I was asked in a recent job interview, “What’s a major decision you would like another go on?”
I answered that I wouldn’t change anything. Every choice I’ve made in my life has led me to the point I’m at now. And I like my life now.
“But,” I went on, “If I HAD to choose, I would have studied literature instead of ecology.”
This is a regret I’ve had for a long time, that I missed my chance to dedicate massive amounts of time to consuming and discussing books with smart people who cared.
At 20 I was not self-aware. I didn’t know myself well enough in my college years to study the thing I love most. Reading was like eating to me — it was not optional — and so I was oblivious to the fact that literature was a passion and not a basic necessity.
But, as I said in my interview, my life would have taken a different turn had I chosen the literary path. I would not be married to my husband. I would not have my children. I would not have the dream job I now have.
Thankfully, to stand in for those classes I did not take, there is the New Yorker: Fiction podcast. Hosted by New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, this podcast highlights the best of the best of the short story. Each month an esteemed writer chooses a story from the archives of The New Yorker, reads it aloud, and then discusses it with editor Deborah Triesman. The discussions help sate the cravings of my literature-degree daydream: Triesman and the reading-writer contemplate what makes it a good story, they examine craftsmanship, they attempt to tease out meaning, and –- most importantly for writers -– their dialogues provide insight into the mind and inclinations of a high-quality fiction editor.
I’ve been binging on New Yorkerpodcast stories lately, re-listening to ones that struck me hard the first time around, and want to share my favorite six with you. I love these not only for the stories themselves, but for the conversations around them as well:
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” read by A. M. Homes. Aired Nov 12, 2008.
Carson McCullers’s “The Jockey,” read by Karen Russell. Aired Jan 14, 2010.
Raymond Carver’s “Chef’s House,” read by David Means. Aired Oct 15, 2010.
John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” read by Anne Enright. Aired Feb 17, 2011.
Henry Dumas: Arkansas-born poet and short story author
Arkansas was kicking my butt, y’all. It began well, with me devouring Charles Portis’s True Grit in two days, but when I finished the book, I realized a good half of it took place in the Oklahoma territory. Should I count it for Arkansas on my Andrea Reads America tour? (Andrea Reads America = three books set in each state, with works by men, women, and authors of color)
On top of the True Grit dilemma, Arkansas was the state that spawned my Where are the ethnic authors? post. After reaching out to faculty in the University of Arkansas English department, I still didn’t have any works of fiction set in the state of Arkansas and written by Arkansas authors of color. I considered relaxing my fiction rule to read the professor-recommended nonfiction titles; I considered reading an Arkansas-set novel written by a novelist who has lived her whole life in New York.
I took a break from Andrea Reads America to read The Goldfinch while I ruminated on what to do about the Arkansas dilemma(s).
When I finished The Goldfinch, I was doped on excellence. I drifted through life in that post-amazing-novel daze where you haven’t yet blinked back into reality; I knew whatever followed was going to suffer, like those poor ice skaters who crash when they follow a gold-medal performance.
And what followed was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I’ve read the book before, and I know it is good, but it did not satisfy me this time. I wanted fiction. I wanted landscape. Caged Bird is nonfiction; it is soulscape. I thought, well, maybe I need something funny, something totally different from the literariness of The Goldfinch; maybe I need something light, something totally different from the seriousness of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
I found a murder mystery series set in Arkansas and written by Arkansas author Joan Hess (she satisfies my woman author criterion!), and I drove to our library to pick up one of the titles in the series, Misery Loves Maggody. I tried to like it, I really did. But the characters were caricatures – exaggerated and expected – and the settings, dialogue, and scenes were cliché after cliché after cliché. The murder didn’t even happen until more than 100 pages in. But more disappointing than any of that was that since I did not detect authenticity in the characters, I did not trust the setting either; the setting could have been a silly spoof of any Southern town – I didn’t get a feel for Arkansas from it.
In other words, Misery Loves Maggody didn’t work for me either.
I was a teensy bit frustrated at this point. Just a tinch. I still needed a non-Caucasian author, and I still needed a woman. One of the Arkansas professors suggested Janis Kearney, the Presidential Diarist for Bill Clinton. She is an African-American writer from Arkansas who wrote a biography of Daisy Bates, an Arkansas civil rights activist. She also wrote a memoir, Cotton Field of Dreams. Awesome, right? Woman and not white. Works set in Arkansas. Problems solved, right?
Neither were available at our county or University libraries. And as I’ve mentioned before, despite being an avid reader, I rarely buy books.
On the drive home after yet another trip to our county library, where I discussed the option of an interlibrary loan of Cotton Field of Dreams with the librarian ($3 fee, could be a few weeks before it shows up, maybe I should just order it), it occurred to me: why don’t I run a search for short stories? Surely there’s at least ONE short story out there by an ethnic author. That’s all I need. Just one.
So I searched.
I searched, and I found.
Henry Dumas. Born 1934 in Sweet Home, Arkansas. Called “an absolute genius” by Toni Morrison. Wrote poetry and – get this – short stories. Fiction! And? And! When I searched the University catalogue, his short story collection, Ark of Bones, with – praise the Lord – stories set in Arkansas, pinged “Available, 3rd Floor, Newman Library.”
