“Hyacinth,” by Saki – From “The Complete Saki,” by Saki – Section: “The Toys of Peace.”
Oh Saki, Saki, Saki. Where does one begin with an author who is by anything else, a man of comedic genius in the way that is, just funny? Not funny to the point that you are rolling on the floor laughing, or pissing yourself with hysterics. No, quite the opposite really. Saki allows for you to smirk, and smile at certain moments. Literature I find or rather the written word, can never really provide the reader to the point that they are rolling around laughing, and giggling with enjoyment. No the written word cannot offer such physical reactions to its own take of humour. The written word in its own way is not something that I think can provide comedy. However some authors like Saki (H.H. Munro) can provide little light bits of dry wry humour to their stories, and even make the reader smile.
“Hyacinth,” is one of those stories. A story of politics, and never learning from the past. And the barbaric nature not to mention (but I am mentioning it anyway) their honesty. Hyacinth is a young boy. Age never made clear, but young enough and deviously clever enough though to play the political game of adults. However instead of using the tactics of mudslinging and words Hyacinth uses a much more interesting tactic to win the elections – the elections in which his father is running in.
Hyacinths mother had been warned, by his aunt not to take Hyacinth to the election polls. However his mother refuses to believe in the naughty nature in her own seed, of a child. She gives reason that the sailor suit (oh how I pity poor Hyacinth!) dress matches both his eyes, and the colours of the party in which her husband is running for.
During the election opening moments, Hyacinth even offered butterscotch sweets (or some form of candy) to the children of the other hopeful person running for whatever political position, as a form of good spirit. This appeared to delight the camera’s and (almost) everyone in attendance at the polls.
‘“Never was Clytemnestra’s kiss than on the night she slew me.”’ Mrs. Pannstreppon – Wise words that foreshadow the following events.
Pretty soon it is soon realized that the kids Hyacinth and the other children of the following political fractions, had gone missing. After a while, Hyacinth (I assume) telephones the polls, and explains the situation, of the children being trapped in a pig pen, with ten little piglets, and one angry sow (the mother of the piglets) snorting with motherly rage ready to attack the children in the following pig pen. Soon the adults – or rather the select people, the parents of course as well as Mrs. Pannstreppon and a few others went down to the place, where the seen that Hyacinth had described was in action. The children of the following party were for sure kept captive in the other pig pen with ten little piglets, and Hyacinth sitting in between the two pens, with an angry sow on the other side, ready to tear the children to mincemeat.
Hyacinth’s demands were simple and his threat a reality. If his father did not win the election, he would unlock the pig pen, and the mother sow would tear the children apart. If his father did win, the children would be let go. The adults not to be outsmarted by a simple child would try and drug the sow. Hyacinth devilishly clever, made cries of a piglet angry the sow, to the point of trampling the drugged bread. Then Hyacinth explains that he will find out shortly if his father won the election or not. For he had a child or someone to fire two shots if his father had one, and one shot if he had lost. Soon, the other candidate was forced to lose for the sake of his children’s safety.
To be honest I have no idea why I just wrote a complete summary for you my gentle reader. I should have said go out and by “The Complete Saki,” turn to page five hundred and eighteen, and read the story. Oh well, what is done is done. What’s the moral of the story? Children who are bad stay bad for the sake of being bad? Bad children make clever campaign managers? Never take a child to elections? Perhaps it’s better to say never make a child wear a sailor outfit. I mean let’s admit it not even sailors like to wear sailor outfits. They are just horrible, and embarrassing. Parents – well more specifically mothers never make your child (daughter or son or son or daughter) ever wear a sailor outfit. Quite frankly it’s not cute, it’s just disturbing.
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“Makeup,” by Yasunari Kawabata – From “The Palm-Of-The-Hand Stories,” by Yasunari Kawabata.
There will always be something about Yasunari Kawabata’s “Palm-Of-The-Hand Stories,” that will continue to enthral me. Even if they are written in some way or another about Japan, Yasunari Kawabata writes about something else also. There is something with his beautiful soft dream like prose, that one can find that just touches the emotional being of who I am. There is something about these prose, a feeling of nostalgia, a moment that is captured and painted so elegantly but no matter how much you touch the canvas of the scene that has been painted on, the world can only be looked at it. It can never be obtained.
“Makeup,” by Yasunari Kawabata is one of those stories, which touches a person. Even though if I were to summarize the story it would come off as if the story is sentimental. Maybe it is a bit sentimental, and that because I love Yasunari Kawabata so much that I fail to see this. Either way this story is just an amazing feat of writing.
