“Birds on the Western Front,” by Saki – From “The Complete Saki,” by Saki – Section: “The Square Egg.”
All of Saki’s works have a bit of a malice streak them. A bit macabre at times. But always evidently malicious. Though any form satire in some way or another is a bit malicious. Within comedy and within satire there is always a victim. The victim is the individual or the society. The abuses, the shortcomings, the failures, the follies, are ridiculed in the ideal that society or the individual is then pushed towards improvement. However satire is a very dangerous double sword. It can be used to make cuts on the one ridiculed, or it can back fire and cut the wielder. Satire can be taken to the opposite degree of humour. It can be taken as a mean spirited attack. A form of viciousness, that is biting and rude; and the effects keep piling on with more salt and vinegar to a deep and already sore wound. This is where problems will come from with satire. Saki satire the Edwardian Era. He satirised the lounging almost carefree but very paranoid upper-high middle class people, who are trying to impress their neighbours and friends. These people are really quite something. Sometimes their failings and misguided judgements and more often than it should have been, their selfish actions guided by their own desires (then again we are all selfish, and we all after something that we want) get them into some rather interesting situations.
“Birds on the Western Front,” is not as much as satirical and humorous as say some of Saki’s other works. “Birds on the Western Front,” is collected in: “The Square Egg,” which was collected after Saki’s death in nineteen-sixteen, in the trenches of World War I. The collection was first collected and published in nineteen-twenty four.
It is no wonder why this particular story had a particularly, biting and bitter dirt like taste to it. One can only picture Saki – a man in his forties, sitting in the trenches with these young men of the ages of eighteen to twenty something, who had such glee and hope in this war. This war to end all wars. However they could now only find themselves in a trench war. Surrounded by scurrying rats, disgusting inhuman conditions, and neither side gaining an upper hand. What had been a war with so much hope riding on its shoulders, had now fallen into the pits of muddy trenches, cold feet, disease infested people, and scavenging rats scurrying about.
Personally myself there is no imagining possible how Saki could write in these conditions. Personally I cannot imagine Saki sitting there in the trench, muddy water sloshing up against his shoes. The sounds of machine guns in the distance, and the whizzing of bullets, flying over head. The cries of the men screaming in the distance and right beside him. The rats, scurrying in and about looking for crumbs, or perhaps some dislodged, and useless body part that had since been separated. The thought of Saki in the wintery forests, shivering to himself, writing pen and paper in hand, but his gun closer then he would hold either of these treasures to him.
However Saki was a brave man himself. An author who took up arms, with his pen. He had taken his pen up to scrutinize and to mock the supposed high society he saw. But he picked up arms to defend the country he loved, against the Germans – even though he was over age at the age of forty-three. Numerous times he went back on the battlefield, still injured and too sick. Finally in nineteen-sixteen Saki himself was shot, by a German sniper. His last words – a fashionably humorous were: “Put that bloody cigarette out!”
It comes to no surprise then, and now, which Saki wrote his last stories the way they did. Taken away from the Edwardian Society and now placed in the barbaric life of a soldier, in the trenches. No longer just a satirical writer.
There is a macabre and unsettling sense of imagery throughout the story though. The discussion of the barn owl’s new nesting grounds – or rather old nesting grounds, being populated by a new desire of mice, parading up and down the war lines. Desolate houses, and even streets and some old barns still standing – all of this is presented, in Saki’s more serious tone.
“In the matter of nesting accommodation the barn owls are well provided for; most of the still intact barns in the war zone are requisitioned for billeting purposes, but there is a wealth of ruined houses, whole streets and clusters of them, such as can hardly have been available at any previous moment of the world's history since Nineveh and Babylon became humanly desolate.”
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“The Rainy Station,” by Yasunari Kawabata Nobel Laureate in Literature of nineteen-sixty eight – From “Palm-of-the-Hand Stores.”
