The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories

It's truly amusing to be engrossed in a book of stories, turn the page, and suddenly come across "cathedral." It always gives the impression of something that descended from the heavens and has been around since the very beginning of mankind or something of that sort. It's hard to fathom that Carver was ever anyone's contemporary. But I suppose that's just the way it is!

Anyway! This book contains numerous excellent stories - mostly the familiar ones like "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", "The Fat Girl", "A Romantic Weekend", "A White Horse" (which is still incredibly great), "The Things They Carried", "Emergency", and so on. However, there were also a few astonishing ones that I had never encountered before. These include "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta" by Kate Braverman (with the line "There is always a garish carnival across the boulevard."), "The First Day" by Edward P. Jones, and, most wonderful of all, a story called "Talk of Heroes" by someone named Carol Bly, whom I had never heard of before. And that story is brilliant! I promptly went and ordered all her books, read the story three times, and cried at the end each time! Carol Bly. I guess she's no longer with us. Glad you stopped by, Carol Bly!

Also, there were a bunch of stories that weren't as good, but we don't need to mention them. Except for "River of Names" by Dorothy Allison, which just made me want to shoot someone. Probably myself. But fortunately, that was the first story in the book and has now been wiped from my memory...

I think my favorite story in the series was undoubtedly "Chopin in Winter". Generally speaking, the stories were good, but I found some of them unbearably painful to read. There are a couple of topics that I find extremely unsettling to have to explore, especially Vietnam veterans and people who relapse into alcoholism. The issue of alcoholism is by far the most uncomfortable, and for some reason, this book was full of such stories. Why are contemporary authors so intrigued by what alcohol does to good people, or why good people turn to alcohol in the first place? "Flagstaff Arizona", "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta" and "Helping" were all painful in the same way that Jhumpa Lahiri's "Only Goodness" is painful. I suppose it stems from my family history and the fact that there was definitely a time in my life when it seemed possible that I could have ended up as a drunkard. I guess it's a kind of "there but for the grace of God" angst. I also found the "Lawns" story unsettling, for some very understandable, and some very unexpected reasons.

In general, I'm tired of American stories about down-on-their-luck, blue-collar people who drink too much, abuse their wives and children, do manual labor, have a "common touch", despise education, and reject sophistication. It might be an honest way to view one of the larger segments of American life, but it's not pleasant, and often not interesting. Henry James wrote about aristocracy for a reason. When you stop guzzling Keystone Light, stop beating your family, stop shoveling coal and become more than semi-literate, your range of emotional and intellectual experiences truly has the leisure to expand.

Tobias Wolf has scoured the entire World of Short Stories and unearthed this remarkable collection.

However, these stories are not for the faint of heart.

They are not meant for a relaxing day at the beach, lounging under a striped umbrella and sipping lemonade, nor for a genteel summer evening with a cup of tea and cucumber sandwiches.

These stories are brutal and gut-wrenching.

You need to be in a darkened room, with a lamp shining only on the page you are reading and a shot of vodka at your elbow, with a bottle within easy reach.

No one should see your face when you weep while reading Dorothy Allison's 'River of Names', or gasp as eight-year-old Billy is found hanging from the rafters.

Was it an accident? Was he playing?

But with a terrible shock, you realize it is just an everyday occurrence in a society that has lost control. The narrator is part of this society, and the narration is an attempt to cleanse her life of unimaginable happenings.

What do you use to rape a woman? Just about anything. How about a broom handle? Too banal? Grass shears? Imaginative.

You move on to Richard Bausch's 'All the way in Flagstaff, Arizona'.

What do you do when your father drinks? On a picnic, he sneaks out to the boot of the car where he has hidden a bottle.

You pretend everything is okay, of course.

You smile when he says, 'I just found a bottle'.

Then your mother can no longer take it.

He now lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, alone and lonely.

He remembers the day he stood on the lawn, looking in.

His house all lit up, thinking of the people inside, whom he had named and loved and called sons, daughters, and wife.

How he had stood there, trembling, shaking as if from a terrible chill, while the dark night descended.

How easy it is for the very rich to discard friends. She just sells a precious Vintage Thunderbird on a whim.

You want to, but you can't do anything about it. You have no money to buy it. All you have is a tremendous desire to hit her when she says with a shrug, 'I need a new car'.

Oh yes, you know how helpless it is to be poor when you read Ann Beattie's 'A Vintage Thunderbird'.

In Carol Bly's 'Talk of Heroes', a Gestapo officer methodically and slowly pries off the knee caps of a Norwegian resistance fighter, Willi.

The Gestapo officer promises Willi a good future if he betrays his compatriots. But the Gestapo officer makes one tiny mistake when he says, 'Willi, everyone talks... sooner or later'.

It is then that Willi realizes, 'that talking sooner is not the same as talking several hours later'.

