www.richardjespers.com
  • Home
  • Books
  • Journals
  • Blog

New Yorker Fiction 2014

7/31/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
Each wrong act brings with it its own anesthetic, dulling the conscience and blinding it against further light, and sometimes for years.
Rose Macaulay
Born August 1, 1881

Youthful Hazards

August 4, 2014, Paul Theroux, “Action”: Albert, the fifteen-year-old son of a Boston shoe store owner, runs an errand for his father in the late 1950s and faces some unforeseen hazards. ¶ Danger seems to lurk everywhere, whether it’s a man that steals his dime pastry or a store owner who asks Albert if he want to get “bollocky” and have his picture taken. Albert’s friend Eddie has told him about his girl, Paige, who is twenty, stating that she’s “action.” After attending to his father’s errand of picking up some shoes, Albert stops to visit Paige at her flat. She is ironing and offers him some lemonade. Having survived the previous perils, Albert
Picture
Edel Rodriguez
doesn’t fare so well now, as a rather large men enters the apartment. During Paige’s brief absence an incident occurs, and Albert exits in a hurry, leaving his father’s shoes behind. Instead of punishing his son, Albert’s father, who is normally quite strict, senses something has happened, something profound, something he cannot change on behalf of his son. Theroux’s collection, Mr. Bones, is out this fall.
Edel Rodriguez, Illustrator

NEXT POST: AUGUST 11. PLEASE PERUSE ARCHIVES LISTED BY MONTH.
STATS SHOW I HAD 3,000+ READERS FOR THE MONTH OF JULY. THANKS!

New Yorker Fiction 2014

7/25/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.
Aldous Huxley
Born July 26, 1894

The Most Difficult Meal

July 28, 2014, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, “Last Meal at Whole Foods”: A twenty-eight-year-old male narrator whose mother has three months to live recalls his life as a child with his single parent. ¶ I kept thinking as I read this story: I’ve been here (caring for elderly parent), and I find it uncomfortable. Yet Sayrafiezadeh takes us to a familiar place that also belongs just to his narrator and mother: the professor who impregnates his mother but who’s too busy to marry her or provide for his son; their life of living on Goodwill and Whole Foods; his mother’s fixation on seeing that he receives a proper education—even to the point of playing Scrabble missing an “f”. She is squeamish about his manners:
Picture
Lettering: Marion Deuchars/Photo: James Ross
“When I was a child, she would screech and recoil anytime my finger approached the vicinity of my nose” (66).
The narrator is at a painful point: wanting to care for the only person who may have cared for him, and, yet hoping to move on with his own life. And again, most of us have been there or will be at some point, and his story is an insightful reminder that we will also become the one who requires care. The author’s collection of stories, Brief Encounters with the Enemy, came out in 2013.
Lettering by Marion Deuchars
Photograph by James Ross

Dalva

7/21/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it.
Hart Crane
Born July 21, 1899

My Book World

Picture
Harrison, Jim. Dalva. New York: Washington Square, 1988.

Dalva is named by her parents after a Portuguese song, “Estrella Dalva,” or “Morning Star.” It may suit Dalva throughout her life for she always seems to be up early enough to witness such thing. She's always active, on the move in her universe. ¶ While still a teenager, Dalva falls in love with a half-Sioux man and makes love to him. When she becomes pregnant, she is sent off to have the baby and put it up for adoption. Dalva will never marry, and she will never have another child. She begins a rather circuitous journey to find out where her son is. She doesn’t necessarily wish to meet him or become part of his life; she merely hopes to find out how his life has turned out. ¶ Interwoven throughout this search is the buried story of her great great grandfather, by way of his journals, that a young scholar, Michael, examines for his research. But always the thrust of the narrative is Dalva in search of her son. The tragic story of the Sioux serves to inform Dalva of the wildness, perhaps, of her half-Sioux lover, the foretelling of what her son might be like, when she finally does meet up with him. And ironically, (thanks to artful writing) the meeting with her son comes near the end of the book. And it is brief. The book has been all about the journey. What happens to those two is now anyone’s guess. It could even become another story, for another time, and in fact, does with Harrison's novel, The Road Home, published in 1998. Dalva, in the long run, may become known more for its fair and stark retelling of the American West: how the original homeowners were duped out of their land forever.

NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION 2014


New Yorker Fiction 2014

7/17/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
One night some short weeks ago, for the first time in her not always happy life, Marilyn Monroe's soul sat down alone to a quiet supper from which it did not rise.
Clifford Odets
Born July 18, 1906

Maybe Drugs Are the Answer

July 21, 2014, Greg Jackson, “Wagner in the Desert”: Two couples visit the desert area of Palm Springs and do non-stop drugs before beginning their search for Wagner, a man who may or may not finance a film one of the men wants to make. ¶ This story is truly one of, for, and about people under thirty-five. The author’s extremely articulate and lyrical prose walks (or rolls) us in a trance-like way through their lives. He names every drug, every substance (including some scrumptious food) they consume on a New Year’s weekend several
Picture
years earlier. How are they different from the last group of young uns to go through this? May be the sheer magnitude, the sheer panoply of drugs and substances that are so readily available to them and how they so easily ingest great amounts of these substances and still rise the next day to do anything more than pee! It’s a miracle!
“First we did molly, lay on the thick carpet touching it, ourselves, one another. We did edibles, bathed dumbly in the sun, took naps on suède couches. Later, we did blow off the keys to ecologically responsible cars. We powdered glass tables and bathroom fixtures. We ate mushrooms—ate and waited, ate and waited . . . we smoked cigarettes and joints, sucked on lozenges lacquered in hash oil. We tried one another’s benzos and antivirals, Restoril, Avodart, YAZ, and Dexedrine, looking for contraindications.”
And yet there may be a cynical self-awareness among these characters that the previous generation didn’t possess. When the narrator’s girl friend (though she clinically explains why they should not have sex) exclaims, high or mellow on mushrooms, “It’s like . . . it was all choreographed for me,” while viewing the hush of a desert sunset, the narrator replies, “‘But that’s what it is,’ I said, ‘That’s what being on drugs is.”

With the last sentence, you realize, perhaps, the entire story has been choreographed precisely so he can say that. And yet the story is plump with realizations—epiphanies, dare I say—that just might not have surfaced without the use of drugs. Either way, whether the writer himself is stoned while writing the story or not, he certainly makes one feel that he could be! It makes you wish your own life could be transformed so easily.

Jackson graduated from Harvard and UVA and is working on a collection of stories entitled Prodigals. He is, I believe, a writer to watch. Be sure and check out the magazine’s interview with him. 
Grant Cornett, Photographer

NEXT TIME: (HOPEFULLY) MY BOOK WORLD

Polar Opposites

7/10/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Born July 11, 1967

My Book World

Ahead of her Time or Too Late?

Picture
Warren, Elizabeth. A Fighting Chance. New York: Metropolitan, 2014.

This book is full of acronyms: AFSCME=American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFR=Americans for Financial Reform, ARM=adjustable rate mortgage, CDO=collateralized debt obligations, CFPB=Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CRL=Center for Responsible Lending, COP=Congressional Oversight Panel, TBTF=Too Big to Fail, TARP=Troubled Asset Relief Program, and many others. I learned that I’d better memorize them or keep a key beside me because to understand them is to understand a lot of Elizabeth Warren’s story.

This memoir by Warren is largely about her stance on how finance is handled in America. At the same time, her autobiography is threaded throughout the book, from her truly humble beginnings in Oklahoma to her much-heralded run for US Senate in Massachusetts in 2012—at which point her opponent, Scott Brown, accuses her of misrepresenting her Native American roots. Through her struggle the reader sees his or her own. She may be the least political politician currently in office. Many of her ideas appeal to Progressives, as well as Tea Party members. Repeatedly she says, “The system is rigged.” It is rigged in favor of corporate interests, which have eroded and continue to erode middle-class life in America.

