Tag: Short Short Stories

  • Short Story Review: “The Plaza” by Rebecca Makkai

    (The short story “The Plaza” by Rebecca Makkai appeared in the May 8th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (SPOLIERS should be expected, but not intended.)

    Sometimes I just want to read a good old-fashioned short story, like from that Post WWII/1950’s period when writers could make a living publishing stories in magazines. These are the stories that are aligned more to the entertaining fair, rather than deep expressions of artistic ambition. Don’t get me wrong, at heart I’m an arty-farty experimental writing guy. Yet, now and then, it is refreshing to read something that came from the period when America was establishing what would become Modern literature.

    When I started reading “The Plaza” by Rebecca Makkai, she took me right to that place and era, not only of literature, but of that specific New York City of old. Makkai did a particular perfect job of making The Plaza of her story matches The Plaza that only exists in the fantasy world of American literature and theatre; a playground for the well off, where any desire or request will be met by the concierge, bellhops and maids. And fantasy is correct for this story.

    “The Plaza” concerns Margie, who is a local beauty in a small town along the upper Delaware River, who at twenty-three is a waitress at a hotel for men who fish the river on vacation. It is there that she meets Alistair Baldwell, a rich young man from New York City, and his Yale friends who are there for the fishing. Soon, Alistair and Margie are together, and before he leaves, he suggests that she should come to visit him in New York. After some time, she does, and he puts her up in a room at The Plaza, and from there, their lives change, including their names. She becomes Margaret, and he becomes Ally. An unexpected pregnancy complicates the situation, but Ally’s answer is for Margaret to take a suite at The Plaza, which Ally’s company pays for, and they secretly wed. And clearly more happens.

    As I said before, this story feels like a complete throw back to what magazine American literature from the Post War period felt like. The sweep, the characters, the vast amount of time covered, and a New York City that feels peacefully wonderful and safe. And this story could exist on that simple homage level, and it would be fine. But what Makkai does expertly here is bring in a delightful undercurrent of allusion and realism. The realism of mounting lies, and the destruction of trust. I also found Margaret’s relationship with her father and brothers painfully honest, giving a clear understand of her motivations in life. But it is the allusion of the fairy tale; a princess locked away in a castle. But also, the feeling of Margaret creating her own fairy tale/fantasy in the world that she finds herself in. All of these pieces swirl together, creating a very textured and entwined story.

    In the end, I found “The Plaza” to be an entertaining story, which fooled me into thinking, at first, that it was just an old styled story. Such is the power of a good writer. What is on display is a writer who understands what made those old stories work so well, while still staying modern and fresh with the narrative, which creates something wholly new.

  • Short Story Review: “Bowling Shoes” by Noel Streatfeild (Alison L. Fraser)

    [The short story “Bowling Shoes” by Noel Streatfeild (Alison L. Fraser) appeared in Rejection Letters on April 17th, 2023.]

    (It’s a flash fiction piece, so I will SPOIL it)

    I do miss going out and drinking on a weeknight. I don’t miss the hangover that followed the next day. Reading “Bowling Shoes” reminded me of this paradox. (Or maybe it is just cause and effect?) Either way, the story taps in on what a night out with friends feels like. There is a tangible energy here, where anything seems possible and likely; a little criminal activity, a little action, violence and sex bubble under the surface, and all could appear at any moment.

    The details and the structure of the piece is what I enjoyed most. From the first line of the narrator telling us, “I padded my stomach with Mom’s lemon and garlic roast chicken,” so we know that this is a person who knows how to drink for an evening – you need a solid protein base to slow the alcohol from absorbing too quickly in the stomach. And as the friends move from bar to bar, their actions build; stealing bowling shoes, kidnapping a friend, dancing with bros, and stumblingly out of a bar. The narrative keeps moving, never settling to long on any one detail or action.

