137. SHORT STORY MONDAY: The Kid by Salvatore Scibona

Salvatore's The Kid is the seventh of the eight stories The New Yorker featured when it provided its best twenty authors under forty years dubbed '20 under 40'. Reviews of the other stories could be read here.

A boy of about five years has suddenly appeared at the Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel Airport, and weeping. Speaking Latvian, the boy is incomprehensible and talks intermittently. Travellers waiting to embark have gathered around him trying to coax him in different languages if he will respond but all prove to no avail. But by some means the boy knows that he is in Germany and that since his mother had warned him that 

A German may appear to be a good fellow, but better to hang him

Janis, the boy, continued crying.

The next section of the story told of Elroy Heflin who had been posted to Latvia and was having an affair with a Latvian lady, Evija. Elroy wanted to marry Evija after she became pregnant but she said she wasn't ready and Elroy was deployed to Afghanistan. Thereafter Elroy began to send mother and son money. Then Elroy received an email to come for Janis as Evija was moving to Spain and she wouldn't go with Janis so Elroy must come for the boy within the month. The narrative then switched between Janis's present state and his father's confusion and frustrations.

Single and without any experience on how to bring his son up, Elroy's journey was filled with personal torture as he looks for a book on parenting to help him adjust; shouting at the boy in that kind of military tone and training. Whereas Elroy's frustration is easy to sympathise with, his final decision to leave a five-year old boy who speaks little English and no German and who seems a bit timid in a strange country is something that is difficult to understand and to forgive. Initially, he thought Janis might not be his child because Evija was dating other men in addition to him especially when he left her to Afghanistan. In fact, there was a Russian theatre fag whom she was dating. But Elroy accepted that the boy resembles him

"... He looks like me, though. A fucking miracle, right? You expect them to follow you in the face, but then you don't think they do, until they get to a certain age, and you see it."

But Heflin would go on to debate with himself, trying to psychologically adjust himself to include Janis, looking for a place to think, to see if things would work according to plan. However, finally he left Janis at the airport as he enplaned to Heathrow. Was it because of his military background? Or was it because he was also deserted by his mother and was raised by an ex-stepfather? Or was it simply because he couldn't raise the boy? But why leave him at an isolated place? I had to reread certain parts of the story because I thought I had missed some lines or had not understood certain passages properly. I really wanted to know why Heflin would do that. 

And when Heflin, having now become a Major, was on his fourth deployment in Afghanistan he received a letter from Evija wishing to see her son and hoping they will be together gain, the three of them.

If you have read this story, kindly share your thoughts on this with me.

136. African Roar 2011 Edited by Emmanuel Sigauke and Ivor Hartmann

Title: African Roar 2011
Editors: Emmanuel Sigauke and Ivor Hartmann
Genre: Short Story Anthology
Publishers: StoryTime
Pages: 214 (e-copy)
Year of Publication: 2011

African Roar has become an annual feature in our literary calendar with last year's publication being the second in the series after it debuted in 2010. It gives voices to new and emerging voices in Africa bringing together hitherto not-widely known writers and those whose writings have been recognised and appreciated with awards. The 2011 African Roar Short Story Anthology continued this tradition by bringing together new voices such as Ghana's Isaac Neequaye and established and award-winning writers such as the recent winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, NoViolet Bulawayo. This year's anthology consists of fourteen short stories with varied themes.

The anthology opens with Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudzo's Witch's Brew. Mai Chamboko has been described as a witch because she has lost her only child and had become successful in her trade. The narrator, a young club-footed boy who was himself a reject of society, found solace in Mai Chamboko and her cooking. This specially-gifted boy who sees beyond the natural world and could predict events knew that Mai Chamboko's goodness and selflessness would bring her into happiness. So that when her neighbour died and she forgot all that was said about her and went to cook for the family, using her own resources, everybody there gathered who ate the food commended Mai Chamboko. It was when she led the people through a series of traditional songs that the wall between them collapsed. Hands were shaken and past (mis)deeds were forgotten. The events in this story is very typical of many African societies where women who succeed, and especially when such women have no children, are considered witches. The delivery in Stanley's hands was striking especially when it was narrated by a young boy with similar fate.

NoViolet Bulawayo's Main is a graphic representation of Zimbabwe's erstwhile problem when long queues were formed to purchase essential goods, when shortages were the order of the day and restrictions regarding foreign exchange were in full force. This was the period of hyperinflation where a commodity like bread could cost several millions of Zimbabwean Dollars. The story also described police brutalities against the folks. There was the slow-motioned fall of a woman carrying a bundle of goods she didn't want to let go but which eventually rolled into a gutter after her fall, which resulted from having stood in line for too long. I couldn't help but notice that someone in the queue was wearing 'Obama for Change' and this aside having a political connotation also places the story into its setting.

A Writer's Lot by Zukiswa Wanner is a tragicomedy of a writer's life. Phiri is a novelist whose first published work has shot him to fame; however, this has not as yet translated into money. His publishers are delaying his royalties and he has not the money to support his fame. He receives frequent visits from Western journalists who are eager to interview him for their papers and magazines but are unwilling to pay him for the interview; initially Phiri thought this would make him famous. However, with time, he realised that they were just taking advantage of him to earn their living. Some even go ahead to ask for free tour of his town. It was through this frustration - frustration resulting from societal and familial expectations of a famous and published novelist and his inability to meet or play his part - led him into a darker world of connivance and robbery. This piece explores the life of a writer and the numerous entities that feed off such a person; the frustration and tedium that characterises the writing process, publishing and post-publishing period; and how 'overloaded' expectations can lead to destruction.

Grace Chirima has been sent abroad by his grandfather to further her education. As a patriarch, Grace's grandfather has sacrificed a lot for his family both near and afar. As Grace was trying to adjust to life in England, things suddenly changed: overnight hyperinflation in Zimbabwe had rendered all savings useless and her grandfather had also suffered a stroke. Now Grace must work in England to support her family home. As Grace goes through all these she began to miss his family back home wondering how best she could be useful to them, is it when she went home or stayed abroad? And she must depend on her flat-mate to keep her going. Hajira Amla's Longing for Home is a sad story which began on a platform of patriotism but ended on a slow acquiescence to the forces of nature and of man.

After marriage, Chukwudi promised to turn away from his hedonistic ways and debauchery and to stay true to his marriage vows though his wife believed otherwise and always asked him to protect himself should he involve himself in illicit affairs. It was at this International writers' conference that this promise was tested to its limit. Having been laughed at and pestered by friends Chukwudi tried as much as he could to stave off any amorous approaches and thoughts. But what happens when a woman bent on having her way with him got him into a room? Whilst trying to have it with this woman, he was chanced upon by the loudmouth of the group. Dejected for having failed and having broken his promise though nothing physical had occurred yet, Chukwudi left. Lose Myself by Uche Peter Umez is one funny story and a test of faithfulness. Did he fail because he succumbed though he never actualised it or he failed because he would have? The answers rest with the reader and perhaps the gender of the reader.

