Some stories actually go somewhere

 kw: story reviews, collections, short stories, poems, sketches

The latter 3/5 of 2023 Pushcart Prize XLVII: Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson and a ton of others, did only a little to improve my opinion of the volume. I didn't read past the first page of about a third of the 38 remaining pieces. Of those I read, there were only a few more pointless stream-of-consciousness pieces, a smattering of tolerable items, and then there was actually a poem that I liked, in spite of its being "free verse" (which means "not verse"), and three more items that made me react, "I'm glad I read that".

The first of these is "If Your Dreams Don't Scare You" by Joni Tevis, published in the Georgia Review. The theme is hazing in the context of a marching band. I was in a high school marching band for 3 years, and I'm glad there wasn't a hazing tradition at my school. The skills we had to learn, and the sarcastic comments from one of the band directors, were bad enough. About a third of the story reviews hazing mishaps around the country that made national news (or should have)…like deaths.

The second is "Half Spent" by Alice McDermott, from Sewanee Review. The story gradually reveals hidden depths in a widow who'd been thought a "silly goose" (my term, not the author's). Her passing showed she had a much greater connection to her community than her late, somewhat-lamented husband.

The third, which made me weep, is "Too Attached" by Whitney Lee, from The Threepenny Review. A doctor attends a woman with a dying pre-born baby, which finally miscarries. Later the woman tries again, and delivers safely, attended by the same doctor. The doctor muses over being too attached to this couple, that such attachments might cause her to leave the profession. This is a real risk. During her last year my mother was attended by a lovely nurse; she became so attached that, as Mom failed, the nurse had a nervous breakdown and had to turn over the caring duties to another nurse. But she managed to be there when Mom died.

The poem I liked is "Screensaver" by Robert Cording, from The Common. An elegy to a youngster who died, it proves that stream-of-consciousness has a proper use. Very touching.

That's a poor harvest of goodness from 66 pieces. The volume as a whole gets this from me:

Is literature becoming irrelevant?

 kw: book reviews, collections, short stories, poems, sketches

I am a little less than halfway through reading Pushcart Prize XLVII: Best of the Small Presses (2023), edited by Bill Henderson and others.

The series used a few logos in early years, and then settled on this one, presented in various background hues ranging from yellow through earth tones to red.

When I encountered the 2014 edition I liked it rather well and posted a positive review. I was still positive a couple of years later. This time, not so much (so far). Of the 28 pieces I have read (or passed over) so far, only one made me react, "I'm glad I read this": "Dear Friends" by Mary Rueful, originally published in Sewanee Review. I call it an annotated list of friends, a series of vignettes that explore numerous dimensions of friendship.

I almost rejected the entire volume based on the first half-dozen lines of text in the first piece, which I decline to name. Sadly, I read too fast to have stopped earlier, because it almost immediately takes the reader into a realm no person of conscience willingly visits, with an image that is hard to forget. It is a sad fact of the human condition that a vicious, corrupted mind such as the author's can even exist.

A goodly number of the pieces are "poems". So far, what I have seen (and skimmed through) have neither rhyme nor rhythm. They consist of slightly evocative prose broken into lines. If the language were more poetic I might call such a piece a poem, but they are junk.

Many of the pieces are aimless stream-of-consciousness bits of one or a few pages, that start and end nowhere, with nothing learned along the way.

One imaginative piece, "Mantis" by Gina Chung, tells of love almost found and then lost, in the character were a praying mantis, who is accustomed to devouring suitors during copulation. The "one that got away" is her only regret. It's a useful allegory of a certain kind of relationship…

A number of pieces portray gay men or women, closeted or out. "The Kiss" by Kate Osana Simonian treats of a relationship between two lesbians who attend a religious school; one is fully out, the other so closeted that her orientation is unknown, even to her best friend. A drama production enwraps their drama. The writing is overdone, with attempts to build tension in a Hitchcockian way that is more annoying than useful.

"Back" by Banzelman Guret is moderately dystopian science fiction, exploring an extreme development of gig work while the protagonist is dealing with his father's OCD and institutionalization.

These few out of 28? If these are "the best", literature is coming on hard times. Maybe in the next few days I'll find another story or two that make me glad I found them.

He's strong and good-looking, and above average

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, stories, memoirs, sketches, humor, humorists

Having listened to A Prairie Home Companion whenever I could between the 1970s and early 2000s, I snapped up Garrison Keillor's new book The Keillor Reader the moment I saw it. I've read only a couple other of his 20+ books, but this promised much, and it does indeed deliver.

The book collects items of Keillor's fiction, semi-fiction and memoir writing over a 45-year career. He thinks of himself primarily as a writer, one who happens to present much of his own writing—or, a stream-of-consciousness version of it—publicly on APHC and at other performance venues.

The arrangement of items is partly by time, within certain topics. He begins with some of his best-loved APHC monologues. I suppose these are from transcripts of his on-air performances, because he writes in one introduction that he pre-writes the monologues, but doesn't read them; he'll use about half the material on average, and chase rabbits (my term for it) as they seem appropriate. His written semi-script is more of a warehouse of ideas he can pick from during the talk. It is a fine way to prepare a talk, and I used a similar strategy in my Toastmasters' International days. But he does supremely better at it!

At least a couple of the monologues must be from public performances, not from on-the-air shows. The material veers into areas my mother used to term "daring". For example, in a hilarious bit triggered by events the day his cousin Kate tried out for a talent show wearing nothing under her sweater, he winds up holding her on his lap as they hide from the school nurse in a stall in the Boys' Room. When he asks, "Are you really not wearing a bra?", she pulls his hands underneath to check for himself. Assuming this is mostly autobiographical, I reckon it was a turning point for a 15-year old boy.

I guess I didn't hear the right monologues to understand the title "Iconic Pajamas" for the second section. The items are short pieces in various genres, published in various venues. He likes to turn well known stories on their head, writing "Little House on the Desert", for example, as a sideways look at Laura Ingalls Wilder: perhaps she "augmented" her stories, for example. Or rewriting "Casey at the Bat" from the perspective of the opposing team. Such bowdlerizations of history continue in the third section, where he lampoons, for example, Earl Grey, Don Giovanni and Zeus.

His humor gets its power from restrained exaggeration. But he can use it quite unrestrainedly when he likes, such as in "My Life in Prison", in which he serves a 512-year sentence for throwing a tomato at his sister. His recounting "My Stroke (I'm Over it)" is straight fact, told in a mildly humorous way, as a fellow, glad to be still alive, might tell his buddies while keeping it light. These are both from the fourth section.

He touches on his faith here and there, with enough emphasis that we realize how profound an affect it has had in his life. Though he was raised in an extremely strict sect of the Brethren, his family was split down the middle between two of its divisions. The various aunts and uncles agreed to be civil anyway, which afforded Keillor and his siblings and cousins more freedom than they'd have had otherwise. He forsook the strict way in his teens, and now takes comfort as an Episcopal. He is warmer than might be suggested by the "God's Frozen Chosen" moniker some use for Anglicans and Episcopals.

His closing essay, "Cheerfulness" is most touching. It begins with a lightning evaluation of synonyms for "happy", noting that being cheerful is a choice, more so than the rest. He claims to be cheerful despite his dour demeanor, and fills the piece with examples. No doubt about it, he spreads good cheer everywhere, so he has a plentiful store of it!