The Short Story Review No. VII

“Filboid Studge, The Story of a Mouse That Helped,” by Saki – From “The Complete Saki,” by Saki – Section: “The Chronicles of Clovis.”

Saki’s sense of humour lies in a twist ending, and a satirising of the upper middle class of the Edwardian period. He wrote about – as it is often distinguished and discussed to the point of repetitive, woodpecker knocking it into one’s skull (and yes I am also guilty of it); the golden afternoon that England had pleasantly enjoyed before the Great War. Filboid Studge is not a person’s name – the odd things people call themselves or what parents name their children these days and even back then, it comes to no surprise to myself that I had even considered the fact that, it could have possibly have been a name at all. Instead Filboid Studge is a breakfast cereal. Previously under the title “Pipenta.”

It is a horrible breakfast really. Something that I can only think to myself reminds me of grits, porridge (how I hated porridge as a child lumpy and warm sitting in a lucrative warm milk), or biscuits drenched in a watery gravy with bits of sausage in it. It all makes me shudder – breakfast has not and remains to this day and probably until I am dead; the most hated meal that I have ever eaten. I despise the cereals (though those children ones with cereal are good) but since I personally was young, breakfast never appeased me. Though there were the odd times of having eggs and toast, with a cup of coffee that I did find enjoyable. But usually I found it all quite disgusting and unfathomable. Who would force their stomach’s I wonder(ed) for such a long period of time, why people could desire to eat such things. Yes the sugary cereals marketed to children is good – but does not sustain the affects of hunger. It does quench that growling monstrosity in my stomach until lunch. Of course now day’s people eat yogurt and fruit for breakfast. But this vile fictional concoction that Saki has created is perhaps the vilest breakfast that I have had both the pleasure and displeasure to read about.

Our protagonist, Mark is a simple artist. He designs posters for products. He makes about two hundred dollars a year. Yes Gentle Reader two hundred dollars a year. It’s messily earnings but life was simpler back then. He wishes to be wed to Leonore an heiress and daughter of a businessman Duncan. Duncan our ill fated, businessman you’ll find if you read this story made a stupid investment in a foul tasting disgusting ruthlessly indigestible breakfast, that no one would buy. However Mark, sensing a way to help Duncan, and secure his proposed marriage to Leonore takes the opportunity to rebrand and redo the advertisement of the breakfast that was so vile and so disgusting that no one wanted it. So Mark does. Soon with his plain poster of the damned in hell, reaching for the now renamed and rebranded Filboid Studge, puritans everywhere are going out to their local grocers and buying the product. The salvation of their soul – at the cost of their stomach’s and the torture of their tongues; become top priority.

All in most ways or another turn out just fine for everyone – to a degree. Once money is made it can always provide a new spin on the perspective of life. Which is fortunate for some and rather unfortunate for others. Though in a sense or way everyone is happy after they get what they want. At least for those who get it – and in typical Saki style it’ll come at the price of the stomachs, the tongues, and the mouths of those foolish and puritan – in other words devoted enough to believe what they see in a poster and their thoughts on the salvation of the soul; enough to buy the foul crap that is sold to them.

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“Riding Clothes,” by Yasunari Kawabata Nobel Laureate in Literature of nineteen-sixty eight – From “The Palm-of-The-Hand: Stores”

“Equinophobia,” or “Hippophobia,” is the clinical term or the more appropriate term for the fear of horses. There has never been a negative experience in my life, about horses. Mind you I have never grown up around horses. Though I look at them as dumb and skittish animals. Odd looking with their legs and heads, and those sad glass marble eyes. What then people ask makes me worry or feel uncomfortable around horses. Maybe it is there strength of those hooves. One kick and your down for the count. Perhaps it’s those teeth. Take your upper lip off, or remove your finger. Either way it does not matter. It does not matter either way. I have no use for horses. Large lumbering creatures, of a skittish attitude, and unpredictable behaviour – much like any animal though or person. When people tell me they are going horseback riding – or trail riding a smile and a good luck wish, and a “have fun,” is all that I can muster. My fear and disgust of horses have what kept me from those creatures, and continue to. What use is a horse to me anyway?