Every time, one reads Yasunari Kawabata there is something about his prose. Something so traditional about it, even though he himself was a modernist writer. The way his poetic gentle dream like cloud prose just merges with itself. There comes sentences, there comes scenes, and images that are strikingly Japanese. The delicate way of Yasunari Kawabata’s prose is like the gentleness of the art of folding paper of origami. Or the delicate arrangement of kadÅ. The prose itself is just strikingly Japanese.
“When their eyes met, her smile made him think of the autumn wind blowing on ripe-coloured fruit.”
Just those metaphors, the delicate way they are composed, like the leaves of a fern; or the blossoms of orchids.
“The Rainy Station,” is one of (the Nobel Laureate) Yasunari Kawabata’s longer short stories in this collection of his “Palm-of-the-Hand Stories,” it’s roughly eight to nine pages long. Longer than other stories like: “Yuriko,” or “Love Suicides,” or “The Hate Incident.” However even though “The Rainy Station,” is longer it holds that same poetic premises that Yasunari Kawabata brings to all of his smaller stories.
There is the echoes through the bones. The soft waxy feel to the way the eyes scan over them. The metaphors are gentle scripts. As if hand painted by a brush, and delicately being painted on the paper.
This is what is attractive of Yasunari Kawabata’s writing. This slow, soft, misty writing. It’s gentle and unique, like every snowflake that touches the ground.
“The Rainy Station,” takes the look at two wives. It appears they meet their husbands at the station when they head home. The narrator of the story explains that the wives themselves are more of prisoners – people isolated from the world, kept hidden in their kitchens. These two wives though are old rivals to each other. It appears that the more outing going one (the one that wishes for the writer to be her husband) stole the love interest of the writer’s wife. However now it appears that the rival has lost, and the writer’s wife had won, in the long run.
It’s an interesting story, missing the same depth that the other stories by Yasunari Kawabata had at times. Still a nice story. It’s no wonder why I enjoy Yasunari Kawabata so much.
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“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Nobel Laureate in Literature of nineteen-eighty two – From “Leaf Storm and Other Stories.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a writer and practitioner of a form of writing that is known as “Magical Realism.” “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” is a good example of it. The most fantastical and magical elements of the story are presented in the most deadpan expression. They are seen as common events. This plays to the Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s advantage in this story and I am sure all his works. For this allows him to present an interesting view point of reality. This is one of the charms of this particular story.
This is not my first stint with magical realism. Jose Saramago the Nobel Laureate in nineteen-ninety eight novel “Blindness,” is a magical realism text. However this short story and the novel of both authors differ greatly. Jose Saramago presents a dystopian piece of work, while Gabriel Garcia Marquez represents, a reality, and what happens when a strangers dead body washes up on the shores.
Describing the village Gabriel Garcia Marquez, describes the somewhat poverty stricken, but reality of the village. When describing the village, I could not help but picture this small village of just a few houses – maybe twenty, or fifteen at the least ten houses. They are all quite close together – but also a distance a part. Each one has stone fences. But the entire area also has a sense of being very desert in appearance. A bit of wild grass – though its gold or brown in appearance grows in patches throughout the area. Rocks are abundant though of this village. The village stands near a cliff. Where the sea can be seen and where the men have their boats (seven boats) down below in which all of them go out and fish. It is there that the strange drowned man is found by a group of children and from there, the metamorphous of the people of the village and the village itself begins to grow and change.
This fishing village has a way of dealing with its dead. The body is prepared like any other body. The village says goodbye to the deceased and the departed person, and then the body is let go back into the sea. Where it is most likely devoured (and is often common knowledge though I doubt spoken of in public) by sharks.
This village prepares the body as if they were to prepare any other body. However this washed up body they find is a bit more of a handful then they have thought possible. Once they have cleaned him of the mud of the sea. The sea weed that had entangled around him, and the rocks wound up in his air, they find him to be the most handsomest man they have seen. They find him to be a tall giant of a man, and a strong man. All of the women sigh over him, and then they begin to sob over him. Finally the drowned man is given a name: Esteban.
