An atomic explosion of awesome

Today’s post shares the dual distinction of officially putting our third month in the books, and being our 100^th post since kicking things off here in November.

Now, we don’t want to pat ourselves on the back, but since there’s no one else to do it we’ll just go ahead and say that it’s pretty amazing that in the past 30 days alone we have thrown the spotlight on 26 different authors. We may not be bottomless fonts of knowledge and insight, but you can’t say we lack range in our literary interests. Just take a look at this past month’s line up:

John Cheever

Roberto Bolano

John Steinbeck

Billy Collins

Wallace Stegner

E.L. Doctorow

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Alice Munro

James Joyce

Aldous Huxley

George Orwell

Thomas Mann

Italo Calvino

Joseph Conrad

Edith Wharton

H. Rider Haggard

Toni Morrison

Sue Monk Kidd

David Grann

John Hersey

J.D. Salinger

Annie Proulx

Eudora Welty

Douglas Thayer

Henry James

Daniel Orozco

Philip Roth

That's a decent list by anyone's standards. And there's lots more where that came from. You just need to strap in and feel the 'Gs.' As always, here are the 5 most popular posts from this past month:

Literary Death Match: 1984 vs. Brave New World 

Review: “Wasatch” 

Haiku-ption Contest #4 

Short Story Club: “Walter John Harmon” 

Poet’s Corner

We’re glad to have each and every one of you as readers, and we hope you’ll continue to spread the word about the atomic explosion of awesome happening over here at ShelfActualization.com.

First Line Friday!

It's "First Line Friday" again. Today's first line is a great one for memorizing, if you are in the business of memorizing first lines:

"I knew her eight years ago."

Now, I like this line. I don't love it, but I do think it's a good first line. I like that it's concise (very concise . . . 6 words), but completely introduces the reader to the subject, which is obviously a girl. But, I also wonder about its efficacy? Does it work? Is too basic?

The writer, of course, is Phillip Roth. The novel is The Dying Animal.

Short Story Club Selection for February

Alrighty. Time to unveil our February selection for the John R. Lyman Memorial Short Story Club. It’s a short one, but it’s an instant classic for anyone that’s ever worked out of a cubical. (I’m typing this post in the bath of fluorescent light that pervades my own little 8’x8’ slice of cube heaven, and some of you might just be reading this in similar surroundings.)

The story for this month is “Orientation” by Daniel Orozco, from his collection by the same name. Access the four-page story for free here, or purchase the entire collection below. Then come back here on Saturday the 25^th of February, and we’ll heap praise/pick it apart/do whatever it is we do at Short Story Club.

Here's the opening:

“Those are the offices and these are the cubicles. That’s my cubicle there, and this is your cubicle. This is your phone. Never answer your phone. Let the Voicemail System answer it. This is your Voicemail System Manual. There are no personal phone calls allowed. We do, however, allow for emergencies. If you must make an emergency phone call, ask your supervisor first. If you can’t find your supervisor, ask Phillip Spiers, who sits over there. He’ll check with Clarissa Nicks, who sits over there. If you make an emergency phone call without asking, you may be let go.” 

[Read More]

Mini-Review: The Turn of the Screw

Since I’d never read anything by Henry James before, I didn’t quite know what to expect when I picked up The Turn of the Screw. Call me clueless, but the last thing I expected was a good old fashioned ghost story- which is essentially what this book is (unless you subscribe to the “insane governess theory.”) It was admittedly an interesting read, but I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about this one. I really enjoyed the premise, and the jaw-dropper of an ending gave the book a punch I didn’t think James had in him. But the fact I didn’t love it probably comes down to a question of style.

James’s reputation as a writer certainly precedes him, so I was preparing myself for pantloads of florid prose. And that, as the snippet below illustrates, is something he delivered in spades:

To gaze into the depths of blue of the child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgement and, so far as it might be, my agitation.

A little much, right? But my recent immersion in Conrad, Mann and Faulkner had prepped me well for the challenge. No, it wasn’t so much the flowery nature of the writing that doomed this book for me, as the sheer quantity of it. He was too blasted thorough for his own good! James essentially talked all the tension out of a very promising tale that was meant to keep you on the edge of your seat.

I don’t need to know every thought, every impression and every detailed description that passes through the narrator’s brain. And I don’t generally need to know the three or four courses of action she considered before finally opening her mouth to reply to another character. As a reader I felt like I could form no reactions of my own, because everything was already explained for me in excruciating detail.