In Murenga Joseph Chikowero's Uncle Jeffrey a man's manhood had become limp and his fears had multiplied from a pending results from an AIDS test and a possible black magic wreaked upon him by a floosie he visited in a fleabag, when a police raid prevented him from paying the service provider and leaving behind one of his suede shoes - a personal item required in such black magic. Pestered by his wife to perform his connubial duty the man was caught between telling the wife the truth and possibly wrecking his family or finding excuses for the next three months when the second results would be in. Even then, there is also the problem of his limp manhood. It was this dilemma that took him to his village and a visit to his uncle, whilst all the time clutching onto his phone like it was an extension of his appendages, waiting for that important call from his doctor, and a tablet that would 'resurrect' the limped penis. Murenga's story would make the reader laugh especially when Murenga wouldn't leave his phone idle and his wife wouldn't stop pursuing him.

In The Times by Dango Mkandawire, a man has lost his son to the dreadful HIV/AIDS disease and has resolved to use the only thing he knows, writing, to expose licentious behaviour that has become the major means of spreading the disease. Caught in this name-and-shame trap are heads of parastatal institutions, CEOs, pastors and more. Richard, the owner of The Times newspaper, regards himself as Thomas Hast reincarnated. Every Friday people gather at news stands to get copies or crane their necks to read about the latest catch. As is common with such jobs, Richard receives threats from these big men who promise to take him out. When the General director of Malawi Water Board got the hint that his story would be in that Friday's Times he did everything possible to 'kill' the news.

Snakes will Follow You by Emmanuel Sigauke takes a look at prophesies delivered by leaders of spiritual churches. Or that's how I read this piece. Shumba had attended one of these spiritual churches with his brother's wife. The prophet had told him that some people in his family who don't want to see him progress are using witchcraft to destroy him and that they would be appearing to him in the form of snakes unless he moves to Harare or another town to continue his education. When a week later Shumba saw a sanke whilst reading Julius Caesar, he shouted for his sister-in-law. She confirmed and provided her own interpretations and commentaries on what should be done. The story also explores the relationship between the Shumba and his brother's wife who was in need in of a child.

Frank is a philosophy lecturer who fell in love with Beatrice. Beatrice's mother disapproved of the marriage; as a single mother she wanted a man rich enough to look after the family and her daughter and she saw it not in a university lecturer but in the military man. Ella, Beatrice's sister and a former student of Frank, is suddenly sick; she does not talk but when she does her words are incoherent. Beatrice called on Frank to help her sister and he obliged. The discomfort between Beatrice's mother and Frank was palpable anytime Frank comes to the house. But there is more: Beatrice's husband, the soldier, has something to do with Ella's situation. He had linked her to the Head of State and the Head of State had died in her presence. This is perhaps an allusion to Sani Abacha, the Nigerian Head of State whom, it is alleged, died from bouts of sex. Emmanuel Iduma's Out of Memory has a tinge of sadness running through. The personal discomfort of the people involved was clear. Beatrice wants to talk to Frank but Frank is almost taciturn in her presence and wants to push her out of his mind; Beatrice's mother sounds remorseful towards Frank but he pretends it is inconsequential. The beauty of the story is the tension it generates and the things not said.

Ivor Hartmann's Diner Ten is a unique story not only amongst the anthology; its uniqueness transcends the borders of the anthology into the sphere of writing, in general. Is it a science fiction or a fable? There is no best way of defining this story. Diner Ten is about Armageddon from a cockroach's point of view. Radic is a survivor and a helper. He's known by all his people and famous for his near-death escapes. He sees humans as intruders when they come out at night to have dinner. It was this one time that the human opened up a gaseous substance that has a picture of his ilk on it and sealed all openings. Written from the point of view of Radic, Ivor takes a tour of how these animals (or insects) see themselves and see humans.

Continuing the trend of presenting Zimbabwe's political and economic crises is Mbonisi P. Ncube's Chanting Shadows. This story is about the land reforms that sought to bring back some lands under black control. And here there is a clash of loyalty to a friend and to an identity. The issue of who is a Zimbabwean is also subtly raised. McNamara is a white farmer who describes himself as a Zimbabwean. In fact he is one in as many ways as a Zimbabwean could be defined. He was born in the country and has lived on this land all his life. Consequently, he is also linked to the land. His friend Mzala Joe, whom he brought up when the man had nowhere to turn to was caught between loyalty to his boss and friend and to the gathering youth who had already killed and destroyed some white farmers and their farms. As a show of friendship Mzala Joe stood by his friend against the raging youth and the two died together. In death they were considered as friends and not as a boss and a servant, thus overcoming the colour barrier.

Snake of the Niger Delta by Chimdindu Mazi-Njoku is about the developmental divide between the oil producing region of Nigeria and the country's capital. It shows how a precocious young boy coming from the region grew up to quell one of such fraudsters who have made defrauding the region their major occupation.

Ayodele Morocco-Clarke's Silent Night Bloody Night is a story of revenge. In this story the author hardly takes a stance or makes a judgement. The narrator, Ameze, is the daughter of a rich cocoa farmer in Nigeria. The family had travelled to their village in Benin-City for the Christmas. During their first night the house was invaded by armed robbers consisting of people whose parents had at one point or another worked for Ameze's father on his cocoa farm and had been, supposedly, cheated by the man. Thus, the leaders of the gang saw it fit to exact their vengeance on the man and his family. What ensued is bloody as the robbers demanded that the man slept with his daughter else they kill.

Water Wahala by Isaac Neequaye is a story about water shortage in an area in Accra. I read this story almost like an article because I live very close to the setting and I have a first hand experience of what the writer was describing; however, what made Neequaye's story exceptional and worth the read is the tension that water shortages could cause in the household between a man and his wife. It also explores how local politicians, most especially Member Parliaments, would often use the most needed amenity to campaign for votes but would end up doing nothing or would find that the problem is bigger than they had imagined. Kweku used to monitor the level of water in the tank. However, when the children leave for school that chore is handed over to his wife Agyapomaa. However, this time, Agyapomaa told Kewku that they had run-out of water when what is left could not cover both cooking and bathing: a choice had to be made. And Kweku had to go looking for water. Pestered by Agyapomaa's relentless demand (via phone calls and text messages) that there should be water by midday and the water-supplier's penchant for tricks, failure and outright lies, Kweku found himself between a situation he has absolutely no control over and Agyapomaa's simmering anger.

This collection is fun to read and addresses issues germane not only to the continent but also to humanity in a general sense. Like most anthologies some of the stories are more enjoyable than others though as a whole this anthology would bring to the reader a satisfying reading experience. A kindle version is available on amazon.

135. SHORT STORY MONDAY: Dayward by ZZ Packer

ZZ Packer's Dayward is set in the period when the emancipation law has been passed and blacks in America were free to leave their masters and live as freed people. Lazarus and his deaf sister, Mary Celeste, though free, are on the run from the Five Daughters. And Miss Thalia, the owner of Five Daughters had fulfilled her promise of setting Kittredge's dog on them after they had had a head-start because she considered

the African race an ungrateful lot of thieves for deserting once emancipation came around. "All I got to say," ... "is that we always fed and clothed you slaves."

