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Life Being the Best & Other Stories
Thirteen stories deal with three sisters, a young woman's dashed hopes, failed love, life's dissatisfactions, missed opportunities, and the search for identity.
Contents:
Life being the best --
Astronomer's wife --
I can't get drunk --
Letters of a lady --
Art colony --
Winter in Italy --
Meeting of the stones --
Peter Foxe --
Convalescence --
First lover --
Career --
To the pure --
His idea of a mother.
Contents:
Life being the best --
Astronomer's wife --
I can't get drunk --
Letters of a lady --
Art colony --
Winter in Italy --
Meeting of the stones --
Peter Foxe --
Convalescence --
First lover --
Career --
To the pure --
His idea of a mother.
140 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1988
About the author
Kay Boyle
98 books43 followersKay Boyle was a writer of the Lost Generation.
Early years
The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. In later years Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.
Marriages and family life
That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and they moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of tuberculosis).
In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she had three more children.
During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby who owned the Black Sun Press and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories. They became such good friends that in 1928 Harry Crosby cashed in some stock dividends to help Boyle pay for an abortion. Other friends included Eugene and Maria Jolas. Kay Boyle also wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two O. Henry Awards.
In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had two children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.
McCarthyism, later life
In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.
In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963.
Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College, where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge,
Early years
The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. In later years Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.
Marriages and family life
That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and they moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of tuberculosis).
In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she had three more children.
During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby who owned the Black Sun Press and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories. They became such good friends that in 1928 Harry Crosby cashed in some stock dividends to help Boyle pay for an abortion. Other friends included Eugene and Maria Jolas. Kay Boyle also wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two O. Henry Awards.
In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had two children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.
McCarthyism, later life
In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.
In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963.
Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College, where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge,
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 15, 2011
Ugh.
I feel a little weird / bad / like a philistine for giving this collection of short stories two stars, but when I tried to click three stars I felt a little bit like a liar. I liked that I could read this book in one evening, and I wondered if maybe I read it too fast and didn't 'get' it properly, but then I said to myself, 'you've read lots of books and none of these stories did anything to grab you, they didn't dazzle you, they didn't even confuse you so you thought it was your own damn fault for not enjoying them, so don't be a twit and give this an extra star just because she is probably the type of writer that deserves at least three stars.' And then I thought, 'no, you're not going to get an extra star from me out of guilt that I've rated fluffy and 'trashy' (in a non-judgemental use of the term of course) memoirs by UFC fighters higher than your book. Yeah it's cool that you were buddies with James Joyce and Duchamp, and that you hung out with all the 1920's ex-pats in Paris, and William Carlos Williams might think you were a master with language and uncovering truths but I got more insight into the human condition from Got Fight? by Forrest Griffin*
*I was told there should be more pictures of bloody fighters in my reviews and less talk about fighting. So here is a gory picture of Forrest Griffin.
So yeah, no extra star for you Kay Boyle!
One the positive side this book can be read in a pretty zippy manner. The back of the book praises the stories as being "masterful in their complex, innovative use of language and their ironic acknowledgement of the subversive realities of life" and I never felt like she was doing too much with language that any competent writer would do, and I have no fucking clue what the last part about ironic blah blah blah even means (well I know what the words mean, but I have no idea what those words signify in a narrative, it sounds like grad school hookum to me).
Nothing in this book made my head hurt, it didn't make me angry (well that nonsense about ironic blah blah blah sort of annoyed me, but that isn't her fault, she didn't write the copy on the back cover) but none of the stories had too much interest for me either. At times my interest was almost piqued by what a reviewer of Death of a Man called the 'Nazi idyllic' quality of that novel, but I couldn't even muster up enough interest in any of the stories to feel like she was really even treading in an interesting manner on the blood and soil motifs of writers like Knut Hamsun. Instead she seems to love writing naturalism themes into the stories but so what. Her descriptions of nature more felt like filler to me than any possible crypto-facism or some nonsense like that. And really the only reason I'd even start thinking along these lines is because of criticism she received for that novel, even though I'm very aware that she was more of a bleeding heart liberal than an undercover Nazi.
I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I had even a negative reaction to it.
Instead I'll probably forget all details about this book, and maybe a year from now I'll be looking through my shelves on goodreads and go, oh yeah I read that book. Or I'll be looking for books to bring to used bookstores and see this on a real bookshelf and I'll have to go online to confirm, 'yes, Greg, you have read this book, you didn't seem to care for it too much and it will be safe for you to sell it for a dollar'.