He is too big for the tallest man in the village’s clothes. Even too big for the fastest mans clothes. So the women of the village make him his own clothes of bridal linen and a sail from a ship. As they prepare the man his funeral and his clothes, they discuss how the poor man is too big for the large houses, and his body to large for any chair. All this fantasy begins to envelope into the reality of their work. The men of the village grow tiresome of the women’s preparations of the stranger’s body. How they throw bottles of holy water on him and nails. How they shower him with flowers, and sigh over him as if to withhold their sobs and tears. However once they look at Esteban’s face they too are overcome with an appreciation and love of the man. After Esteban is let go back to the waters, which have first brought him to the insignificant village, all the villagers know their lives have been changed. They make their houses bigger and stronger. The walls are painted brighter. They plant flowers; so that one day when ships pass they will see bright colours of the village, and the fragrant smell of the village, and one day says: “that’s Esteban’s village.”
The entire village is transformed by the kindest of a dead man, who showed no real kindness at all. In fact just the strange mans masculine beauty is all that has gathered such appreciation for him, but also the villager’s villages themselves. This is what transformed the village. The entire metamorphous of the village happened because of the dead man Esteban. It is a sweet tale. One that I had thoroughly enjoyed.
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“Some Women,” by Alice Munro – From “Too Much Happiness,” by Alice Munro.
This was not one of Alice Munro’s stronger stories of this collection. Perhaps the ending felt rushed. Perhaps it was because it was spoken of through the first person narration of a child, who was actually an old woman looking back on her life – but came off as more of a child’s view point. It did not have that same lushness that “Dimensions,” and “Free Radicals,” had. “Some Women,” by Alice Munro just appeared to be a story of quaint simplicity – which is not a compliment at this time; of a man who is simply dying of leukemia. His stepmother Dorothy is a crotchety old fossil, and a hag of a creature. Dorothy gets massages from a chipper and false woman by the name of Roxanne; who used to be a nurses aid, and takes care of the man dying of leukemia – or rather Roxanne was scheduled to simply give Dorothy her massages. Kneading that wrinkled old flesh. However Roxanne makes it her responsibility, and duty to take care of the dying man who suffers of leukemia, along with the young narrator. The narrator’s duties however are simple. She fetches the pitcher of water from the fridge, and whatever else, the dying man (Bruce) needs for her. However with Roxanne added into the picture her job becomes a bit more complicated. Roxanne always appeared to be an intruder or interloper on foreign ground. She massages Dorothy but then romps up the stairs, and quickly makes Bruce her new business. This however also comes to an end. Sylvia Bruce’s actual wife soon has the rest of the summer off when summer courses are done. This leads to a fall out between Roxanne and Dorothy. Though it is not unclear why it happened, other than Dorothy – poor old Dorothy; felt her own power of authority was being subjected to a hostile takeover, from an outsider. For once a person – especially a woman of the household, gets to being Dorothy’s age, no longer married but a widow, and a stepson dying, she has an intimate feeling with the household in which she then feels is her duty to keep intact. However someway along the line Dorothy became crotchety and overprotective. The house is hers and hers alone. She despises intruders, and is no wonder why she has very little patience for the meek, shy and otherwise bashful narrator as a child. It itself is seen as a intruder upon her own realm. An outsider; a disease; a carrier of pestilence; a harbinger of the end of her own reign of superiority of the house. Dorothy has very little patience and even a lack of tolerance for her daughter-in-law Sylvia. She once again views Sylvia as a younger lioness, challenging her superiority and authority in her own household. Then why is it she was so quick to accept Roxanne, that odd colourful, chirping chipper bird, of a creature. Who cooed and awed; cawed and squawked with excitement over the smallest of things.
