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The 2009 edition of The Best American Short Stories, edited by Alice Sebold, was pretty good. Only one clunker and two amazing leaps of imagination, one about a family whose second child is a centaur, the other a submarine in the Civil War.

Specifics:

1. In "Yurt" by Sarah Shun-Lein Bynum, middle-school teachers dance on Friday afternoons at a nearby bar. "Ms Hempel realized that an awful mistake had been made: she had actually been meant to spend her whole life dancing, not teaching English to the seventh grade." (page 18) Ah. Moments of truth. But do you think dancers ever realize they were meant to have spent their whole lives teaching English?

2. On war in "Rubiaux Rising" by Steve de Jarnatt: "Then in testament to true absurdity, Rubiaux, a double amputee with severe brain damage, was declared AWOL." (page 34) Catch 22, all over again.

3. In "the Shadow Table" by Alice Fulton. "Waitressing appeals to people who like to leave a place neater and cleaner than they found it." (page 61) Not me. Waitressing appealed to me because every time I worked as a waitress, I lost a minimum of one pound a day.

4. Also in "The Shadow Table," "My family had no sense of background. Some might say we were raised to aim low, but I'd say we chose our disappointments just as others choose their battles." (page 62) I like that.

5. Also in "The Shadow Table," "I once asked Ray if Episcopals had Lent. Why yes, he said. So I asked if he'd ever given up sweets for Lent. Why no, he said, he'd never given up anything. How could anyone live without abstinence? That was my question." (page 63) And it's a question I've never thought to ask. Not ever.

6. In "Sagittarius" (the centaur story) by Greg Herbk. ""No, he doesn't want his son to vanish. He just wants him to be normal. He wants fatherhood to be free of pain and paradox." (page 114) True certainly if the son's a centaur, but also true I imagine for any father, which is what made the story work for me. Gotta find some more stuff by this Herbk fellow.

7. Bit of dialogue from "A Man Like Him" by Yiyun Li. "'The weak-minded choose to hate,' she said. 'It's the least painful thing to do, isn't it?'" (page 175) And that could be the explanation for a whole lot of opinions I don't understand.

8. In "Magic Words" by Jill McCoreke. "Anyone drawing breath believes in something, even if it's only that life sucks and there's no reason to live." (page 197) Really?

9. In "Them Old Cowboy Songs" by Annie Proulx: "But for the first time she realized that they were not two cleaving halves of one person but two separate people, and that because he was a man he could leave any time he wanted, and because she was a woman she could not." (page 251) When Crash beat Brokeback Mountain for the Academy Award, Proulx (author of "Brokebreak Mountain") kept referring to the winner as Trash. Immediately I disliked her, although I did go one to read—and like—"Brokeback Mountain." Now I'm going to reread "Them Old Cowboy Songs" and may have to separate Proulx, the author, from Proulx, the person. Hope I can. For years I tried to separate Streisand, the actor/singer/director, from Streisand's press but finally gave up.

Words (Literary short stories. Need I say more?):

1) crepuscular: "… the light coming in felt crepuscular …" (page 48) "of, pertaining to, or resembling twilight; dim; indistinct" Felt? Feels wrong somehow.

2) quiver: "… the taxi driver finds the quiver of buildings." (page 78) No. Dictionary.com gives only shaking and container for arrows. Anyone out there ever run into another use? A collection of arrow-shaped buildings?

3) putatively: "…putatively heavy cuisine …" (page 79) "commonly regarded as such; reputed; supposed: the putative boss of the mob." Reputedly wouldn't work? I fail to see a difference.

4) Ameliorative: "He practices sustained ameliorative forgetting." (page 211) "to make or become better, more bearable, or more satisfactory; improve; meliorate. " Meliorate, of course, means ameliorate. Damn dictionaries.

5) Drover: "… spit on the ground like a drover." (page 245) "a person who drives cattle or sheep to market." Didn't know that, but it was from an Annie Proulx story so it fits.

6) "Muzungu": title of last story. Mzungu is Swahili for white person. The story is set in Africa and does deal with children of mixed races.

Gave up on John Rechy's City of Night on page 112. I had wanted to give it a try because when published in 1963, it was the first major book written about one aspect of gay life in the big cities, that of the hustler in Times Square in New York, Pershing Square i.n LA. The Washington Post once labeled it as "one of major books to be published since World War II."

So I began. I finished the New York section and started on LA. Soon LA began to sound a lot like New York. Since the introduction said the book would cover the lifestyle in various cities, I sensed a lot of repetittion would be forthcoming, I stopped reading. (Once you've seen Times Square, you've seen 'em all, perhaps?) I will, however keep the book and may sometime make another stab. The writing style is interesting, as are many of the outrageous characters. Right now though, not having enough time to devote to it, I'll make a dangerous assumption and figure I know what is covered in the remaining 290 pages.