I feel a little weird / bad / like a philistine for giving this collection of short stories two stars, but when I tried to click three stars I felt a little bit like a liar. I liked that I could read this book in one evening, and I wondered if maybe I read it too fast and didn't 'get' it properly, but then I said to myself, 'you've read lots of books and none of these stories did anything to grab you, they didn't dazzle you, they didn't even confuse you so you thought it was your own damn fault for not enjoying them, so don't be a twit and give this an extra star just because she is probably the type of writer that deserves at least three stars.' And then I thought, 'no, you're not going to get an extra star from me out of guilt that I've rated fluffy and 'trashy' (in a non-judgemental use of the term of course) memoirs by UFC fighters higher than your book. Yeah it's cool that you were buddies with James Joyce and Duchamp, and that you hung out with all the 1920's ex-pats in Paris, and William Carlos Williams might think you were a master with language and uncovering truths but I got more insight into the human condition from Got Fight? by Forrest Griffin*
*I was told there should be more pictures of bloody fighters in my reviews and less talk about fighting. So here is a gory picture of Forrest Griffin.
So yeah, no extra star for you Kay Boyle!
One the positive side this book can be read in a pretty zippy manner. The back of the book praises the stories as being "masterful in their complex, innovative use of language and their ironic acknowledgement of the subversive realities of life" and I never felt like she was doing too much with language that any competent writer would do, and I have no fucking clue what the last part about ironic blah blah blah even means (well I know what the words mean, but I have no idea what those words signify in a narrative, it sounds like grad school hookum to me).
Nothing in this book made my head hurt, it didn't make me angry (well that nonsense about ironic blah blah blah sort of annoyed me, but that isn't her fault, she didn't write the copy on the back cover) but none of the stories had too much interest for me either. At times my interest was almost piqued by what a reviewer of Death of a Man called the 'Nazi idyllic' quality of that novel, but I couldn't even muster up enough interest in any of the stories to feel like she was really even treading in an interesting manner on the blood and soil motifs of writers like Knut Hamsun. Instead she seems to love writing naturalism themes into the stories but so what. Her descriptions of nature more felt like filler to me than any possible crypto-facism or some nonsense like that. And really the only reason I'd even start thinking along these lines is because of criticism she received for that novel, even though I'm very aware that she was more of a bleeding heart liberal than an undercover Nazi.
I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I had even a negative reaction to it.
Instead I'll probably forget all details about this book, and maybe a year from now I'll be looking through my shelves on goodreads and go, oh yeah I read that book. Or I'll be looking for books to bring to used bookstores and see this on a real bookshelf and I'll have to go online to confirm, 'yes, Greg, you have read this book, you didn't seem to care for it too much and it will be safe for you to sell it for a dollar'.
May 15, 2017
Today, for Mother's Day, I read the story 'HIS IDEA OF A MOTHER'. He is a little boy, an orphan - How long she had been dead, he did not know. - and he resides with Aunt Petoo. Aunt Petoo is not his idea of a mother. An urchin is found, stealing cherries. Reynolds, a hired hand, is set to thrash him. Then this:
"Don't, don't, ah, please don't, Aunt Petoo!"
He spoke very quietly, and the "ah" seemed a strange sound for such a small boy to be making. It was a church, a poetry sound, and to hear him using it for a moment put her out.
He runs away, over a fence and up a hill he's eyed before. Cows are cropping grass in the growing dark. He rubs his foot against one cow's foreleg. He feels her sweet meadowy odor pass across her face. There's more. The feral scene tells us what the boy has missed.
Ah.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Sometimes there's not quite a plot, as in 'THE ASTRONOMER'S WIFE', just a small canvas:
That man might be each time the new arching wave, and woman the undertow that sucked him back, were the things she had been told by his silence were so.
And:
Life, life is an open sea, she sought to explain it in sorrow, and to survive women cling to the floating débris on the tide.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
"LETTERS OF A LADY" is brilliant: seven letters from Sibyl Castano to Sir Basil Wynns, M.D. A lot happens in those seven letters. In the second letter, when she has moved her form of address from 'Dear Sir' to 'Dear Sir Basil' but before she singly writes to 'My Dear, Dear Friend' before reverting to 'Dear Sir Basil', there is this:
You said the other day that Juno (her daughter) should be educated as if she were a boy, but what, it has occurred to me, would then become of the single and personal thing which no education should touch, were she to be narrowed down to the perfected code of insular morality which for me signifies an English education? She would be permitted no curiosity, and no imagination, and while that might make her a better object for filial and domestic experiences, I for my part am not interested in her responsibility to me, but rather in her capacities for discriminate living. At teatime, however, I am reasonable, and I can therefore in reply to your request but recommend that moment of the day to you as decidedly my most satisfactory time for your next visit.
I, the reader, was as doomed as Sir Basil.
Ah.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
There's ten more, but that's all you'll get from me.
"Don't, don't, ah, please don't, Aunt Petoo!"
He spoke very quietly, and the "ah" seemed a strange sound for such a small boy to be making. It was a church, a poetry sound, and to hear him using it for a moment put her out.
He runs away, over a fence and up a hill he's eyed before. Cows are cropping grass in the growing dark. He rubs his foot against one cow's foreleg. He feels her sweet meadowy odor pass across her face. There's more. The feral scene tells us what the boy has missed.
Ah.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Sometimes there's not quite a plot, as in 'THE ASTRONOMER'S WIFE', just a small canvas:
That man might be each time the new arching wave, and woman the undertow that sucked him back, were the things she had been told by his silence were so.