The story tells of an unnamed narrator who lives next to a funeral home. His bathroom, window faces that of the funeral homes window, and the narrow space in-between the two spaces, usually smells of the flowers and wreaths that have been disposed of by the funeral home. The narrator remarks at how beautiful it is, but also remarks that over time the flowers and wreathes rot.
The most disturbing part of this story is how the narrator remarks at how the woman attending the funeral, go in to the bathroom to hide themselves and place on their makeup. Hence the story title “Makeup.”
This act of the woman hiding away in the bathroom and applying their makeup with a calm and collected manner makes the narrator shudder with disgust, at the human indignity at how they hide their feelings and themselves with their perfectly placed make up, makes them hide behind their coloured faces, and not be able to face the fact of the death.
‘”I also have to look at human beings in the window of the funeral hall restroom. There are a lot of young women. Few men seem to into the rest room, and the longer the old women stay there the less they look like. Most of the young women stand there for a moment, then do their makeup. When I see these in mourning clothes doing their faces in the in the restroom, putting on dark lipstick, I shudder and flinch as if I’ve seen the bloody lips of one who has licked a corpse. All of them are calm and collected. Their bodies exhibit a sense o sin, as though they were committing an evil deed while they hid themselves.”’
As one can see Yasunari Kawabata Nobel Laureate of Literature of 1968, with his subtle prose and keen sublime psychological insight into not only people, but the nature of human beings constrained by culture and by duty to society and family. These woman described by the above passage, disgust the narrator. The way they go and hide in the bathroom so coolly and without the hint of emotion, for the dead, or a sense of mourning, they simply hide themselves under more and more darkly colours of makeup. This repulses the narrator. The sheer fact that these woman, hide themselves in the bathroom but not because they are (or so it appears) that they are sad, but because they have some other motive. They hide themselves as if only to recollect themselves from the funeral and then vainly paint themselves with their makeup. They hide away from the rest of the mourners only to apply lip stick to their lips, and powder their noses. No sense of emotion can be seen in their faces. How disturbing it would appear.
The coldness and callousness can truly be seen for the lack of respect or the lack of emotion, that these women appear to show for the deceased. I can’t help but wonder if Yasunari Kawabata writes this as a way of saying that society and the culture of the people, often stifles the emotional development or the emotional release at such difficult times. Part of me in some way or another wishes that these women, go into the bathroom, only to recollect themselves apply their makeup, and their masks only to listen to people, say how sorry they are for their losses. One cannot help but wonder if they are just told by the culture and by society that showing such a public display of an emotion even if it is a appropriate time to show such tears or sadness, would be both dishonourable or disrespectful to the deceased. When it appears to both the narrator and myself as the narrator that it is perfectly humane, and quite the opposite of the teachings.
Truly just another amazing story of Yasunari Kawabata. The perfect drifting feeling of the prose and the way that it all just floats, like cotton balls down a river, is just amazing. Yasunari Kawabata is certainly an author that I admire, and enjoy to read. He is an amazing author and certainly one of the most amazing authors I have had the pleasure to read, and one of my personal favourites.
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“Fiction,” by Alice Munro – From “Too Much Happiness,” by Alice Munro.
The way that Alice Munro appears to be writing with these stories of the collection “Too Much Happiness,” has a bit of a detached voice to it. There appears to be a lack of emotion in the way that the third person narration comes across. Like some detached observer just watching what happens slowly and surely. Never once a shred of emotion can be seen. Now at times this can work in my opinion. Sometimes when a rather sentimental scene or sensationalistic event happens, to read it without any authoritarian emotion to cloud the readers own emotional reaction, to the scene can work and is usually preferred – at least I prefer it. However when there is no real sensational scene or sentimental scene happening, sometimes without the authoritarian emotion to give a hint of how the scene should feel or what is the premises of the scene at hand. This is the fault in “Fiction,” by Alice Munro. However that does not mean that Alice Munro’s story “Fiction,” is not a good story.
Numerous things have caught my interest with this story. One of them being both the intelligence of the characters and their stupidity all at the same time. How could two people with such high IQ’s (Intelligence quotient) who are going to college, and then just drop out to take up the life of vagrants and temporary jobs, and just wandering. Part of me is interested in that kind of life style all that admitted. Then again at the same time such a lifestyle could grow old rather quickly that is true, also – a life of temporary jobs, of wandering, of not having enough money to do certain parts of life; like getting a plane back to Ontario when the character Jon’s mother was suspected of dying – they collected mushrooms (presumably magic ones) to sell in order to get enough money to buy tickets back to the Ontario to see Jon’s mother.
