Do not pick a collection of short stories for the next Big Read.
Due to the Cold of Death*, I lost momentum. And then I just fell right off the train.
That's a ridiculously mixed metaphor, but I've never been any good at metaphors.
Anyway, huge apologies to Patti, Heidi, Gail, and anyone else who was reading along. I'll do better next time.
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*I'm much better now.
"The Dummy": Dinner date gone awry .
• "the people who came there laughed quietly and dined thoroughly, appreciating the principle that the check was always a little more than the restaurant and the entertainment warranted..."
• Another situation where the son is away.
• Ventriloquists' dummies are always creepy. Either it's secretly alive and not-so-secretly evil, or it's just a dummy but the ventriloquist uses it as a way to lash out and say nasty things without really saying them. Except for that one episode of Buffy. That dummy -- or, sorry, figure -- was alive and not evil.
• Looks like Shirley Jackson went with Dummy Option #2:
"Shut up for a minute," the dummy said to the girl. "For God's sake will you just shut up for a minute?"
• Well, I didn't see that coming. But, see what I mean? The dummy totally took the hit, even though it was the man who should have. It seems like Mrs. Wilkins must've been right on the edge already to have had that reaction -- she doesn't strike me as a vigilante, defending women wherever she goes. She was on the edge of... something... from the very beginning of the story. Mrs. Straw seemed pretty oblivious to that edginess. The girl in the green dress, of course, in the last line, showed that she wouldn't be changing her situation anytime soon.
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Other reader/bloggers:
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Previously:
"Elizabeth" and "A Fine Old Firm"
"Flower Garden", "Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors" and "Colloquy"
"Afternoon in Linen"
"After You, Dear Alphonse" and "Charles"
"The Witch" and "The Renegade"
"My Life with R.H. Macy"
"The Villager"
"Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial By Combat"
"The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
The Schedule
"Elizabeth": Is this life? Well, I'm depressed.
• Her apartment reminds me of the apartment in "The Daemon Lover". But this one has more of a presence -- it's almost a character:
...after more than four years in this one home she knew all its possibilities, how it could put on a sham appearance of warmth and welcome when she needed a place to hide in, how it stood over her in the night when she woke suddenly, how it would relax itself into a disagreeable unmade, badly-put-together state, mornings like this, anxious to drive her out and go back to sleep.
• This story also reminds me of "The Villager". Except the woman in "The Villager" was more successful, financially -- she wasn't living hand-to-mouth like this.
• This one feels really claustrophobic -- the rain keeping everyone inside, the crowded bus, the tiny apartment, the tiny office... and her dream of a "hot sunny garden, with green lawns around her and stretching as far as she could see".
• I suspect that Robbie is gearing up to do what he did before -- to leave his partner and set up business (and "business", IF you know what I mean) with his new secretary.
• Another Jim Harris. This time he isn't causing any trouble -- Elizabeth is projecting all of her desires onto him.
• Not a whole lot actually happened in the story, but I feel like maybe a lot is GOING to happen to her, soon. And not anything positive.
"A Fine Old Firm": A meeting of the mothers.
• Erm. I feel that I might have missed something here.
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Other reader/bloggers:
Patti at Fickle Words
Gail at Original Content
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity
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Previously:
"Flower Garden", "Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors" and "Colloquy"
"Afternoon in Linen"
"After You, Dear Alphonse" and "Charles"
"The Witch" and "The Renegade"
"My Life with R.H. Macy"
"The Villager"
"Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial By Combat"
"The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
The Schedule
"Flower Garden": In which we find another us/them country/city situation.
• First line:
After living in an old Vermont manor house together for almost eleven years, the two Mrs. Winnings, mother and daughter-in-law, had grown to look a good deal alike, as women will who live intimately together, and work in the same kitchen and get things done around the house in the same manner.
Remember that episode of Six Feet Under where Nate comes home and his mother and Lisa are doing the dishes together and they swing around at exactly the same time and they're both wearing aprons and smiling and he just looks like he wants to turn around and start running and never, ever stop?
