Writers: Short Stories - Mavis Gallant, Jhumpa Lahiri, Grace Paley, Flannery O’Connor, Edna O'Brien

 Jhumpa Lahiri's “Jubilee” is available for free (well, free as of 6/30/2025) from The New Yorker.

A wooden ruler with the etched faces of Henry VIII’s six wives running down the middle; ticket stubs from Hampton Court and the Chamber of Horrors, where we walked ahead of our mothers, hand in hand; a few wrappers of Dairy Milk. I still see clearly the brochure from Madame Tussaud’s, a green nameplate on the cover with white lettering. We shuddered at the likeness of one particularly sinister man standing in an olive-colored three-piece suit with old brown pharmaceutical bottles behind him. We’d seen him in the chamber dedicated to those who poisoned and stabbed and slashed. Later, flipping through the brochure, sitting side by side, we braced ourselves for his effigy; how we dreaded turning to that page. A Mavis Gallant story I discovered only recently likens the compulsion to save tickets and programs to a type of narcissism: that’s how a mother interprets a daughter’s need to hold on to memorabilia. But was that not what Gallant had done in some of her stories, and taught me to do? Intertwining invention with preserved bits and scraps of life? Already that spring, about to turn ten in the city of my birth, I was attempting to leave some trace, struggling to glimpse myself on a murky surface.

How do we face up to death, our own transience?

And by some weird miracle, The Walrus today published “A Wonderful Country”: A Mavis Gallant Story Rediscovered 

I called him the Hungarian because I couldn’t pronounce his name. If he had a name for me, I never heard it. We weren’t what you’d call chummy.

A much different rhythm than Lahiri's story.  A real estate transaction that seems small, that is sticking with me right. A life in an eggbeater.

Although Rewriting the Rules: Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (Library of America) has excerpts, it is not the whole short story as with the previous links. Its title is truth in advertising; which does not make it any less worth reading.

Although O’Connor—in the spirit of Chekhov’s famous dictum about the onstage gun needing to go off—has prepared us for the appearance of the Misfit, in a more profound sense she has radically rewritten the rules that seemed to have governed her tale. The effect is dizzying, and intensifies when it becomes obvious that the family can only be murdered by the Misfit and his men.

***

...Her darkly funny, violent world continues to exert tremendous appeal—and fascination—not least because of its collision of incongruous elements: the low and the transcendent, the comic and the speculative, the grotesque and the divine. In her meticulously crafted fiction, these opposites resolve via the unlikely transmutations and orderings of the creative act. For within her peculiarly personalized spiritual orthodoxy, ultimately nothing is incongruous; all is one. As she wrote, quoting the French theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Everything that rises must converge.”

I think of Lahiri as elegiac, Gallant as sharply condensing lives as an observational vignette, and O'Connor as twisted.

sch 6/30

I had not heard of Grace Paley until the last ten years, since I went to prison. I had heard of Zadie Smith. I still have not read Grace Paley, but I have read Zadie Smith (and written about her on this blog).

The New Yorker that published the Lahiri story, also published a Zadie Smith story. That I have not read, yet. I chose to read her write about Grace Paley: Zadie Smith on Grace Paley’s “My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age”.

Paley reminded me of my past but also of my present: living in Greenwich Village, with a poet as a partner, trying to write while bringing up two kids. The startling aspect, to me, was that she included it all. She didn’t put a cordon around a short story and use a special literary voice to create it. In her expert hands a short story is like one of those cavernous shoulder bags you’ll need to carry in the city if your plan is to tote around four or five novels, a feminist treatise, a bunch of diapers, somebody’s lunch, a photocopy of a zoning law to brandish at a community-board meeting, and a large banner that reads “END THE WAR.” Paley is an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink sort of a writer, with an emphasis on the kitchen sink. The domestic is not banal to her, nor is it bourgeois. It’s perhaps a little perverse to write a story called “The Silence” in homage to one of the chattiest writers on the block, yet for me Paley has always served as a kind of stimulant to honesty. I can get all up in my head when I’m writing. But if I read a bit of Paley just before I open the document I feel some of that wildness and openheartedness enter me. My character Sharon in “The Silence” is a fictional person from a shadowy region of my mind, but Paley cleared the space and built a little platform so that Sharon could step forward and just . . . be. My Sharon is dealing with “the Change,” which seems also to be on Paley’s mind in “My Father.” (“We should probably begin at the beginning, he said. Change. First there is change, which nobody likes—even men. You’d be surprised. You can do little things—putting cream on the corners of your mouth, also the heels of your feet.”) But Sharon is not a participant in what I want to call “menopause discourse.” She doesn’t really have a language for what’s happening to her. She’s just trying to get through it.