One way to fight back: “When you have no real power, go public—really public. The public is where the real power is” (126). And this is the kind of action she takes all throughout her career. When before a crowd or audience, she speaks plainly and easily about complex problems, sounding much like the law school professor she has been for many years. Now instead of educating law students, she’s educating the public.

Warren, of course, is reviled by the financial community (Wall Street), but that is because she’s on the side of the middle and working class families, whose incomes have been diluted over the last thirty years. Her run for the Senate begins when someone makes a video of her speaking in someone’s home. I’m paraphrasing her words: No one in this country makes it alone. People who succeed in business must work hard—that’s a given—but they must use roads and other forms of infrastructure that our taxes pay for; and the more heavy-duty their business is the harder they are on this infrastructure, yet they feel entitled to pay less in taxes than their secretaries. I would add that local, state, and federal laws combine to give corporations all kinds of breaks, the large oil companies receiving government subsidies being one of many examples.

Warren lays all this all out in prose that is simple yet artful. She threads her words with figurative language that demonstrates further what she is saying to her audience. I believe Warren when she ways she’s not running for president. I believe her goal is to spend the rest of her life leveling the playing field, so that the middle and working classes might again have the opportunities they once had. So that young people might attend college for reasonable prices and finance it through loans at rates that are no higher than what banks have to pay for money. Yet, everywhere she goes, she creates energy, energy that is contagious. Might she just be drafted to run for president? Might she give another woman a run for her money?

Out of the Past, They Determine the Future

Picture
Schulman, Daniel. Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty. New York: Grand Central, 2014.

Whenever I meet others who are also from Wichita, I’m often asked where I went to high school. It is a subtle way of determining very quickly to which social class I must belong. Indeed, I grew up on the other side of several sets of tracks, certainly far from the East Thirteenth Street address, where the Koch brothers spent their early years. In fact, beyond a certain point the Koch brothers didn’t even attend Wichita public schools, but exclusive preparatory or military schools in other parts of the country. And only one of the brothers, Charles, continues to live in Wichita today. The rest of them live (given they own multiple residences) in a variety of places, including the Northeast.
In the past few years, since Charles and David have made their political will so well known, they are either exalted or reviled, depending on which camp one belongs. Schulman seems to remain quite objective, neither favoring them nor shielding them from criticism. Readers certainly discover more about the Koch brothers than they ever thought they might learn.

The four brothers’ father, Fred Koch, for example, originally hailed from Quanah, Texas, making Wichita more or less a place of happenstance for the brothers. Fred is a cold and tyrannical father, yet all but one of the sons sets out to try and please their father, that is, emulate him and his maniacal competitiveness in every way. Only one, Frederick, Junior, chooses to follow his own path. Rather than taking his millions and establishing his own dynasty, he prefers the life of the arts: living in a lush place in Manhattan (and in Europe) and attending musical and visual arts productions, purchasing expensive art as if it’s going out of existence. Throughout their lives, the brothers will sue one another for various reasons, until some time in the 1990s, they decide to call a truce—although there still exist deep suspicions among some of the brothers for each other to this very day. Charles and David, though eight years apart, seem to share the most concerning political beliefs and set out to change the country through their activism. They’re just as fervent as their father was, when he served as one of the founding members of the John Birch Society. When all the facts are laid out, one can see how the Koch brothers have become the men they have. It still doesn’t make some like their political stands, but at least one does understand how perhaps they became the men they did, wanting and fighting for completely unfettered freedom to earn as much money as they want without governmental interference. That, they believe, is the salvation for everyone. If you have the utter freedom to earn as much money as you want, you will be happy, and everything will turn out well in the end. Funny what drives some people, when it would be so easy for them to wrap themselves in their billions, like a cocoon, and waste away inside. This they do not do.

NEXT TIME:  More of MY BOOK WORLD

Even More Canyon Photos

7/9/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
When we have understood, we hear in retrospect.
Marcel Proust
Born July 10, 1871

Photos

NEXT TIME: MY BOOK WORLD

New Yorker Fiction 2014

7/8/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
A well-informed mind . . . is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice.
Ann Radcliffe
Born July 9, 1764

Weatherall Meets Columbus?