“Riding Clothes,” interests me as a reader for its location first and foremost. Yasunari Kawabata the Nobel Laureate in Literature of nineteen-sixty eight, is Japanese. Some might think of Japan as a nation isolated from the rest of the world. Reclusive to the influence of other countries. Always individual, and always strong. One however does not really think of Japanese people as the traveling type. Yet Yasunari Kawabata shows a different Japan then what some people may traditionally envision. The Japan depicted in Yasunari Kawabata’s fiction is a country in purgatory. A place of traditions, of beautiful and elegant customs, and at the same time, a country that is on the verge of modernization and has come to be influenced by other countries.

The short story “Riding Clothes,” takes place in both Japan – in the present tense; and presently in London, England.

The story is about a woman Nagako, and her unhappy marriage to a man by the name Iguchi, who had since lost his job, forcing Nagako to teach English at a Preparatory School, to support herself and her husband. However Nagako is unhappy in her marriage for the reason that she is married to her husband who reminds her too much of her father. Her father has left her with less than happy memories. She remembers her father sending her to old school mates with a latter. Each one shaking their head at the embarrassment of a grown man sending his daughter to send a letter instead of going there himself. This memory had left her with such an unhappy feeling, and his death only strengthened her feelings of discontent with her father, who she saw as a coward.

The title of this story comes when Nagako see’s an English family riding in Hyde Park, in the appropriate riding clothes. Their faces the epiphany of happiness. Something she herself could only touch and yet not have as her own.

Yasunari Kawabata’s “Palm-of-The-Hand: Stories,” are like small moments. Echoes if you will, of characters, trapped in moments of beauty and moments of the past, whispering and calling; yet like a candle quickly snuffed out by the current situation, or the reality of their lives quickly becomes tears down the moment of nostalgia or fantasy of what could have been, and should have been.

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“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” by Gabriel García Márquez the Nobel Laureate in Literature of nineteen-eighty two – From “Leaf Storm: and Other Stories.”

When Gabriel García Márquez discusses what Magical Realism is, he stated that: “the most frightful, the most unusual things are told with the deadpan expression.” Which is quite true, in discussing the short stories that I have read by him. For one with the discussion or the reading of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” it best to say that the above quote “the most frightful, the most unusual things are told with the deadpan expression,” is a great description of the reality of this story. In the simple discussion of the old man – who later is referred to as an angel, with his moulted and tattered wings; discusses with the most simple of deadpan expression, the very way Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy or Émile Zola, would describe the conditions of the reality of their time. Just like the way when the angel is disturbed with a hot poker, pressed to his side, is described not with a sense of inhumanity or humanity; but instead described with that neutral way that Gabriel García Márquez uses in writing.

What strikes me as interesting in this story is not the way this angel is treated – well yes it is also interesting; but the way that the angel is just a common occurrence almost; or the way that when the crabs walk throughout the house, because of the rains and the consequences of the flooding, that has resulted of the rain. Another interesting aspect of this story is the description of this angel.

The angel has aged like any mortal creature – usually when a celestial being is described, in any narrative or any work of fiction; it is described well as ‘heavenly.’ It is described as beautiful. It’s a majestic being. It is something that mortals could never really comprehend in its aesthetic beauty. However with this angel compromised with this story, it is aged, its wings are tattered and look like a buzzards (no gold wings, or angelic dove like white wings of purity or cleanliness) there are only a few strands of hair on the top of his head, most of his teeth are missing. I assume he is underweight, starved and looks like some creature with an eating disorder. One can tell that this angel is not an individual of heavenly beauty or celestial power. If anything Gabriel García Márquez has invented a creature so pathetic and pitiful, that any predetermined concept of heaven as a paradise shows in some way or another is nothing but just like earth. The angels (the mortals there) age and follow the same concept as human beings.