When I gave up writing in my early twenties, one part was not having anything to write. What I did not learn until I began telling my Indiana stories to people from the East, until I read Joyce Carol Oates's western New York stories and Thomas Hardy's Wessex novels, was that where there are people there are stories to tell. You look around and see what you can see, and then try to recreate the life you see on paper.

Edna O'Brien's illuminating short stories

sch 7/1 

Reading Lists!

 Like any of us have time to read these days - or, rather, the quiet time away from the screen to read a book. Like the fool I am, I keep reading what amounts to journalism on the internet.

My reading list is what I started and have not finished. That is long enough of a list.

But in the interest of encouraging you to read, having reading lists flowing into my inbox, I will put you wise to these lists, hoping you do better than I do:

From Write or Die:

Nirica Srinivasan, interviews editor

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett — I was so excited to hear a new Claire-Louise Bennett is on the way this year, so I'm revisiting Checkout 19, the first thing I read by her — a delightfully strange, shifty sort of stream-of-consciousness book, about art and imagination and writing and reading.

Kailey Brennan DelloRusso, editor in chief

I was so excited to stumble upon Girls with Long Shadows by Tennessee Hill at the library the other day. Summertime always makes me want to read stories about girlhood and this one caught my attention right away with its Texas golf course setting, story of girl triples without names and the sibling dynamic I was looking for as I gear up to write my second novel.

Suzanne Grove, fiction editor

Slanting Towards the Sea by Lidija Hilje — My great-grandfather was born in Bubnjarci, a Croatian village bordering Slovenia. I grew up hearing stories about life there, so I'm always seeking novels and novelists with that Croatian connection. The novel begins, "Sometimes I stalk my ex-husband." Of course you have to keep reading.

Shelby Hinte, senior editor

I am currently trying to live and breath rewriting my next novel, so I am reading a chapter out of Rick Rubin's The Creative Act: A Way of Being each morning for a little pre-writing pep talk, and I am rereading Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies for a lesson in structure. I've been surprised at how my view of the characters and their marriage is wildly different 10 years later. (Maybe because I read it during the first year of my marriage, and now, 11 years married, I am currently separated from my husband...a fact that is also responsible for the major overhaul of my WIP.)

Nicholas Claro, fiction reader

I just finished Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash and I'm now reading Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle.

Jessica Bao, essay reader

Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Jo-tzu— Originally written in Mandarin Chinese as an imagined translation from a 1940s Japanese text, the book follows the travels of young novelist Chizuko as she explores Taiwan—then under imperialist Japanese occupation—with local translator Chizuru. Led by Chizuko’s impressive and frankly aspirational appetite, the two women eat their way around Taiwan in chapters titled after various wonderful food items. They also grow carefully and heartrendingly closer than perhaps their time allows. And while Taiwan Travelogue made my mouth water (Ohh the bah-sò-pn̄g of my childhood) and my throat parched, perfect for a summer day, it was also so tender that it cracked my heart in two.

(I had the privilege of reading the original Mandarin text alongside the English one, flipping between my ironically more fluent second language and my mother tongue. There are nuances in the translations—diegetic or otherwise—that I will talk about for hours with anyone willing. Literally, just dm me.)

 A Reading List for Disability Pride Month 2025 (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses)

Private Eye reading recommendations from the '70s to now

reading lists (Literary Hub)

Summer Reading Reset (Democracy in Color) (Podcast)

sch

 

Happy Kitten Day & Some Words From Harlan Ellison

Yesterday was work and the start of my two vacation. Whatever allergic reaction wraps around my ankles still hurt during work, and I was ready to leave when we wrapped up around 10:45. But else I might have done, got lost when I decided I was not going anywhere but bed. The pain might have been less than Tuesday, it still wore me out.

