Michael Kevane

“Save a Horse Ride a Cowgirl” by Ann Beattie appeared in the November 23, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.  Another story about growing older. This one with a deliberate nod to Chekhov and the seagull… Does Bree destroy Ryall, out of boredom?  Intriguing story; those steeped in the traditions and techniques could explore for hours. Unusually, no interesting comments at Mookse.

While on vacation last week I read a bunch of short stories from the past couple years from The New Yorker.  Sorry to say that many were not very good.  I don’t expect perfection, and it is nice to read stories that do not attain that state, but still, some of these were quite mediocre. Are there really not enough short story writers in the world to keep magazine up to standard?

“God’s Work” by Kevin Canty in the April 4, 2016 issue.  A teenager proselytizes with his mother, while dealing with teenage male sexuality.  Honest and real, but ordinary and nothing great in the writing.  William Trevor wrote similar stories 30 years ago, nothing new here.  Mookse commentators agree, though some liked it.

“It’s a Summer Day” by Andrew Sean Greer in the June 19, 2017 issue.  This was just awful. I first listened to the podcast version of the author reading it, but forgot that I had stopped listening, and as I read it a month later I thought it was familiar… and still disliked it.  Either I am missing something devilishly clever about the story, or it just seems actually sophomoric.  Mookse commentators after an initial disparaging review have do not rise to its defense.

“Ladies’ Lunch” by Lore Segal in the February 27, 2017 issue.  If you have an elderly parent you will immediately understand this story.  Telegraphing, bursting, laughing, and ultimately crying.  The humiliation of the reality of being in your 80s.  “No, I am dead.” Generated a lot of commentary on Mookse, and I like this contribution in the comments:

I’m also finding that the story works quite well as a horror story, like a sophisticated take on the idea of the zombie, something that is strangely popular right now. Lotte’s experience is essentially one of being zombified, of being ripped out of her normal life and put into a state of being among the living dead. And she knows it, which makes it even more horrifying. Her spirit has been murdered, while her body lives on. Her friends watch what happens to her, and want to help her, but are unable to do anything (transportation issues are woven into the story to the extent they seem to be an important theme, reflecting what happens to old people in real life). And, although I don’t remember that it was stated explicitly, the friends are probably fearing that something similar may eventually happen to them, as well. The story can feel distinctly creepy to me if I see it as a contemporary horror tale, a perspective which, once I thought of it, it seems to invite.

“Usl at the Stadium” by Rivka Galchen in the October 12, 2015 issue.  The story is based on a true event, sportscasters mocking a guy sleeping through a Yankees game.  Galchen imagines his interior life, his perspective.  A nice exercise.  Something you might assign in creative writing class.  Galchen’s version very competently done, with nice touches like Usl’s boss Gregory.  The story is sympathetic to a type of person we imagine exists.  The sad sack sweet loser guy. Not much more to say.  Mookse commentators appreciated, but not excited by the story.

“Mother’s Day” by George Saunders in the February 8 & 15, 2016 issue.  Another story about aging and dying. I found this the most interesting in terms of technique. Saunders shifts the point of view repeatedly, and goes back and forth between dialogue and interior monologue. Maybe overripe though. The story practically bursts.  I wasn’t sure what the final bit in the ambulance was about. Just to riff once more on the technique?  To remind us that everybody has a complex interior monologue, even Alma and Debi, even the dying body on the stretcher anonymous to the paramedics? Another good moral, earlier: “This has nothing to do with him. How do you want to be?”  Useful discussion at… Mookse! They have a lot of opinions about Saunders… might think about the line, “This has nothing to do with him. How do you want the story to be?”

And one last story about aging and dying.  Geez, a lot of them. is that what is happening to Americans?

“Quarantine” by Alix Ohlin in the January 30, 2017 issue.  Now about distance, rather than empathy.  A good juxtaposition with the other stories. Can we know, can we help, someone else, really?  The story telescopes thirty years.  Brief paragraphs advance the reader a decade.  A Nigerian ex-husband is exactly drawn.  The relationship between two women, Angela and Bridget, is realistic and complex. Very impressive.  I agree with the comments of Dennis over at Mookse (along with excellent comments and some flaming!):

I wish I was up to the depth other commenters here have provided for so many of these “New Yorker” stories. I can’t, but having just read this one it left me dazzled: it’s dizzying pace, character depictions, riveting scenes, seamlessly cemented though years apart, how it all flows through these lives,the unfolding of their relationships and how they evolve over time–culminating with the pathos between the two women at the center. The mystery and (for lack of a better word) the authenticity of it. Just gripping!!

Saw La Larga Noche de Francisco Sanctis by Argentinean directors Andrea Testa and Francisco Marquez, on the flight back form Mexico.  Very little dialogue.  Long stretches of Francisco walking through the streets, but it is short.  You need to know the background of the junta in Argentina in 1977 and the reality of the disappearances and the Montoneros.

The point, I think, is to give you the time to think, daydreamingly, about what you would do in this situation.  All the more relevant as we think about Trump’s response to what seems an inevitable constitutional process to oust him, if not this year then at some point.  The man seems to be certifiable: advocating police brutality, calling for joint cybersecurity with Russia, lashing out at the fourth estate, firing and hiring based on whim and unctuousness. As he gets older, surrounds himself with family and sycophants, alienates more Republicans, and comes under more pressure, he will increasingly cross legal lines and become more and more vulnerable to impeachment.  When that happens, he might well pull the state of emergency ploy.  Michael Flynn, one does not doubt, would be happy to come back and clean up “the carnage.”  And then every person will have to make those small decision like Francisco Sanctis.