That is really the entire story there. Four female characters – two rival woman Sylvia and Roxanne – it can be seen that Roxanne in some way or another wants what Sylvia had or has; Dorothy that old owl, whose hooting and screeching around the house with her cane, makes everything nervous and unsettling; then there is the narrator; a young canary of sorts; naive and ignorant to the happenings and goings of the house; completely oblivious to the exotic parrot like Roxanne and her conversations, the plain sparrow of Sylvia, but not so oblivious to the ever overpowering force that Dorothy is. In fact out of the entire three adult women, the narrator has more respect for Sylvia then she does for the other two. Not because Sylvia drives her home; or says barely a word – or barely makes an appearance, but she is the most respectable character out of the three women. She is devoted her husband, which can clearly be seen at the end. She is an underdog, at the constant squabbling jibber jabber that the other two women give her; not once giving her the benefit of any doubt at all. Maybe this is why she is given more respect than the other two. She does not flash her flamboyancy and annoyance like Roxanne, nor does she hover over everything with such scrutinizing eyes. Always judging the smallest of details. Making sure that every details work perfectly. She is just doing what she can. Yet Sylvia shows her true side at the end.
It’s not my favourite story by Alice Munro, and in fact is a bit weak, a bit poor really. Maybe this is what happens with short stories, as the collection progresses, they lose more and more of that creative spark, that ingenuity of the first stories, where the narrators or characters figured out what to do when faced with a problem. It all eventually becomes tireless and listless. Like watching rain falling on trees and watching the individual droplets roll off of every individual leaf. That is how it goes, it appears to be. Then again every batch of fruit. Everything has its little sore spots.
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“(Spring) Mushrooms in The City,” by Italo Calvino – From “Marcovaldo or The Seasons in The City.”
Italo Calvino at the time of his death, was a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature, was one of the world’s greatest fabulists, and had been lionised in the United Kingdom and the United States, as one of the most translated contemporary Italian writer. When reading this first story from “Marcovaldo or The Seasons in The City,” it’s difficult to see if one sympathises Marcovaldo – the titled character; or if it’s more appropriate to despise this character. However after a while it can be seen that Marcovaldo looks after himself and his family but also after his family, and has a great appreciation for nature. However Marcovaldo does have a great appreciation for nature; though he has a great hatred for the city in which he lives and works in. It is dull, drab, and full of grey. Completely unnatural and disgusting to him. However as Italo Calvino points out, though the main character Marcovaldo has no eye for the appreciation for the city landscape – the traffic lights, the bill boards, neon signs, and shop windows; he has a great attention for the natural detail that sprouts up in the city:
“On the other hand, a leaf turning yellow on a bough, a feather caught up on a tile, never escaped him; there was never a horsefly on the back of a horse, a worm-hole in a table, the peel of a fig squashed on the pavement, which Marcovaldo did not notice and did not reflect upon, observing the changes of the seasons, the longings of his soul and the wretchedness of his existence.”
However upon reading the back of the book of these short stories by Italo Calvino one has a better understanding of whom and what Marcovaldo is:
“An unskilled worker in a drab northern Italian industrial city of the 1950s and 1960s, Marcovaldo has a practiced eye for spotting natural beauty and unquenchable longing to come a little to the unspoiled world of his imagining. Much to the puzzlement of his wife of his wife, his children, his boss and his neighbours, he chooses his dreams, gives reign to his fantasies, tried – with more ingenuousness than skill – to lessen his burden and that of those around him. The results are never the anticipated ones.”
This is certainly the best description of Marcovaldo’s actions in “Mushrooms in the City.” Especially the ending of this story, which certainly reflects the last line of the summary of all the stories from the back of the book: “the results are never the anticipated ones.” However he certainly has his heart in the right place – though he himself is out of place in the industrial city in which he works.
There is a beautiful way of how Italo Calvino writes. Though the short stories are short, there is of course a certain, breathlessness to his work. However though they are breathless in there short work, there is a real depth and beauty to them. Just as the first quotation, remarks on it. How Italo Calvino describes Marcovaldo’s eye for the natural world around him. A world full of life and colour; contrary to the world in which he himself finds himself in the present. Marcovaldo would be happier as a farmer. A man who is able to work and tend to the land. However he himself finds himself working in an industrial factory. A place churning out smoke, and pollution in the air. The start of consumerism, showing itself in the shop windows, neon signs, and bill boards; and yet Marcovaldo is able to find something more in this drab world. He finds tiny moments of natural beauty sprouting up in the world around him.