Yet there is just something about these two characters. Both appear unreliable to me. How can two people both intelligent just drop everything they had hoped for, and could have had, and then just go wandering like “hippies,” as their parents called them but they were too late in the movement to be classified as hippies, and yet neither one did drugs and Jon made a point of shaving and having Joyce cut his hair and as the third person points out, they both dressed in a rather conservative manner. But part of me still just cannot believe that two people would just drop their futures to wander around – and for what could they be wandering for? Joyce was expected to be a high class violinist performer, and Jon was to become some scientist presumably discovering the secrets of the world. Then the two just dropped out and let their restless feet take them where ever they wandered too. How can two people give up so much for presumably and from the looks of it nothing?
“Also the services advertised beside the road, and more particular to this part of the world – tarot readings, herbal massage, conflict resolution.”
Just reading that alone on the first page for me, makes me think of British Columbia for sure. I’ve never been around the Rough River area – that is if it exists; but when I read such aspects of British Columbia I cannot help but smile to myself. Because that is British Columbia to me. The politically left and most certainly far left of Canada. It’s port city of Vancouver overrun with crime, drugs, gangs and immigrants and I am sure a fair deal of new age magical voodoo stuff also. But I know from my travels to Nelson British Columbia – I swear that is the hippie capital of British Columbia; on route there were signs of places saying cherries for sale, or other kinds of fruit for sale – the closer one gets to Nelson the stranger the signs can become. Such as herbal tea readings, or tarot card readings, and other odds and ends as one gets closer to ones destination. Then of course there comes to the oddities of how people dress in the region. Those funny hair braids that men wear, dreadlocks I think they are called. The woman dress in odd bohemian fashion. And hemp clothing and hemp accessories are all the rage. Not to mention the look of being filthy and dirty is pretty hip also. Oh and the air – oh that fresh marijuana air is considerably known.
The characters of this story can be seen as a bit weak at times. Joyce is obviously the main character, and is perhaps the strongest character of this story – Jon is a typical genius man, who is egotistical but has dropped all his genius smarts for carpentry. There is Eddie the apprentice with tattoo’s and recovering alcoholic who attends “Alcoholics Anonymous,” and not to mention is opinionated, and if I do say so myself a bit selfish, and if one were to ask me us young and has a tendency to blow her supposed alcoholism problem out of proportion. Then there are all sorts of other characters, who blow in and out of the story much like Joyce and Jon had drifted in their early lives.
As the reader, we get to watch Joyce slowly transform from who she was into something else. We watch her slowly steady transformation into another woman – though not incredible, it still can be seen. The muted landscape of “Fiction,” and how the past slowly crawls into the present life in some odd ways. I haven’t read enough Alice Munro personally, but I will say that personally “Fiction,” isn’t my favourite by her.
Admittedly I have walked into this book with some high expectations, and though I have since given those expectations the boot out the door, I can certainly say that my expectations are not terribly high, but certainly I do expect a bit better then what “Fiction,” had provided.
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“Broken Glass,” By Patricia Highsmith – From “The Selected Stories for Patricia Highsmith,” – Section “Slowly, Slowly In The Wind.”
I do not think I could ever say that Patricia Highsmith is by any means a great writer. Part of the allure of Patricia Highsmith, is the fact that for so long she was neglected, and with all fairness still is neglected in her own country. Another part of her allure is the fine way she tosses away any sense of justice or fair game in both her novels and stories. She probes her characters psychological mind. She remarks at how the world her characters inhabit is both cold, relentless and uncaring. A world view I am sure that one could say that Patricia Highsmith shared. No white knight of chivalry or a person of altruistic attitude would ever be caught seen. However people may do altruistic motives – or what appears to be altruistic motives on the surface; but in Patricia Highsmith’s reality there is an ulterior. Patricia Highsmith’s world is bathed and looked at with a deep dark pessimistic eye to it. No one does a deed for another without a certain desire for some reward. Everyone looks out for themselves, no one else. Unless of course that serves their own purpose. Ever walk up towards a building and ran into the door because the jerk, in front of you didn’t hold it open in front of you? Well you obviously didn’t have anything that he wanted. Ever held the door open for a lady only to have her bitch at you and saying: “[she’s] an independent woman, and get her own door. She doesn’t need any man, to do it!” Truth be told he was only holding the door open to hopefully get a smile, or something else. She on the other hand wanted him to hold the door open for her to show just how much of a feminist she really is. These are the kinds of people that inhabit Patricia Highsmith’s world.