Saw this movie on flight back from Mexico.  Tremendous. Very quiet.  Let’s say it is the opposite of triumphalism, fascism, inyourfaceism, and instead embodies every virtue related to empathy, caring, and grace.  Of course watching a movie like this on an airplane is already a recipe for teary sniffling, but when two-thirds of the way through the movie prominently features the song Eres tú, from the Basque/Spanish youth group Mocedades, which came out in 1973, and you know only a tiny fraction of all humanity was also 11 years old that same year (like me) and grew up speaking Spanish (like me) and was very shy (like me), and associates that kind of folky, choral guitar song with all the young people who were brutalized by fascist regimes like Franco’s (like me), well then you will be crying a torrent inside, for all the lost souls.

A nice review here:

Ana Cristina Barragan’s Alba. A mostly wordless, beautifully understated study of the multiple growing pains of a cripplingly shy 11-year-old girl, the film follows a series of Barragan shorts on the theme of troubled childhood. It is loaded with weepie potential but diligently shuns the facile at every turn, playing it for an emotional truthfulness which is embodied in a fine, trembling central performance by Macarena Arias and in its sensitive, empathetic script. Alba has been garnering festival plaudits, most recently at Toulouse’s Latin American film platform, but deserves more.

Source: ‘Alba’: Film Review | Hollywood Reporter

The comments from The Mookse and the Gripes are spot on. I read the story last night, and at the end just put the magazine down, muttering, “Treisman….really?”

I’m a fan of Lanchester, both his novels and his essays (I recently referenced his last New Yorker piece, “Expectations,” an excerpt from his excellent novel Capital, while reviewing Anne Enright’s “Solstice”) but his lack of familiarity with the short story form certainly shows here. He has a grasp of writing and at the sentence level it’s fine, but not only is the short story not Lanchester’s forte structurally, the supernatural horror story isn’t exactly his bag either re: content. Stephen King this isn’t, nor is it a more literary version of the form, a Poe, or, as someone mentioned above, a Henry James. It just kind of sits there trying to be allegorical and contemporary. The woes of technology are an all but inexhaustible topic in 2017, but it just isn’t carried off well here. Ham-fisted, used above, is a word I never thought I’d use in description of Lanchester’s writing, but it’s unfortunately rather apropos here. A disappointment from one of our better contemporary British scribes.

Source: John Lanchester: “Signal” – The Mookse and the Gripes

Read this a couple of months ago.  Do not have much to say. It won the Hugo. Characters were well-drawn.  In general, I do not like fantasy-sci fi “mixes” where magic and science co-exist.  The underlying premise, that the scientists really have no explanation (and often not even curiosity) about why some humans (or some aliens) would have magical powers when others do not, or how magical powers would work in a physical universe with rules, makes me impatient.  It is too much like villagers in Burkina Faso, who happily tell tall tales of witches and sorcerers, but when you ask, faux innocent, “If they can be invisible, why do they need to chop off the head of a person to get rich , could they not just invisibly walk into a bank?” They glare at you for spoiling the story.

Unless, of course, the whole point is to lovingly pay homage to novels that do have science and magic co-existing (e.g. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell).

The Greatship by Robert Reed is a collection of twelve stories or novellas set in or on the Greatship, a Uranus-sized ship making its way through the Milky Way.  Humans were first to find the ship, and so by the galactic laws of salvage they get first ownership rights.  The captains (who feature in occasional stories but are mostly obscure) have decided to take paying passengers, who recreate parts of their worlds in the ship.    SO lots of opportunities for mingling.  Brains are all functionally immortal (they can be inscribed in ceramic and made indestructible, but oddly they cannot be copied, so there is no multiple identity problem and “who is me” issues), and bodies can be regenerated.

“Hoop-of-Benzene” Probably the best story.  Clear character development, a beginning, middle, and end. A nice surprise.

“Mere” Another very good story.  An alien crash lands on a planet, finds a place, influences things, loses everything.  In the end, some kind of destiny awaits her.  Nice philosophical orientation.

“The Remoras” decide to play a joke… or get revenge… on Quee Lee, but it was never about her…. but what was it about?

“Rococo” A good alien world story, some adventure, some momentous decisions by a pair of clever siblings.

“River of the Queen” is an adventure story featuring Perri and Quee Lee.  Fun and interesting: who has taken the Queen, and why?

“Night of Time” Nice story… two creatures come to a memory specialist who can peer deep into a mind with a variety of diagnostic devices.  But the mind that turns out to be interesting is not the one you think it is.  Do we need to be needed to have a reason to live?

“Aeon’s Child” is one of those sci-fi stories that could have been published in the 1950s.  Huge staged battle scenes.  Pretty boring, lots of skimming for the reader.

“The Caldera of Good Fortune” is a very nice description of a small alien habitat on the Greatship, leading to a smallish mystery (spoiler: would being uploaded to the AI that maintains the little habitat, which is actually vast in its details, be a way to escape one’s enemies?).

“Camouflage” is a conventional hard-boiled detective story featuring a demoted sub-captain and a sad but beautiful woman, whose many husbands are being killed off.

“The Man with the Golden Balloon”  When Quee Lee and Perri explore an unmapped portion of the ship, they find an ancient being.  He can connect the dots.  The dots are hinted at. But then no actually connected.  The anticipation of a big reveal keeps the reader going, but then of course comes a feeling of being cheated.  A good review (that agrees with me!) is here.

“Hatch” The ship has lost a war with something called the Polypond, and a remaining colony of humans live as scavengers outside the ship.  A mysterious alien might hold a key.  Classic buildup to a final sense of wonder.