    Where the story does slow down are in two very curious asides from the narrator about teachers from grade and high school. The first is about a teacher taking kids to a bar to learn pool because of geometry, and the second is a high school teacher saying that a screwdriver isn’t a real drink. Both are instances of authority figures doing and saying borderline inappropriate things to their students. The narrator doesn’t share any insights or feelings in the current situation with the friends, only actions are described. So, these two memories are the only true insight we have to the narrator’s mind set. There is no clear answer here why these two thoughts were shared, but that isn’t a detriment to the story. Maybe it is to show how the drunken mind works, or maybe it was to add to the climax of the story?

    What “Bowling Shoes” left me with was the feeling of both a meaningless and profound night out with friends. People being stupid, but also people out living and experiencing their life. It was honest, straightforward, and also messy and incomplete. You know, like a night out drinking with friends.

  • Short Story Review: “Alisa” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya (Translated from the Russian, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.)

    (The short story “Alisa” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya appeared in the April 3rd, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Yes, I will SPOIL this story.)

    Illustration by Golden Cosmos

    The story “Alisa” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya is translated from the Russian, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. But I’m pretty sure you knew that from the title of this post. When it comes to translated works, I often wonder how different the piece sounds in its original language. In college, I read three different translations of “The Cherry Orchard” and though the plot stayed the same, the tone of each version was radically different. This was a thought that crossed my mind as I read “Alisa.”

    “Alisa” is a tight little story that I found myself drawn into quickly. The piece focuses on Alisa, a woman who is in nearly perfect health at sixty-four. She lives alone, has no family, and after a brief fainting spell, begins to think that she would rather commit suicide than get to the point where she will need someone to take care of her. She finds a doctor whom she asks for sleeping pills, and she is honest with her intentions. The doctor, Alexander, doesn’t agree right away, but soon they start on a relationship that leads to them getting married. I want to leave it there, though I will spoil the story a little later, I want to leave a few surprises for you.

    What impressed me with this story was that it went in two different directions, and tied up wonderfully together. This was a well-structured, and built story. At first I thought I was getting the tried and true “reason to live” story, such as Alisa wants to die, but then she finds love and wants to live. And she does find love, with those moments of between her and Alexander being very poignant and tender. As their love grows, Alisa never forgets that even with a commitment of marriage, nothing lasts forever. So, when Alexander is killed in a car crash on his way to the hospital to see his daughter and new granddaughter, the surprise is in how he died, but not that he died. Ulitskaya did a very good sleight of hand/misdirection of foreshadowing, laying out the clue, but not in the way you expected. And when Alisa decides to raise Alexander’s granddaughter, as the mother slips into mental illness and cannot take care of the child, there are clear moments that preceded this decision, where it was shone to us why Alisa would come to this conclusion. All of this leading to a satisfying conclusion where Alisa has grown and changed from where we first met her, while also allowing Alisa to retain a quality of her character that still hasn’t changed. Again, I don’t want to ruin the last line of the story, but it’s fits very well with the narrative and tone.

    Which gets me back to my first question about the translation and the original tone of the story. In this case, I didn’t find myself wonder if something was lost. The intention and tone were clear, and worked together in a very effective story. Maybe it was just a “reason to live” story, but I left feeling satisfied that Alisa got to have that time with Alexander, and that she was happy where her life had taken her.  

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  • Short Story Review: “THE NIGHT THE STARS FELL” by Dustin M. Hoffman

    (The short story “THE NIGHT THE STARS FELL” by Dustin M. Hoffman appeared in One Story, issue 289.)

    (Yeah, I will SPOIL it.)

    I’m really late to the party on this story. “THE NIGHT THE STARS FELL” by Dustin M. Hoffman was published May of 2022 in One Story, and I got around to reading it this past week. I wasn’t planning on writing about this story, since it was published almost a year ago, but when I finished reading it, the piece kept poking, and gnawing at me.

    The story takes place on a Thursday night when all the stars in the night sky have fallen and disappeared. There is Jack, a former accountant who has been unemployed for eight months and spends his days watching tv, and his nurse wife, Catherine, who has remained employed at the local hospital to keep the two of them financially afloat. We learn that Catherine had a miscarriage a little over eight months ago, and their lives haven’t been the same since. It is on this night, that Jack has decided to talk to Catherine about how they should try again to have a child, but with the stars disappearing from the night sky, the conversation doesn’t occur. They decide to drive around town, to witness the chaos as the end of the world appears to be close. They end up at a bonfire at a local grocery store, where Jack makes a realization about his wife.