“Broken Glass,” is a story by Patricia Highsmith that I quite enjoyed. There of course, certain Highsmith elements in it. The ending one of them. The subtle bit of violence that happens in a normal surrounding, in this case it is a bit of poetic justice – at one time at least one point.
The story is something that hits home on a certain level. A feeling of good people, living in a area that had its glory day, but has since fallen down into the shambles. Over run by pestilence, disease, and a slow infection that appears to happen in all communities that were once good then go bad.
As Patricia Highsmith’s characters and the third person persons view point, do point out that through the years, welfare people, and their rotten welfare children, began to move into the homes. The first residents who had seen the neighbourhood in its glory days had since grown older. Older and older they got, their kids moved out, and some moved away. But then there are people like Kate and Andrew, and the Schroeder’s all could not move away – as the price of living or housing went up, their situations, began to become more and more apparent. They had become stuck in their neighbourhood. They had become stuck in a area full of crime, and where the rotten welfare children, and had since grown up large, and are becoming far more dangerous.
The Schroeder’s where one of the people that had recognized that fact. Kate and Andrew also recognized the fact that those children, and their disgusting parents, were not taught or had any manners or morals born into them. However this story also shows Patricia Highsmith’s keen observation. Though it can be seen though that if people read this particular story that Patricia Highsmith is showing her more racist view points.
Though these small racial remarks – which are not blatant displays of racial remarks; it is not that Patricia Highsmith is running around calling stating the word “Nigger,” or calling a Hispanic a “Pepper,” or anything else like that. Patricia Highsmith just simply applies the fact that the antagonist or the reason for the collapse of such a nice neighbourhood into the slums or the “ghetto,” or becoming a poor neighbourhood was/is simply racial mixtures, and immigration. People, who can only afford low end paying jobs, so therefore have little money. They can’t keep their kids under control because they are working absurd long hours. Eventually their children grow up, they join gangs, they do simply stupid things, like mugging, and simply causing damage and inconvenience to other people’s lives. Good people like Kate and Andrew, and the Schroeder’s. All good people. Every one of them good people. Each one senior citizens, each one forced to manage their lives around the delinquents that like rats, have scurried into their neighbourhood.
It is a story that I have personally seen. There is a place my aunt used to live, where when I was young was a perfectly safe neighbourhood. Then again as a child, does one really think any place is not safe? Then I hear on the news the other day there was a knife stabbing there the other day. A few years back I learn that a cop pulled over a person, on a simple traffic violation, the person pulled over, shot the cop. Point black.
Then of course, there was the poetic justice of the narrative, which Andrew did. And then the immoral bastards take their revenge. Then again what kind of disgusting punk – black or white, or Asian, or aboriginal, or Hispanic, or Islamic, or Jewish or whatever; robs an eighty-one year old man? It’s disgusting and wrong.
This story from the collection: “Slowly, Slowly, In The Wind,” was one of the better stories from Patricia Highsmith for sure. I quite enjoyed this story. Now I can understand at times why Patricia Highsmith is given such praise that she has.
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“San Francisco,” by Amy Hempel – From “The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel,” by Amy Hempel – Sections “Reason To Live.”
Amy Hempel constructs very interesting and precise sentences. This is her greatest strength. However this can also be her greatest fault. It’s hard for me to say what the short short story “San Francisco,” was about.
However the lovely constructed sentences, were well done and constructed quite well. But in this case, without much of a plot, or really information, about any plot, or character (sure name[s] are given but no real characterization is given) so it’s hard where to start with this story, or what to talk about.
In that case, one should look at the well-crafted sentences.
“The way the floored rolled like bongo boards under our feats?”
Okay poor choice, but there is something about that sentence that shows just how well Amy Hempel can construct a sentence. She certainly does not waste her time with other things. She’s not describing a scene. She’s not describing a character. She is not describing much action. More or less the sentence is constructed as a way of speaking. In fact the entire story can be seen as someone trying to tell a story, and as the reader, we get introduced to the story half way through the person telling the story.