Fourteen year old Lazarus and nine year old Mary Celeste were on a journey to reunite with their only surviving relative in New Orleans but first they had to survive the journey and the dogs. Using tales told them by their parents like the man who suffocated and killed a dog by wrapping around his some homespun from his shirt and ramming it down the dog's throat, the siblings managed to survive but not without struggle. It is on this journey that we get to know what had happened to them. Mary Celeste was not born deaf; her deafness developed gradually when she complained of hearing sounds that later became 'a strict calm of long corridors, unaccompanied by anything.' Instead of calling white folks' doctor, Miss Thalia and Mr Thompson called the county's veterinarian, who specialised in horse carbuncles. He had advised 'Master and Miss to refuse to tolerate the girl's melancholy and to end her bed rest.' Gradually Mary Celeste became deaf. Packer also filled us in on how their parents had died. She writes

Lazarus thought on it all. How their father had come to be killed, not from his ear being nailed to the post but from scratching it day and night until it pussed over. How their mother had run off into the woods, witless and mad, after their father's death. She'd been gone nearly three days, then caught pneumonia and died and died before she could be properly whipped for attempting to escape - if churning around the same copse of trees less than four miles off could be called escaping.

Having also rammed his clothed hand into Miss Kittredge's dog's throat and suffocating it to death, Lazarus had to endure an infected and putrefying hand all through the journey aided by Mary and feeding on black berries. But they would finally find Aunt Minnie with her seven children.

The story is not about the what happened in the end, the reunion which itself was nothing spectacular for Minnie had her own problems; however, Packer used the journey was used to discuss the plight of blacks during the days when they were mere properties and also, perhaps, as a metaphor even in today's world. This story reminded me of Toni Morrison. ZZ Packer's story is a haunting one but then that's the history of Americans of African descent. Currently, some African Americans don't want to be referred to by that name  as they find it discriminatory.

Quotes for Friday from Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things

It wasn't an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of estivation, a dormancy, the psychological equivalent of what lungfish do to get themselves through the dry season, except that in Estha's case the dry season looked as though it would last forever. [12]

Though you couldn't see the river from the house anymore, like a seashell always has a sea-sense, the Ayemenem House still had a river-sense. [30]

"We are prisoners of war," Chacko said. "Our dreams have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter" [52]

Some things come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms with built-in cupboards. They would learn more about punishment soon. That they came in different sizes. That some were so big they were like cupboards with built-in bedroom. You could spend your whole life in them, wandering through dark shelving. [109]

It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again. [218]

He still had about him the aura of rage that even murder cannot quell. [224]

It is unreasonable to expect a person to remember what she didn't know had happened. [251]

When you re-create the image of man, why repeat God's mistakes? [285]

Screams died in them and floated belly up, like dead fish. [292]

Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it. Dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other. As though they knew already that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain. As though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken. [317]

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Read the review here

134. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things (Harper Perennial, 1997; 321) by Arundhati Roy won the Man Booker prize in 1997 amid some controversies. Some have gone ahead to describe the book harshly, whilst others have praise the insight of Roy. One thing is however clear The God of Small Things is a book that opens up a society exposing all its rotten innards and demands that we choose but choose wisely.

In this novel, Roy examines the lives we live and the choices we make on the lives of the people around us, mostly on the innocent children. She also examines hypocrisy, more especially political hypocrisy, and betrayal by the state, friends, loved ones, and family. Estha and Rahel are more than just fraternal twins. Their soul reach out for each other. One day, whilst on their way to pick their uncle's - Chacko's - daughter, Estha was sexually molested by a hairy man who offered him a cold soft drink. Estha lost his innocence and something lively in him died. And something in Rahel also died. This was the first of many 'deaths' and betrayals that were to occur in the lives of these children of seven years. Their mother, Ammu, who had divorced their drunk father was hardly recognised or considered by the family including his Oxford-graduate brother, Chacko. When Ammu fell in love with Velutha, an untouchable who was supposed to occupy the lowest of the rungs in life, Baby Kochama, Ammu's aunt moved into action. In fact, Velutha himself was betrayed by his father Vellya Paapen, who reported the incident to Mamachi, Ammu's mother and overheard by Margaret Kochama, her aunt. He was also betrayed by the political system led by Comrade K.N.M. Pillai, who disowned him as a member of his party tor advance his own selfish ambition, and was finally betrayed by Estha (and Rahel), two children whom he had loved and cared for and helped.

To Baby Kochama - a woman who unable to get the man she wanted, a man for whose love she went to a convent and changed denominations, did not marry again - such an abominable union portends doom for the whole family, it tarnishes their purity and their image and so she schemed to thwart it and in doing so got an innocent man killed by the overly enthusiastic police force who seem to work for one caste against the other. Baby Kochama had gone to the police to lie about the relationship between Velutha and Ammu, describing it as rape. She also charged Velutha for adoption, after Estha, Rahel and Sophie Mol - Chacko's daughter who was visiting with her mother Margaret Kochama after the death of the latter's second husband, Joe, went missing for several hours. However, when Ammu told the truth to the policemen and was confirmed by Estha and Rahel, the police officer, Inspector Thomas Mathew, knew they had committed murder and that murder was heaped on Baby Kochama. However, everything would disappear if the twins could identify Velutha as the man who kidnapped them. The kids who were there when the police arrived at the History House and beat Velutha to comatose - there again something died in them - knew the truth and spoke it and almost defended it. But Baby Kochama, the schemer, threatened them with the murder of Sophie Mol, for on the previous evening whilst leaving home to the home they had created at the History House, because home has become unbearable with their mother shouting at them and locked in a room by their uncle, their boat had capsized and Sophie Mol had drowned because unlike them she could not swim. Baby Kochama presented to the children a jail term for Ammu or identifying Velutha as the culprit, after all the policeman had told her that Velutha, after the heavy beating would not survive the night. And Estha was chosen to do the identification. And on that day the last living thing in Estha died.  

Several individuals played a part in the destruction of the young souls including Comrade Pillai who betrayed Velutha when he needed him most and used his death as a launch pad for his Communist party campaigns and demonstrations; Chacko who allowed himself to be manipulated by Baby Kochama to beat and sack Ammu out of their home, and ordered Estha to be returned to his father; Papaachi who saw no interest in educating a woman and so Ammu, an inherently brilliant girl, was left uneducated and Mamaachi who only considered Chacko as her child. Again, the traditional practice that give women no chance to develop their abilities, that patriarchal system that considers them to be inferior to men was at play in this story.

The story is told back and forth, between an older Estha who was considered mad because he never talks and goes on long walks everyday, an older divorced Rahel who had come from America, where she had migrated to with her husband, when Baby Kochama told her about Estha and his seeming madness and the younger Estha and Rahel. As events unravel, one has the feeling of something destructive was hovering on the horizon. It makes one think of rape and others. And this builds up due to Roy's narrative style which drops hints of what is approaching and also by presenting the state of Estha and Rahel in the first pages. Because Roy chose to tell the story mostly from the point-of-view of Rahel, some of the words were written in the way they were pronounced. She tried as much as possible to carry the feeling of childhood to the reader. 