• "Eloquent hands". I like that.
• I had no idea that was where the story was going. How depressing. Stories like that make my stomach hurt. For a while, I thought maybe Mrs. Winning might come around, if only in her head -- because she was wistful about the bond between Mrs. MacLane and her son, the life that Mrs. MacLane and her son were creating in that cottage, because the cottage and its inhabitants represented the bright color that it seemed like Mrs. Winning longed for -- but that she wouldn't be able to voice it because it would mean going up against everyone she knew. I even could have understood (not justified, but understood) the times when she felt that she needed to make it clear that she sided with the rest of the people in the town. But the bit where Mrs. Winning realizes that she's enjoying Mrs. MacLane's discomfort and pain -- that, I thought, made it pretty clear that she was like the rest of them. I don't think it was a matter of her not standing up because she was afraid or because it was too hard -- I think it was a matter of her not standing up because she didn't want to.
"Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors": In which sailors are boogeymen. Or something.
• Okay, I admit it. I'm at a loss here, maybe because most of one side of my family is military, and heavily Navy. Was this a common thing, worrying about sailors?
• I felt that this story, more than most of the others, had a very specific sense of time and place.
• It did feel like the women equated the sailors with sex (especially when the narrator got lost and afterwards the mother shook her and said, "Aren't you ashamed?"), scared that they would say something or do something to destroy the girls' innocence -- or that maybe just being around them would somehow turn the girls into wantons. And the fear rubbed off on the girls, but it was more of a shapeless fear that gave me that boogeyman feeling.
• And again, a view of the lines that divide adults and children.
"Colloquy": Which means a conversation or dialogue, and yes, I looked it up.
• I don't have much to say about this one, other than that I feel for Mrs. Arnold.
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Other reader/bloggers:
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity
Patti at Fickle Words
Gail at Original Content
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Previously:
"Afternoon in Linen"
"After You, Dear Alphonse" and "Charles"
"The Witch" and "The Renegade"
"My Life with R.H. Macy"
"The Villager"
"Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial By Combat"
"The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
The Schedule
"Afternoon in Linen": In which Harriet "don't know any".
• This made me fall in love with Harriet:
"Recite one of your poems for Mrs. Kator, Harriet."
The little girl looked at her grandmother, at the sweet smile, and at Mrs. Kator, leaning forward, and at Howard, sitting with his mouth open and a great delight growing in his eyes. "Don't know any," she said.
Of course, I thought that Howard was happy because Harriet was rebelling, but no. He was happy because he would be able to torment Harriet about writing poetry.
• This was another story that showed a rift between children and adults -- both in that the adults were using the children as performing monkeys and in that the adults had no clue about what was really going on. This one may have been my favorite so far. I loved Harriet's thought about Alice Through the Looking-Glass: "I'm a gentleman all dressed in pink paper".
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Other reader/bloggers:
Patricia at A Girl Diverged
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity
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Previously:
"After You, Dear Alphonse" and "Charles"
"The Witch" and "The Renegade"
"My Life with R.H. Macy"
"The Villager"
"Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial By Combat"
"The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
The Schedule
Man, I can't believe I missed yesterday. I'm really finding sticking to the schedule difficult this time around.
"After You, My Dear Alphonse": I bet this one gets used in classrooms a lot.
• I loved this one. I thought it was rather hilarious (sadly) that Mrs. Wilson assumed that her son was being racist by making his friend Boyd carry the wood and then proceeded to make, like, 57 stereotypical assumptions about Boyd and his family over the course of the next three pages. And this:
"Boyd's sister's going to work, though. She's going to be a teacher."
"That's a very fine attitude for her to have, Boyd." Mrs. Wilson restrained an impulse to pat Boyd on the head. "I imagine you're all very proud of her?"
A very fine attitude -- like it probably won't pan out, but that it's nice that she has that dream. And the impulse to pat him on the head is so condescending.
