ON EXTENDED FORECAST AND SHORT FICTION

All this past dark and soggy winter long, I nurtured fantasies of summer. Drinkable skies and an amber sun. Contagious color in the garden. Breezes through an open door, an open window. The dance of fireflies.

In my needy, scheming, romanticizing mind, darkness was giving way to light, work was giving way to play, and I was reading (at my leisure) whatever I happened to fancy. Reading in the earliest part of the day--before my son or husband stirred, before the glisten on the grass burned off, before anybody anywhere could suggest a different agenda. Reading outside on the old wood-en bench, or up on the slatted, sloping deck, or on my side of the bed, turned toward the breeze and the clean, pink, morning light.

Beth Kephart, Extended forecast, Chicago Tribune (May 23, 2004), cited in MonkeyMom, Summer Sherbet: Six Weeks to a Better Mind (May 24, 2004).

Short stories are often thought of as the amuse bouche of the literary world. Their brevity is considered a mark of an unserious nature. "How could anything weighty be said in a brief work? Look at Brothers Karamazov, at Swann's Way... important works are supposed to be tomes." The thing is, important works are pockets of gold, just like lengthy tomes, and we can take value from them if we can find these pockets.

Kephart's essay and list on the short stories she intends to read over the summer is a divining rod [FN1] to the pockets of gold that we seek. "MonkeyMom" has created alternatives to this list (on her main page). Personally, I look at such a task as daunting. There are certain authors - Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff - with whom I'm not comfortable playing triage, with saying "this short story is better than that one." Others, I just don't know enough about [FN2]. I don't plan on following this reading list - I've already read many of the works on here - but I like it, and I may look up a few of the noted blank spots in my memory. [FN3] I have my own self-imposed curriculum planned for the summer. [FN4] A few recommendations from this list can be made, though.

A Country Husband, and most of Cheever's other works, is worth reading. Cheever seems to be the evolutionary predecessor to Carver, differing from Carver in that Cheever seems more fond of his characters.

A Small, Good Thing is a natural second recommendation, then. I tend to think that this story is the most perfect one ever written: efficient, descriptive, heart-wrenching, and redemptive. It's like a fifteen-page condensation of the New Testament.

Much has been spoken of about my third recommendation, The Shell Collector, and I think that story deserves the attention. It's ... it's... it's damn interesting. I read the story first in the 2003 edition of The Best American Short Stories annual anthology, and then again in the 2003 collection of The O. Henry Prize Stories. Then, I read it again a few months ago after Julius, my inventor-misanthrope friend, stated that he had read it, aloud, no less, to his family and didn't see the allure of The Shell Collector. To be honest, I can see the allure, but I'm not ready to put it into words. [FN5] The story deals with death, redemption, and mysticism, and tends to leave me panting for breath at the end. That's my current summary, if you will.

A general note should be made about the format of Kephart's list. Kephart does not cite the anthologies used for each of her suggested stories. While most of these stories aren't hard to find, it just strikes me as bad journalism to recommend a text but not make clear where to find the text. Now, while I have not included it here, Kephart does suggest a number of short fiction anthologies, and presumably these would have the stories she has suggested (well, most of them; she doesn't cite to anything that would have Doerr's The Shell Collector, so I can't imagine that the recommended anthologies are meant to correspond with the suggested reading [FN6]).

The first suggested addition would be Dan Chaon's The Bees. Originally published in McSweeney's, it can be found in the Walter Mosley-edited 2003 edition of The Best American Short Stories. It's a chilling ghost story [FN7] about the haunting of a reformed alcoholic by his memories of his first son. It's surreal and terrifying in a fashion that I never found Steven King to be.

The second is a realistic story, Kevin Brockmeier's Space, which immediately follows The Bees in The Best American Short Stories. Space addresses a father and son dealing with the loss of the father's wife. It's well written; almost lyrical, in fact. It's the quiet sort of sincerity that sometimes gets lost when transposed to film, due to its lack of "movement."