Picture
July 7 & 14, 2014, Allegra Goodman, “Apple Cake”: Jeanne, a seventy-four-year-old woman, is dying of lung cancer, and her entire family drop in to pay respects before she actually departs. ¶ I’ve read few short stories in which the author employs the third person omniscient point of view; such is usually reserved for the large scope of a novel. But here Goodman uses it effectively to depict Jeanne’s family. We float in and out of her consciousness, as we wonder if she just might hold on. We trail out of Jeanne’s room or house to see and hear what Jeanne’s older sisters are saying and doing. Her two sons, as well. Why is it, Goodman seems to be saying, that at the end of life, a once energetic and talented musician and teacher becomes something less than human? A burden. A problem to dispose of. And perhaps she addresses this question. So close to death, Jeanne is far removed from the playing of her violin, though it is just out of reach. She doesn’t wish to be buried next to her husband of thirty-eight years. Is she crazy? Is the story a bit “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” meets Good-bye, Columbus? Goodman published Intuition in 2006. [The magazine gives no credit for the story’s illustration.]

NEXT TIME: RECENT CANYON PHOTOS


More Canyon Photographs

7/2/2014

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
Love has as few problems as a motor car. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road.
Franz Kafka
Born July 3, 1883

Ah, What a Little Rain Can Do!

These photographs of Yellow House Canyon were taken in late May, after the first big rain came. Amazing stuff! Doesn't seem like the same place. (I also include photos of nearby Lake Ransom Canyon.)
NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION 2014
    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
    My Long-Playing Records My Long-Playing Records
    ratings: 1 (avg rating 5.00)


    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011



    Categories

    All
    Acting
    Actors
    African American History
    Alabama
    Alaska
    Aldo Leopold
    Andy Warhol
    Arizona
    Arkansas
    Art
    Atrial Fibrillation
    Authors
    Authors' Words
    Barcelona
    Blogging About Books
    Blogs
    Books
    California
    Cars
    Catalonia
    Colorado
    Cooking
    Creative Nonfiction
    Culinary Arts
    Deleting Facebook
    Ecology
    Education
    Environment
    Epigraphs
    Essays
    Fiction
    Fifty States
    Film
    Florida
    Georgia
    Grammar
    Greece
    Gun Violence
    Hawaii
    Heart Health
    Historic Postcards
    History
    Idaho
    Iowa
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Literary Biography
    Literary Journals
    Literary Topics
    Literature
    Maine
    Massachusetts
    Memoir
    Michigan
    Minnesota
    Mississippi
    M K Rawlings
    Musicians
    Nevada
    New Hampshire
    New Mexico
    New Yorker Stories
    Nonfiction
    North Carolina
    Novelist
    Ohio
    Pam Houston
    Parker Posey
    Photography
    Playwrights
    Poetry
    Politics
    Psychology
    Publishing
    Quotations
    Race
    Reading
    Recipes
    Seattle
    Short Story
    South Carolina
    Spain
    Susan Faludi
    Teaching
    Tennessee
    Texas
    The Novel
    Travel
    Travel Photographs
    #TuesdayThoughts
    TV
    U.S.
    Vermont
    Voting
    War
    Washington
    Wisconsin
    World War II
    Writer's Wit
    Writing


    RSS Feed

    Blogroll

    alicefrench.wordpress.com
    kendixonartblog.com
    Valyakomkova.blogspot.com

    Websites

    Caprock Writers' Alliance
    kendixonart.com

    tedkincaid.com
    www.trackingwonder.com
    www.skans.edu
    www.ttu.edu
    www.newpages.com
    www.marianszczepanski.com
    William Campbell Contemporary Art, Inc.
    Barbara Brannon.com
    Artsy.net
WWW.RICHARDJESPERS.COM  ©2011-2023
                    BOOKS  PHOTOS  PODCASTS  JOURNALS  BLOG