"Fifty Best American Short Stories", Edited by Martha Foley

I love short stories, and I consider the short story to be the best form of all writing in literature. It has almost no room for error. Even the simplest little changes can either make a short story truly great or turn a potentially great short story into something very ordinary. I have read and studied the short story form ever since my high school days which were a mighty long time ago. I also write and have published about 20 short stories in at least 12 states in a variety of both college and university literary journals and some of the better online websites. I published my first short story in my twenties. But I don't pretend to be an expert on the short story, and I surely don't pretend to be a great short story writer. I do profess to be a good short story writer, and I believe the significant number of editors and/or editorial committees who have accepted and published my stories is some level of proof of their agreement with me about my self assessment. The best way to become a good to great short story writer is to read stories by the authors whom other people who understand the short story believe to be the best in the world. Everyone has their own opinion of what a great short story is, and there is room for some disagreement since the idea of stating what is a good to great short story is very subjective. It should also be very objective and sometimes editors are more subjective than objective. I remember one story I submitted to a book project in Texas, as I recall, and I got a handwritten rejection from the editor who had rejected it which said something to the effect that "This story really doesn't fit our project goals, but it sure is an interesting story." Did that editor mean that "interesting" was a good thing or something less. Since he bothered to send me a handwritten rejection, I assume he liked the story. You never know in a case like that. But to get to the point of this blog post, I am actually supposed to be writing about the book of stories which I recently finished by reading one stor a day from the book with my wife. This particular book, "Fifty Best American Short Stories" Edited By Martha Foley, was published in 1986 and contains stories from 1915 to 1964. It contains short stories from several of my favorite authors although the stories the editor chose are sometimes not my favorite stories by a particular author. It also contains some stories from people whom I had never read who might not make anyone's top ten or top fifty list of short story authors which speaks to that subjectivity of which I spoke earlier. But it is overall a very good book of short stories and well worth reading. The authors in this collection whom I had already placed on my list of favorites includes Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Flannery O'Connor, and Shirley Jackson. Interestingly, the editor did not include the story I consider to be each of those writers' best. She might have been bowing to copyright restrictions on what she considered their best but included another story from each of them in a bow to what she considers their overall greatness. Or maybe we just have differing opinions, hence subjectivity rears its head. If you can find a copy of this old collection, buy it, read it, and make up your own mind while trying to be totally objective about the process.

"Kinfolks: The Wigus Stories" by Gurney Norman

A recent reread of this book was, naturally, prompted by the death of its author, Gurney Norman, who is most famous for his first novel, "Divine Right's Trip: A Novel of The Counter Culture" which I had reread and written about earlier this year. I honestly don't remember the first time I read this collection of short stories. It is composed of a collection of ten short stories which have a cast of common characters who are all either family or friends of the protagonistg, Wilgus Collier, an Appalachian male who is raised in the home of his maternal grandparents. I believe all but one of the stories had been previously published in several literary journals around the country. In some respects, an argument could be made that it is a similar kind of collection to Mildred Hauns's "The Hawk's Done Gone". However, this collection falls a bit short of Haun's book in being a major part of the argument about what actually constitutes a novel versus a collection of short stories with a common setting and a common cast of characters. Norman's book and the stories it is comprised of is less tightly timelined across the lives of the characters, and falls a bit short in the depth of the character development of most of the characters as opposed to Haun's work. Enough about that. The protagonist is a member of a family which has a complicated structure and mercurial interactions. He is the grandson living in the home of his grandparents, is a close friend of his slightly older uncle Delmer who teaches him how to drink among other acts of coming of age. This book is generally perceived a series of coming of age stories and spans the boys adolescent years to his young adulthood. He is better educated than the other family members and is often viewed as a source of assistance when family problems arrives. One of the stories is about the illness of the grandfather and Wilgus' spending a night sitting with him in hospital. A similar incident with different characters is also a significant part of "Divine Right's Trip" in which D. R. the protagonist in that book performs the same chore for a family friend. The family fight often, love each other always, and show it clearly when the chips are down. They might fight each other in private but they always fight common enemies in public. These stories will make you laugh, and make you cry. They will make you a fan of Wilgus and his extended family. I sincerely doubt that any of these stories will be forever enshrined into the pantheon of great American Literature. But they are already enshrined in the pantheon of serious Appalachian Literature. This book is well worth reading especially if you are a devotee of the American short story.