The God of Small Things is many things. It is the destruction of a life too young to understand its choices; it is the decision of society to keep people at a low level of life where they can expect nothing but the crumbs from once-in-a-while benevolent privileged folks. It is also about how people take advantage of the poor and how individualistic people could be. Above all it is a book of tragedy.
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Read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge

133. SHORT STORY MONDAY: Lenny Hearts Eunice by Gary Shteyngart

In this short story Shteyngart takes a look at a near-futuristic America where diet, health, technology, credit (or finances) all matter, through the awkward or mismatched relationship between Eunice Parker and Leonard (Lenny) Abramovic. In this near-futuristic world individuals are rapidly evolving (have already become Post Humans different from humans) and the workers at the Post-Human Services have been told to

keep a diary, to remember who we were, because at every moment our brains and synapses are being rebuilt and rewired with maddening disregard for our personalities, so that each year, each month, each day, we transform into different people, utterly unfaithful iterations of our original selves, of the drooling kids in the sandbox. 

But not Lenny. Lenny had just returned from Rome to his bio-tech company that deals in selling immortality to High Net Worth Individuals and where he works as Life Lovers Outreach Coordinator (Grade G). In Rome, Lenny had given in to all sorts of indulgences, consuming all sorts of wine and food: pig jowls of the bucatini all'amatriciana, plate of spaghetti with spicy eggplant, rabbit drowned in olive oil. Unconcerned about his health in a world where humans have scientifically evolved to Post-Humans where youth is all that is needed to survive, where thirty-nine is old, Lenny's return to his New York office was met with a demotion; because he reminds the people of death. Because he wasn't looking younger and for a company that sells immortality his state is bad for business. In fact, his friend had just been sacked for turning forty and perhaps looking old. In this world that Shteyngart described people are always monitoring their adrenal stress index, insulin levels, methylation and homocysteine levels, testosterone and estrogen levels and for employees their results are always screaming from screens including their moody + stress indicators, 'which was always supposed to read "positive/playful/ready to contribute" but which, with enough input from competitive co-workers, could be changed to "one moody betch today" or "not a team playa this month."' 

Through this, Shteyngart provides a funny almost comic look at recent American culture of diet-watching, body-weighing, credit-rating, body-building, selling-anything and more. Individuals take Niacin tablets, supplements, indulge in de-stressing, and breathing-right activities all to look fit and live forever. Everything that is to be done must contribute towards a healthy life so that even love is thought of in terms of boosting the biochemical compositions of the body. When Lenny told Joshie, his forever-young boss, that he has thinks he is in love, Joshie said:

It's great for pH, ACTH, LDL, whatever ails you. As long as it's good, positive love, without suspicion or hostility.

Lenny is sex-starved, probably, and had met the beautiful Eunice at the de Tonino bar in Rome. There they had struck acquaintance, Eunice never thought much about it but Lenny was all for it including having some romantic ideas when Eunice took him home but nothing materialised. Per Eunice's letters to an unidentified Precious Panda Lenny was old, not in the league of gentlemen she would date, a sloven who do not even know the proper way to brush his teeth or button his shirt, a non-modern person who loves reading 'Tolesoy' instead of streaming; very much unlike her former boyfriend Ben whom she left because he was too good for her. So that there was a great divergence between what Eunice and Lenny thought of each other. Yet Lenny never gave up and kept on writing her to entice her. Eunice finally decided to get closer to her parents in America and having nowhere to live went to live with Lenny and a relationship developed from that though Eunice was still her snobbish and 'modern' self.

The American ethic mostly seen in trade and commerce was profoundly portrayed in this story. One reason for Lenny's demotion, aside his health, and perhaps the most important or only reason, was his poor sales record when he went to Rome, selling to only one person in that year. But Lenny is running out on cash because of poor management by his brokers who had invested his funds in loss-making companies and can no longer afford his beta-dechronification necessary for him to look young. Back in New York and going back on his health-regiment Lenny almost became his pre-Rome self and earned his seat back at the office. He also got a client who wanted to buy eternity for himself and his children and Lenny was explaining what he was doing

I painted him a three-dimensional picture of millions of autonomous nanobots inside his well-preserved squash-toned body, extracting nutrients, supplementing, delivering, playing with the building blocks, copying, manipulating, reprogramming, replacing blood, destroying harmful bacteria and viruses, reversing soft-tissue destruction, preventing bacterial infection, repairing DNA.

And the test carried on this individual is fun to read: Willingness to Live Test; The H-Scan Test to measure the subject's biological age; The Willingness to Persevere in Difficult Conditions Test; The Infinite Sadness Endurance Test; The Response to Loss of Child Test. In the end it was clear that what this company is dealing in is snake oil.

The divide between Euro culture and American culture was stated and with no knowledge in such issues a bold statement cannot be made here. For instance, it was almost clear that these longevity, immortality, ultra-health care issues are American fantasies and idiosyncrasies that has nothing to do with Eurpoeans. The book is a reminder of Atwood's Oryx and Crake with tinges of Orwell's 1984.

NEW PUBLICATION: How Shall We Kill the Bishop and Other Stories by Lily Mabura

Slated to be published in March 2012 is Lily Mabura's short story anthology How Shall We Kill the Bishop and other Stories. The title story How Shall We Kill the Bishop was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2010. I read the story but got lost along the way; however, I know of other individuals who loved the story. The challenge is now to revisit this short story and have a second reading.

From the Publishers:

An artist mourning for a brother who died in Bosnia, a restless young woman alerted to the possibility of life outside her tight knit community, an unemployed lawyer lingering in a Kenyan hospital - Lily Mabura's first collection of short stories deals with characters whose fates fascinates and alarm. 

Set in Kenya, the USA, Namibia and the Congo, these brief, evocative tales demonstrate an acute sensitivity to the globalised trajectories which increasingly distinguished our world.

One of Kenya's most promising authors, Lily Mabura's Story 'How shall we Kill the Bishop?' was shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing. 

Visit the publishers site and download Man in ultramarine Pyjamas for free. The book is published under the African Writers Series.