    One of the things that I appreciated with this story was the decision to make the external event, the stars disappearing, just on the very far out edge of possibility, though highly unlikely. I will take a wild stab in the dark here and say that the stars disappearing is a stand in for the Pandemic; a global event that brings about change and self-reflection. And that’s what I think the story was really about – watching how these two depressed and dissatisfied people deal with a life changing event that is beyond their control, or ability to affect the outcome. They are powerless. But this situation is handled with a light touch, and allows a few moments of humor to pop up, which was refreshing. (It’s not lost on me that the disappearing stars could also function as a metaphor for the miscarriage, but I’m sticking with the Pandemic.) Without these uses of humor, the story could have easily spiraled out of control.

    Even with all of that said, this is a story about Jack and Catherine, and their relationship. When we are introduced to Jack, he is presented as a man who has given up – unemployed for the past eight months by his own passive-aggressive doing, he watches Discovery Channel all day, keeps the curtains drawn. He is showing all the signs of depression with his inaction. He’s a schlub and starts the story at a very low point. Catherine is also depressed, but acts out. Her first reaction to seeing the stars fall is to reach out and try to stop it from happening. Also, she has no issue slapping Jack to get him to focus on the issues at hand. She climbs out of the car, and throws her shoes. Though pointless sometimes, Catherine does take action. Both of their depressions are springing from the same place – the miscarriage. I liked that Jack and Catherine had this dualism. It’s not a revolutionary narrative trick, but in the right hands it can be very effective.

    Now, as the story unfolds it is revealed to us that Catherine, after the miscarriage had an affair, only for Jack to go and have his own affair. We are informed they reconciled after working at it, only to land in a rut of a banal existence with the help of their top-of-the-line HD TV. This paragraph of backstory is given to us right in the middle of the piece, and I know it was meant to function as the explanation of how they got to this place in their relationship when we first meet them. But, this development struck me as odd, especially for Jack. From what we know of Catherine, she is acting out on her depression, thus having an affair fits with her character. But Jack? The guy who never leaves home and watches tv all day? I mean, to have an affair, you have to put for a little effort. What we know of him, he doesn’t follow through with putting out effort.

    I justify my reasoning of this by referring back to the beginning of the story. We are told Jack is ready to try again at having a baby, and that Catherine just needs convincing, but that is only a red herring. When Catherine returns home, and tells him of the stars, he cannot focus on her, but continues to watch tv. Catherine has to slap him, just to get Jack to focus on the issues at hand. To me, this says that Jack never truly intended for them to try again for a baby, let alone have a conversation about it, because it was never at the forefront of his thoughts. He might be saying that he wants a child, but he actions are to stay in front of that TV.

    So, when we get to the end of the story, and Jack “realizes” what Catherine had gone through with the miscarriage, what is his action? He doesn’t go to her to try to console her, or share his new understanding. In fact, another person has to tell Jack that he needs to go to his wife. And as they drive home, the decision that Jack makes, if there is a tomorrow, is for life to go back to the routine. Jack’s decision is not to take action.

    And then that gets me to this question; Can a story have a fulfilling conclusion if the protagonist does not take an action at the climax?

    I think Hoffman attempted to do a little sleight of hand here with the ending. As Jack and Catherine are driving home, Jack, with his new insight to what he believes Catherine has been going through, says that she was right that didn’t try again to have a baby. While Jack appears to be referring to the end of the world that might be coming, Catherine’s agreement seems to be referring to the state of their relationship. Is this relationship a tragedy? Are they star crossed lovers, doomed to fail, or are their fates trapped in the stars, never to be changed? It’s an interesting idea, or metaphor, that Hoffman attempts to use, but ultimately, it falls flat.

