Tag: Short Story Reviews

  • Short Story Review: “Life with Spider” by Patrick Langley

    (The short story “Life with Spider” by Patrick Langley appeared in the February 5th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photo illustration by Hana Mendel for The New Yorker

    First of all, when I read a story that has to do with a grown man and a large insect, I can’t help but think of “The Metamorphosis” by Kafka. And I have run into more stories than I can count about men and bugs. (Kafka created a secret literary genre that no one talks about.) It’s unfair to Patrick Langley that I immediately made that comparison when I started reading “Life with Spider,” but when I finished the story, I think Langley was counting on me to do that, so he could mess with my head.

    “Life with Spider” is a story about Fletcher Hardy and his bug-like creature called Spider, even though it is not a spider. We are told off the bat that Hardy, not his real name, has given permission to the narrator to tell the story, provided that we aren’t able to figure out who the “real” Hardy is. It’s an interesting framing of the story as everything that Fletcher says and does, in essence, is told to us second hand. Several specific details are given about Hardy; who his family is, where they live, what he does, and what they do, and so on. It made me wonder if the narrator was lying to “throw me off.”

    Either way, we learn that Hardy is being visited by a six-legged insect like creature, which will not leave him alone. Hardy convinces his friend, the narrator, to help get rid of the creature. I don’t want to give away too many details, leave a few surprises, but I am sure you can surmise that Hardy and the narrator survive, as they are telling this story.

    I enjoyed this story even though it did befuddle me. I mentioned the one above about the details and if the narrator was reliable. But the big question for me about this story was, what was Spider? Did it represent something specific? Was it death? Since the two main characters were young men transitioning into adulthood, was Spider a metaphor for their transition? Possibly, Spider was a manifietation of their friendship? Was I supposed to think about Kafka? Am I thinking too hard about Kafka? And the story had a “Dead Chick in the Basket*” ending, which maybe made sense? Or maybe it wasn’t supposed to make sense?

    What “Life with Spider” reminded me of was some of the more fantastical stories from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami. Both had a sense of play, humor, and the humans in the stories react with a relative sense rationalism to their extreme situations. I didn’t need “Life with Spider” to make sense or tie up all the loose ends neatly, because the enjoyment was trying to figure out a mystery that would never get completely solved.

    *  “Dead Chick in the Basket” refers to a clichéd writing device where the final paragraph of a short story contains new information about a character which is meant to make the reader view the actions, statements, or feelings of that character in a different light. The first known use of this device was in J.D. Salinger’s short story “Just Before the War with the Eskimos.”

  • Short Story Review: “Poor Houdini” by Anne Carson

    (The short story “Poor Houdini” by Anne Carson appeared in the January 29th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Lauren Peters-Collaer

    Well, yeah!

    “Poor Houdini” by Anne Carson is the type of short story I love falling into. Why beat around the bush here; This is a fabulous story that happily reminded me how much fun it is to be engaged and enthralled by the ways a writer takes words, and language and plays with it, creating mood, atmosphere, and a lyrical mist which surrounds their story. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with that first paragraph, but by the end I was ashamed that I wasn’t aware Anne Carson before today.

    I guess there is a through line of a story here; a female poet, romantic entanglements, a crow, the rescue of a woman from a collapsed balcony, and the writing of sonnets. Picking apart this story seems antithetical to what this story exudes; which is a sort of lived life that is filtered through a poet’s eyes, and their reactions to those events. And these events can and should be explored more, but I only have so much time.

    Because what grabbed me was the language and how it danced to life. “There is stillness after rain. Rank risings rise. Trees drip. Street lamps loom. Night takes on a polish, a pure power.” I know this feeling, this setting, and it’s as if I can touch it with my fingertips, yet it stays magically elusive. Carson weaves these words, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of melancholy, as this is a world of people looking for connections with each other, but nothing seems to land the way they want or expect. But they keep moving forward, not exactly flailing, but grasping – at least the poet does.

    I know that I am not doing the story justice, and this isn’t so much a “review”, as it is more a “gush.” I think part of my reaction to “Poor Houdini” is that it also brought up in me the memory of being young, in college, and the world was still able to be discovered, emotions could be surprisingly new, and it mattered to attempt to create something out of that jumble of life. I can’t completely put my finger on it, but it felt very close to what Anne Carson wrote.