• I thought, by the end, that Boyd had picked up on what was going on, but that it went over Johnny's head.
• The Alphonse bit originated in a comic strip.
• The story is online here, so go read it if you haven't already.
"Charles": In which I found myself picturing a very young, very short Marlon Brando.
• I think I must have read this one in school or something -- it was very familiar, and I remembered the ending. It's available online here.
• This is another one that falls into the parent-being-freaked-out-by-their-child category:
The day my son Laurie started kindergarten he renounced corduroy overalls with bibs and began wearing blue jeans with a belt; I watched him go off the first morning with the older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life was ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a long-trousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner and wave good-bye to me.
• I thought both of these stories felt very Dahl-esque.
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Other reader/bloggers:
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity (Alphonse)
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity (Charles)
TadMack at Finding Wonderland
Gail at Original Content
Patricia at A Girl Diverged
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Previously:
"The Witch" and "The Renegade"
"My Life with R.H. Macy"
"The Villager"
"Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial By Combat"
"The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
The Schedule
"The Witch": In which we have either a nice, sweet, possibly confused old man OR a nice old man with a strange sense of humor OR a crazy psycho killer old man.
• La la la, a lady on the train with her children. A little baby:
She was strapped securely to the seat so she could sit up and look around, and whenever she began to slip slowly sideways the strap caught her and held her halfway until her mother turned around and straightened her again.
and a four-year-old boy:
The few other people in the coach were sitting at the other end of the car; if any of them had occasion to come down the aisle the little boy would look around and say, "Hi," and the stranger would usually say, "Hi," back and sometimes ask the little boy if he were enjoying the train ride, or even tell him he was a fine big fellow. These comments annoyed the little boy and he would turn irritably back to the window.
• La la la, on the train. The boy sees a witch outside (or so he says) and then a nice-looking old man comes by and he and the boy spar for a bit and THEN the man tells the boy about HIS little sister:
"I bought her a rocking-horse and a doll and a million lollipops," the man said, "and then I took her and I put my hands around her neck and I pinched her until she was dead."
• AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!
• Actually, I didn't find the guy all that creepy. If I'd been the mother, well, YEAH, of course I would have, but I thought the focus of the story was on the little boy, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. But then there's the whole danger-in-very-normal-places thing... I think spooky happenings in everyday places are way scarier than spooky happenings in very obviously spooky places. Maybe because the spooky is intruding on our world? Anyway. I really do like these little no-real-explanation-slice-of-life stories.
"The Renegade": In which I was just happy that I wasn't Mrs. Walpole.
• I'm glad I don't live in the 1950s:
He said, "Morning," without glancing up and Mrs. Walpole, her mind full of unfinished sentences that began, "Don't you think other people ever have any feelings or--" started patiently to set his breakfast before him.
• And then the phone call:
"The dog," the voice said. "You'll have to do something about the dog."
A sudden unalterable terror took hold of Mrs. Walpole. Her morning had gone badly, she had not yet had her coffee, she was faced with an evil situation she had never known before, and now the voice, its tone, its inflection, had managed to frighten Mrs. Walpole with a word like "something."
I thought that was good -- that the vagueness of "something" might be worse than specifics.
• The us vs. them/country vs. city/locals vs. people-from-away mindset is one that I know I suffer from. I live in an area where the population doubles (literally) in the summer. So while I sympathize with Mrs. Walpole, I sympathize with the lady on the phone, too.
• Did you notice that the chicken people are named Harris?
• Except for the caller, Mrs. Nash and, obviously, Mrs. Walpole, everyone seems to be enjoying the situation, giving nasty advice and whatnot. I'm with Mrs. Walpole on this one -- I don't see the humor in it.
• And the kids. Rather similar to the last story, what with the kids relishing the idea of violence and the mother being understandably sickened. These last two stories reminded me quite a bit of Ray Bradbury.
