Salman Rushdie was the guest editor of 2008’s edition of
The Best American Short Stories, a fact I mention simply because it meant I almost didn’t buy it. Why? Somewhat shamefacedly, I admit a preference for (Nay, let’s be honest: an almost exclusive interest in) American writers. Now the foreword in this short story edition did a lot toward changing my thinking. Heidi Pitlor, the series editor, questioned each word in the book’s title. When she got to “American,” she acknowledged Rushdie to be “a native non-American living part-time in the United States.” (page x) In that regard, she liked his perspective. I did, too. (Of course, now I’m going to have to find and buy the volume Amy Tan edited, which is the only one I’m missing since I started reading the series in 1988. I guess she's American, but I expected an exclusively oriental slant from her.)
I mention the above also as a tribute to you guys. I do read many, many of the books you review. Often you pull me out of my comfort zone. Mellow sends me to Germany and Japan; I enjoy the experience and now keep an eye out for other books by “her” authors. Phil gets me to read philosophical/religious books I never would have picked out on my own. Even Kathy. While we may not often agree to a book or author, when we do, it’s WOW! Early on in this thread someone actually got me, an English major, to read Ayn Rand. And I liked most of what she wrote. So, to all of you, a huge “Thank You!”
And back to the review.
My major “find” in this edition was a Karen Brown, whose story was “Galaea” from
Crazyhorse. Opening sentence: “I married William in upstate before he turned out to be the Collegetown Creeper.” (page 36) No way I’d stop reading after that.
Other “Galaea” highpoints:
1) “I had a fireplace in my apartment. Angela had one downstairs in hers. We were not allowed to use them, but we put large lighted pillar candles in them, and it gave the illusion of warmth we desired.” (page 38) “The illusion of” was what was desired? Wow!
2) About William’s family: “They had an enclosed front porch with an air hockey game, and gnome statuary on the front lawn that William, as a child, believed came alive at night. Before she died, his mother grew apples and sold them at a small roadside stand, Macoun and Winesap and Cortland. I imagined, from these aspects of his life, that I knew everything about him.” (page 39) We do that, don’t we? The first college crush I had was on a boy who, on the way to the initial read through of a play we were both in, looked up at the starry sky and said, “Somewhere up there is Oz.” He had me at Oz.
3) Early in the narrator’s relationship with William, he leaves her apartment and she falls asleep. When she wakes up, he’s there, wearing his wide-brimmed hat, watching TV with the sound off and eating Korean takeout food. “I thought I should be a little afraid of him, coming into my apartment without asking, but I was not.” (page 41) And that bit sets up a perfectly wonderful scene that comes later. The narrator and William have broken up. She picks up a guy and takes him back to her apartment. The following occurs after they’ve had sex.
”Do you do this a lot?” he asked. “I mean, you’re a pretty girl. I could be the Creeper.”
I asked him what he meant, and he told me the story of the Collegetown Creeper, how he showed up in women’s unlocked apartments while they slept. They awoke to him standing over their beds or sitting idly in a chair, wearing a wide-brimmed hat. … I looked at the boy’s fine-boned face, his eyebrows drawn together, telling his story.
“You aren’t him,” I said. (page 49)
And I laughed out loud. I love understatement.
4) Back to the early William days: “We looked at each other for a long time, believing we knew what the other thought. I saw I could imagine anything about him, even a past he might never confess. I saw this was what love was.” (page 46) Ah, yes. And the answer then becomes, IMHO, get to know anyone well enough and you’ll never get married.
Karen Brown’s one published work, a collection of short stories called
Pins and Needles, is on my to-be-read list.
There are other dog-eared pages in
The Best American Short Stories 2008, but I think I’ll limit my in-depth review to Karen Brown’s “Galatea.”
Immediately after finishing
The Best American Short Stories 2008, I read the collection of last year’s winning writings in the
Writer’s Digest yearly contest. Boy, was that sequence a mistake. ‘Nuff said!
Now it's back to reading Leon Uris's
Mila 18, which will be reviewed a few days from now.
