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  • Short Story Review: “Autobahn” by Hugo Hamilton

    (The short story “Autobahn” by Hugo Hamilton appeared in the September 23rd, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Christoph Niemann

    Funny how a situation, a moment that you are experiencing, can unlock a memory that even sometimes has nothing to do with what you are doing. Walking into my kid’s school the other day, I started to remember being at my grandmother’s house, and how it would smell when she was making apple dumplings. Interesting, how moments in our lives can be keys to the past. Hugo Hamilton’s “Autobahn” plays around with that idea, but in a more dramatic fashion.

    Here’s a super simple description of the story: The narrator, an Irish hitchhiker in Germany, is questioned at gun point by a police officer along the Autobahn, and while being held there, the narrator begins to remember his father.

    This is a very short story, and though it isn’t a flash piece, it had that quality to it. Also, this story did remind me of a song, perhaps because there were two “melodies” happening with the piece; the cop story line, and the father story line. (And then it could be that the story ends mentioning a Doors’ song.) I found that Hamilton did a good job switching between these two narratives, like jumping from the chorus to the bridge, and then back again. Both story lines had the threat of violence to them, which created tension needed to keep the story dramatic, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that the narrator was never really in danger.

    What I found most interesting about “Autobahn” were two bits; one was the theme, and the other was the climax. I liked how Hamilton laid out the difficult and conflicting the relationship was between the narrator and his father. How the father could be abusive toward his son, but also encourage his son’s talents, and how circling that square is a never-ending challenge which ends up making memories of the father always close to the surface. Then there was the climax, where the narrator describes a moment when he saw his father at a newsstand, but his father didn’t see him. It was drawn well, and had a lasting but fleeting feeling to it.

    I liked this story, though it did feel light. Like, the story wanted to go to a third gear, so the speak, but pulled back in the last section. Over all, Hugo Hamilton created a very specific emotional moment, that I could relate to, as sometimes you can’t stop a memory from coming up.

  • Blog Prompts/Ideas That Failed Me

    (These are all ideas for blogs that I had, but I couldn’t get them to work. So, enjoy some one-off sentences.)

    I have been too hard on myself lately. I need to loosen up, relax.

    We have a very hard time keeping plants alive in our family. Even the weed that sprung up in the planter on the fire escape just gave up, browned up, and has shriveled away.

    I don’t miss being a kid, and I like being an adult.

    I always thought Casper Van Dien should have been a bigger star.

    I bought one thing online from Pottery Barn, and they won’t stop emailing me. Good Lord, the Harris campaign doesn’t email me as much as Pottery Barn does.

    September 16th was the anniversary of the Battle of Harlem Heights. The battle took place in my neighborhood. I think that’s cool.

    I’m in a hurry for Thanksgiving.

    When we have small dinner parties at our place, we end the evening with drinks and a game of UNO.

    Yes, I am bald, but my love of hats predates my receding hairline. Not that anyone believes me.

    Another blog on my love of naps.

    Can I come up with a half-ass idea, and pass it off for a full assed one?

  • Missed Out on all the Stuff

    I don’t know what happened to me this weekend, but all the stuff I normally pay attention to, I completely spaced out on.

    It started on Saturday, when Tottenham played Arsenal. You know, their top rival, the team they hate. These matches even have their own title, “North London Derby.” Since I started follow Tottenham, these games have been a big deal, usually both teams are in a “need to win” position, and the games are exciting and dramatic. This Saturday, totally spaced on it. Just forgot.

    Same thing happen on Sunday, when I spaced on the Cowboy game against the Saints. But to be honest, the Cowboys played so bad, it was better that I missed it.

    And because comedy and drama both follow the rule of three…

    Then Sunday night, I forgot about the Emmy’s. When my wife pointed out that they were on, even my kid was surprised that I wasn’t watching them. (I am a sucker for an awards show.) It was like the Emmy’s snuck up on me and then I ignored them. (Though I did get to see that very weird Johnny Walker backstage bar moment.) Oddly, I had watched most of the shows that were nominated this year, so I sort of did know what was happening.

    Not that any of this really matters in the big scheme of things, yet I still found it odd that I whiffed on three events that normally are rather important to me. Such as I make plans to watch them. But for some reason, I missed all the ads for these things, or I missed the conversations about these things. It left me feeling like I was running behind everybody else.