"Memoirs of a Geisha", Rereading A Classic Novel

My initial reading of this book took place about 2003, about 6 years after the book was originally published. I chose to reread it with my wife because we had both loved it when we read it the first time. On second reading, the book is just as great as I had viewed it over 20 years ago. It is written by the author, Arthur Golden, as a memoir in the first person with the narrator being the protagonist, Sayuri, a poor young Japanese girl who has been sold, along with her older sister, by her father after the death of her mother to a leading man in their poor seaside fishing village in rural Japan. The buyer immediately sells her to the owner of an okiya in the large city of Gion to be used as a maid initially, but ultimately to be trained as a geisha. The dictionary definition of a geisa is "A Japanese girl or woman who is trained to entertain professional or social gatherings of men with conversation, dancing, and singing". That simplistic definition is a bit short of reality. The girls who are being trained to become geisha are nothing short of slaves, property, belonging to the female owners of the okiyas into which they have been placed. An okiya is a house which is run by an older woman, sometimes a retired former geisha, In the house, this owner will have at least one and sometimes more geisha whose work supports the entire household which is composed of the owner, perhaps an assistant or two who may also be former retired geisha, one or sometimes more young apprentice geisha, and several support staff who function primarly as maids, cooks, and errand girls. Often the maids are young girls who are being considered for training as geisha when they are older. There is a complete culture represented by the geisha, the other members of their okiyas, and their customers who are usually well to do men some of whom may even be among the richest in the country. This culture is thoroughly represented by Arthur Golden in the book and he actually trained in college to become an expert on Japanese culture and language. Incidentally, this is his only published book so far as I know, and that is a tragedy. This novel is classic and was a massive best seller when it was first published. In the okiya to which Sayuri has been sold, the primary geisha is a woman named Hatsumomo who is one of the best known and highest earning geisha in Japan. But she is a foul tempered, manipulative, and totally unlikeable woman who is the villian of the book. She does all she can to prevent Sayuri from ever becoming a geisha by lying, manipulating all those around her, and working on a daily basis to destroy the life, hopes, and dreams of Sayuri. But since she is the primary wage earner in the okiya,she is the one person on whom all the others in the house are dependent. Sayuri manages to meet and become befriended by another geisha, Mameha, who takes her under her protection and assists her in succeeding to become a full fledged geisha. Very early in the book, Sayuri meets only briefly a man referred to as The Chairman, who owns one of the largest companies in Japan, and she falls in love with him. But due to the strict social protocols of Japanese culture,she cannot make her feelings about him known. She does find steady work entertaining the Chairman over time along with his right hand man who is a former war hero who has lost an arm and been severely burned during the war. But he is compassionate despite being gruff, brusque, and overly honest in his criticisms of those around him. He and Sayuri become close friends and he wishes to become her danna, a Japanese expression for a man who provides for a geisha without ever marrying her. That relationship never happens and Sayuri near the end of the book takes actions to ensure that she doesn't ever become the beneficiary of his assitance. This is a powerful novel which provides a lenghthy ongoing portrait of live in Japan both for geisha and all those around them in the years leading up to War War II and beyond. Sayuri suffers hardships both as a child and as a geisha especialy during the war. But in the end she has become an independent woman in control of her own life and circumstances. It is one of the finest novels I have ever read about life in Asia in general and in Japan in particular. It can be found on any used book page on the internet and is still in print. Read it! You will love it!