The Short Story Thread

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Followers of minutiae in these posts may have noticed that I left my book at home tonight (Sunday, June 31, 2016.) Never let it be said that a minor detail like not having a book in my hands prevented me from reading or reviewing it!

How so, I hear you cry. Ah, that is simplicity itself. Since the book I do not have with me is Babylon Revisited and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it contains stories which are both A) very old and B) considered worthy of literary study. Hence, one need only type in the title and author, and one is likely to find the story available. Par exemple, "The Ice Palace" (1920), the first story contained in the book which I am reading even though I left it at home.

http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/engl494/icepalace.pdf

This is the story of a young woman from the Deep South who becomes engaged to a young man from the Far North. (If this reminds you of Georgian Zelda and Minnesotan Scott, that is surely no coincidence.) Much is made of the contrast between the two parts of the nation, with the story taking place alternately between the languid summer of the South and the brisk winter of the North. The symbolism is obvious, as many contrasts are also drawn between the peoples of each region. The Southern men are easy-going and lazy; the Northern men are hard-driven achievers. The Northern woman are conventional and colorless; the Southern women are skilled charmers. (Although this was undoubtedly an exaggerated stereotype even in 1920, I presume there was more truth to it at a time when there must have been many elderly Civil War veterans still alive.) It all comes to a climax when the young woman pays a visit to a gigantic structure of ice built for a winter carnival. The story is beautifully written; perhaps a bit too much so at times. Certain lines seem designed to show off the writer's skill. The ice palace itself is wonderfully described.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Continuing, now that I have the book in my hand.

"May Day" (1920) is a lengthy and complex story, almost a novella. It takes place on May 1, 1919, in a New York City which is still full of soldiers returned from the Great War. Part of the plot deals with a couple of these soldiers; part of it with a pair of friends from college, one going up in the world and one down; part of it deals with Socialists; and part of it deals with two young women of very different social classes. These various characters encounter one another in various ways as night becomes day. A grand party, with plenty of alcohol flowing, contrasts with an assault on the headquarters of a Socialist newspaper. The ending is rather sudden and perhaps a bit melodramatic.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" (1922)

Fitzgerald abandons realism in this outrageous yarn whose title is quite literal. The richest man in the world owns a mountain of solid diamond. He also happens to own several slaves, descendants of those who were told the South won the Civil War. He, his wife, his son, and his two daughters live in insane luxury in their secret land in Montana. (It's not on any map, thanks to mighty efforts.) The hero, comparatively normal by contrast, is taken home by the son, his college buddy, and has amazing adventures. It's all very tongue-in-cheek, with a satiric touch. One almost feels that the author is making fun of his own obsession with the very rich.

The next one I read and reviewed in another collection:

"Winter Dreams" (1922) -- Over several years, this tells the story of a man who works himself up from a middle class golf caddy to a wealthy business man, and his encounters with the rich and beautiful woman, faithful to no man, for whom he yearns. Has the feel of The Great Gatsby.

 

[Andrew Lambert]

Steel Eye by Ralph Kern. Great! Due out soon within the Ticketyboopress Houston series of short stories, I think.

 

[DZara]

Yesterday I read The Rocking-Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence. A classic - you can Google it and find it.

The story of a young boy who needs some luck, and will go to great lengths to find it.

Not a science-fiction story necessarily, but some great fantastical elements alluded to in it.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

More Fitzgerald:

"Absolution" -- An encounter between a boy who has lied in the confessional and a priest undergoing a spiritual crisis. Displays quite a bit of psychological depth.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Rich Boy" (1926)*

Character study of a wealthy young man as he grows up, falls in and out of love, and never quite finds the satisfaction he seeks. A very Fitzgeraldish story, with some famous lines near the beginning.

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.

(I have heard it said that Hemingway replied "Yes, they have more money.")

(*I neglected to mention that "Absolution" is from 1924.)

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Freshest Boy" (1928)

A fifteen-year-old, unpopular at his private school, goes to see a Broadway play and has his life changed by what he learns of the adult world. Contrasts the boy's Walter Mitty type fantasies with both the harsh realities of the school and the endless possibilities of life after it.

 

[Bick]

"The Freshest Boy" (1928)

A fifteen-year-old, unpopular at his private school, goes to see a Broadway play and has his life changed by what he learns of the adult world. Contrasts the boy's Walter Mitty type fantasies with both the harsh realities of the school and the endless possibilities of life after it.

I like to read your posts on short-stories Victoria. You find and read a bewildering variety of authors and books. How do you go about choosing what to read, and are there things you're looking for particularly? I ask, as the books you pick up are quite an electic mix.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I like to read your posts on short-stories Victoria. You find and read a bewildering variety of authors and books. How do you go about choosing what to read, and are there things you're looking for particularly? I ask, as the books you pick up are quite an electic mix.

Well, that's an interesting question. I suppose I can only say that I haunt used book stores -- that dying breed! -- and look for things that grab my interest. My current binge of Fitzgerald, for example, is due to the fact that I happened to pick up several of his works for dirt cheap at a store going out of business (where I also picked up several SF anthologies, some of which I have already discussed here.) Why Fitzgerald at all? Simply because I fell madly in love with The Great Gatsby many decades ago. The local library holds book sales a few times a year, and I look for older SF collections and anthologies and novels by authors who appeal to me. (I still think of John Varley and the late Lucius Shepard and Kim Stanley Robinson as "new" authors, to give you some idea of the past wherein I dwell.) As another example, while passing through a small town in North Carolina on vacation, my better half and I found the local library's "book trading" place. (With no books to trade, we made a small cash donation instead.) The vast majority of books available were recent bestsellers of no interest to me. I did, however, pick up a cheap paperback of Herman Melville's Typee (because, fickle creature that I am, I also fell madly in love with Moby Dick decades ago) and a cultural history of syphilis, just because that caught my fancy.

