Two American stories that are the opposite of Barbara Pym, and of each other

Escaped from the fussy, microscopic world of Barbara Pym w/ two American short stories that could not be more different from her work, or from each other for that matter. First, Miranda July's quirky piece in current New Yorker, The Metal Bowl, about an eccentric and somewhat w/drawn LA mom - story opens w/ her young son entering the bedroom and, noting blood on the sheets, informing mom that she's just had her period - show heads off to the mall and believes a man is staring at her, that he "recognizes" her, which leads her to recount a time in her youth when she starred on a one-person sex video (fans of the video would recognize her in public). Turns out the man is her next-door neighbor; the next night, when an earthquake hits the area, she and he spend the night outside on a blanket, spooned together. Eventually she cops this to her husband and tells him for the first time about the sex video; strangely, though maybe not surprisingly, this turns him on and he re-enacts for her the sex scene, exciting both of them (the eponymous bowl is one of the props). This is not something that would happen to anyone in a Barbara Pym novel! Later I (re)read Edward Jones's great story, Old Boys, Old Girls, reprinted in 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories (what happened to Jones, who wrote some great stories plus The Known World, one of the best American novels of the past 30 years - and who seemed to compose entire works in his head before putting them into print or writing?); this harrowing story about a black man in DC who seems to have some retardation or other cognitive difficulties, who murders 2 men and can't really remember why or keep the 2 events straight in his mind. He goes to prison, and his time in Fulton is I think foundational for contemporary prison movies/TV that have followed - I certainly saw the influence of the struggles for superiority, the alliances, the favors and disfavors, the violence - not random but calculated for effect - in the recent The Night Of. The protagonist is the kind of person we would pass w/out a 2nd thought, who is never the focus of a book or movie (he's not sympathetic, nor an anti-hero either, just an ordinary disturbed criminal) - but Jones treats him w/ empathy and respect, if not with love. The ending is dark and somewhat open-ended - as we follow a short time in his life after prison, with few supports and with a surprisingly welcoming (and successful) family, whose love for him seems to push him away and make him more self-conscious and anti-social. Nothing here is lovably quirky or eccentric as in July's story. 



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