Amy Hempel also places in this story some wry and dry humour. Just read the following bit from the story:
‘”Maidy didn’t tell you, but you know what her doctor said ? When she sprang from the couch and said, “My God, was that an earthquake?”
‘”The doctor said this: “Did it feel like an earthquake to you?”’
So I’ll fill you in on the small details that I know. This character or fictional person therefore a character; is seeing I presume a psychiatrist (because he is called a doctor) for whatever reason. This humorous story that is being relayed to another person from the unnamed narrator, is best to be seen as a story about Maidy and her psychiatrist and the humorous and yet dangerous occasion of an earthquake and circumstances permitting that moor Maidy just happened to be in the psychiatrist office when it hit.
I do confess that I had picked this story out of Amy Hempel’s collection because it was short, and I am tired, and it is late, and I am selfish. All of the above make the reason why this review for this very short story is also quite short. Yet the humour was funny, the sentences well-crafted and I quite enjoyed what I have read.
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“The Indian Mutiny,” by Will Self – From “Grey Area,” by Will Self.
When walking into a Will Self story be ready to see a world not quite like the one the one that you know and love and hate. Will Self is a satirical writer or novelist or both; he obviously takes a single idea and exploits it and exploded it. There is no doubt that Will Self is a clever man, but sometimes his satire is a bit lost on me. Then again maybe people will read him in years from now, and find him absolutely hilarious; just like when I read Saki and I find myself smiling at his use of dry satirical humour. By that time though people may read Saki and find his humour lost on them much like Shakespeare’s humour is lost on people now.
“The Indian Mutiny,” is a novel of the cruelty of children at their worst. Just as the narrator of this story (Fein is his name) explains he killed someone. Now of course the narrator does make it quite clear over and over again that he is not proud of this deed. Quite the opposite really. Of course the more someone denies the pride in such an event one cannot help but find that even though they deny their pride in such a task or event, or action. One cannot help but see that the more they deny the fact the more it becomes apparent that they are quite proud of what they had done.
As the Booker Prize long listed novel “Skippy Dies,” shows children are not as innocent as people would have us all believe. Christ even when a person is a child they can remember some of the naughty and bad things they had done. Children are not innocent. And to add to the long list of fiction, movies, and memories to prove such a point; “The Indian Mutiny,” by Will Self can also be used as a reference.
The story “The Indian Mutiny,” is a story concerning a child revolution of children in a classroom titled “4b,” and how a new teacher different from the others takes over their class. I presume he is a history teacher, based on the fact that they discuss history quite a lot in his class like the Crimean War, and the fact that the teacher discusses or hints at the past imperial rule of colonies like India – one of the reasons for the title of the story. The entire story itself is nothing special really. Though it certainly shows just how bad students can be.
I know with this new generation, of kids. Kids pumped up with such a belief that everyone should hear their opinions, and that their self-confidence is important, and how experienced there in the ways of technology and other odds and ends. That they think that they’re old fuddy duddy teachers are too old to really teach them anything at all. I know personally (not that I have or ever will be!) that a teacher’s job is a very difficult job, especially since the days of being able to beat the kids are gone. I still remember back in my day’s naughty classmates, getting yard sticks broken over their heads. I can’t remember the teacher’s name, but she was a nasty old braud, with her red hair long nose, and wrinkles galore! And not to mention that when you were caught chewing gum, some teachers made you put on your nose. Of course this was way back in the days of good old discipline being used. Kids these days do not know how good they have it. This entire New Age thinking and all that, about how you tell the kids how you feel about their behaviour is affecting you, is not going to work. In fact it is going to further the children in their actions. So a teacher’s job is a difficult job. Especially in today’s world, of political correctness, and rules and the thought of how we need to raise children self-esteems and their self-confidence and all that ridiculous crap. Maybe if we told them to go worship some stones, and wear a bunch of stones around their necks, and kiss chickens and worship pig’s, and eat cow shit, maybe they’re confidence will grow.
Will Self’s story though shows the difficulties of a teacher whose time of greatness had passed. Who obviously had something to do with colonized India, and is now dealing with brat’s who would rather make fun of his lesson plans. He discusses the guilt of killing this teacher – by pushing the teacher to suicide and a mental breakdown; Will Self discusses all these things. He discusses the uncontrollable spirit of youth. An interesting short story for sure.
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Well Gentle Reader I do hope you enjoyed the second Shot Story Review, as much as I enjoyed reading the stories and reviewing them for you.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M. Mary
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