    It falls flat, in part due to how Catherine is not treated as an equal to Jack in the story. The narrator tells us what Jack is thinking and realizing, but for Catherine, we are left to speculate. We are never told what her thoughts are, and on a few instances, the narrator isn’t sure what the motivation for her actions are, only to tell us what Catherine “seems” to be doing. Catherine is treated as just another character, like the employees of the grocery store burning shopping carts in the parking lot.

    Because of this decision, “THE NIGHT THE STARS FELL” is Jack’s story. And again, I ask, can a story have a fulfilling conclusion if the protagonist does not take an action at the climax? Jack’s hero’s journey, to use the Joseph Campbell’s theory, is that at the beginning he decides to take an action for a purely selfish reason, goes out in the world where he learns an insight about his wife, and then decide that he wants to go right back to where he started, without making any changes. Jack starts as a schlub and ends as a schlub; it’s not a satisfying journey for the hero.

    Now, I try to follow the rule of critiquing the story that is presented by the author, and not the suggesting what I would have done if I had written the story. But in this instance I am going to make an exception. Mainly to ask; Why wasn’t Catherine the protagonist of this story? She is a much more interesting, and dynamic of a character compared to Jack. She’s complicated, troubled, conflicted, and faces a real crisis of conscious in this story. She also takes action and tries to do things to affect the outcome of the situation she is in. There is drama in her life, not only in her job but in her marriage. Why was Catherine relegated, and she was by the way she was treated by the narrator, to playing backup to a very bland Jack? Catherine’s character could go in a million different dramatic directions, while Jack is locked into a single predicable trajectory.

    Like I said, I was late to the party on this one, but I do think there was an opportunity for a very honest, and humorous story to be told here. It just focused on the wrong person to tell its story.

  • Short Story Review: “Snowy Day” by Lee Chang-Dong (Translated from the Korean, by Heinz Insu Fenkl and Yoosup Chang.)

    (The short story “Snowy Day” by Lee Chang-Dong appeared in the March 6th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Yes, there will be SPOILERS!)

    Illustration by Anuj Shrestha

    “Snowy Day” is an okay story. Not awful, not amazing either, and in the end, I do recommend that you should read it. It was written by Lee Chang-Dong, translated from the Korean by Heinz Insu Fenkl and Yoosup Chang. I broke my own rule with this story and looked up who the author was to gain some background information, as I was curious and wanted to know why the author structured this story the way that he did. By the way, Lee Chang-Dong is an accomplished South Korean film director, screenwriter, and novelist.

    What struck me about “Snowy Day” was that the story felt like it was written from a different time; specifically, like a late 1940’s short story in Collier’sor some other magazine of that period. And what I mean by that is those stories of that time were structured in a classic form, but were beginning to take on a more Modern subject matter, so those stories had a disjointed, incongruent feel. That’s what “Snowy Day” felt like.

    The structure of this piece had an old feel to it. The story is bookended with a girl coming to a military camp looking for her new boyfriend, who is a private on the base. Then the story shifts to the private being on guard duty with a corporal, and this is where the majority of the action takes place, in this one setting. And the story follows the rule of three multiple times, and even slips in an “O. Henry” twist at the climax of the “dumb” character being smart, and the “tough” character being a coward. Then we return back to the girl being informed that the private is in the hospital and she leaves the base.

    Nothing surprised me in this story. Literary structure and form handled badly can be formulaic, and Lee Chang-Dong avoided that. The character of the private is intriguing, and made a good protagonist, while the girl feels more like a woman from a Poe story; tragic and doomed to have her heart broken. The other characters are left to serve the structure of the story. Yet, there still was this purposeful disjointed feel to the story. That these worlds weren’t fitting together as they should, which created an underlining tension. I think the structure is what helped create that, functioning as foreshadowing since we know how this structure is supposed to work.

    Like I said, the story is okay. I didn’t feel like my time was wasted reading “Snowy Day,” but it wasn’t compelling either. What I liked in reading this was seeing an author that respected and knew how to use form and structure to tell a story.