Brief Bio: Lily Mabura is an African and African Diaspora scholar and writer at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her literary awards include the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and Kenya's National Book Week Literary Award. She has published several short stories, a novel, The Pretoria Conspiracy (Focus Books, 2000), and three children's books. She is currently working on a fictional exploration of Kenya's 2007-08 post-election violence, Man from Magadi. (source: A Life in Full and other stories)

Quotes for Friday from Veronique Tadjo's As the Crow Flies

We live in a world where we can tell neither head nor tail. We live in a world that jeers at you and proffers insults, an incestuous world that robs you of hope. [23]

It is definitely a century that hands its head in shame. Our elders have been called impotent, and we are accused of being 'limp'. [31]

We are all sick and tired of this suffocation, of this monarch lording it over his people. Everybody can feel that this is a sterile century. Even love is finding it hard to thrive. [31]

Somewhere, a young man wallows in his suffering - his wound so deep he cannot draw a distinction between love and destruction. When he fights, he wounds his adversary like a fighter in search of victory. [59]

His pain is so great that he wants to punish all women, but I tell him, 'No, love is the colour of hope. Bitter today, sweet tomorrow. You should not throw away your wealth of tenderness and let the honey-filled caresses dry up. Do not be wicked just to prove who you are, just to expose your wounds to the skies.' [59]
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Read the review here. The entire book could be quoted if one desires for the prose is exquisite.

January in Review and Projections for February

Most of my readings this year would be challenge-related as I pursue the target of 70 books. I have tried committing myself to 50 pages a day, regardless of the font size or volume of the book and somehow it is working. Weekends are used for rounding up reads especially those that are less than 150 pages to completion. 

Comparatively, I read more books (9) in January 2011 than I have read in January 2012 (7, excluding single stories). However, the total pages read (1533) for last year January is less than the total pages (1755, excluding single stories and the first review for 2012 which was read in December 2011) for this month. Books read and or reviewed in January are:

1. So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba (read in 2011, Top 100 Books Reading Challenge)
2. The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (Top 100 Books Reading Challenge)
3. I Write What I Like by Steve Biko
4. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (Top 100 Books Reading Challenge, Chunkster Challenge)
5. As the Crow Flies by Veronique Tadjo (African Reading Challenge)
6. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (Top 100 Books Reading Challenge)
7. African Roar 2011 edited by Ivor Hartmann and Emmanuel Sigauke
8. Burning Grass by Cyprian Ekwensi

In addition I read a number of single stories which were reviewed for Short Story Monday and are part of the 100 shots of shorts challenge:

1. The Pilot by Joshua Ferris
2. Here We Aren't, So Quickly by Jonathan Safran Foer
3. What You Do Out There, When You're Alone by Philipp Meyer
4. The Entire Northern Side was Covered with Fire by Rivka Galchen
5. The Mistress's Dog by David Medalie
6. Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo

In February I would continue with the intersecting-challenge books. My first read will be Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfuoz, a 498-page book that qualifies for the Chunkster Challenge, the Africa Reading Challenge and the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge. I want to read Harare North, a non-challenge book, because it has been on my shelf for sometime now. Again, there will be - not sure though - some Morrisons to be read. I have Paradise, Her Bluest Eyes and Sula  on my shelf. Again I really want to read Jose Saramago's Blindness. I am running out of African-authored books on my shelf and need to go book-buying soon, else my reading might get skewed this month or year. Whatever I read, I hope February would be as fruitful as January has been.

132. As The Crow Flies by Veronique Tadjo

Title: As the Crow Flies

Author: Veronique Tadjo

Translator: Wangui wa Goro

Original Language: French

Publishers: Heinemann (AWS)

Pages: 104

Year of First Publication: 2001

Country: Cote d'Ivoire

Read for the African Reading Challenge

As the Crow Flies is a love story of some sorts. The story is a cascade of individual stories capable of standing on their own as shown by one thread which was published under the title Betrayal  in the Opening Spaces edited by Yvonne Vera.

The story opens with a woman whose husband also has a wife. Initially, she was happy; her heart was filled with joy. Then things began to change and she was not happy anymore. There was a detachment, somewhat. And she applied for a divorce. The coming of this woman, from abroad, to meet this man interspersed several sections of the story. Thus, as if the story is diverting from some course, which it always did, then suddenly the woman at an airport comes up. 

From this somewhat love story, Tadjo presented us with a commentary of happenings around the world,happenings as she reads from the newspapers. Through this she also presents the reader with some of the idiosyncrasies of Western life such as the fear of getting fat even when she was gobbling ice-creams. There are also several political critiques in this story. Tadjo provides a scathing analyses of our present life. She writes:

It is definitely a century that hands its head in shame. Our elders have been called impotent, and we are accused of being 'limp' ... Indeed, the town lost its scent a long time ago. We are all sick and tired of suffocation, of this monarch lording it over his people. Everybody can feel that this is a sterile century. Even love is finding it hard to thrive. 

Suddenly, there is a comparison of life in Africa and the US which morphed into a girl who is pregnant and in search of a place to abort the baby. Through similar picturesque descriptions Tadjo presented us with the rot in our society, the unlove, the non-love, the difficulties, the wickedness. All the stories had to do with love and its numerous manifestations or non-manifestations. There was an old beggar who killed a young boy for occupying his space and attracting his clients. Thus, in Tadjo's world or in the world she painted, love is not far from rot and the opposites live with each other. The rot manifests from the unlove we show and from the non-loved we have. And as the story switches from scene to scene, the narrative style also changes with it. There are places where it is the first person 'I'. At other places there is the second person and the omniscient narrator were also used and there are places where the narrator addresses the reader.

One thing that is clear is the poetic flow of the write. Reading this reminded me of Mia Couto, not his ultra-refined sentences with all its inversions, but his style of storytelling and his visions which breaks boundaries and the seeming magical nature of his characters for in Tadjo's world all these converge, with beauty. Tadjo knows her subject. Regarding the rot in society she writes:

I want to talk about the death of a pregnant woman in that suffocating part of the city. The architect had not been entirely honest and the contractor negligent.

This particular strand hammers on shoddy works - is it to get more profit? - and its ultimate end. This particular one caused explosion of the toilet pipes and death of people. This same story became a comment on rapid population growth and limited public amenities, as people packed themselves into a bus at bursting point, and again suddenly morphed into a subtle argument for abortion when:

Young girls, muttering inaudible words, contort their bodies on the hospital floor. One of them looks especially young. 

Then the love story comes in again. A man who has been betrayed decides to taken vengeance on all women.

Somewhere, a young man wallows in his suffering - his wound so deep he cannot draw a distinction between love and destruction. ... His pain is so great that he wants to punish all women, but I tell him, 'No, love is the colour of hope. Bitter today, sweet tomorrow. You should not throw away your wealth of tenderness and let the honey-filled caresses dry up. Do not be wicked just to prove who you are, just to expose your wounds to the skies.'

To show the other sides of love, the narrative leads us to a boy (or a man) who was visiting his mother after a long period of absence and estrangement. And this occurred when the woman was on his deathbed. The duality of Tadjo's world is negatively. So that even though 'the city dazzled with bright lights and shimmered with wonders ... one false move would lead to mud and filth'. Again, he showed the inner rot, the poverty that has been plastered with an ostentatious show of superficial wealth, wealth which run shallow. Consequently,

Although people wore gold, if you just turned your head you would see the poor in tatters and the street children. If you came off the brightly lit streets and ventured further out, you would find yourself choking on the dust of abandoned tracks. ... The worst part is it was that the inhabitants had lost hope.