This poor angel who has – at least according to a neighbour; come for the child who was in sick health; has been so old was beaten down by the gusts and the rain and fell into the mud trapped. This leads to his dual nature of becoming a guest and a prisoner in the chicken coop, of Pelayo and his wife Enlisenda. Pelayo took the angel in out of a sense of fraternity. Not the sense of the two being bond in some brotherhood; but rather that Pelayo is a kind and generous man who would welcome and accept anyone into his home, and help them out as needed – though in all honesty as well he is a little bit reluctant in helping the Old Man but at the same time is willing to. Enlisenda wife and family woman, is the one who comes up with the concept of charging a fee to for people to see this old man and his wings – a prospective angel who Father Gonzana has his own theory and suspicions is a fake. However Enlisenda money making becomes a bit of a problem when she needs to clean up after the crowds of people. However in the long run it pays off.

In the end the old man and his wings – though an ugly, pathetic and pitiful creature; finally loses his lustre and appeal. When a new ‘freak show,’ comes around and adds a new sense of wonder to the work other than that of the old man – who quite frankly did nothing. However with his fame done, his lodgers can now get their due rent.

The ending of the story is perhaps the best part of the story. It is not rushed. There’s a great sense of – not a happy ending, or a pleasant ending; but an ending which one can look back at as one does with their own life and give a slight smile to those wistful moments. For it is when the old man is described like a “senile vulture,” in the story it becomes slightly amusing to picture both a senile vulture, but it also adds to the grotesqueness of the old man himself.

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“Child’s Play,” by Alice Munro – From “Too Much Happiness,” by Alice Munro

Alice Munro’s greatest strength is her foreshadowing. How her pen becomes a brush. How the brush paints the scene. An odd scene. Not even the most friendliest scene. It’s dense with atmospheric emotions, muted in sepia and other olive hue tones. Like that of memory itself. Her stories may not be that far away from the past, and yet there is a sense that they are distances between the reader and even the character and the past. Many praise Alice Munro’s ability to weave a story. Her theme of using both women’s strength’s and their vulnerabilities against them. However for myself, the long shadow her pens casts across the page, as she writes out the scenes, makes the characters react and respond accordingly – though not always appropriately. Accidents, depression, absurd situations, despair, adultery, divorce – all of these aspects of life, lead one to unanswered questions. Yet each of the characters, face them as they like anyone else, is forced to. There is nothing they can do. They cannot hide from them. They cannot runaway. They cannot disappear, or wish them gone. They are part of their lives.

“And the name Verna – I dislike that. It doesn’t sound like spring to me, or like green grass or garlands of flowers or girls in flimsy dresses. It sounds more like a trail of obstinate peppermint, green slime.”

That is what there situations are: “obstinate peppermint, green slime.” Slithering into one’s mouth, forcing that sickening taste down one’s throat. Reminds one of those sickening candies their grandparents give them when they are children – some rather enjoy(ed) them; in fact it wouldn’t come to much shock, surprise and awe that most even enjoyed them; however I found (correction still do) find peppermint a sickening creature. Upon reading that quote it became apparent that it needed to be slithered into this review somehow. My utter distaste and dislike – no more like hatred for peppermint (not only the taste for it but also the smell of it!) was just a necessary to fit in. Let it crawl in, and be known.

However this short story by Alice Munro for me was one of her bests. The detachment and foreshadowing was appropriate. It allows for one to realize and see the emotional sterility of the narrator and characters themselves. However what I thoroughly enjoyed by this Alice Munro short story, was a sense of literary academia.

It should come to no surprise that Alice Munro is usually depicted as a former house wife turned writer, whose writing is characterized by the mundane, and the subtleties of text that show the underlying struggles but determination that the modern women must face. Such problems can vary. From the women facing herself against the collective group of society or her own self, and her own mistakes. A woman fighting change or embracing change, but being penalized by those around her for embracing change in an, otherwise oppressive and somewhat fiscally conservative landscape (not conservative in the political sense, but the concept of tradition the ways aspects of life “have been done,” versus the way that aspects of life “should,” or “what is going to be deemed done.”) But it always done through the mundane. The life of these women, which is beyond ordinary to the point of banal – and yet it never become banal. The gothic undertones at times, the ensure there is something darker. More captivating just below the surface. Like a fat juicy earth worm to be eaten, after all that top soil has been sifted thoroughly. Did I ever get a thick fat juicy worm with this story though.