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  • Short Story Review: “Chance the Cat” by David Means

    (The short story “Chance the Cat” by David Means appeared in the January 22nd, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Bobby Beasley for The New Yorker

    (Edited and Updated on 2/5/24)

    I’m guessing here, but I’ve written close to 100 reviews for my blog. And when I write one, I try to come up with some catchy opening, or hook, or gimmick in the first paragraph to get you, the reader, interested in reading further. The reason I do this is mainly because that’s how I was taught to write essays and critical papers in high school and college. Effective? Yeah, sure. Original? Not really. (Now, watch how I do this.) “Chance the Cat” is such a story that has a hook, a gimmick as one would say, that David Means employees to tell his story.

    What “Chance the Cat” really is, is a deconstructed bittersweet rom-com with a cat and a Secret Service agent, which employees the gimmick of starting each section/paragraph by asking “Does it matter…” or stating “What mattered was…” or some other variant of the aforementioned questions/statement. Of the 49 section/paragraphs, only 5 do not use this hook. There must be a reason for this, right? Those 5 parts must contain some weight to them, because dramatically, when a pattern is created in the narrative, inevitable it will be broken for effect. I am not faulting Means for this structure in his storytelling, merely identifying it.

    I bring all of this up because, as I said earlier, the story is a com-com. There is a meet cute, a budding relationship, a jointly cared for cat, a break up, and then the melancholy remembrance of the time shared. There are jumps in time, as the story doesn’t follow a linear format, which works well with the bittersweet tone of the story. I enjoyed how the story played with how disparate people come together, the crutch they use to stay together, in this story the cat, and how as time passes, it still isn’t clear how one should deal with those emotions from that time together. Using the “Does it matter…” “What mattered…” gimmick plays very well into that theme.

    Did I mention the Secret Service agent? Yeah… this is the only issue I had with the story. (Well, it was a little long in parts…) You see, this couple lives down the street from the Obama’s in Chicago, and as such, there are Secret Service agents on the block checking people who live there as they come and go. Being that this information is essential to the breakup and the climax to the story, I found it an odd decision to share this with us about 2/3 way through the piece. A good amount of time is spent on this agent, whose purpose in the narrative is only to annoy the guy so he loses the cat. That’s it. The agent doesn’t weigh on the girl’s mind years later, nor is there some sort of connection between the girl and the agent, which I thought would happen as it would play into the complication of the central relationship. That was just me hoping for something to justify the agents existence.

    I try very hard not to impose what I want to see happen in a story, but only to analyze and critically examine what the writer has presented to the reader. I kind’a fudged this one. In my defense, except for one character choice, I did enjoy “Chance the Cat.” I enjoyed the structure David Means created to tell this story, and there are many details that layered and deepened the central characters. But that agent…

    (And then I got an anonymous comment this morning telling me that the story was about race, and how it was mind boggling that I could miss that. At first I left a quip about boggling minds, thanked the person for their comment, and asked what they thought the Agent represented.

    I went about my day, but that comment kept poking at the back of my head. Was the story all about race? Could that be right? And if that was true, did I honestly completely miss that?

    So, I went back and reread the story… and I took a whiff on this one.

    And I’m embarrassed by that.

    Rereading the piece, I now see what I missed and glossed over. Especially William’s reaction to the agent stopping him.

    Something still doesn’t sit right with me when it comes to this story. I will stick with my original reaction of the Obama’s being down the street, along with the introduction of the Agent, 2/3rds of the way through the story. That Agent and all of his passages still feel odd to me; not fitting in with the rest of the flow of the story.

    But I think the bigger question in all of this, is why did I whiff so hard on this piece? What I wrote in the last paragraph of my original review reveals everything, and shows my mistake. As I reread the piece, I began to discover how I had errored; I didn’t critically analyze what David Means presented, but started to impose in my mind what I wanted the story to be and glossed over what didn’t fit in with my judgement. I got caught up in thinking I knew better. That was my mistake. I want to own up to, and promise to do better.

    Also, I want to thank the anonymous commenter who did an appropriate job of smacking me upside the head.)

  • Short Story Review: “The Beach House” by Joy Williams

    (The short story “The Beach House” by Joy Williams appeared in the January 15, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I will SPOIL this story.)

