Larry’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2020)

Larry’s comments from the Nonfiction Reading - Only the Best group.

Jerome wrote: "This is very personal, so pardon me, but I worry about the future of my adult son. He is extremely intelligent, witty, empathic, but extremely introverted, lonely, and at times, depressed. One of our 3 cats, the one who attached himself to my son more than anyone else in our family, who had the softest fur, and would snuggle with him, passed away suddenly from an apparent heart attack this past Wednesday, and it hit my son very hard, as he has had few attachments in his life due to his introversion and being bullied. He seems to be improving daily in his mood since, but I worry...."

You're a good parent, Jerome. I am glad your son is doing better.

I love this story about Drake ... that is, about him insisting on finishing the game.

Sher wrote: "Dang-- I lost my long post; I will try again.

Whereas Steve and Larry felt frustration, I felt disappointment. I kept reading, because I was eager to see what would happen to Marya. The 19th C rom..."

Sher et al., That distinction between frustration and disappointment had me thinking for a long time yesterday. I finally used Wikipedia to look at "emotions" and was just amazed at what I didn't know about emotions. So many theories! And I have no idea which are the better ones. But when I think back to my own feeling about the story, I guess it really is a mix of of frustration and disappointment.

I think that Jerome's following question (or questions) possibly will stick in my mind as we read the next stories also. "Is Chekhov also making a comment on Russian society? Are they dreaming of their past royal glory, while it is leaving the majority stuck in dreary lives."

Sher wrote: "How do you appreciate the way Saunders breaks down and analyzes story? He takes it page by page- scene by scene (almost). Do you find that approach effective? It's different isn't it- we normally r..."

Sher, I think that--even as a book instead of his classroom lectures--he's teaching writers about how a story works and how it should work. So I do think it's effective for that audience.

My own initial take, which started pretty soon after Marya Vasilyevna's life was described and carried on until the end of the story, was that this was a life of quiet desperation ... and that left me with the same since of frustration that Steven described.

Carol wrote: "A very thoughtful poem by Whitman. The spider and the soul, both isolated, both throwing out gossamer threads across the vast expanse to connect, to form a bridge.
What does your friend, Mark Edmu..."

Carol,

I actually haven't bought this most recent book by Mark Edmundson. I will eventually. I have exchanged emails with him about Whitman, recommending several years ago that he acquire the following book: Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself. When you read the following Guardian review, you'll understand why.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

As the review says, however, the text of this book is indeed tricky to follow. It pays to read the poetry with another edition first.

Getting back to Mark Edmundson, I have read his Why Read? four times. Brilliant. He followed that one with Why Write?: A Master Class on the Art of Writing and Why it Matters and Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education. All are recommended.

But what I have corresponded with Mark about most is American football ... ;-) ... that stemmed from his publication of this one: Why Football Matters: My Education in the Game.

One of my Facebook friends just posted this one today:

A Noiseless Patient Spider
BY WALT WHITMAN

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

My Facebook friend, Mark Edmundson, is a true Whitman scholar. He just published this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Song-Ourselves...

John wrote: "Here is a poem by Ange Mlinko. According to A.E. Stallings, one of the best Rhymers writing today.

The Rhymers are part of the literary branch called New Formalism. So they are New Formalists. I p..."

John, really good. Scribd has two of her books available for borrowing. They are Distant Mandate: Poems and Marvelous Things Overheard: Poems. I've read several poems in each ... just wonderful.

I thought I might mention a book about short story writing that impressed me when a read it a few years ago. It's much more a grab bag of techniques than is the Saunders book, but it is an extremely well-informed look at those techniques. This is Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular by Rust Hills. It is so different from what Saunders does and just demonstrates how you can approach the short story as a form in several different ways.

Sher, thank you so much for this schedule. I think it is a great aid in facilitating a better discussion. One story a week is certainly the best for me!

Jerome wrote: "and the Yarmolinsky translation of "In the Cart" at archive.org:
In the Cart"

Jerome, that's a great find ... I didn't know that the Yarmolinsky translation was available like that.

Perhaps the best short story writer writing today--for my own tastes--may be Ted Chiang. All of his stories are either science fiction or fantasy based, but that should not limit readers to trying them. Chiang's story, "Story of Your Life," was turned into the Amy Adams movie, ARRIVAL.

His first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, received these highly praised reviews:

""Summarizing these stories does not do justice to Chiang's talent. Seemingly ordinary ideas are pursued ruthlessly, their tendons flayed, their bones exposed. Chiang derides lazy thinking, weasels it out of its hiding place, and leaves it cowering." —The Washington Post

"Chiang is a consummate stylist, and these lyrical tales aren't just great SF; they're great literature."—The Globe and Mail

"Ted Chiang's collection is probably—without exaggeration—the most anticipated short story collection of its generation."—The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others (p. 275). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

And his second collection, Exhalation: Stories, is just as good.

In thinking about the Carver LoA collection of short stories, it made me think of a more recent publication ... this is the LoA collection of Breece D'J Pancake short stories and more. I actually don't have this one ... just an earlier collection of his short stories, which are stunning.

This is from the LoA announcement: "“Pancake’s stories are the only stories written in just this way,” observes Jayne Anne Phillips in her introduction to this volume, “from inside the minds of protagonists coming of age in the mountains of an Appalachian world closed to others.” As beautiful, stark, and solemn as the landscape in which they are set, the stories concern miners, truckers, farmers, waitresses, and others possessed by dreams of change they can neither relinquish nor quite bring themselves to believe in. ... Breece D’J Pancake was a gifted and original writer who died far too young, having published only a few stories before taking his own life in 1979 at twenty-six."

Jeff and Sher,

The LIbrary of America has a wonderful collection of Carver's short stories.

https://www.amazon.com/Raymond-Carver...

And here is a great article in the New Yorker that looks at Carver and his relationship with his editor. It ends with this paragraph.

"In 1987, Carver wrote “Errand,” a story about the death of Chekhov, his literary idol. It was published in The New Yorker. The same year, Carver, like Chekhov, began spitting up blood. Carver had always been, he once said, “a cigarette with a body attached to it,” and he was found to have lung cancer. He and Gallagher bought a house on the Olympia Peninsula overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and they married on June 17, 1988. Some mornings, Carver tried to write, despite his illness. “But I get so awful tired,” he said. He died on August 2nd. He was fifty years old, and “Errand” was his last story. "

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

Sher wrote: "Hi All:
I bought a new iPad, so I am trying to see how to use it with apps. With GR it is different from phone and laptop; I hope I enjoy it.

Anyway, reading short stories almost seems like an acq..."

Sher,

I hope you enjoy that new iPad ... I'm still dicovering important things and new ways to use our iPads several years afgter getting them.

I'll wait until Jerome is ready before I take off on any real discussion. My own way of reading these short stories will probably continue the way I've handled the first one ... That is, to read the short story all the way through ... and then to read it and the comments in the Saunders book. Yeah, it's more work, but it works for me.

I have finished the first story, Chekov's "In the Cart." Without getting into the story itself, I'll say that I found Saunders analysis brilliant. I think that I have been reading too many things without thinking about why an author makes the choices she does. This book will help remedy that to some degree.

One comment about the short story form. We live in an age that doesn't reward the writing (and publication) of short stories very well. Many, many writers have made this point in recent decades. If you read current short stories, where do you turn to to find them???

Carol wrote: "T.S. Eliot, a friend of Pound's, once called him, 'the inventor of Chinese poetry in English..."

I think that there is a lot of argument over how good Pound was a translator. He has come under attack a lot ... but he also has a lot of defenders. Here's a link to one of the better lines of criticism, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...

As a coincidence, Ezra Pound appears as a walk-on in a very good crime novel I finished yesterday. It's Elmore Leonard's Pronto. A bookmaker is on the run from the mob and returns to Italy where he had served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Pound was a character that the bookmaker had encountered earlier.

Moving to the present day (in terms of the novel at least), Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens--the protagonist in the TV series Justified--goes to find him in Italy.

I think that he is the only genre writer for which the LoA has published his works in two different genres (Western and crime novels). Few writers write better dialogue than Leonard.

Carol wrote: "John wrote: "I did not know what thread to ask this question, so I thought I would ask here.

Although this is fiction, I am curious if anyone here has read Robinson Crusoe, and, if so, did you lik...Although a long time since I read it, I think it can perhaps be likened to the contemporary novel, 'The Martian' by Andy Weir ,for its detail of what was happening. "


Carol, I recently finished Andy Weir's new novel, Project Hail Mary. Here's my review of it.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Sher, connectivity and these online events have helped us get through the pandemic.

Zooming with family and friends has been the best, but yesterday we attended a Zoom session with Jane Goodall and Peter Wohlleben, in honor of Wohlleben's new book, The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond with Forests and Nature. Goodall mentioned that she has returned to live in the house she grew up in and she can look out the window at a beech tree, that she used to climb--and hang out in--as a young girl.

Sher wrote: "Hello-- For Joan Didion fans here is an exciting opportunity-- Libray of America is offering a few event on Joan Didion -- Pacific Time May 19th-- WED at 3 p.m.

Registration is free -- please read..."

Sher, I so appreciate you alerting us to the LoA events.

Here is a great article about how the LoA came into being ... with huge assistance from Edmund Wilson and some resistance from people like the Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin.

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/s...