Had I known The Pushcart Prize XXXIV (2010) was 500 pages long, I never would've bought it. And now that I know that, I strongly suspect it will never make it to the unread-book shelf again. Not that all of it was bad. I found a few things to comment on before my evaluation at the end
Stuff
1) Take the first story (Take it, please), "Modulation" by Richard Powers. Its subject was synthesizing music, war and social strife so that everyone heard the same thing. At least I think that's what its subject was. (I'm not taking any bets on this one.) But while muddling through the story itself, I came across two quotes that really intrigued me either by their thought or the expression of that thought. A) "What kind of person would want to punish music traffickers? There were the geek hacker athletes, virtuosi like Tashi had been, simply giving their own kind of concert on their own astonishing instruments, regardless of the effect on the audience. There were always the terrorists, of course. Once you hated freedom, it was just a matter of time before you hated two-part harmony." (page 21) Sounds great, doesn't it? And I'm sure there's something profound about the terrorists and two-part harmony, but I really have no idea what it's talking about—even if I still liked the words. B) "Words were as effective at holding music as smoke was at holding borders." (page 23) I like the analogy; I even think I understand it.
2) "Rae-Jean had worked for twenty years as a copy editor at a university press, publishing mostly esoteric and incoherent textbooks that it then was sold for exorbitant amounts of money to destitute student who wouldl have no choice but to use their student-loan money to buy these books. Rae-Jean had edited such arcane manuscripts as The Postmodern Beowulf, Homosexuality and Deuternaopity in Squirrels, The Synthesis and Antithesis of Polypeptotes, [i]Freemason for Dummies[/i], and Whether the Witch Hazel: Piles-Driven Imagery in the Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson." (page 212) At least that story, "How the World Will Look When All the Water Leaves Us," demonstrates a sense of humor. Actually that quote may have been the highpoint of all the collected winners.
3) "… terror a blue vowel that kisses the hurt." (page 232) I have no idea what a blue vowel might be, but I like the phrase. (What? You're not looking for meaning? Setting the bar kind of low for this book, aren't you?)
4) "The nerve of fathering is woven through the moment…" (page 331)| The opening sentence of "The Points of Sail." At least it made me want to keep reading, a much-improved opening sentence, IMHO. Many stories did not even reach that level. Of courses, even if they didn't, I forced myself to read at least a page.
Words
1) Epithalamium. The title of a poem. The World English Dictionary: "poem or song, written to celebrate a marriage; nuptial ode." That is one I never heard. Strange as I was an English major. I thought all English majors learned every possible name for every possible type of poem or ode. But apparently not.
2) Animist. "And there was gathering of evidence that that bringing trees into homes and decorating them, he said. began with animist religions." Www.dictionary.com: "noun, the belief that natural objects, natural phenomena and the universe itself possess souls." A belief.in which I indulge, although I never knew there was a name for it.
3) Duchenne's. "'It could be worse, Mom,' I said 'those kids with Duchene's.'" (page 406) dictionary.com: adj: relating to or being Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Kind of figured it was something neuro/muscular. (BTW, the text misspelled it, spelling it with only one N. Talk about making it harder.)
Final evaluation: More and more I am reminded of Alice in Wonderland, "…she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, `without pictures or conversation?'" (Page 1) Except for the occasional short story this year's Pushcart winners pretty much fit her complaint.
Last edited by humphreysmar; 06/08/11 06:35 PM.