What I will remember is this: that there was a Della. That in a place now gone dark, within some vale or crimp of lost time, I knew her. And that something of her life passed into a nd through my own, effecting a conversion. My memory of you will be like the envelope of a bubble - rising out of sight from the collar of its wand, transporting the breath of me to some far place.

Kevin Brockmeier, Space, in The Best American Short Stories (2003 ed.), at 291.

KEPHART'S SUMMER READING LIST

UPDATE: I am modifying this list to include the sources for these works, if I know where to find them. A few abbreviations will be used. First, the Houghton Mifflin Best American Short Stories Annual will be abbreviated as BASS (Year of Publication). The O. Henry Prize Stories Annual will be abbreviated as OHPS (Year of Publication). Otherwise, I will provide the full title of the work and a link to it on Amazon, if possible.

Day 1 "Girl," Jamaica Kincaid

Day 2 "The Country Husband," John Cheever [The Stories of John Cheever]

Day 3 "Along the Frontage Road," Michael Chabon [BASS 2002]

Day 4 "Hills Like White Elephants," Ernest Hemingway [The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (The Finca Vigia Edition)]

Day 5 "The Liar," Tobias Wolff

Day 6 "Sonny's Blues," James Baldwin

Day 7 "Souvenir," Jayne Anne Phillips

Day 8 "Red Lipstick," Yolanda Barnes

Day 9 "A Small, Good Thing," Raymond Carver [Where I'm Calling From]

Day 10 "Spring in Fialta," Vladimir Nabokov

Day 11 "First Love, Last Rites," Ian McEwan

Day 12 "The Shell Collector," Anthony Doerr [OHPS (2003); BASS (2003)]

Day 13 "Everything That Rises Must Converge," Flannery O'Connor

Day 14 "The Love of a Good Woman," Alice Munro

Day 15 "Made in Heaven," John Updike

Day 16 "How to Win," Rosellen Brown

Day 17 "Graveyard of the Atlantic," Alyson Hagy

Day 18 "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson

Day 19 "His Mother's House," Edward P. Jones

Day 20 "Sweethearts," Richard Ford

Day 21 "People Like That Are the Only People Here," Lorrie Moore

Day 22 "Mexico," Rick Bass

Day 23 "Why I Live at the P.O.," Eudora Welty

Day 24 "The Tell-Tale Heart," Edgar Allan Poe

Day 25 "The Age of Grief," Jane Smiley (though properly considered a novella, it is worth sneaking in during a short-story binge)

Day 26 "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien [The Things They Carried; You should also pick up the second collection of stories in this series, If I Die In A Combat Zone]

Day 27 "I Stand Here Ironing," Tillie Olsen

Day 28 "Gooseberries," Anton Chekhov

Day 29 "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner

Day 30 "Graduation," Andre Dubus

Day 31 "The Wig," Nathan Englander

Day 32 "Bill," Brad Watson

Day 33 "The Lady With the Pet Dog," Anton Chekhov

Day 34 "Babylon Revisited," F. Scott Fitzgerald

Day 35 "Open Arms," Robert Olen Butler

Day 36 "Nilda," Junot Diaz [I think this was in a 2002 issue of The New Yorker]

Day 37 "I Want to Live!" Thom Jones

Day 38 "Tall Tales From the Mekong Delta," Kate Braverman

Day 39 "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Flannery O'Connor

Day 40 "Labor Day Dinner," Alice Munro

Day 41 "The Rocking-Horse Winner," D.H. Lawrence

Day 42 "Cathedral," Raymond Carver [Where I'm Calling From, supra]

FOOTNOTES

1. For those interested in playing The Professor and the Madman, I happened to notice the absence of an entry in the Wikipedia for divining rod. I have created one, and look forward to your revisions.

2. Jamaica Kincaid and Flannery O'Connor are two authors in which I'm poorly versed. I am well aware that this is a monstrous black mark on my soul.