The protagonist Marlene is a university or college educated woman. She has never married, and is childless. She studied anthropology and as a child was greatly paranoid by a rather “special,” kind of person by the name of Verna, whose mental incapability’s were frightening to the narrator as a child. She is a horrible turning point for the narrator as well. Changing her life forever. Her friendship to her ‘twin,’ Charlene, as well as perhaps a sense of an obsession with the fact of mental incapacitated people, and what is deemed normal functioning people – at least in a social sense.

“The words ‘Deficient,’ ‘Handicapped,’ ‘Retarded,’ being of course also consigned to the dustbin and probably for good reason – not simply because such words may indicate a superior attitude and habitual unkindness but because they are not truly descriptive. Those words push aside a good deal that is remarkable even awesome – or at any rate pecuniary, powerful in such people.”

That is what I thought was enjoyable. For such a brief moment was a abandonment of the mundane, and for a second it felt like the narrator was actually quoting an extract from her fictional book “Idols and Idiots,” which dealt with people like Verna. One cannot help but feel a sense of guilt, being confessed, and washed away – or at best an attempt at redemption trying to take place between the narrator and the character Verna through that fictional book.

What came as a real shocker was the ending. At times, it felt like there were two stories being told and run through this one story, but once they had collided, as so, it worked out nicely and adequately. Beware however Alice Munro is not a sentimentalist, or a sensationalist. The narrator discusses the facts with the coldest and at times cruellest of matter of fact way of speaking. All guilt, grief, desire for confession, and redemption had failed, and had long since been abandoned. Reality and the personal history had sunk in. No matter, what she did – be it confess, or flog herself – would ever change that.
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“(Autumn) The municipal pigeon,” by Italo Calvino – From “Marcovaldo or The Seasons in The City.”

There certainly is a sense of sardonic humour – that arguably could be seen as resembling to being irony; in Italo Calvino’s short stories. That being said humour is something that one should always state is quite difficult for an author or writer or anyone for that matter, to communicate or present across through any written text. Humour can be situational. It can become physical. It can become vicious. But one aspect of humour that it truly be stated to become difficult and even next to impossible to do, is provide a substantial humours effort in written text. There is no physical or active proportion. One does not clearly see the way the characters voice contorts to shock and awe and a humours or comical way. One does not to explicitly see the awkward position in which the characters will find themselves in. This leads to an explicitly difficult sense of writing for an author who wishes to achieve a comical writing. However Italo Calvino does achieve this, in writing’s own special and unique way. It does not make one laugh out loud, with their stomach cramping at the humour, but one does certainly give a slight smirk or even a smile at the way the story unfolds.

Marcovaldo really is the little William Kempe or a happy Pagliacci. Though slightly miserably in his surroundings. Marcovaldo would be more content in the countryside. Paradise would be working on a vineyard. Having the lush green grass surrounding him. However his situation is not that at all. He must endure the fact that he is surrounded, by cement, steel, brick, smoke and other wonders of the man made beehive that he finds himself living in.

To make matters so much more worst Marcovaldo is a poor man. An uneducated general labour simply working at a factory. A job he despises, in a city he despises. To add some more grief upon that, poor Marcovaldo tries his best to improve his situation. He does his best, to allow his family to eat well. He does all he can for them. Though explicitly stated on the back of this collection of short stories: “the results are never the anticipated ones.”
It was fitting to choose this story based on its season. Autumn, the time of harvest. A time of bonfires, Halloween – and in Canada thanksgiving. Autumn (also my favourite season) is also a prelude to what is about to come. Soon there will be the long thin icicle fingers of winter slithering around on the ground. That old breath sighing heavily on windows at night. It’ll soon come to that time when one must take out the snow brush, and scrape off, the frost that had accumulated the night before. Let the car warm up before driving off to one’s destination.