2) quiver: "… the taxi driver finds the quiver of buildings." (page 78) No. Dictionary.com gives only shaking and container for arrows. Anyone out there ever run into another use? A collection of arrow-shaped buildings?

When you design a group of tall buildings, Allen Center in Houston, TX or the Embarcadero in San Francisco, CA, you have to have a more general name for the idea. Quiver works well enough. Plus a grouping of cobras is a quiver.

Still, it seems as if the word probably distracted from the story.

But your post makes sense. Here in Huntsville, AL, we don't have quivers. H<eck, we rarely even quiver.

It was, of course, a landmark in literature and when I read it at the time, an eye opener. I have not revisited the book in many years so cannot comment on your experience Martha, but memory tells me that while the stories may seem the same or similar, they contained a whole lot of data that those of us who were struggling to find a gay identity relished.

Rechy's way of describing places and practices was unerringly accurate and provocative to those of us yearning for the information.

Have no idea how it would read to a non-fellow traveler, however.

I am currently struggling to complete "C" by Tom McCarthy, and I do mean struggling. It is this month's book club selection otherwise it would have gone down long ago.

Which is why I'm hanging on to it, hoping to give it another try during some lull.

For the most part I enjoyed reading Carolyn Jessop's Escape. It confirmed and strengthened a lot of views I already held—always a nice thing to have happen. The story itself was at times gripping. There was sex, sometimes borderline kinky—another plus. The big BUT, however, was my feelings about the author when I reached the last few chapters. We'll get to that later.

First, there were many passages that fed my belief that a Mormon should never, ever hold an elected office in this country. "Strong," you might say. "Haven't they reformed?" They say so, but—sorry about this—I can't support anyone connected in any way with a religion that claims their path is the only way to whatever god there may be, that they are the chosen people while everyone else is evil, that one individual man is the only way to approach or understand god, and that holds such disdain for the wellbeing of women and children. (Yes, I know all religions have similar tenets, but Mormons seem to put all four front and center.)

Examples of when my opinion was strengthened:

1) Talking about local schools, Ms Jessop writes, "In theory, at least, religion is not to be taught in public schools, but in fact it was an integral part of the curriculum there." (page 11) Oh, let's not even go there.

2) "Understand that we were taught to believe we were better than everyone else in the entire world because of our beliefs." (page 18) Couldn't we give at least lip service to equality?

3) "She (the author's grandmother) taught me that I had been blessed by God with an opportunity to come into a family where generations of women had sacrificed their feelings and given up things of this world to preserve the work of God and prove worthy of the kingdom of God." (page 19) And apparently in the Mormon that is the sole purpose of women.

There were other times when I reacted negatively, appalled by what I read:

1) "Shortly after Jeffs (a maniacal leader) took over, he decreed that all worldly material goods—including books—be banned from he community. My husband ordered us to comply. Our house was scoured: all literature was confiscated and destroyed, including my children's books." (page 3) "Oh, no!"—to be said with a dismissive shoulder roll. Touch my Little Women or Alice in Wonderland and there'll be trouble.
.
2) Definition of "'keeping sweet,' a religious phrase we said to one another to remind us not to react to things that made us mad." (page 141) Gotta keep them women in line, any way one can.

3) "In order to have power in Merrils's (author's husband's) family, I had to make myself important to him. … Only the strong survived. No one in our family ever tried to look out for a sister wife." (page 179) Kinda makes HBO's Big Love look like a pipe dream, doesn't it?

4) "Women were being instructed to listen to the whispers of God and pray to know their husband's hearts. A wife's goal was to be able to meet his every need without ever being told. If she asked questions when her husband gave her an order, it was only because she still had contamination in her heart." (page 205) Grrrrrrr!

5) "It is a sin for a woman to talk about abuse; if she is being abused, it is because she is not in harmony with her husband." (page 277) Penultimate grrrrrrrrrrr!

6) "But Merril's family had shunned her (Agnes, an older daughter of the author's husband) after she got sick. Her illness was seen as a sign that she had disgraced her father by not being in harmony with the husband she never wanted to marry." (psge 301) And finally: GRRRRRRR!

For the last, my feelings about the author at the end of the book: granted Carolyn Jessop was brave and overcame a lot, but ultimately I disliked her. Why? Because one of the things she prides herself on is doing it all herself. Horse feathers! She's continually thanking people for things they gave her, be it laundry soap (page 384) or a year's college tuition for her oldest child (page 422) And. wow, she even managed to fill out, all on her own, the forms for government assistance. I read that both Whoopi Goldberg and J D Rawlings, who accepted aid when they were struggling, paid the money back. I hope Carolyn Jessop did, too. Escaped doesn't say.