To sum up: I think beautiful and elaborate language definitely has its place, I just don’t think it served this story as well as a simpler approach might have done. Any James fans out there? Am I completely off base on this one?

Review: Wasatch- Mormon Stories and a Novella

Before picking up this book, my only exposure to Douglas Thayer was his short story “Opening Day,” which you can access for free here. This collection contains some of his previously-unpublished stories, and returns to print others that are described as among his ‘career-best.’ If you’ve never heard of him before, you might be wondering what kind of career we’re talking about here. I was in the same boat, but after Wikipedia told me he’s been referred to as the “Mormon Hemingway” I admit I was intrigued. I decided to take the plunge, and I’m glad I did.

On the face of it, you could say that Thayer is firmly entrenched in telling only one kind of story, as almost all of these selections feature coming of age tales told from the perspective of the Mormon male. But to dismiss the collection on those grounds would be to do the author and the reader a great disservice. There’s considerable range lurking beneath the surface. Whether it’s the magical realism of “Brother Melrose,” or the black comedy of “The Gold Mine,” Thayer explores themes of life and death, survival and forgiveness, faith, doubt, friendship, heroism and more.

Thayer’s Mormon-ness, which is altogether absent in a number of the stories, is doled out by varying degrees in the interior monologue of his characters, rather than explained overtly in sermons and worship services. Sometimes this method gives an air of expository doctrine dropping (as in “Crow Basin” and “Apache Ledges”), but for the most part it is handled deftly- as a backdrop or a motivation for the character action. In fact, those stories that delve for deeper religious meaning (“The Locker Room” and “Fathers and Sons”) are among the most powerful in the collection.

The author has described himself as having “a mind that deals in images.” His straightforward prose certainly conveys those images clearly, and above all, evokes a strong sense of place. The mountains, rivers and elements of Wasatch are maybe more accurately described as characters than as settings. They shape and challenge his protagonists, and in some cases give them their very purpose.

If I were to level one criticism of the writing, it is that Thayer has a strong affinity for leading with dependent clauses. This isn’t a problem in and of itself, but when two or three such sentences are grouped together, it can be a little distracting:

Sometimes at night, almost feverish, not wanting to go to bed in my deep, dark room, and not knowing why, I stayed out late. Dressed in Levi’s and low-cut tennis shoes without socks, my T-shirt wadded in my pocket, I rode my bike under the dark summer trees to town. The sidewalks nearly empty, driven by some strange desire to know myself, I rode past the dark store windows to see my reflection flash by.

I should mention that the above excerpt isn’t representative of the whole, but was simply dog-eared by me as a noticeable offender. Overall, his skills as a storyteller should not be left to doubt. Thayer moves effortlessly between backstory and present action in all of his stories, but does so to special effect in his novella “Dolf,” which will have your heart pounding right up until not one, but two final twists knock you squarely between the eyes. It’s like something out of Cormac McCarthy or the very best Louis L’Amour.

His characters are introspective and interesting, and they inhabit a wide range of time periods and settings. He’ll take you from the frontier of the Old West, to Depression era small towns, to modern day settings of all sorts- including hobo camps, national parks, red rock deserts, abandoned mines and ice-fishing reservoirs. You see a Mormon perspective played out against any number of backdrops, but as I said earlier, Thayer is by no means a one-trick pony. I’d be glad to read him again. Check him out. 

*** Update: This Book was awarded the Association for Mormon Letters' award for Short Fiction in 2011 ***



The eructative Eudora Welty

I shared in another post how I was introduced to John Cheever through a pop-culture reference in an episode of Seinfeld. But I’m sure Cheever’s not the only writer to befall this sorry fate. Sadly, my first introduction to Eudora Welty came in a 1995 episode of the Simpsons.

In “A Star is Burns” film critic Jay Sherman comes to Springfield to judge a film festival. It’s an important episode in the Simpson’s canon if only for the two short films embedded below, “Man getting hit by Football” by Hans Moleman and “Pukahontas” by Barney Gumble (You’ll have to ignore the Polish subtitles.)

The reference to Mme. Welty comes as Sherman is bragging about having won the Pulitzer, to which Homer responds with some bragging of his own:

The exchange between Lisa and Sherman is cut off at the end, but it goes something like this:

Lisa: “Wow! How many Pulitzer Prize winners can do that?”

Jay Sherman: “Just me and Eudora Welty.”