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“Jesus is Waiting,” by Amy Hempel – From “The Collected Stories,” by Amy Hempel – Section: “The Dog of the Marriage.”
This is the classic story of what one would come to expect of Amy Hempel. There was something about Amy Hempels previous short story that was read and review “The Harvest,” which showed Amy Hempel at her strongest form. Her mature state shining. Leaving just enough out, giving just enough information; allowing for just enough amount of reasonable speculation. “Jesus is Waiting,” had that same premise, however what it appeared to be missing is just that spark. That spark that “The Harvest,” had. Though instead of that consistency that “The Harvest,” had this story felt more like sentences, drifting in and out of each other. There never felt to be anything there to grasp. Just as much as this narrator, drifts on the highways. Slipping into hotel beds and then scurrying away just as fast. All the sentences appeared to have flowed away from each other. Becoming nothing more than mere independent fragments in their own right. Their own little islands in an ocean of an ever unclear story.
Realism is often simply portraying reality as it is. Naturalism portrays the same reality that realism presents, however takes a step closer and adds its own determinism philosophy to the whole ordeal and in some “scientific,” way tries to explain that human nature happens based upon the nature and the nurture of its environment. Magical realism is when the most fantastical or the more horrifying become something of a dead pan reality. Minimalism (even though Amy Hempel has often stated she dislikes the term) can be adequately described in these characteristics:
“a reduced vocabulary; a shorter sentence; a reticence towards the expression of a character’s thoughts or feelings; unresolved, even slight narratives which reveal more than they resolve; the use of unadorned language and the rejection of hyperbole; a detached, even ‘absent’ narrator; a more abundant use of dialogue; fewer adjectives and, when used, not extravagant; showing, not telling as a primary means of communicating information; an interest in the accurate depiction of the everyday; and a focus upon the present tense.”
(Thank-you to “An Introduction of Literary Minimalism,” by an author that I cannot find the name of apparently. However the author left her e-mail on the website -- http://literaryminimalism.wetpaint.com/page/An+introduction+to+literary+minimalism )
In some way or another minimalism (leaving out the technicalities) is the splintering up – or fragmenting; the literary narrative, as it describes the dead pan reality in a short and abrupt way. There is no real easy way to describe minimalism I suppose. Samuel Beckett’s minimalism was absurd and nonsensical. His characters drowning in hopeless, despairs of a grey world of nothing and yet can only make jokes or humour of these poor despicable situations. Amy Hempels minimalism differs greatly. It takes on that more defined approach of minimalism in general. Its dead pan. Abrupt, and short. There is a detached narrative – even though the narrator is a first person; however even though they are driving the car, they act as if they themselves are sitting in the passenger seat, watching all the scenery fade into itself. The grass fades with the wheat. The mountains fade in with the city. Everything just becomes a swirl of detail. But yet what good is all this detail and knowledge if nothing is there. There is no abundant use of dialogue within Amy Hempel’s story either, and at times there does not appear to be anything coherent happening. At time this work. However at other times it does not work. It becomes increasingly difficult, and increasingly more frustrating which then leads to increase feelings of replacing the author, because the ambivalence of the feelings towards the story just makes it quite difficult.
However there are good points. Though in my opinion there is not much of a story told – perhaps at times that is what Amy Hempel means to do with the work. There is no story told, therefore it in itself mimics life itself. It mimics the aimless purposelessness of life. All the story was, was fragments of a narrator drifting in and out of hotels. Zipping up and down highways. Going nowhere fast, and going anywhere within a hurry. Which lead to the speculation of what or who is she running from? What is this restlessness caused by? There are days though that everyone surely has the idea that they are just going to drive. Drive to nowhere in a hurry and go out and find somewhere, anywhere better then where they had left. Yet in the end they always return. They always return to the place they left. It has not changed. Though something about it has changed. Maybe it’s just the perspective that has changed.
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