This vision is found in all major cities, especially across the developing world where stupendous wealth exists side by side with abject poverty and a showy of mendicancy. It is visions like these that turn the narrator into a vaticinator prophesying the destruction of the oppressed and warning the oppressors whilst pointing out the oppressors, those who squeeze out the wealth from the society for themselves because they have not love, because they think not of the other but of themselves and their bellies; To them

I say, 'Be wary of those cheques with lots of noughts, though big-bellied bank accounts, and black lacquered Mercedes.' Your gardens will be trampled upon, your sacred altars under siege, and your fetish idols beheaded. Your houses will crumble. Your books will be strewn on the ground, and your famous thinkers condemned. All traces of your footsteps will be erased and your chests will be pierced with poisoned arrows on abandoned beaches. 

The stories are beautifully written and reads like poetry. In fact, interspersed are pieces of poems. Though they are disjointed the theme of love, humanity, the results of unlove, of egoism, of individualism run through. This theme is not different from Tadjo's non-fiction work on the Rwandan crises The Shadow of Imana.

This is recommended to anyone who would want to try a different kind of African story and at only 104 pages, it does not burden the mind; yet, the reader would leave with something.

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Brief Bio: Click Here

131. SHORT STORY MONDAY: Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo

Hitting Budapest is the winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2011. The story is about five young girls, mostly pre-teen, moving from their shanty town of Paradise to the estates of Budapest in search of guavas and anything that matter. As they make their journey towards Budapest they converse as all children do. It is through this that we get to know that Chipo, a girl of ten years, has been impregnated by her grandfather.

At Budapest they met a white woman of 33 years who had just come from London, eating ice-cream. They looked longingly at this ice-cream only for her to throw what is left of it into the dustbin and take a picture of them. On their way back they shared their dreams with each other: to travel to America, get big houses and cars. Whereas IMF is a street at Budapest, AU is a street at Paradise, the shanty town.

Back at Paradise, the children went to ease themselves in the bush where they saw a woman dangling from a rope - a possible suicide. The children decided to remove the shoes the dead woman was wearing and sell for it for bread.

Initially, this story reads as a metaphor where some Africans in search of better lives travel abroad. Again, Paradise and Budapest represent the economic duality that we have in most countries where extreme poverty exist side by side with all the skyscrapers and glass-houses. However, as the story unfold, the metaphorical view changed.

As the children journeyed in search of guavas as food, they discussed Chipo's pregnancy. Most of them did not know how babies are made with some thinking that God puts it there. However, these same children knew about terrorists who hijack planes. They also know that most people who go to America clean poop in nursing homes. I found this a bit difficult to take.

Like most of the winning stories in the Caine Prize for African Writing, there was defilement, poverty, extreme hunger, dejection, and many more. Whereas some readers, including myself, have bemoaned the trend of the winning and shortlisted stories others have equally embraced them. Irrespective of my belief that even such stories could be written in a different way or from a different angle to make it new, this story reads nicely. The story can be read here.

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Brief Bio: NoViolet’s stories have won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing and shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN Studzinsi Award. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Boston Review, Newsweek, The Warwick Review, as well as in anthologies in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK.

NoViolet recently earned her MFA at Cornell University where her work has been recognized with a Truman Capote Fellowship. She currently teaches creative writing and composition at Cornell. NoViolet was born and raised in Zimbabwe. (Source)

NEW PUBLICATION: Birds of Our Land and Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

This year Cassava Republic has two new titles:

The first is a children's guide to West African birds called Birds of Our Land, by Virginia Dike. The book aims to introduce Nigerian children to 25 birds representing the major species in the region. Through rich, poetic descriptions, it explains the basic features of these birds and includes key things to note in observing them. It is also richly illustrated with beautiful paintings by artist Robin Gowen. We believe this book is more than a great read, it is the perfect tool for parents and educators to encourage children to spend more time exploring nature.

Virginia Dike is a professor and head of the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and is also a founding member of The Children's Centre Library at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka.

Our second book is the haunting novel, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away, by Christie Watson. Winner of the 2011 Costa Award for First Novel, this beguiling novel tells the story of 13-year-old Blessing and her brother Ezikiel who must leave their comfortable life in Lagos to live with their grandparents in a poor village in the Niger Delta when their father leaves them for another woman. Just as Blessing begins to settle into this new life peopled by unforgettable characters, she finds out that all may not be as it seems. and forces beyond her control threaten to tear the family apart.

Christie Watson has worked for over ten years as a children’s nurse. She has a Masters in Creative Writing at University of East Anglia.

Quotes for Friday from William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

Years ago we in the South made our women into ladies. Then the War came and made the ladies into ghosts. So what else can we do, being gentlemen, but listen to them being ghosts? [10]

Maybe you have to know anybody awful well to love them but when you have hated somebody for forty-three years you will know them awful well so maybe it's better then may be it's fine then because after forty-three years they can't any longer surprise you or make you either very contented or very mad. [12]

Ellen: blind romantic fool who had only youth and inexperience to excuse her even if that; blind romantic fool, then later blind woman mother fool when she no longer had either youth or inexperience to excuse her, when she lay dying in that house for which she had exchanged pride and peace both and nobody there but the daughter who was already the same as a widow without ever having been a bride ... [13]

In church, mind you, as though there were a fatality and curse on our family and God Himself were seeing to tit that it was performed and discharged to the last drop and dreg. [20]

Neither papa nor Ellen said Come back home. No: This occurred before it became fashionable to repair your mistakes by turning your backs on them and running. [28]

His guests would bring whiskey out with them but he drank of this with a sort of sparing calculation as though keeping mentally ... a sort of balance of spiritual solvency between the amount of whiskey he accepted and the amount of running meat which he supplied to the guns. [46]

Boys, this time he stole the whole durn steamboat! [51]

[Y]ou will notice that most divorces occur with women who were married by tobacco-chewing j.p.'s in country courthouses or by ministers waked after midnight, with their suspenders showing beneath their coattails and no collar on and a wife or spinster sister in curl papers for witness. [57]

Or maybe women are even less complex than that and to them any wedding is better than no wedding and a big wedding with a villain preferable to a small one with a saint. [61]

[B]ut the fact that women never plead nor claim loneliness until impenetrable and insurmountable circumstances forces them to give up all hope of attaining the particular bauble which at the moment they happen to want. [63]

Love, with reference to them, was just a finished and perfectly dead subject like the matter of virginity would be after the birth of the first grandchild. [90]

But who knows why a man, though suffering, clings, above all the other well members, to the arm or leg which he knows must come off? [111]

So that he must have appeared, not only to Henry but to the entire undergraduate body of that small new provincial college, as a source not of envy because you only envy whom you believe to be, but for accident, in no way superior to yourself: and what you believe, granted a little better luck than you have had heretofore, you will someday possess; - not of envy but of despair. [117]

Henry, the provincial, the clown almost, given to instinctive and violent action rather than to thinking, ratiocination, who may have been conscious that his fierce provincial's pride in his sister's virginity was a false quantity which must incorporate in itself an inability to endure in order to be precious, to exist, and so must depend upon its loss, absence, to have existed at all. [118/9]

