Elliot's Reading Week of 8-8-21: Short stories by Hemingway, Shirley Jackson, Joyce

 Elliot’s Reading - Week of 8-8-21

R.V. Cassill chose only one Ernest Hemingway story for his Norton Anthology of Short Stores - not sure why, as EH had, with the possible exception of Joyce, the greatest influence on American short fiction in the 20th century. That said, his selection, the much-anthologized Hills Like White Elephants, aptly shows EH’s enigmatic, terse prose style at its best. The story, in 3 or 4 pp., shows us about an hour in life of an American couple waiting for a train at a remote depot in Spain - an express bound for Madrid. The first half of the story, which EH tells mostly in dialog, seems mundane and uneventful, except that these two consume an enormous about of alcohol before boarding the train; the wife makes a observation that the hills in the distance look like white elephants, the husband notes that he’s never seen white elephants, no why should you?, his wife says. This becomes a mantra for them: We sense that their relationship is built on her awry observations and his dismissal of them - this will not end well. And then we get a hint as to where they’re headed and why: One of them, the woman I think, is to undergo some kind of medical procedure - it seems  like she’s facing an elective procedure that will render her sterile. This is obviously a huge, risky, life-altering decision and they seem to be doing all they can talk talk in enigmas and to deaden their sense w/ drink. An outsider waiting for this train would notice nothing awry, but EH brings us right into this marriage and in just a few lines we see everything that’s gone wrong for these two - yet leaving us, mysteriously - as he does in so many stories - with no clear answers or resolution: Who are they? What are they facing and why? What brings them to this place, this land? What will become of them? 

As everybody, at least of my age, has already read Shirley Jackson’s story The Lottery (in the Cassill Norton anthology), it’s impossible for the story today to have the same shock it would have had on its initial publication (1948), it’s still an amazing story of creepiness and fright - reaching back in style to of course Hawthone (the ostracism, the occultism, the community gone mad - see early post on Young Goodman Brown, ditto Scarlet Letter) and forward such dystopian/religio fanatic works at Handmaid’s Tale - but still it stands on its own, a terrific piece of writer economy. And what’s the point? I think there’s more to it than the frightening evocation of this deathly Lottery and its results; especially in light of the recent Jackson bio and more recent publication of her collected (selected?) letters, we see her as a writer who in many ways felt like a social and intellectual outcast, living as “faculty wife” in a small community in Vermont, far from her home (which maybe was a plus). She was great at creepiness and horror - Haunting of Hill House, the book not the limpid miniseries -was frightening to read and at just the boundary of the credible - but in light of what we know of her and her struggles for success and acceptance plus her rejection/exploitation by her husband - we can see this story as a psychological masterpiece, a look into the torment of an outcast soul. 

Cassill wisely included 3 stories by James Joyce in his Norton 

anthology of Short Fiction. Along w/ Hemingway, Joyce had the greatest influence on the course, style, subject matter of 20th century short fiction, and his work would be revered today (maybe even more so) had he stopped at the end of Dubliners, restless soul that he was. Two of the selections in the anthology are good representations of JJ’s style and mode: Araby, about a young man who wants to get to the local fair to buy a trinket for an (older?) woman on whom he has a secret crushing; nothing works out well. Didn’t Updike pick this theme up on one of his early stories? The second, A Little Cloud, is about a she and timid young man who goes out for drinks with his boisterous, self-important friend - a man who’s seemingly made it big in London journalism, who is bullish and condescending, and whom we can see through in an instant. The story ends with the timid man heading home to wife and children, feeling remorse and regret, but whose life is the better? The third story is unassailable, as The Dead is widely revered as perhaps the greatest short story (it’s not really that short) ever written. On the surface, its a richly detailed period piece, an meticulous account of an xmas eve gathering at the home of three elderly, unmarried, highly musical sisters - though the narrative focuses closely on Gabriel, the nephew, a big presence, an honored guest, a fatuous man who believes he’s much more dynamic, intelligent, and perceptive than his peers. For most of the story, it seems to be a cinematic re-creation of this one night of music, dancing, dining, and many little social cuts and insults - most notably the woman who taunts Gabriel for writing book reviews in an English-based newspaper and for failure to recognize or even take interest in his Irish heritage. She pierces his balloon so to speak, but she a bit nasty and self-important herself. The story emerges as truly great literature in the final section, when Gabriel thinks about the course of his life and his marriage, remembers shards of passion and ecstasy, obviously yearning to have sex with his wife, Gretta, as the head off for a hotel room; she is quiet and withdrawn, and she eventually confesses that she has been thinking about a man she’d known in youth and who willingly died of love when she left him. A musical passage made her think of this young man - and it’s interesting how all of the great modernist writers - think of Proust and Mann e.g. - recognize the important relationship between music and memory. In any event, Gabriel has completely misread her, feels despair and disappointment, and at the end reflects in unforgettable language, of his life, heading toward death, as are we all.