He wipes his mind, no rosy future for him. And then in his mind, he follows the escape route his friends will take if he doesn't betray them.

Oh yes, it is much later that he gives the names, but it was not sooner but much later.

By now, you are addicted to violence, sickness, alcoholism, sexual exploitation, and divorce.

You wait for everyone to leave the house, you light that lamp that encircles just your page, and you are ready for your encounter with the violent psychopath, a murderer who dislikes men of all shapes and sizes in Scott Bradfield's 'The Darling'.

On her fifth month of sobriety, she is stalked by Lenny, a cocaine-heroin addict who drags her deep down into his dark world in Kate Braverman's 'Tall tales from the Mekong Delta'.

Raymond Carver in 'Cathedral' talks about the husband who is exasperated by his wife. She has a friend who is her confessional and knows everything about her.

She has even told him about her husband. On the way to visit his in-laws, Robert, the friend who is blind, visits them.

How does the husband deal with a blind person? Robert comes, drinks, eats with gusto, and the husband even smokes pot with him. Both realize they enjoy each other's company.

Then Robert and the husband start building a cathedral so that the husband can visualize what it is like to be blind.

It is then that the husband realizes that although he can see, he is drawn deep into the world of the sightless.

You are confused by Andre Dubus' 'Fat Girl'.

By now, the mood is happier. You decide just one more story and then it will be time for bed. Just one more and then you will hit your pillow.

But you are mistaken, sadly mistaken.

Stuart Dybek in his 'Chopin in Winter' manages to wring out the last drop from you.

From some faraway place, you hear your wife calling you for dinner. Hoarsely, you manage a weak, 'coming honey'.

They ignore you and continue with their dinner. You sigh and move to the Eighteenth Street, where Mrs. Kubiac, the Polish landlady, lives and rents out apartments.

As you move through the small building, you hear so many voices, so many stories. You hear Marcy, Mrs. Kubiac's daughter, a gifted pianist who returns home pregnant but refuses to tell who the father of the baby is.

Dzia-Dzia has also returned from one of his endless wanderings. Soaking his feet in boiling water with a fizzy tablet that fogs the entire kitchen, he listens to Marcy playing some boogie-woogie and tells his grandson Michael,

'Marcy is playing boogie-woogie music, she's in love with a coloured man'.

Oh yes, Dzia-Dzia loves and shares Marcy's music. She plays her beautiful, soul-searching, heart-wrenching Chopin on her magnificent piano, and Dzia-Dzia plays Chopin on his dining room table.

Oh, what duets they have, and all the while Michael, the dyslexic grandson, tries his penmanship on the same table.

Dzia-Dzia screams music at Michael. And then Michael meets Marcy while playing on the landing, and she says,

'Are you the little boy I used to hear crying at night?'

'I don't know'.

'If your name is Michael and if your bedroom window is on the fourth floor right below mine, then you are', Marcy says.

Michael then realizes it is not he crying but his mother crying for hours, seated at the foot of his bed after she loses her husband in the war.

Oh yes, you hear so many stories in Mrs. Kubiac's apartments, whispers and shreds of music everywhere, in the chutes, in the vents, through open windows, through the wallpaper... and then 'deep and pure silence beyond daydreams and memory'.

You stagger to bed, drained. You have a long day ahead of you.

For kinky sex, you turn to Mary Gaitskill's 'A Romantic Weekend'. A sadistic married man and a masochistic unmarried woman decide to have a beautiful romantic weekend. 'They are almost quaint in their attempts to be perverse', but as the weekend progresses, you realize with alarm that there are shades of darkness as the liaison reveals itself as a fight for control.

In Allan Gurganus' 'Minor Heroism', a young boy reveals how terrified he is of his father, who has returned from the Second World War.

The father was used to a long war and has little to do in peacetime, so he focuses on disciplining his son, who does not fit his picture of 'Son the Achiever'.

The son's terror is palpable. Whenever he tries to draw pictures that do not resemble his father, his father is incensed, as he has to have 'himself' in every picture.

Strangely, the boy finds a way to pay back, but subtly.

You cannot believe adults bash their kids, such tender and fragile bodies. Power?

You relax, this promises to be a nice coming-of-age story, and it is. You loosen up because the nicest part is that it is all about music. In fact, it is all about Ravel's Bolero, which you love. Just as a lark, you put it on as you read Barry Hannah's 'Testimony of Pilot'.

Just as you calm down and start Ron Hansen's 'Wickedness', you are horrified at the devastation nature can wreak, entire towns blanketed with such deep, deep snow and such mind-numbing cold, killing hundreds.

For some reason, you cannot read Denis Johnson's 'Emergency' or Thom Jones' 'A White Horse'.

It is one of those things; the stories fall flat for you.