The protagonist in David Lodge's Deaf Sentence, Desmond Bates, is a retired linguistics professor who is well on his way to going deaf, a handicap that leads to, among other things, a not-quite-sexual involvement with Alex Loom, a graduate student who is working on her doctorate at the university where he taught. Others prominent in the story are Fred (Winifred), Desmond's wife, and his ailing father. The pace is leisurely, but eventually I became involved in both the humor and the action. My biggest regret was that there wasn't more of Alex, a conniving character, the type I love to hate.

Specifics:

1) Desmond Bates and I both dislike cell phones. When getting on a train, he chooses the "Quiet Coach" where they are not allowed. They are, of course, used anyway, and frequently he interrupts the people using them. They in turn react, and one response the author pretty much sums up my dislike of the chronic cell phone user. "Some, usually women, simper and smile and nod, and extend a placatory hand, as if admitting they are at fault but craving indulgence, while blithely continuing their telephonic conversation with others …" (page 40) GRRRRRRRR! Cell phone up their ear!

2) A-ha! "I envy religious people their belief and at the same time I resent it. Surveys have shown that they have a much better chance at being happy than those whose belief systems are totally secular. Everyone's life contains some sadness, suffering and disappointment, and they are much easier to accept if you believe there's another life to come in which the imperfections and injustices of this one will be made good; it also makes the business of dying a much less depressing prospect." (page 75) That explains so much.

3) Looking for something good about deafness, Desmond thinks the following about Goya: "The critic said it was as if his deafness had lifted a veil: when he looked at human behaviour undistracted by the babble of speech he saw it for what it was, violent, malicious, cynical and mad, like a dumb-show in a lunatic asylum." (page 79) Makes me wanna watch an episode of The Andy Griffith Show with the sound turned off and check out the theory. Maybe this afternoon.

4) Alex tells Desmond about "a man who paid for panties that had been worn but not laundered. You sent them through the post, sealed up in a freezer bag, once a week, and three days later back came a cheque." (page 91) Yep. David Lodge could have gotten a lot more mileage out of this character than he did. Trust me.

5) "To me the treatment of books is a test of civilised behaviour." (page 106) Yes! Yes! OK, I dog-ear pages but only in books I own.

6) "I remembered that Evelyn Waugh used to signal his boredom by laying aside his ear trumpet …" (page 118) Good plan, and I admit that sometimes in order to really "get" someone, I have "play cripple." Works like a charm.

7) "Aural experience is made up of quiet, sounds and noise. Quiet is neutral, the stand-by state. Sounds are meaningful, they carry information or they give aesthetic pleasure. Noise is meaningless and ugly." (page 134) Interesting theory. Such a breakdown never even crossed my mind.

8) Desmond and Fred visit his father who has had a stroke. No doubt. Well written, IMHO, and scary.


Since Deaf Sentence is British, I found at least the usual number of unfamiliar words.

1) autodidact: "a person who has learned a subject without the benefit of a teacher or formal education; a self-taught person." (page 57) Dang! Learned that one all by myself, I did.

2) Stroppy: "bad-tempered or hostile; quick to take offence." (page 232) Well. Imagine that.

Bottom line: two thumbs a little more than halfway up.

I've been hearing about Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. since I was in college when it was reported to be the "dirtiest" book ever, surpassing Peyton Place and even Lady Chatterley's Lover. At the time I'd read Peyton Place and given a try to Lady Chatterley, which was so boring I quit—and at that moment probably decided Last Exit wasn't worth trying. I changed my mind when in the 1990s I saw a movie version that I liked. Sometime this last year I bought the book.

So? After all these years, was it worth digging up?

Sort of. The fact that it's still in print says something. Comparatively, I think Peyton Place has a better story, but Last Exit is probably more interesting than Lady Chatterley. I say that 'cause I did make it through Last Exit.

It is pretty raw and I wasn't crazy about Selby's style—long sentences, even longer paragraphs and not much dialogue, but I finally did get caught up in it. That, however, took a while because rather than the whole book being a story, it's short stories (maybe novellas) about individuals, some of whom do show up in more than one section. The story of a strike left me cold; that of a prostitute who's gang raped was far more gripping.

For a long time, I thought maybe Last Exit might join my very short list of movies that were better then the books they were based on, but I re-watched the film and have to admit that Selby's presentation of character left the film at the starting line. (That leaves To Kill a Mockingbird as the only title on the list.)

No specifics. I dog-eared a few pages but now, 4 days since I finished it, have no idea why I did.

One word oddity: have any of you ever run into "doggies" as a term for sailors? It's used throughout the book.

I can't say that I have seen "doggies" used that way...maybe short for "seadogs"?(a term I have seen used for some sailors/pirates)