Up and about, I spent the rest of the day revising "Colonel Tom". It now needs a new title. There are about 600 words less than when I started. I finished a little before 11 pm.

Today, I slept in until around 6. Fiddled with the email and a little reading when I should have been doing the dishes. I need to catch the bus in less than 30 minutes - I am off to the laundromat. After that a special group session, the grocery, and back here to do some more writing.

Today is National Kitten Day!

Some news from yesterday:

 Indiana Public Broadcasting statewide reporting team eliminated (News From The States)

There goes the best in Indiana's local reporting, and you can thank Donald Trump and our General Assembly for that.

At the same time as Hoosiers vote for Trump and Micah Beckwith, while they salivate like Pavlov's dogs for MAGA, the state is getting diverse: Slice Of Life: Indian Pizza In The Circle City (Indianapolis Monthly). Or is it that our becoming more diverse, more open to life in the wider world, that inspires our retreat into the comforts of the Republican Party? Just like cockroaches scurry aware from the light.

It has always been hard to find Harlan Ellison's stories, but perhaps it is easier today with the internet and him being dead. If so, find his books, and read him. Ornery and tough, but damn he could write. He had brains, could think, and said what he meant:

Funny, too. 

Something to make you feel better:

Have a good day.

sch

Dirty Snow, George Simenon 3-2-2013

    [ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 7/5/2025] 

 Georges Simenon created Inspector Maigret. Dirty Snow is not a Maigret novel. To me, Dirty Snow has more to do with Albert Camus' The Stranger and Franz Kafka than to Maigret.

The novel ostensibly concerns itself with Frank Friedmaier. The novel opens thus:

If not for a chance event, what Frank Friedmaier did that night wouldn't have had much meaning. Obviously Frank couldn't have foreseen that his neighbor, Gerhardt Holst, would pass him in the street. But Holst did pass by, and he recognized him, too, which changed everything. And, yet, that and all that later followed, Frank accepted.

Part One, Timo's Customers, Chapt. 1

I disagree with William T. Vollman calling this noir. It is dark, but as The Stranger or The Plague are dark, and not dark as the works of James M. Cain or Jim Thompson. (I completely disagree with his classifying Philip Marlowe as a noir character.)

The occupying forces occupy without an apparent ideology or overt force. Even when Frank becomes enmeshed in this force's web, it is never clear what is his transgression. Therein, lies the resemblance with Kafka.

Destiny interests Simenon:

It was funny. He had spent the greater part of his life - it wasn't an exaggeration - hating destiny with an almost personal hatred, to the point of looking for it everywhere, wanting to defy it, to wrestle with it.

***

"I know nothing about whatever it is you're investigating. That I swear. But if I did know something, I wouldn't tell you. You could interrogate me as long as you wanted, but I wouldn't tell you a word. You can torture me. I'm not afraid of torture. You cna promise me my life. I don't want it. I want to die, as soon as possible in whatever fashion you choose.

Chapter 4; Part Three: The Woman at the Window. 

Simenon creates a world of a political vacuum, which is then a moral vacuum. A girl from a good family becomes a whore and possible terrorist. Hannah Arendt could have found her banality of evil in this novel. In the end, Frank creates his own morality.

[7/7/2025:

One thing missing from prison is information. No Google. I would have liked to see what others thought about the books I noted above. Well, I got that chance now, and you can decide if I am a moron or not. You may also want to follow the links provided in the text.

The Snow Was Dirty is bleak and uncomfortable - but it's also a masterpiece (The Guardian) - has me rethinking whether nor not this was noir.

Philip Marlowe (The Thrilling Detective Web Site)

sch]

Russia and The Ukraine War

 I have posted here again and again that the Ukraine War is a religious war. Religious faith goes beyond President Trump's limited understanding. Which says to me, there will be no settlement of the Ukraine War until Putin does something that offends Trump's self-regard.

Russia’s Settlement Memo – Lift Restrictions on UOC & other news (Orthodox Christian Laity)

Another Attempt to Break the Silence: Why Orthodox Christians in America Must Stand with the Persecuted in Russia (Orthodox Christian Laity)

As an Orthodox Christian witnessing the systematic persecution of clergy and faithful in Russia, I find myself compelled to break the deafening indifference within our American Orthodox communities. My heart grows heavier each day as friends—priests I’ve known for decades—suffer for their faithfulness to the Gospel of peace.