Later in the episode Krusty the Clown announces that he has a date with Eurdora Welty, after which a giant belch is heard offscreen and Krusty shouts, “Coming, Eudora!”

My own internet sleuthing (which is notorious in some circles) has failed to come up with any substantiated basis for this running gag at Ms. Welty’s expense. I’d love to learn that she was a profligate belcher, but highly doubt it. Anyone out there know if there’s a source for it? Anyone?

In Defense of the Books You Hate: Catcher in the Rye

Tucker got me thinking about Catcher in the Rye the other day, and I left a comment voicing one of my pet peeves.

I can’t stand it when people hate things just because they become popular. I mean, I get it. We all like to be in on the ground floor. We all like to be curators of our own little pop culture universe. But if you ask me, there are few things stupider than yelling “sell-out” just because someone you don’t like happens to like something you liked first. A good indie rock band can be absolutely ruined for some folks, for no other reason than that their songs finally get airtime on mainstream radio stations. What a joke.

I’ve read enough crap commentary about Catcher in the Rye to know that it’s one of those books that people just love to hate. It’s a simple-minded creation. Holden’s a self-centered, whiny little pipsqueak. Nothing really happens in the story. Why are we celebrating this dope? But when it comes right down to it, where’s all this vitriol coming from?

My guess it’s one of those books most people love as a teenager, but one which you’re supposed to “out-grow” once you get a little life-experience under your belt. I just don’t get it. Nobody’s saying it’s got to be your favorite book, but let’s recognize it for what it is. It gives us one of the most memorable narrator’s voices of all time. In fact, on that score, I’d rank it in slot number one. It’s a book that continues to resonate with generation after generation, despite an avalanche of arrogant dismissals by the well-read masses. -And I’m no died-in-the-wool, angst-ridden teen- I say all this as someone who didn’t pick the book up until my thirties.

Here are just two passages that caused me no small embarrassment when they produced involuntary, audible guffaws on-board a packed airplane:

I got bored sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I was just amusing myself. I can’t really tap-dance or anything, but it was a stone floor in the can, and it was good for tap-dancing. I started imitating one of those guys in the movies. In one of those musicals. I hate the movies like poison, but I get a bang out of imitating them. Old Stradlater watched me in the mirror while he was shaving. All I need’s an audience. I’m an exhibitionist. “I’m the goddam Governor’s son,” I said. I was knocking myself out. Tap-dancing all over the place. “He doesn’t want me to be a tap-dancer. He wants me to go to Oxford. But it’s in my goddam blood, tap-dancing.” Old Stradlater laughed. He didn’t have too bad a sense of humor. “It’s the opening night of the Ziegfield Follies.” I was getting out of breath. I have hardly any wind at all. “The leading man can’t go on. He’s drunk as a bastard. So who do they get to take his place? Me, that’s who. The little old goddam Governor’s son.”

“All of a sudden- for no good reason, really, except that I was sort of in the mood for horsing around- I felt like jumping off the washbowl and getting old Stradlater in a half nelson. That’s a wrestling hold, in case you don’t know, where you get the other guy around the neck and choke him to death, if you feel like it. I landed on him like a goddam panther.”

Now, you may not have relied on such random feats of stupidity for laughs when you were young, but it sounds an awful lot like a million moments of boredom I passed with my highschool friends.  And just because I haven’t pulled a half nelson on anyone in the last twenty years doesn’t mean it doesn’t ring true. It’s a veritable work of genius, and if I had written it, I’d probably be just as likely as Salinger to hole up in New Hampshire for the rest of my life for fear of never producing its equal. It’s that good. Run, don’t walk…

From the pen of Annie Proulx

I’ve said it before, but I read a lot of short stories. It’s my primary method for exploring new authors. Between podcasts, stories people send my way, and the John R. Lyman Memorial Short Story Club, I probably take in a dozen or more stories every month. That’s a book-length pile of fiction, every month, that doesn’t end up in my regular reading tally.

But just because I don’t keep track of them doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share some of their better lines every now and again. So today on the free sample trey, I give you a smattering from Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News. The lines below come from her short story “What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?”. All emphasis is mine- the phrases that jumped off the page at me in bold.

"With his mother gone, civilization began to fall away from him like feathers from a molting hen. In a matter of weeks he was eating straight from the frying pan."

"A section of the high-school band straggled past, sweaty kids, many of them obese, their white marching trousers bunched at the crotch. He remembered schoolmates in his own childhood, skinny, quick ranch kids, no one fat and sweaty, Pete Kitchen looking like he was made of kindling wood and insulation wire, Willis McNitt small enough to shit behind a sagebrush and never be noticed."