3. Some, like Along The Frontage Road, I feel like I've read, but I'm not sure; some, like Everything That Rises Must Converge, I know I've never read, and others, like Cathedral or Mexico, I know I've read, but want to read again.

4. For those who pretend to care, I need to read Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (for denouement) again. I also need to re-read Hemingway's short stories (for editing purposes), and some travelogue anthologies that slipped away from me over winter (for descriptions).

5. Certainly not coherent or meaningful words.

6. While she does cite to The O. Henry Prize Stories, she cites to the Larry Dark edition, which was 2002, not the 2003 edition which included The Shell Collector and was edited by Laura Furman, David Guterson (of Snow Falling on Cedars), Diane Johnson, and Jennifer Egan. This is a minor quibble, but one that would frustrate me to death if I did try to follow this syllabus.

7. Amazing, isn't it? Ghost stories never seem to lose their impact.

Comments

[pjm]

One of my Russian professors, citing one of the stories on Kephart's list (Chekhov's Dama s sobachkoi, variously translated as Lady with Small Dog, Lady with Lapdog, or Lady with Pet Dog): "In two and a half pages, Chekhov said everything Tolstoy said in eight hundred pages of Anna Karenina."

So, skip Anna, read Anton, and all is well.

[Kathleen]

love the new banner!

[Jerome du Bois]

I love lists like these. First thing tomorrow I have to get the 2003 BASS.

Glad to see my two favorite Carvers, to which I would add only "Feathers" and his last, "The Errand," about Chekhov's death.

Another favorite: "The Prophet from Jupiter," by Tony Earley, in the 1994 BASS. His extended explanation in the back is also wonderful, and includes this little gem:

The lucky day for me as a writer came when a friend, a profoundly religious man and great lover of fresh vegetables, said, "You know, in the last days Christians won't be able to get corn." For him this was a matter of some concern. For me it was a gift. Those words, I knew, belonged in the mouth of the Prophet from Jupiter.

JdB

[TPB, Esq.]

Thanks, Kathleen.

Jerome, definitely, go get the Best American Short Stories. I'm committed, now, to reading three of the "Best American's" each year: the Best American Short Stories, the Best American Travel Writing, and the Best American Essays.

PJM, I like that line about Chekhov. I'd only take exception with the notion of not reading Anna Karenina. As much as I prefer the short form, that's a beautiful novel.

[yasmín]

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is one of my least favorite stories by Poe. I always prefered "The Masque of the Red Death." I thought it was more meaningful I guess. I'm also amused Steinbeck didn't make the list. I don't have a taste for him, but I'm sure he's decent.

I still have to read Anna Karenina.

[TPB, Esq.]

I'm guessing Steinbeck didn't make the list because he wasn't really a short story writer. His best stuff - East of Eden and The Winter of Our Discontent - are about 800 pages and 400 pages long, respectively.

Masque of the Red Death is brilliant; I can imagine Poe sitting in NYC, where he wrote that, and thinking of the Astors and the Morgans in the nobility of Venice.

[MonkeyMom]

My biggest issue with Kephardt's list was also that she did not list anthology sources. The average reader to whom the list is probably geared (i.e. those who haven't read the stories on the list)probably don't have many of these stories. I know my blog audience--and it is quite diverse--but there are a good number of people I know who are just too busy to read and don't have easy access to these stories. It's a shame and it makes such lists somewhat useless. I haven't had the time to investigate, but I wonder how many of these stories could be found on-line?

[TPB, Esq.]

Not many, I'm guessing. Since many of these stories are recent, their copyrights are still valid. The rights issues associated with putting stories online are pretty varied (this is probably more an issue for Kevin Heller of http://techlawadvisor.com). I'm going to see if I can annotate this list, providing sources, where I can. I'd appreciate all the help I get.

[yasmín]

I thought of Steinbeck only because I remember having to read "The Pearl," but now that I think about it, it's very possible it could have been excerpted. I don't remember, but I do recall that it was still a depressing read. The man did like to write. ;-)

[Shane]

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