Here, I must acknowledge that Ukrainians are dying daily under Russian aggression. At the same time, hundreds of pro-war priests from Russia actively support the war efforts in the occupied territories of Ukraine. I focus on the resistance within Russia itself—those who refuse to participate in this betrayal of the Gospel.

There is an open letter that can be signed by you to show solidarity for Ukraine and Russian's anti-war Orthodox Christians:

Your voice matters. Together, we can break this silence. Please sign our Open Letter at https://sobornost.cc/. Let us stand with those who suffer for the Gospel of peace. The All-American Council is coming. 

sch 7/7 

Writers: Obsession

 Looking at myself, Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante's I’m Obsessed: On the Importance of Getting Lost in Your Writing (Literary Hub) makes sense. Once started, it is hard to shake off. 

The article marks obsession as a good thing:

For writers, obsessions—personal, aesthetic, emotional, intellectual—are not something to be tamed, managed, or medicated—at least not when they aren’t dangerous or debilitating. Instead, they should be welcomed, pursued relentlessly, and mined in our work.

My obsessions have history and memory, and getting the mechanics right. The last might be more of a hindrance, from what else the article has to say:

The prime directive (we think) is obsession. To write about things you care passionately about. To exploit your obsessions as both directional compasses and material: not what you know (or don’t know) but what you can’t stop thinking about.

No matter what a student chooses, we see a direct correlation between a writer’s and their readers’ excitement and discovery and willingness to go deep. To do so, the stakes often need to be raised from mere interest or idea.

We say, follow that heat, no matter how borrowed from “real life” or invented, no matter how improbable it seems as a subject, how big and overtly political or seemingly trivial, or how potentially mortifying it might be to admit that you should care about such a thing.

Since I have begun revising "Love Stinks" for the umpteenth time, I am not sure what to do with the following:

We think this dual strategy of focusing on your obsessions, and welcoming the strange places they might take you, is a critical aspect of good creative writing.

In fact, we believe it’s so important that we give it a name in our upcoming book from W.W. Norton, The Lab: Experiments in Writing Across Genres.

We call such deviations from an obsessive topic nonconforming oddities.

What’s a nonconforming oddity when it’s at home? Any unexpected thread that might not seem relevant at first, but upon developing (and revising) your piece, turns out to be extraordinarily important, even essential.

A nonconforming oddity is that image or section that a traditional writing workshop tells you to “cut” as a way to adhere to static ideas of form and consistency. But we encourage you to identify those moments as possible gold among the straw—and then see if your piece, in its final draft, earns it.

With this revision, I am moving further from "Love Stinks" origin as a screenplay. The new first chapter has gotten thumbs up from two of my three readers. I have in mind putting one scene at the end. I am trying to decide what I can save - and some of those items are certainly nonconforming oddities - but there will need to be some new connections made, too.

I think there is a serious truth here. Why else would Melville have written Moby Dick?

sch 6/27

Class, Not Race 2-24-2013

[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 7/7/2025] 

 One thing I see in prison are the divisions along class. For those of you who drank too long the Kool-Aid of America as a classless society need to go to the library and read The Great Gatsby, or anything by Edith Wharton (besides Ethan Frone). Or tour Newport News, Rhode Island.

Money divides us. I almost wrote education, but money gets us an education. Is there a connection between declining wages and declining academic achievements?

Gore Vidal argued in many of his essays we have an oligarchical government. Walter Karp wrote about this oligarchical government in Indispensable Enemies. I think their warning may now be proven right.

Whites and Blacks and all of this country's other ethnicities ought to pay attention to these words of Michael Eric Dyson from Can You Hear Me Now?

If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive, he would talk about the economic inequality and fundamental social injustice that is ethnically based and racially informed - but also class based, because poor white people themselves have been duped by politicians who don't have their best interests at heart.

Chapter 9: Justice and Suffering

We Americans conflate class and race because we are so simple-minded. We can no longer afford simple-minded solutions to our problems or the fear derived from bad consciences.

sch 

[7/7/2025:

One thing missing from prison is information. No Google. I would have liked to see what others thought about the books I noted above. Now, you can do that by following the links provided in the text. I feel the ideas here remain valid. sch.]