"Behind the band came two teen-age boys dressed as Indians, breechclouts over swim trunks, a load of beads around their necks, black wigs with braids and feathers."

"They were followed by a stock outlaw and a sheriff’s posse, and behind them half the town’s women and small children in pioneer regalia—long calico dresses, aprons and sunbonnets, big Nikes flashing incongruously with every step."

"The sky was a hard cheerful blue, empty but for a few torn contrails. Plastic bags impaled on the barb fences flapped in the hot wind." 

"He got out, threw his chicken box at the trash can. Rod, too, tossed his crumpled box, but it hit the side of the can and sprayed chicken bones."

First Line Friday!

Today's first line is a rockstar pioneer of a line. Written in 1951, I am unaware of this type of tone in any other literary work from the period, let alone to commence a masterpiece novel. Now remember, this was written in 1951 (the era of Leave-It-To-Beaver):

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

It's a great first line because the tone itself slaps you in the face. You reach the end of the sentence and are left thinking, "Hmm, I didn't expect that. This kid sounds like a real ass." And you're only one sentence into the novel.

This novel is so prominent and respected and blah blah blah that I would assume most of you recognize the line immediately. As such, I am not going to disclose it here. If you don't recognize it, you'd 'better get your shit together.' (I am confident that Holden would phrase it that way too, if he lived in 2012).

Review: A Bell for Adano

My search for audio books at my local library is a pretty haphazard thing. I don’t place holds, and generally don’t plan ahead. My selection just depends on whatever they have available whenever I happen to drop by. Sometimes I come across a book I expect to be phenomenal, and it ends up falling flat. (I’m looking at you, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy) Other times I pick something up out of sheer curiosity and end up loving a book I’d never heard of before. That’s exactly what happened when I pulled John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano off the shelf.

Turns out this book won the Pulitzer in 1945. It’s the story of a Major in the American Army who is stationed as the Allied Military Government Officer in the fictional occupied town of Adano, on the coast of Sicily. It is a novel full of colorful characters: the eccentric villagers of Adano, the cantankerous army General, the conniving former fascists, and the hapless soldiers who try to make sense of it all.

The book’s amusing descriptions of military incompetence and beaurocratic inefficiencies rival those in Heller’s Catch-22 or any good episode of M*A*S*H. Here’s a description of the runaround a local Italian gets when he wants to relay some piece of intelligence to General Marvin (who is modeled after General Patton):

After an argument with Colonel Henderson, Cacopardo was sent upstairs under guard, was stopped and questioned by a sentry at the head of the stairs, was sent downstairs because he did not have a proper Division pass, was given a pass, was taken upstairs again and was questioned as to age, religion, political beliefs and sex by a Sergeant, was interviewed by a staff officer who doubted whether the General  would be free to see him, was referred to Colonel Middleton, the General’s Chief of Staff, was questioned by Colonel Middleton’s secretary, who thought the Colonel was busy, was finally admitted to Colonel Middleton, who after an argument, agreed to see whether the General would see Cacopardo, which he doubted. At the moment, General Marvin was playing mumblety-peg with Lieutenant Bird, his aide.

The main character, Major Joppolo, is a competent, well-meaning officer and all-around good guy. A rarity in both the U.S. beuracracy and the long-oppressed Sicilian town. There is truly nothing not to like about the man. The reader wants him to do well, wants him to succeed in establishing democracy in Adano and in replacing the 700-year-old bell that the fascists had melted down for war munitions.

Unfortunately he’s in a race against the clock to accomplish everything he wants to in Adano. Early in the book he countermands a ridiculous order of the General’s and a memorandum explaining the insubordination is mailed off to the General to make sure he knows where to place the blame. In intermittent chapters we trace the memo as it makes its way from wrong Division to wrong Division, back to Allied Command in North Africa, and then finally to the General’s desk in Sicily. The feel-good ending turns bittersweet just at the crucial moment, but the book was as enjoyable a read as I’ve had lately.

The writing won’t knock you over with its lyrical beauty, but it is a great story, well-told. And what it lacks in breathtaking prose it makes up for in delightful lines from crass characters:

“This place is such a dump. Say, if they ever give this old world an enema, this is where they’ll put the tube in.”

A very strong recommendation for A Bell for Adano, a light but powerful read. Check it out.