In fact, perhaps this is pure and perfect incest: the brother realising that the sister's virginity must be destroyed in order to have existed at all, taking that virginity in the person of the brother-in-law, the man whom he would be if he could become, metamorphose into, the lover, the husband; by whom he would be despoiled, choose for despoiler, if he could become, metamorphose into the sister, the mistress, the bride. [119]

[A]nd Sutpen still waiting, certainly no one could say for what, incredible that he should wait for Christmas, for the crisis to come to him - this man of whom it is said that he not only went out to meet his troubles, he sometimes manufactured them. [130]

God may mark every sparrow, but we do not pretend to be God, you see. Perhaps we do not even want to be God, since no man would want but one of these sparrows. And perhaps when God looks into one of these establishments like you saw tonight, He would not choose one of us to be God either, now that He is old. [143]

[I]t would not be the first time that youth has taken catastrophe as a direct act of Providence for the sole purpose of solving a personal problem which youth itself could not solve. [148]

I really requires an empty stomach to laugh with, that only when you are hungry or frightened do you extract some ultimate essence out of laughing just as the empty stomach extracts the ultimate essence out of alcohol. [162]

There are somethings which the intelligence and the senses refuse just as the stomach sometimes refuses what the palate has accepted but which digestion cannot compass [188]

[T]he only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak ..[217]

[T]here was a limit even to irony beyond which it became either just vicious but not fatal horseplay or harmless coincidence. [333]

[T]here are situations where coincidence is no more than the little child that rushes out onto a football field to take part in the game and the players run over and around the unscathed head and go on and shock together and in the fury of the struggle for the facts called gain or loss nobody even remembers the child nor saw who came and snatched it back from dissolution... [333]

[A] man who could believe that a scorned and outraged and angry woman could be bought off with formal logic would believe that she could be placated with money too... [335]

[H]e had learned that there were three things and no more: breathing, pleasure, darkness; and without money there could be no pleasure, and without pleasure it would not even be breathing but mere protoplasmic inhale and collapse of blind unorganism in a darkness where light never began. [374]

[W]hen you are proud enough to be humble you don't have to cringe [410]

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Read the review here

130. Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom!* (Vintage, 1936; 485) is a story of how a singular decision made by a poor boy, at a time when he was too young to understand anything, caused so much devastation to him and the people around him. The story follows from when that decision, and later others, was made and their effects through the generations, beginning from 1820 when the first malevolent seed was sown to 1910 when the last bitter fruit was harvested, or crushed.

Thomas Sutpen appeared suddenly in Yoknapatawpha County. A strange man with strange looks, strange behaviour, strange language, and nigger followers. A man with an unknown past. A man who at fourteen made a decision, after he had been turned away from a big white house by a nigger who wears nice clothes, to create his own future wherein lies a big white house, niggers, and nobility.

Sutpen was to acquire a hundred-square miles land from an Indian community through a process no one knew or could conjecture. Then he set forth to build his house, having an architect amongst his travelling troupe. Again, through unknown and suspicious means, suspicious to the folks of Jefferson, he built the biggest house and named it Sutpen's Hundred. After which the need for a wife and Nobility arose. Sutpen then fished for a wife from an unlikely man, Goodhue Coldfield. For had Coldfield and Sutpen been twins they would definitely had been fraternal where one would be hedonistic and the other a monk. Goodhue was

a Methodist steward, a merchant who was not rich and who not only could have done nothing under the sun to advance his fortune or prospects but could by no stretch of imagination ven owned anything that he would have wanted, even picked up in the road - a man who owned neither land nor slaves except two house servants whom he had freed as soon as he got them, bought them, who neither drank nor hunted nor gambled; [20]

And from Goodhue Coldfield's home, Sutpen married Ellen Coldfield - a woman who was, initially and falsely, attracted by the house and the pride to live in it. The enigma surrounding Sutpen increased to such an extent that, even though the townfolks weren't certain of the source of his wealth, which seems to move with him into Jefferson anytime he takes a temporary leave, they had him arrested for theft and in his arrest Sutpen was still the unshaken stoic man and it was Goodhue Coldfield who bailed him out and having being bailed out looked no different from before his arrest. A man unmoved by the devices of man or of nature. A man whose sole purpose in life is to acquire certain items in life (including a wife and a name), pick them up like one picks items from a shopping mall, only his had an exceptional kind of determination and zealousness to it so that he would, if necessary, sacrifice his life towards its realisation just as he starved for several days during his journey into Jefferson and braced the cold weather conditions when Sutpen's Hundred was not fixed with its fixtures and fittings. And he was a man who could not accept help from anyone. And so Sutpen married Ellen Coldfield on one rainy day before a dozen witnesses cum audience and had two children Henry and Judith Sutpen, in that order.

What would undo Sutpen was not that Henry was almost effeminate, not as strong as he - Sutpen - was and unable to stand the bloody entertainment his father had with his niggers nor that Judith took his father's boldness. What would undo him is a choice Sutpen made when he run away from home and went to the West Indies in search of the riches that would make him achieve his dream. Not even this for merely fleeing home in search of wealth was innocuous. What would pulverise Sutpen's achievement began with deception.  When he married, bore a son and left mother and son because the son was a negro. Sutpen had earlier been told that Charles Bon's - his son - mother was a Spaniard and not Haitian. When Sutpen - a man who had been turned away from a house by a negro and which had set him on this long journey - found that he had borne a negro, he saw his dream crushing down upon him before it began and so repudiated both mother and son.

Sutpen had achieved all: wealth - he was the largest grower of cotton; the house; the niggers; recognition - he was commended for his part in the war. Yet, he was a man who wanted sons. And it was this quest for sons that destroyed him. For Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen met at the university, became friends, later got to know they were brothers. And Judith fell in love with Bon and Bon wanted Sutpen to accept him as a son and Sutpen didn't want the marriage to materialise and Henry wanted Bon to divorce his octoroon wife in New Orleans, with whom he had a negro son, and Henry not assenting. And it was through this that Sutpen would urge Henry, psychologically, to kill Bon. And Henry would not have done it for he feared not the possible incest, in fact he argued for it. But it was the miscegenation that Henry feared and this was revealed to him by his father. And it was that that destroyed him and Bon. Having lost both sons - one physically the other emotionally, spiritually and all - Sutpen wanted sons who would succeed him. Ellen was dead; died through neglect and pain for all that Sutpen wanted was a woman with a respectable name in his household. In need of sons, Sutpen proposed to Rosa - Ellen's youngest sibling who, born seven years after Ellen's marriage had come to live with her sister - that if she were to make him sons there would be marriage. As an affront on her being Rosa - whose father - Goodhue Coldfield - and all her relatives had died or eloped, moved to his lonely home. In need of sons, Sutpen slept with the granddaughter of a handyman on his property. She did get pregnant but it was a daughter. The interlocked gears which had been set into motion ground all - Sutpens and Coldfields. This destruction brought upon him by his quest for sons is reflected in the title Absalom an allusion to the biblical Absalom, the third son of David, who rebelled against his father and died in that rebellion.