    Just odd is all.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Going to Bed, Getting Up, and Central Park

    (If this isn’t making sense, it doesn’t make it lies…)

    In the spirit of self improvement, I have decided to go for the lowest of hanging fruit on the personal empowerment tree; I’m trying to go to bed at a normal time. This one should be easy, real no brainer. This is actually the hump I am having trouble getting over. Did you know, all the cool stuff happens at night? It’s a fact! Look it up! Also, that’s when all of the worst movies come on tv. Anyway, going to bed is a real trick for me. My body wants to fall asleep, I get very tired in fact, and then I find a second wind and decided that tonight needs to be the night that I watch “Sorceress” on Prime. But not anymore. I want to become boring, and healthy. I want to get in better shape, and have a better out look on life, and my doctor told me that I have to get more than five hours of sleep a night. So… poop.

    But, the flip of this is that I now get up early and get shit done, right? Well, sort of. Getting a jump on the day is nice, and I have also found it very rewarding to make breakfast for my family. I’m not talking cereal in a bowl, but actually making breakfast food for them. I started making gimbap for the kid – that one’s more of a special occasion breakfast – but most mornings it’s omelets, and egg sandwiches, and I even make a pot of miso soup. The one thing I would like to tweak, is that I do sit on the couch and stare at my phone for like thirty minutes before I get going. There is a part of me that thinks I should be using that time constructively.

    I took a walk with the kid around Central Park today. She’s off from school, for some reason, and I needed her to get off the screen and do something outside. The Park seemed like the best idea. It is the one place in the City that I pass by daily, but only visit twice a year at most. And one of those two times will be to cut through it to get to the East Side. The fun thing about walking around the Park with the kid today was that she noticed that you can be in parts of the park, and not see or hear the City. Like a magic trick.

  • Short Story Review: “Last Coffeehouse on Travis” by Bryan Washington

    (The short story “Last Coffeehouse on Travis” by Bryan Washington appeared in the September 16th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Delaney Allen for The New Yorker

    The only constant in life is change – nothing stays the same forever. The older I get, the more I think about this. There are things I wish would stay the same forever, but I also know how foolish of a wish that is. And then there were times in my life that I thought nothing would ever change, only for the ground to slowly shift under my feet. These were some of the thoughts I had as I was reading Bryan Washington’s “Last Coffeehouse on Travis.”

    The story is set in Houston in the very recent past. Specifically, in the Midtown neighborhood before gentrification changed the area. At the start of the story, the narrator is being politely kicked out of his aunt’s home and is going to live with Margo and her son Walter. In exchange for a free place to stay, the narrator will have to work at Margo’s coffeeshop not too far away. Margo is master coffee maker, and the majority clientele at the coffeehouse are recently arrived white gentrifiers. But there is to be a solid group of regulars, mainly black and latinx, who form the community of this story. As Washington lets his story develop, mainly through Margo’s coffee making and the narrator’s attempt to learn from her, we come to see people in states of change, both wanted and unwanted.

    Now that I have that very simplistic description out of the way…

    There were a couple of times that I felt that this story could fall off the rails and land in a pool of clichés; The narrator continually trying to make a cup of coffee that impresses Margo, or a character reveals some deep dark secret trauma from their past, or the climax being some explosion of a fight between two characters that should be working together. No, Bryan Washington was playing with me, because he crafts full, lived in characters that I could see myself running into on my block and having a conversation with. These are characters that want to learn from each other. Characters that have pain and mistakes in their past, but that pain doesn’t define them, nor stop them from going out and living and trying to make connections.

    Then there is the craftsmanship to Washington’s writing. The very subtle touches he uses to forward the story and develop characters. How Margo never asks, she tells people what to do. The very short but efficient descriptions of the neighborhood, to create the feel of this setting, as something that is slipping away, but at this moment, it was very alive. Another aspect that I thought was well written was how gentrification was this underlining menace to the story and its characters. Change maybe unavoidable, but it is not always good. We know from the beginning of the story that the neighborhood will change, and Margo and the coffeehouse won’t be there in the future. It’s touched on in the right way to amplify the theme without belaboring the point. This is good writing, where nothing felt wasted or superfluous. This story was made the way it needed to be.

    Which brings me to how well the climax of this story worked. Again, I go back to the fact that Washington was playing with our expectations by starting this section with, “The morning that it happened…” My mind went to dramatic ends of what could possibly be coming. In fact, the final paragraph of the section before, the narrator even acknowledges that no matter how well things are going, it can’t stay this way forever. (See, Bryan Washington is priming us.) But what follows are characters understanding that it is time for them to move on to whatever is next, because things are changing. There is a rise in action, a true climax, but it is treated in an honest way that I wasn’t expecting, and I am also trying not to ruin this story for people. Sorry that’s vague.

    I love reading Bryan Washington’s work. It moves in ways that feel familiar but also unexpected at the same time. I loved being with his characters, not at the most dramatic moment in their lives, but a very pivotal one. These are moments that take us to the next place, and Bryan Washington reminds us how valuable those moments are.