And:
Life, life is an open sea, she sought to explain it in sorrow, and to survive women cling to the floating débris on the tide.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
"LETTERS OF A LADY" is brilliant: seven letters from Sibyl Castano to Sir Basil Wynns, M.D. A lot happens in those seven letters. In the second letter, when she has moved her form of address from 'Dear Sir' to 'Dear Sir Basil' but before she singly writes to 'My Dear, Dear Friend' before reverting to 'Dear Sir Basil', there is this:
You said the other day that Juno (her daughter) should be educated as if she were a boy, but what, it has occurred to me, would then become of the single and personal thing which no education should touch, were she to be narrowed down to the perfected code of insular morality which for me signifies an English education? She would be permitted no curiosity, and no imagination, and while that might make her a better object for filial and domestic experiences, I for my part am not interested in her responsibility to me, but rather in her capacities for discriminate living. At teatime, however, I am reasonable, and I can therefore in reply to your request but recommend that moment of the day to you as decidedly my most satisfactory time for your next visit.
I, the reader, was as doomed as Sir Basil.
Ah.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
There's ten more, but that's all you'll get from me.
July 2, 2020
For a book I found in an Uptown LFL, this wasn't bad! She was part of that interwar generation of writers (most of whom have been lost to time – the last book I finished was about Louis Bromfield, who I had never heard of before either). The stories were all of perfect short story length, and she occasionally has a turn of phrase that really struck me.
December 29, 2023
Cuando leí El caballo ciego descubrí a una autora admirada por sus contemporáneos y considerada una de las escritoras cruciales estadounidense. Pero injustamente ha sido olvidada, casi no se la conoce y la mayoría de su obra está descatalogada. No lo entiendo porque es espectacular.
Afortunadamente tenemos a @munecainfinitaeditorial y gracias a ella podemos leer esta auténtica maravilla.
Quince relatos publicados entre 1931 y 1952 y divididos en dos partes, en la primera vemos los escritos de 1931 a 1938 y en la segunda los escritos de 1941 a 1951.
De esta forma vemos los años anteriores y posteriores a la SGM.
"Si vivir es lo mejor, qué es lo peor???"
"Vivir es lo mejor" es el primer relato y conocer a Palavicini me impactó tanto que pensé que no iba a encontrar otro igual.
"Ben" tambien me ha gustado, entristecido y apenado al ver la poca importancia que le damos a las personas que tenemos alrededor.
"Tu cuerpo es un joyero" , es otro de mis favoritos de la primera parte.
Ya sabemos que cuando leemos relatos unos nos gustan más que otros pero ya os digo que todos son maravillosos. Parte primera terminada. No creo que la segunda parte pueda superarlos.
Leo la segunda parte y lloro a mares con Los perdidos. Todos son maravillosos pero si solo pudierais leer un relato de esta segunda parte, leer este.
Ya no sé cual de las dos me ha gustado más. Brillantes, conmovedores,originales y con unos finales tremendos. Qué más da cual me haya gustado más, hay que leer a Boyle, disfrutar de su prosa, de sus personajes y de sus historias.
No la dejéis, es maravillosa 😍
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March 23, 2024Con el título Vivir es lo mejor" tenemos una recopilacion de relatos de Kay Boyke divididos en dos partes, una antes de la segunda guerra mundial entre 1931 y 1938 y la segunda parte después de la guerra entre 1941 y 1945. Se trata de una división que queda muy clara en los relatos, estos cambian radicalmente y si en los primeros ya se crean situaciones duras, los de la segunda parte son mas tristes, desoladores, más dolorosos.
Me ha gustado mucho leerlos, en la primera parte apor la forma en la que describe personajes, sentimientos y cómo crea atmósferas que te cortan la respiración, que te hacen sentir angustia o desasosiego y te hacen seguir leyendo, y en la segunda parte por cómo consigue que se respire el desconsuelo, la tristeza y desesperanza, las emociones de las personas que han vivido una guerra y han sobrevivido.
No suelo leer libros de relatos porque no suelen gustarme demasiado, pero este que he podido leer gracias a Babelio me ha gustado mucho y creo que es para recomendar. Su autora ha sido para mi todo un descubrimiento
Me ha gustado mucho leerlos, en la primera parte apor la forma en la que describe personajes, sentimientos y cómo crea atmósferas que te cortan la respiración, que te hacen sentir angustia o desasosiego y te hacen seguir leyendo, y en la segunda parte por cómo consigue que se respire el desconsuelo, la tristeza y desesperanza, las emociones de las personas que han vivido una guerra y han sobrevivido.
No suelo leer libros de relatos porque no suelen gustarme demasiado, pero este que he podido leer gracias a Babelio me ha gustado mucho y creo que es para recomendar. Su autora ha sido para mi todo un descubrimiento
December 12, 2023
La segunda mitad me gustaron mucho todos. Creo que leer sus relatos es como adentrarte en la historia de la IIGM y posguerra desde historias súper íntimas, casi antropológicas.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews