, “I’m beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.”

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Author: Thomas McGuane

Knopf, 2006

Best ebook deal: Sony eBook Store (ugh)

It’s difficult to discuss as a coherent whole any book of short stories, but especially a collection like Gallatin Canyon, whose most notable quality is a vast range between the register, tone, and language of each story.

McGuane fearlessly builds characters of various genders, races, education levels, professions, sensibilities, and dispositions. He strides as confidently into the life of a grumpy philandering retired lawyer as into that of a prostitute who makes extra money by rolling on her johns.

My one complaint is that McGuane seems to focus on the variety of his characters to the detriment of the trips he takes them on. He spends a lot of words setting scenes, and proving that he knows his stuff when he talks about sailing or herding cattle. He spends so much time building the lives of his characters that he rarely has enough time left to push them finally into trouble.

His stories are ultimately admirable, but never equally as entertaining. …
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