The next day, after a trip to the 3rd Floor, Newman Library, I plopped down on our couch with Ark of Bones, and I nearly cried for joy. The stories are alive, and they are different from anything I’ve read in a very, very long time. If ever. They are dark and smoky, masculine and earthy, filled with mojo and magic; they read as if they come from a long line of souls buried deep in the earth. I imagine Henry Dumas was an intense man; he certainly had a reverence for the dignity of his race.
Most importantly, in what is surely the crowning accomplishment in his writing career, he rescued me from a post-Goldfinch spiral and an anti-Arkansas frustration. I am grateful to him for that. And I am grateful to the works that didn’t work: I would not have found Henry Dumas without them.
I decided to keep True Grit for Arkansas. It’s too great a book to leave out.
I am reading America: 3 books from each state in the US with the following authorships represented – women, men, and non-Caucasian writers. To follow along, please visit me at andreareadsamerica.com.
I considered reading a short story like going out to dinner and only ordering an appetizer. Want a real meal? Eat a goddamn novel. – Jacob Tomsky
I came to the short story late. It wasn’t til this year, 2013, at the age of 38, that I finally began to appreciate this form.
I don’t remember exactly when it began. Three ingredients fell into a pot over a period of months – Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and subsequent suggestions that I read “The Lottery,” my quest to read Southern women – and a delicate broth began to bubble. It was thin at first, but as it perked and popped, as it reduced and thickened, its flavor deepened, became more complex, more surprising, and more pleasurable than I thought a humble soup could be.
Like Tomsky, quoted above, I never considered short stories to be – what? Rich? Deep? Memorable? No. None of those alone, and all of them at at once.
Satisfying. That’s what it was. I didn’t think stories would fill me up. I didn’t think they’d satiate. When I read, I want to get lost in a story. I want setting, I want fully fledged characters, I want depth and complexity. I don’t want chop. I don’t want quick. I want a good thing to continue. I want to gorge.
When I first came across A Moveable Feast, I did not realize it was a book of short stories (or memoirs – I think Hemingway didn’t want to get sued, so he claimed “This book is fiction.”) I was disappointed it wasn’t a novel. I began anyway, and within minutes I was underlining passages, finishing a narrative then leafing back to it’s beginning. That bit was only four pages, and look what he did! The amount of story, character, setting, punch that Hemingway accomplished in each piece astonished me. I ate story after story, in bed with my yellow pencil, appreciating short form fiction for the first time, impressed by how smart an author has to be to achieve such brevity.
My reaction was similar when I read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” I had written about The Haunting of Hill House, and so many reading friends responded with, Have you read “The Lottery?”, that I finally resigned myself to finding the book. My friend Amy said, No, it’s not a book. It’s a short story. Here’s a link. I read it in a matter of minutes, while onions caramelized in a skillet on the stove. In that short amount of time I gasped in wonder at the story’s brilliance, at how much there was to chew on. How much there was to hold on the tongue. How much there was to savor.
And then. My quest to read Southern women. Who comes to mind when you think of Southern women writers? Flannery O’Connor. A sister Savannah native, whom Amy chided me for never reading. “Hello, Andrea. She went to our alma mater.” And what did O’Connor write? You guessed it. Short stories. Twisted, powerful, Southern Gothic 10-page pieces with flesh and blood characters and as deep an immersion in the South as I’ve experienced in any full length novel.
More tastings followed – a wallop of a story from my critique buddy, short fiction from my dad – and it was at this point, when I was in this blinking, vulnerable, maybe short stories are awesome state that I came across Jacob Tomsky’s “So You Hate Short Stories” manifesto on Book Riot, in which he tells the (short story) of the origins of his Short Story Thursday project in which he emails a classic short piece out each week. I was practically cheering by the end of his essay. As soon as I read the final sentence, I sent an email to shutyourlazymouthandread@shortstorythursdays.com and said, “I just read your piece on Book Riot, and I want short stories on Thursday please. Thank you!”
So far in my 38 years, I’ve read very few brief fiction pieces. I barely know where to begin. Other than O’Connor and Hemingway, my experience with short stories is limited, and I am in a feed-me state: feed me your favorites. My ears perk when my favorite podcasters discuss a must-read compilation of short stories (Alice Munroe), and now, every Thursday, I eagerly await Tomsky’s carefully curated, hilariously introduced, always-a-fun-surprise classic short story in my inbox.
Short stories are becoming my go-to when I want to graze, or snack, or when I am in that limbo between novels, when I’m hungover from the last one or need to cleanse my palate for the next one. But even more than that, even more than snacking or grazing, I am realizing that though a novel may provide a fill-you-up meat and potatoes type meal, sometimes fine dining is composed of tastings – of exquisite soups served in demitasse cups, a single bite of melt-on-your-tongue lamb, a plate of fruits and cheese. And sometimes, the most fun meals are spent lingering late at night, filling up at leisure tapas-style – tortilla Española, Serrano ham, grilled Spanish sausages – sating your palate, your need for entertainment, your hunger, small plate after succulent small plate.
If you think you’d be interested in signing up for Short Story Thursdays (SST), please read Jacob Tomsky’s piece on Book Riot. It will give you a feel for what the introductory email is like for each story – hilarious (to me) and with lots of swearing. You can also follow SST on Facebook and on Twitter @SSTexecutives.
Butterfly Mind 