You are so comfortable and enjoying yourself. Such pleasure a short story is. But swiftly, you are drawn into a pool of sadness, a whirlpool of disrespect when an illiterate black mother takes her well-scrubbed daughter to school for the first time.

Your heart squirms when the story opens with 'long before I learned to be ashamed of my mother' in Edward P. Jones's 'The First Day'.

This feeling of sadness, such contempt for another human being, spills over into Jamaica Kinkaid's 'Girl' as she says 'to prevent yourself from looking like a slut I know you are so bent on becoming'.

In John L'Heureux's 'Departures', all the mother wanted to do was kiss and hug her son, a seminarian, when he returns home on vacation.

But then he says with icy self-control,

'I'll just kiss you on the cheek, don't touch me, and I'll shake hands with Dad'.

As he bends to kiss her on the cheek, she pulls slightly away...'she has gone white, and the look of panic on her face is not nearly as terrible as the look of drowning in her eyes'.

Even when she is dying, she thinks of that one occasion. She looks at her son and murmurs,

'You're not to worry. When the train comes in, I won't kiss you. I won't touch you'.

'No!' the priest cries out sharply.

'Mother, no'.

He leans over the bed to kiss her, but as he does, she turns from him, saying, 'I'll be good. I promise. I'll be good'.

And she dies with her head still turned away from him.

You drink your last bit of vodka and stagger to bed.

But you cannot sleep.

You have now finished most of the stories. They have drained you, and you cannot stop weeping.

Your wife says you have changed. You drink too much, you are morose, and you have forgotten to laugh.

It's truly a pity that short stories have become a somewhat overlooked genre in today's times.

When they are of high quality, as these particular ones are, they have the ability to encapsulate the joy, depth, and impact that much lengthier works possess, all without the need for a significant time investment of several hours.

There are an abundance of excellent stories within these pages, making it impractical to provide individual comments. However, I would like to offer a general tribute to Tobias Wolff, the editor, for making almost uniformly outstanding selections.

I have found myself having to pace myself while going through this book because, almost without exception, each story demands careful consideration.

And aside from the inherent value of the stories themselves, a collection like this also has the unique advantage of introducing one to numerous undiscovered authors, thereby greatly expanding one's literary perspective.

Favorites include: "Helping" by Robert Stone,

"Lawns" by Mona Simpson,

"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien,

"All the Way in Flagstaff, Arizona" by Richard Bausch, and of course "Rock Springs" by Richard Ford.

For me, the setting where a story takes place has a significant influence on whether I like it or not.

I have a particular affinity for stories that are set in the West.

The wide-open spaces, the unique landscapes, and the rich history of the West all add a certain charm and allure to a story.

It gives the narrative a sense of adventure and possibility.

I find myself drawn to the characters and their experiences when they are placed in this particular context.

It allows me to immerse myself in a world that is different from my own and yet still feels familiar and engaging.

While I enjoy all of the stories on my list, I can't help but wish that they all took place in the West.

Perhaps it's because I have a personal connection to that region or maybe it's just the romanticism that I associate with it.

Either way, I know that when I read a story set in the West, I'm in for a treat.

I don't usually read short stories. However, I was given this book and soon found myself completely engrossed in it.

I am truly amazed by the profound emotions that some of these stories manage to convey within just 10 or 15 pages.

My favorite stories from the book are as follows:

- "A Vintage Thunderbird (*)"

- "Tall Tales From the Meekong Delta (*)"

- "Men Under Water"

- "The Things They Carried"

- "Lawns"

These are really outstanding works.

The brevity of the stories does not in any way detract from their power and impact. Each one manages to capture a moment, a feeling, or a concept with remarkable clarity and intensity.

It just goes to show that sometimes, less is truly more when it comes to storytelling.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys thought-provoking and emotionally engaging literature.

Unfortunately, there were an excessive number of stories that left me completely baffled as to why Wolff believed these were the absolute best. It seemed rather puzzling. Each story had its own set of elements, but somehow, I couldn't quite fathom the reasoning behind Wolff's selection. It was as if there was a hidden criteria that I was not privy to. The collection, as a whole, felt more like a random gathering of tales rather than a精心 curated selection of the top-notch. Maybe there were aspects that I was missing, but from my perspective, it was just a capital collection with no clear standout features or qualities that would justify it being labeled as the best.

Some really great stories are packed in there.

It's truly amazing how many wonderful tales can be found within those pages or within that collection. Each story has its own unique charm and吸引力. They might transport you to different worlds, introduce you to interesting characters, or make you feel a wide range of emotions. Whether it's a heartwarming romance, an exciting adventure, or a thought-provoking mystery, there's something for everyone. These stories have the power to captivate your imagination and keep you engaged from beginning to end. You can lose yourself in their pages and forget about the outside world for a while. So, if you're looking for some great entertainment or a way to escape, be sure to check out those stories that are packed in there.