    Illustration by Mia Bergeron

    Of all the storytelling tricks that are out there, the “MacGuffin” is my favorite. If you don’t know, a MacGuffin in a story is any object, device, or person that is essential to the plot and motivation of the characters. Think of the Ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark; it’s the object everyone wants and is also what drives the plot. And the beach house in Joy Williams “The Beach House” is a MacGuffin, but the rest of the story doesn’t play along.

    So, in the story, Amber’s elderly father is near death, and he owns a beach house which he is planning on willing to a charity that save dogs. Amber finds this charity suspicious, but more importantly, if the house is not willed to her after her father’s death, she will be homeless. This is about as textbook as you can get with a plot, and motivation and the whole thing. He wants one thing, she wants another, and the stakes are high as she has a desperate need to get her hands on this beach house.

    But this story never seems to get its dramatic act together. It plods along with little urgency. Amber seems resigned to talk about her plight, but never take action. And the father, though its hinted at that he might be suffering from early dementia, doesn’t seem very interested in his daughters situation of near homelessness. I feel that there are other issues simmering under the surface between these two, but I also think I am giving the story the benefit of the doubt here. When the climax of the piece occurs, the father falls and the daughter wants to take him to the hospital, it in no way affects the plot, the motivations, or the MacGuffin. Nothing is resolved or concluded with this action – the issue of the beach house is still there.

    It’s not a badly written piece, but the aftertaste I am left with is that “The Beach House” might be the first chapter of a novel. Again, all the pieces are here for a good story, and like I also pointed out, there seems to be a subtext between the characters that could be richly explored. But, with the story in this state, Williams introduced a gun and then didn’t fire it.

  • Pretty Much My Last Blog Post of 2023

    I think that will be true. We are getting down to crunch time for the Holidays; the kid will be off from school, and soon the wife will be taking her Christmas vacation from work. Then we do have some traditions around the City we like to take part in, so the time to blog is growing short. And as such, this might be the last one I write for the year.

    Not that anyone is asking for this, and I am talking to the couple of you who stop by this blog, but I’ll post a Best of 2023, as well as some Holiday videos for Christmas and New Year’s. Once the kid and wife are back in school, I will resume the normal blogging schedule.

    As for 2023, it wasn’t a bad year…

    On the writing front, I submitted to 50+ magazines, and got accepted in one. I had planned on sending out to 100, and only then did I hope that maybe I’d get a bite. So, I’ll chalk that up as a win. I have three stories out there that I am waiting to hear on, so I guess there is still hope. The blog readership grew this year, which was unexpected to say the least. Most days, I feel like I am talking to myself in the dark, and lets be honest, that’s a rather true description. Yet, I averaged 5 readers a day in 2022, and in 2023 that grew to 20. I’m sure there are some Russian bots in those numbers, but some of you are real. Also, looking at the numbers, if you stop by this blog, you’re reading the Short Story Reviews, and not many of the other things I write about. (I don’t get any likes for my Tottenham posts, but I’m still going to write about my club.) I will say this about the reviews, which is that I have read more short stories this year than any other year of my life. I have discovered many new online lit journals which are great, and most importantly, I have read so many great new writers. I could do a better job about promoting these journals and writers, and perhaps that should be a goal for myself in 2024. I was hesitant in 2023 as I was writing and submitting myself, and I had this idea that it could be considered a conflict of interest. Then I reminded myself that no one knows who I am, no one cares, so I should just relax.

    On the other personal fronts; my wife is good, the kid is healthy and doing well in school, and life in the City isn’t too bad. There will always be things that I need to work on so I can be a better husband and father, and friend, and son, and brother. I’ll still be pulling for the Dallas Cowboys to win the Super Bowl this year, and I would be happy with Tottenham just qualifying for the Champions League. Cubs are the Cubs, so I’ll be happy with a winning season. It would be good if I got back to sketching more, and maybe I should complete a book or some art project in 2024. Who knows…

    But, in the end, I would like to say thank you to the 20 of you, if you are real, who look at this thing each day. You do validate my existence, and that’s a pretty nice thing to do for someone. Especially when it’s a middle-aged guy still trying to figure things out and expressing… opinions about stuff. Anyway, I appreciate it.

    Have a good Holidays and I’ll talk to you soon.