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Other reader/bloggers:
Gail at Original Content
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity
Patricia at A Girl Diverged ("The Renegade")
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Previously:
"My Life with R.H. Macy"
"The Villager"
"Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial By Combat"
"The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
The Schedule
"My Life with R. H. Macy": And now I will never think of Macy's in quite the same way again.
• This is the first story that's been in the first person, yes?
• I actually don't have much to say about this one, other than that I loved it and want to quote the whole thing but obviously can't. And it's the first one that I thought was funny without being painful, and it's the first one in which I thought the main character actually made a move to break a cycle. Here's a snippet:
They gave us each a big book with R. H. Macy written on it, and inside this book were pads of little sheets saying (from left to right) : "Comp. keep for ref. cust. d.a. no. or c.t. no. salesbook no. salescheck no. clerk no. dept. date M." After M there was a long line for Mr. or Mrs. and the name, and then it began again with "No. item. class. at price. total." And down at the bottom was written ORIGINAL and then again, "Comp. keep for ref., and "Paste yellow gift stamp here." I read all this very carefully.
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Other reader/bloggers:
Gail at Original Content
Patricia at A Girl Diverged
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Previously:
"The Villager"
"Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial By Combat"
"The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
The Schedule
"The Villager": In which Miss Clarence doesn't deny being Mrs. Roberts.
• Love this:
"She went into Whelan's and sat at the counter, putting her copy of the Villager down on the counter next to her pocketbook and The Charterhouse of Parma, which she had read enthusiastically up to page fifty and only carried now for effect."
• And this:
"She stopped and rested on the third landing, and lit another one of her cigarettes so as to enter the apartment effectively."
• Another Mr. Harris! No first name, though.
• This was another one in which someone pretends to be someone else. Why did she do it? Embarrassment at being caught? Because she felt silly explaining the situation? Because she wanted to feel, even for a few moments, like she had followed her dream of dancing?
• I got the feeling that she had mixed feelings about the other residents of the Village -- that she wanted to be one of them, that she wanted her old friends from home to think of her as one of them, but that she also wasn't all that comfortable with their way of life. The starving artist lifestyle didn't work for her -- it sounded, from the very beginning of the story, like she moved to New York with the idea of becoming a dancer, but didn't necessarily try to make a go of it. She liked the idea, but not the reality, maybe?
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Other reader/bloggers:
Gail at Original Content
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity
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Previously:
"Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial By Combat"
"The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
The Schedule
I can't believe I missed a post already! I blame election craziness for the general crappitude of my internet service yesterday.
"Like Mother Used to Make": In which I wished for a Roald Dahl "Lamb to the Slaughter" ending.
• The first few sentences make me think of two things: The first was that scene in The Weatherman where Nicolas Cage tries to remember the tartar sauce (decent amount of swearing and whatnot):
The second was, of course, this:
Okay, okay. On to the story.
• Have you noticed that the characters in these stories seem to get quietly mocked a lot? Or, at least, they think they're being quietly mocked?
• Who does that? Eats dinner at someone's house and then invites random guy in without even asking the host and says, "That's all right, it's just Davie"? Especially because he's so into having his world and his space Just So. Gross. It feels like a violation.
• And, yeah. I felt very much like David was kind of mothering Marcia from the beginning, but that doesn't mean it's okay for her to act like he IS her mother. That now she expects him to feed this guy.
• AND THEN SHE PRETENDS THAT SHE MADE THE PIE???
• AND NOW SHE'S PRETENDING THAT IT'S HER APARTMENT??
• When he was putting the silverware away, my heart broke a little bit. Even more than when he let her get away with it.
"Trial By Combat": In which Mrs. Allen totally wins.
• It's funny that I ended up reading both of these stories today -- in which the main characters avoid confrontation and making a scene and end up losing out, even though they were clearly in the right.
• And it's interesting that even though her writing feels really distant and detached, somehow, that it still evokes these violent reactions in me.
• I wonder what went through Shirley Jackson's mind during cocktail parties.
