Blasphemy | by Sherman Alexie

Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories by Sherman Alexie
(Grove Press, 2012, 465 pages)

Sherman Alexie is a Native American writer. I’ve read a few books of his and liked them. I’m glad I read this one. It was provocative, thoughtful and funny. Blasphemy consists of 31 short stories, some old and some new.  Alexie’s characters are Spokane Indians who are male, female, young, old, educated or illiterate in Washington State.  Alexie is a great story teller with a terrific sense of timing.  His observations are meticulous, humorous and brutally honest.  His stories deal with subjects that many of us are not comfortable with: poverty, sex, racism, addiction, alcoholism, domestic abuse and homelessness. A few stories are disturbing and sad and left me heartbroken. However, I enjoyed all of the new stories as well as a few old favorites. You’ll enjoy it if you are a Sherman Alexie fan or if you just want to have a peek at modern day Native American experiences.

This Is How You Lose Her | by Junot Díaz

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz
(Riverhead, 2012, 224 pages)

I loved The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz so I knew I was going to read this collection of short stories that was recently published. The stories all revolve in some way around a young man named Yunior and they all touch on some aspect of love. Díaz’s writing has a way of instantly pulling you in and I enjoyed each of the stories included in this collection. I will say that I initially thought it was going to be more of a novel so I had to readjust the way that I was reading. A very enjoyable and quick read.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank | by Nathan Englander

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander
(Knopf, 2012, 207 pages)

This collection of short stories was diverse and engaging. If there was one “connection” between all the stories it would be that the characters were all Jewish and in one way or another dealing with how that influences their identity – internally and/or as viewed by others. Englander does a great job drawing you in to the stories quickly, which is key with short stories in general.

The audiobook version of this was really nice. Each short story was read by a different narrator which was nice in terms of distinguishing the story and setting the characters apart. Too often a bad narrator can “kill” a story, not so with this title

The Artist of Disappearance | by Anita Desai

The Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, 176 pages)

This collection of short stories is melancholy but interesting. Set in India, the stories all explore people who have avoided the past, or have avoided making anything of themselves in the present. They all have regrets or something to hide from, although the thickly veiled stories make it hard to figure out what that is sometimes. The best story in the collection was about a young writer who translates a book from its native language into English, and is then disappointed by the author’s next work. Trying to rewrite the book, the translator effaces both herself and the author, and her career disappears.  This book was a nice change of pace from more straight forward narrative accounts, but requires quite a bit of interpretation by the reader.

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders | by Neil Gaiman

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman
(William Morrow, 2006, 360 pages)

This collection of short stories (and the occasional poem) by Neil Gaiman was something I picked up to get a better feel for his writing style. There are connections with the title, Fragile Things, in every story or poem included. As Gaiman says in the introduction, “There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.” You can see the element of fragility somehow conveyed in each piece. The introduction also included a breakdown of how each story/poem came to be and what Gaiman’s thought process was as he wrote. I found this incredibly helpful to return to after I finished each piece.

The collection is comprised of a number of genres, so there’s something for everyone. I was going to try and list some of my favorites from the collection, but it would have been a long list. I definitely enjoyed it.

Armageddon in Retrospect | by Kurt Vonnegut

Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
(Berkley Publishing Group, 2008, 232 pages)

As a college student in the 70s, I, like many of my fellow students, was a huge fan of Kurt Vonnegut. His irreverent, satirical novels somehow spoke to my generation with their wry observations on the human condition and pessimistic view of bureaucracies, bores, and bombast. I was therefore intrigued by Armageddon in Retrospect, a compilation of unpublished writings related in some way or another to war. With an introduction by his son, Mark, this book gives us one last peek into the mind of this author, who was a humorist on the scale of Mark Twain or Will Rogers.

When Vonnegut died at age 84 in 2007, America lost a shrewd observer of the human condition and a very funny writer. Having read pretty much all of his other books, many of them more than once, I have always appreciated his wit and unusual writing style. Spare, concise and sometimes accompanied by his own drawings, Vonnegut’s books dwelt on themes of industrialization, futurism and free will.

The book includes a speech that Vonnegut was supposed to deliver in Indianapolis but he died before delivering it. Like his writing, it is filled with short, sometimes biographical factoids and wry observations on Karl Marx, religion, and African-Americans.

As his readers learned in 1969 when Slaughterhouse 5 was released, Vonnegut was taken prisoner after only 5 days on the front during World War II and he spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner. This final book includes his non-fiction account of his experiences, including the burning of victims of the Allied bombing of Dresden. A copy of a letter he sent to his family after being freed is also included. It also provides more detail on his capture, transport and treatment by his German captors.