This is also the season of the bird migration. Already it can be seen in the sky the geese flying away. Flocking away squawking and honking their goodbyes, as they head south for the winter – much like lizard like old people do as well. The woodcock bird, is what grabs Marcovaldo’s eye migrating. This almost gets him run over and the scorn of his foreman at his job. However upon retelling his story of his foreman, the foreman remarks that he would head up to the hills and hunt the woodcock like a hunter. Marcovaldo had a different approach in mind. Laying birdlime on the roof, and the laundry lines, Marcovaldo had hoped to catch woodcock, and have the birds for his own greedy purposes of a necessity of devouring them, like a king at a feast. However poor Marcovaldo is left with a bit of a disappointment. Instead of the delicious meaty game bird of woodcock, he is left with more a more meagre scrawny urban pigeon, trapped in his birdlime. However food is still food, to Marcovaldo, and he devours the bird. Though his meal comes a with a bit of a price.
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“Three Popes Walk into a Bar,” by Amy Hempel – From “The Collected Stories,” by Amy Hempel – Section “Reasons to Live”

“Three Popes Walk into a Bar,” first came to my attention after reading an interview that Amy Hempel had done by the “Paris Review,” back in the summer of two thousand and three No. 166. It is in that interview that Amy Hempel had discussed the inspiration of the short story “Three Popes Walk into a Bar.” Amy Hempel had discussed how in order to help her write a memorable short story, and would help her later on, was enjoying the company of stand up comedians. She had informed the interviewer (Paul Winner) that upon watching the stand up comedians, she was able to observe some of the most crucial aspects of a story and stand up comedy itself. Amy Hempel describes how she witnessed “nuance, inflection, timing, how the slightest difference mattered,” all of which can clearly be seen in her work – along with her own traits of leaving right information out. On one such occasion, Amy Hempel had relayed to the interviewer the inspiration or the event that helped shape the short story “Three Popes Walk into a Bar,” when she met Steve Martin at Boarding House in San Francisco, back in the green room he was getting sick. It is there she had confessed that she had admired him, and told him she would not be able to go out there and make people laugh if she were sick. Steve Martin replied “Don’t be silly—you couldn’t do it if you were well.”

This anecdote is used within in the story itself. It is used specifically in the story where the narrator discusses talking with her friend Wesley a standup comedian who is by all means necessary not a humorous funny person, off stage. In fact it could be seen that he himself has grown tired of performing standup comedy and grown quite sick of it – a dark shroud of depression can certainly be sensed forming around him. However the real question is, is Wesley sick of doing comedy on his own choice, that the desire and the dream of it all has come and past or is he growing tired and sick of it because his girl friend Eve a former topless dancer, now a journalist who writes a column about fallen stars – or has been celebrities that is titled “Where Are They Now?” which the female narrator remarks they all called “Why Aren’t They Dead?” Eve wishes Wesley to give up standup comedy and for the two of them to buy a boat and to put it simply “live it up.”

One aspect of Amy Hempel’s writing that I am beginning to understand is that Amy Hempel’s writing deals with powerlessness in relationships, deception, lies, falseness, doubt, and self-deception. All of this can be seen here in this short story. However what Amy Hempel does in these stories though is how the characters try to mend what is broken in their lives. They try to fix those broken aspects of their lives. Mend those bridges. Paint over the bruises. Find a sense of meaning. This is what leads to some form of self-deception. That, the characters are so happy and so easily comfortable with their situations that they cannot accept the fact that the relationship is doing them no good whatsoever.

Part of this can be seen in the scene where Wesley shows the unnamed narrator of the story a commercial film he did for a company, for a product that seals concrete – a sense of sealing or healing what is chipped, cracked and broken. If memory serves correct (and I do not feel like going and searching throughout the story to find it to see if I am right – I read it and lunch time with a bunch of people talking around me.) Wesley cannot bare to watch himself on the video. He covers his eyes. One can take this a sense of Wesley’s inability or desire to change his current situation – to fix it like the cement seal that he himself had helped advertise.