Showing posts with label Short Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Short Stories. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Rooftop Reviews - Stories
Friday, January 31, 2014
"Centerburg Tales" by Robert McCloskey (1951)
This is the 2nd of the Homer Price books by
Robert McCloskey. The book opens in Centerburg, the town which sits just a
couple of miles from Homer’s home at the intersection of two highways. Mr.
McCloskey has a way of getting right to the heart of the matter when it comes
to children’s things, and he starts off with a chapter called "The Hide –A-Ride".
The kids in town all know and love Grandpa Hercules; whom
they call Uncle Herc for short; and he is a big part of their lives as they go
about their daily lives. He spins stories while they spin tops, and he manages
to infuse all of his tales; true or not; with a bit of local history. In this
chapter he spins an unlikely, though wonderful tale about a ride he helped to
build for the Indian natives way back when.
That endeavor involved a barrel rolling down hill, which had
an intoxicating effect on the Indians, but was bad for the barrels. So, Grandpa
Herc invented the Hide-A Ride, which was a mechanized way for the barrel to be spun
without destroying it each time. It’s kind of a Rube Goldberg contraption, with
a wonderful illustration by the author for the more unimaginative. This story
would probably be politically incorrect by today’s standard, illustrating just
how “enlightened”; or thin skinned; we have become.
In "Sparrow Courthouse" the author spins the yarn about the
time the town of Sparrow got their days and nights mixed up by following the
time on the Courthouse clock without question. A stranger passing through realizes
that the problem is being caused by the sparrows sitting on the hands of the
clock, making time move slower in a sense. By the time the stranger is able to
convince the town of the cause, they have been living night by day, and day by
night. (This story was written at the beginning of the HUACC hearings and I can’t
help but wonder if this is a sly poke at blind loyalty.)
Grandpa Herc has had many experiences, all of which he
eagerly shares with the kids of Centerburg. Like the time he went hunting for
gold in California. His adventures there with Hopper McThud are so enthralling
that at one point Grandpa has the crowd so mesmerized that they are all looking
at the luncheonette ceiling as he describes a cliff hundreds of feet in the
air. This guy is some story teller!
One day Grandpa gets a package from Gravity-Bitties, a breakfast
food for champion jumpers. This cereal is so potent that it comes with a chunk
of lead to put inside your coat to keep you from jumping too far. But Grandpa
is wiser than all of the advertisements and proves his wisdom by not eating the
Gravity-Bitties and jumping far anyway. His point was proving that the
advertising people don’t know what they are talking about. Heck, he fed the
cereal to the chickens!
From Homers experiments at home to the goings on at the
barbershop, these stories are emblematic of what life was like in the years
after the Second World War. In so many ways we were at the acme of our strength
and influence as a nation. Socially there were still kinks to be worked out in
the areas of Civil Rights and poverty, but for the most part these was the best
of times. And in Robert McCloskey’s books about Homer Price those times are
palpable.
Monday, December 16, 2013
"The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry (timeless)
O. Henry, along
with the likes of Mark Twain, marked a new type of journalist; ones who became
serious writers; a tradition which has continued to the present day. With such
luminaries from Mark Twain on through to Jimmy Breslin and Norman Mailer,
journalists have become, increasingly, some of the leading writers of their
times. O.Henry was no exception.
With his incredible
feel for irony, and knowledge of human behavior, he wrote of the daily
struggles which faced the generation of his time. Jim and Della are emblematic
of that struggle, and the love for one another which enabled them to make it
through the rough times.
The irony in the
story is apparent, as well as their love for one another. The illustration I
have posted here is the "Adoration of the Magi" by the Italian
Artist, Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510). This is a perfect Christmas story, which
I have enjoyed for many years, thanks once again, to a grammar school teacher
who really had a heart, and made a difference. Mrs. Denslow, this one's for
you.
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And
sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by
bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks
burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next
day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the
shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral
reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding
from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat
at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had
that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no
letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax
a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James
Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze
during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per
week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking
seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James
Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called
"Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already
introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with
the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat
walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and
she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every
penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go
far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only
$1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent
planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and
sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of
being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room.
Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile
person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal
strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender,
had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the
glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color
within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its
full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham
Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that
had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had
the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her
hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's
jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures
piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he
passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and
shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made
itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and
quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two
splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat.
With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she
fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie.
Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself,
panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the
"Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat
off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass
with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings.
Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and
no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had
turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by
meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of
The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like
him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars
they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that
chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company.
Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the
old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a
little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the
gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love.
Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny,
close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She
looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself,
"before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island
chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-
seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was
on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her
hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered.
Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer
about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God,
make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He
looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be
burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at
the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression
in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor
surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had
been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar
expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at
me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived
through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't
mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry
Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a
beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim,
laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the
hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della.
"Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't
I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an
air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della.
"It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be
good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were
numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody
could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded
his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some
inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a
million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you
the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them.
This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it
upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said,
"about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a
shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll
unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper.
And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to
hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the
comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back,
that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure
tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful
vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply
craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now,
they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments
were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was
able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast,
Jim!"
And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and
cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it
out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash
with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to
find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me
your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put
his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas
presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I
sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the
chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise
men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of
giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones,
possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I
have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in
a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of
their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that
of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive
gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
"By-Line:Ernest Hemingway" Edited by William White
I have never been a fan of Hemingway's writing, preferring the movie versions of his novels instead. I know that makes me illiterate in the eyes of some, but let's face it, his best work was his shortest one, "The Old Man and the Sea." In my opinion, Hemingway was best when he was brief. But that's just my opinion. Obviously, many people the world over revere his works as modern "classics."
But here is a book, compiled and edited by William White, which contain some of the earlier writings of Ernest Hemingway, and they are truly delightful. The first section is composed mainly of his columns in the Toronto Star Weekly from the early 1920's. These are gems.
Take the piece titled "Circulating Pictures", which deals with the upper crust women in Toronto who "lease" works of art from the artists, and then exchange them amongst themselves in a mini "art club." This allows the women to appreciate the artwork in their homes, and then return them to the artist at the end of the "lease." The painting has now been viewed and advertised for free by many patrons of the local art scene, which drives up the price. At the expiration of the "lease" period, the work of art is returned to the artist, who then goes on to sell it at 4 times the original price. All of this is done in an effort to keep commercialism out of art.
Hemingway's love of fishing is shown in it's earliest stages of reknown while the author is fishing in Canada. His love of the outdoors virtually pours from the 3 page article. There is more substance in some of these short pieces than in any of his later full length novels.
The 1920's were the days of Prohibition, and that subject is covered here in a piece called "Plain and Fancy Killings, $400 and Up." It seems that American gangsters were going to Ireland, by way of England, to assassinate local politicians, British Soldiers, or any of the Irish Republican Army members who may have run afoul of someone. A mere $400 paid for killing a soldier, of either side, while for $1,000 you could have a Public Official eliminated. The latter is the better deal, considering that the poor soldier wouldn't have to be there in the first place, were it not for the bungling of Public Officials.
The Barber College in Toronto, described so vividly in "A Free Shave", is a brilliant piece of work equal to anything by O. Henry. Barber colleges offered shaves and haircuts for free if you let a student do it. For 10 cents more you could have a senior student do the job instead, with considerably less risk involved.
This is a real treasure found in the stacks at the Mooresville Public Library. It was copyrighted in 1951 and then re-released in 1967. The book covers all of the years in between the First and Second World Wars, with stories from Paris, Madrid, Switzerland and even the 1923 earthquake in Japan. That piece is very timely, given the current situation in Japan.
The World War Two years are covered in a series of interviews with, and articles by, Mr. Hemingway, which explore every aspect of the war, from it's causes to it's proposed outcome.
A wonderful book, with a unique perspective on the history of the times in which it was written, this was an eye opener for me concerning Hemingway as a journalist. Like O. Henry before him, Mr. Hemingway seems to have done his best work in the short form.
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