The Big Read IV: The Lottery and Other Stories -- Shirley Jackson "After You, My Dear Alphonse" and "Charles"

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

Comments

[TadMack]

Boy, that first one...!
What was surprising was that neither one of these were very much... horror oriented. Somehow I thought all the stories would be like THE LOTTERY. I have to say that Boyd did catch on, poor kid; adult resentment is so weird. And I figured out the Charles thing and it was confirmed when Charles came shouting up the hill... but it's very sad that his parents didn't get it sooner!

It's nice that some of these are online!

[Leila]

Yeah, poor Boyd. It felt like Mrs. Wilson tried to put him in the box she had in her head, and when he didn't fit, she just KEPT TRYING to cram him in. The bit at the end -- where it seemed clear to me that Boyd knew what was going on but Johnny didn't -- reminded me of Chris Lynch's Gold Dust.

[EM]

These are two of my favorites. If you like the lighter side of Shirley, go right now and find her two nonfiction books about her family, RAISING DEMONS and LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES. I've read them several times and they keep getting funnier. (Perhaps because my kids keep getting older.)

[gailg]

I thought After You, My Dear Alphonse was a little on the obvious and instructive side, though I wonder if it was very original and cutting edge when it was written and published.

I remember Charles, also. It's a lovely story.

[Leila]

I can see the obvious and instructional about Alphonse, but I think it would have bothered me more if there'd been some Big Moment where Boyd Said Something Profound. Or if Johnny'd even noticed what was going on. Since there wasn't a Big Moment, I thought it felt like another slice-of-life.

And, yeah. Charles is lovely. I love that Laurie's teacher (and the other parents) must have been as excited to meet Laurie's mother as she'd been to meet Charles'.

EM, I know I've got copies of those somewhere -- I'll have to dig them out at some point soon!

[Heidi]

I didn't get that Johnny didn't get it, so I went back for another look. This time this sentence jumped out at me: "Mrs. Wilson lifted the plate of gingerbread off the table as Boyd was about to take another piece."

so saying that if you won't be grateful for free clothing, you can't have any more cookies.

So Johnny says, "She's screwy sometimes." Meaning, I take it, that he doesn't necessarily understand her actions as racist, but just think his mother acts irrationally at times.

So that makes me wonder why Boyd simply says, "So's mine."

Maybe because he realizes Johnny is blind to the race thing so far, and he wants to keep it that way as long as possible? Until Johnny becomes aware, they can just be two kids playing at soldiers and "after you."