The rest of the stories, although somewhat uneven, relate in some way to issues of war and peace. Some of them come directly from his experience as a P.O.W..     Prisoners in a camp speculate on what meals they will eat after they are released. A soldier confronts and ultimately kills another American who had returned to Germany to fight for the Nazis. A Czech cabinetmaker is forced to build an elaborate desk for the commanding officer of an American occupying unit.

Each of these stories give us an insight into how Vonnegut’s style and thinking evolved over the years. As a counter-cultural hero, Vonnegut appealed to my generation’s cynicism and his sharp-witted jabs at the follies of warfare endeared him to beats, college students, and peaceniks of all types. This final volume puts a period on the career of this troubled, but gifted, writer.

20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker | edited by Deborah Treisman

20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker edited by Deborah Treisman
(Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2010, 431 pages)

I’d been wanting to pick up this collection of short stories for a while.  This is a compilation of work from the 20 authors under 40 that were highlighted in The New Yorker.  The only thing the authors have in common is a discernible literary talent and the fact that they are all under the age of 40 (or were when the list was compiled), other than that, they all have very unique styles and literary focuses.  I enjoyed this book because it exposed me to a lot of authors whose other work I’m eager to check out.  I also had a slight bias because a friend I went to Divinity School with is included in this talented group, C.E. Morgan.

If you’re looking to be introduced to new authors or are just eager to check out a diverse collection of short stories, this was a good read.  Not all the stories spoke to me, but like I mentioned earlier, enough did that I’m eager to check out their other work.

Wild Nights! | by Joyce Carol Oates

Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway
by Joyce Carol Oates
(Ecco Press, 2008, 238 pages)

This collection of 5 short stories focuses on alternate endings/interpretations of the latter days in the lives of some of literature’s heavyweights.  Oates puts a unique spin on the lives of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway.  Not only does she incorporate biographical elements, she also channels the writing styles of each of the authors.  The stories were unique and I finished the book wanting to learn more about each of the authors Oates focused on.  It’s hard to go much further in depth without summarizing each of the short stories, but this was definitely a dark and engaging read.  If you’re a literature lover you’ll appreciate this collection.

Plan B: A Nick Heller Story | by Joseph Finder

Plan B: A Nick Heller Story by Joseph Finder
(Macmillan, 2011, 32 pages)

When Nick Heller sets out on a mission, you can be sure that there will be plenty of suspense. In Plan B, he arrives in Barcelona to rescue a kidnapped 16-year-old girl from a notorious Spanish mobster only to find that the person who hired him is really the villain. He has done his surveillance, knows when the residence is most vulnerable.  However, Nick does not leave things to chance; he always has a “Plan B” just in case. When the alarms sound and security guards surround them before they can escape the premises, Nick pulls “Plan B” out to save their necks.

Joseph Finder writings will intrigue you. He vividly paints scenes causing you to feel like you’re a part of the story. I hope to find more about Nick Heller in forthcoming stories. I was caught off guard when Plan B ended. I did not realize it was a short story. It surely will have a sequel.

Girl with Curious Hair | by David Foster Wallace

Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
(W.W. Norton & Company, 1989, 373 pages)

This collection of short stories is an enjoyable but challenging read. It is difficult on a number of levels. The plots of Wallace’s stories are far from straightforward. He is most concerned with presenting a character, or a set of characters, from a variety of different angles. While this also turns out to be one of the strengths of the collection – the array of diverse characters, voices, and viewpoints is remarkable – it also means that some real effort is required to access the perspective from which each story is told. The effort is well worth it and results in an exercise in empathy for the people the author portrays.

Wallace deals with issues of love, sexuality, family relationships, and entertainment culture. Some of the content is fairly graphic, though never gratuitous. The story from which the collection derives its name features the interior monologue of a sociopath, with all of the violence and perversity that would be expected. And yet, the cold, unaffected voice renders a direct and unsentimental picture of the others characters in the story that would otherwise be impossible to articulate. “Little Expressionless Animals,” recounts the scarred childhood and dysfunctional relationships of a Jeopardy contestant, investing an otherwise vacant and context-less face on a TV screen with a personal history.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the collection is the way that Wallace takes real life figures – Alex Trebek, Pat Sajak, Lyndon Johnson, and David Letterman all make appearances – and draws a recognizable picture of the public persona while making incisive comments and observations about the arena in which each moves, be it TV or politics. On the whole, this collection rewards the effort that must be put into reading it.