The story had different narratives, including a universal narrator. It began as a narration from Rosa Coldfield to the grandson of Sutpen's only 'friend' in Jefferson, Quentin Compson. Quentin's father also filled him in. Then Quentin himself retold parts of the story to his roommate at Harvard University, Shreve, who himself also narrated parts, or retold parts to Quentin to ensure that he had understood him. What was clear from all these narratives is each narrator's perception or influence on the story: they were more like explaining the actions of the individuals in the story rather than telling it as it is. Consequently, the veracity of what was being told became questionable. Another point about the narrative is the method chosen by Faulkner. The story was told in a repetitive mode, with each repetition adding another layer of information. As the telling spirals inward, the reader get to understand reasons and motives and it is not until the last end, when the story converges, that a concrete picture is obtained.

Aside being enigmatic, his singular purpose of mind in search of riches and, after he attained them, of sons made him a demon to many. He was described in many similar adjectives. Initially, one could not pinpoint what exactly Sutpen did wrong. Was it his goal in life? It could be said that the numerous narrators were all confused and could not explain the man's reasons. Even the few times a somewhat omniscient narrator took over the explanation of the man carried little of essence. So that Sutpen's evilness could lie not in him but within the skewness of the narrative. Irrespective of this, the reading evokes a comparison of Sutpen with Heathcliff (ref. Wuthering Heights). However, when the story developed and the narrators explained, adding and subtracting, they ended up with a Sutpen who, not having killed a person, nor fought anyone, nor stolen from anyone, was still as much evil as evil could possibly be.

A feminist reading of Absalom, Absalom! would be appropriate. For Sutpen was a patriarch who considered women as properties and even though Judith could have been what he wanted Henry to be, he saw through her. Again, to him marriage was for sons and acquiring a wife was akin to acquiring a property. Though the period might have contributed to this, Sutpen's relationship with women quite stood out relative to other couples in the story. 

Absalom, Absalom! could be a difficult read. With its long sentences the reader sometimes loses the message being conveyed for within each sentence lies several diversions, expatiation, and confirmations. Notwithstanding this, Faulkner's storytelling ability is capable of holding one's attention throughout and a dedicated, attentive reading is a necessity for understanding and enjoyment. William Faulkner has a way with words and this shone through too.

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* I read The Corrected Text
Read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge and the Chunkster Challenge

129. SHORT STORY MONDAY: Philipp Meyer and Rivka Galchen

 These two stories were taken from The New Yorker June 14 & 21, 2010.

What You Do Out Here, When You're Alone by Philipp Meyer

Max and Lilli had moved from their modest home in Huntsville to a plush neighbourhood in Oaksville. Unlike Huntsville, they were almost unknown in Oaksville, uninvited to parties and were living under the shadows of the teeming 'filthy' rich. Their new neighbourhood was the place where one could be 'sued for painting [his] mailbox the wrong color, for putting up the wrong fence, for installation of unapproved rooting materials...' But Max was not happy for several reasons. Not because his Porsche business was bad, for he was the 'best Porsche mechanic in Texas, the entire Southwest, if he was hones', in fact business was good and could even do favours for those who could not afford his services.

Max was not happy because of Lilli, through whose boss at Goliad Associates, they had heard about the Oaks building, which though had been obtained at half the market price was still expensive. Lilli, whose conviviality, happy-go-lucky behaviour in Huntsville had made her the object of attention at all the parties and gatherings they organised instantly metamorphosed into a calm, taciturn, and extremely cold figure. Perhaps because they were not recognised. But mostly because she wanted Max to live up to the 'standards' of the people of Oaksville to the extent that she bought him his t-shirts. Then there were the rumours. Rumours of Lilli sleeping with other couples in a sort of kinky kind of sex: threesome, foursome. The news was everywhere. Max had married young, had given up college and married Lilli and after over two decades and a son later, he wasn't sure if he was willing to go on with the marriage. If Lilli was still loved him. They had sex and had it even more, especially after what he referred to as Accident.

The Accident involved their son, Harley. Harley had a purpose, an aim to go to College. He was a top-of-class student, not exactly popular but had had enough friends. Even at thirteen, Harley had plans of going to Rice when he graduated. At least until the move that dislocated his plans and distorted his view of life. At Oaksville, Harley had become closer to his mother and Max had become a total stranger. So that when Harley involved himself with coke, it was Lilli who took him to see the shrink and Max had been kept totally in the dark. Currently, Max is in the hospital - having recently come out of coma - recovering from head injuries he had sustained in cells where he was held for drug possession. And it these that Max was thinking about. Struggling to comprehend how a simple move from Huntsville to Oaksville had destroyed his once peaceful, happy family. From a 'do-it-yourself' family, he had entertained the idea of walking off, with his son, leaving Lilli behind. Perhaps he could go with the single lady who seems to want him. He liked that lady but had restrained himself from having sex with her.

Philipp Meyer's story is not a happy one. He investigates, somewhat, what lies behind the facade of richness, of walled communities. And he does a good work with this one.

The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fire by Rivka Galchen

This story is seemingly opposite to Meyer's. This time round it was the man who played the woman. Written in the first person, Trish came home one day to find his house less of some items. Initially, it seemed as if there had been a burglary until he found a note addressed to him. It was by her husband, the father of the baby she was carrying, Jonathan.

Trish had always thought that their relationship was without any problem. But Jonathan thought differently. So differently that he blogged about how his wife was getting on her nerves at 'I-Can't-Stand-My-Wife-Dot-Blogspot-Dot-Com'. Trish's brother, who had had suspicions about Jonathan had invaded the privacy of his laptop. Initially, he had had the idea that perhaps it was porn that was the problem. But what he found was weirder than porn, and the mere fact that there was no porn was also 'suspicious'. What Trish's brother then told his sister of Jonathan's blog. Later his friend  - David, who had earlier shown some affection for her - also confirmed the existence of the blog and its content. Trish was determined not to read nor listened to the content from his blog. Though Jonathan had withdrawn money from Trish's account - she was a writer whose debut novel had shot her to fame so that she had a little bit of respect and a little bit of money - under the guise of paying his tuition through business school, he really wasn't a student. No one knew him at that said college. In effect Jonathan was a complete fraud. But Trish still had some love for him.

Thus, in The Entire Northern Side was Covered with Fire, we see Trish trying to accommodate to the sudden 'loss' of her husband and her daughter's father. Rivka Galchen also tries to say something, though not loudly, on the culture of 'keeping out of people's business'. Thus, though his friend and brother knew of he existence of the blog, none could tell her - afraid of hurting her feelings, perhaps. However, according to the brother, he thought it was a joke. 

One common theme I found threading through both stories is an examination of our current chosen mode of living, the current living culture. Or could I have been influenced to see the link where there is none because I read one after the other? All the same, The New Yorker's 20 under 40 is a good read.