My better half also tells me about books I should read (my next assignment is National Velvet) or purchases them for me as gift (the complete stories of Frank Herbert, for example.) We also pick up a lot of silly little books about things like French fries or toilet paper.

 

[dask]

The local library holds book sales a few times a year, and I look for older SF collections and anthologies and novels by authors who appeal to me. (I still think of John Varley and the late Lucius Shepard and Kim Stanley Robinson as "new" authors, to give you some idea of the past wherein I dwell.)

Me too.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Babylon Revisited" (1931)

The title story of this collection, and a very powerful one. The year it was published is quite relevant also. The protagonist has returned to Paris after a couple of years or so to reclaim the young daughter he left in the care of his deceased wife's sister and her husband. An alcoholic and wild party animal during the Boom years, he is now sober and a hard worker during the Bust years. An unexpected encounter with a couple of acquaintances from the bad old days interferes with his plans. One can definitely see the author wrestling with his own demons in this story.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Crazy Sunday" (1932) -- Deals with a motion picture writer and his relationship with a director and his wife. There's a sudden, dramatic event near the end, almost a melodramatic one. Not so much a portrait of Hollywood (although the author certainly had his own struggles out there) as a series of character studies.

"The Long Way Out" (1937) -- Brief tale of a woman waiting for her husband to take her home from a sanitarium (surely a touch of the experiences of poor Zelda) and what happens when he fails to arrive. Almost reads like a psychological horror story.

 

[Bick]

Re: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me", and Hemingway's reply, "Yes, they have more money."

This is indeed true, and was supposed to be an exchange they had in a Paris cafe. I can imagine Zelda snorting in amusement and downing her gimlet. Now, the funny thing is that last night I read the Hemingway short story, The Snows of Kilimanjaro (which many suggest is his finest). In the story the dying man recalls several key episodes in his life, in one of which another character (Julian) says the same Fitzgerald line, and the protagonist, Harry, gives Hemingway's line - word for word. So they both used it in short stories.

 

[Bick]

I'm currently reading through Hemingway's The First Forty-Nine Stories, incidentally.

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber was wonderful - one of the best short stories I've read recently, and possibly even better than The Snows of Kilimanjaro, mentioned above.

The nice thing I find with short story collections is that you can read 5 or 6, take a break to read a SF novel, and go back to it, and it doesn't feel like you're being adulterous, as it does if you interrupt another novel.

 

[BigBadBob141]

That's what I do, I can't be slogging my way through novels all the while.
I very seldom read a collection all the way through in one go, so I just cherry pick a few stories here and there.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Starting reviews of stories from the February 1974 issue of Amazing.

"Father" by Pamela Sargent. The front cover screams "A New Short Novel Complete In This Issue!" This is actually a novella which later became part of the author's first novel, Cloned Lives, along with the stories "Clone Sister" (1973) and "A Sense of Difference" (1972.) It's interesting to note that the first part of the novel was published last, and vice versa. Anyway, this is best described as what is now known as mundane science fiction. It takes place in the near future year of 2000. There are arcologies and automated highways and an observatory on the Moon, but otherwise it's not much different from 1974. (People still smoke a lot.) The big difference, of course, is that the first human cloning is about to happen. The story ends with the "birth" of the five clones of the "father," a brilliant astrophysicist/science popularizer (think a widowed, childless Carl Sagan) so it mostly deals, in a realistic fashion, with how this might happen (there are already artificial wombs) and how society might deal with it. The style is rather dry, deliberately, I think. Interesting, if not thrilling.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Warship" by David Redd. Set in Northern Europe some years after a "limited" nuclear war. The protagonist has to decide whether to stay at home and lead a dull, but relatively secure life, or join the crew of a fighting ship left over from the time before the war, now commanded by an old friend, and become a modern pirate/Viking. Not bad, but I wonder if it was the best possible choice to use multiple viewpoints and multiple flashbacks.

"Annapolis Town" by Grant Carrington. A strange woman shows up in the city of the title and asks a guitar maker to build a peculiar instrument for her; meanwhile, she begins an affair with the narrator, an amateur composer. What happens won't surprise you, but it's a sad, gentle little story.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Man in a Vice" by Gregory Benford. Hardboiled yarn set in the near future. Most interesting for predicting that a computer virus could be a form of criminal activity.

"No Deposit*No Refill" by Robert F. Young. Brief dialogue between a man and his artificial lover. Pushes some of my buttons because this situation is blamed on "women wanting to be like men."

"Mama Loves You" by Dale Randles, Jr. A young boy escapes his robot teacher only to discover his parents' secret. Not a big surprise.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Starting a series of reviews of stories from this anthology:

"Girl Hours" by Sofia Samatar (Stone Telling, December 2011) -- As a sort of introduction, the book opens with a prose poem about Henrietta Swan Leavitt, one of the women used as "computers" by astronomers in the late 19th century. You can read it here:

Stone Telling: The Magazine of Boundary-crossing Poetry

"Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-Realist Aswang" by Kristin Mandigma (Clarkesworld, October 2007) -- Satiric account of a mythological creature from Filipino folklore who argues with a science fiction fan as to whether SF or realism best serves socialism. You can read it here:

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

"Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra" by Vandana Singh (Strange Horizons, March 29, 2010) -- An eleventh century storyteller is recreated, in some sense, aboard a starship in the far future. Weaves multiple levels of narrative in an imaginative exploration of the nature of story. You can read it here:

Strange Horizons Fiction: Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra, by Vandana Singh