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Other reader/bloggers:
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity
Gail at Original Content (not posting about it, but reading and discussing!)
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Previously:
"The Intoxicated": In which a young woman scares the bejeebers out of an older drunk man.
• I love the opening line: "He was just tight enough and just familiar enough with the house to be able to go out into the kitchen alone, apparently to get ice, but actually to sober up a little; he was not quite enough a friend of the family to pass out on the living-room couch."
• I've read this story before. I wonder where and when?
• This is perfect:
He waited for a minute before he said, "I think it's a little silly for you to fill your mind with all this morbid trash. Buy yourself a movie magazine and settle down."
So she should fill her mind with fluffy trash instead. Get the feeling that he's more upset about her filling his mind with morbidity? And wow, how condescending is that bit about the movie magazine?
• "He wanted badly to say something adult and scathing, and yet he was afraid of showing her that he had listened to her, that when he was young people had not talked like that."
• This story would be less creepy if Eileen poisoned his coffee or something. Their conversation, her words and his reactions, made my skin crawl. I got the distinct feeling that she hated him and what she thought he represented. Either that, or she was screwing with him in a major way. Or both.
"The Daemon Lover": In which a groom doesn't show.
• I've read this one, too. But I'm positive I haven't read this whole collection. We shall see.
• Was he ever really there? She ripped that letter up before finishing it. "Thirty, it said on the license." Marriage license? Were there actually people in that apartment at the end, or was it another empty one with rats? So. Is she bananas or is there an actual missing person? Or does any of it matter?
• And then there's this: The Ballad of James Harris. GAH.
• Okay, so the first story made my skin crawl. This one made me tense up. My neck got so tight that I'm still rolling my head around trying to unkink it. It wasn't just her growing panic -- it was that everyone laughed at her.
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Other reader/bloggers:
Heidi at Adventures in Multiplicity
Gail at Original Content (not posting about it, but reading and discussing!)
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Previously:
I'd have been happy with any of the choices, but I am very excited about reading these stories -- I loved the Haunting of Hill House and I adore-with-a-capital-A-D-O-R-E-D We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and I remember reading "The Lottery" (of course) in high school, but I never have read the rest of the collection.
Also, I've been meaning all year to read more short stories. Nice that I'm finally getting around to it.
As always, this is the schedule I'm going to stick to. You all can do whatever your little hearts desire -- but if you want to follow this schedule, grab a copy soon! We're less than a week away from our start day.
And of course, if you blog about it, let me know so that I can link it all up. Oh, and it should be noted that Matthew Baldwin at Defective Yeti, the creator (as far as I know) of NaNoReMo, is gearing up for November as well. So if The Lottery isn't what you're looking for, there'll be another group read over there!
November 3: "The Intoxicated" and "The Daemon Lover"
November 4: "Like Mother Used to Make"
November 5: "Trial by Combat"
November 6: "The Villager"
November 7: "My Life with R. H. Macy"
November 10: "The Witch" and "The Renegade"
November 11: "After You, My Dear Alphonse"
November 12: "Charles"
November 13: "Afternoon in Linen"
November 14: "Flower Garden"
November 17: "Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors" and "Colloquy"
November 18: "Elizabeth"
November 19: "A Fine Old Firm"
November 20: "The Dummy"
November 21: "Seven Types of Ambiguity"
November 24: "Come Dance With Me in Ireland" and "Of Course"
November 25: "Pillar of Salt"
November 26: "Men with Their Big Shoes"
November 27: "The Tooth"
November 28: "Got a Letter from Jimmy" and "The Lottery" and "Epilogue"
And it's The Lottery.
But as it was pretty darned close, I think we should do Titus Groan next, and maybe The Blue Castle as a Little Big Read sometime soon. AND WE'RE TOTALLY DOING IVANHOE AT SOME POINT BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME!!! Ahem. Moving on...
Schedule coming soon. Very soon, as we'll start reading next week.
