A few weeks of fighting the short story, made it possible to explore it once again through the eyes of three very different authors--one young, two old.
The sentimental is stripped from the work of Robert Stone's "Bear and His Daughter", while McGuane still puzzles in a way that at times aggravates me as a reader, but then, in no less than a short sentence, illuminates the power of the short story: heart, humor, mystic observance. "No longer the country crossroads of recent memory, Four Corners was filled with dentists' offices, fast food and espresso shops, and large and somehow foreboding filling stations that looked, at night, like colonies in space..." (From the story Gallatin Canyon). McGuane propels the narrative forward with a rare language that is true as a woodcut, yet understands the need to lighten moments with non-sequiter dialogue and exposition that often traces the cruel, strange, and funny line of a man's life:
"The seas were ever less violent, and within an hour the skies had cleared entirely and the Gulf had regained its characteristic dusty green placidity under towering white clouds. It occurred to Errol that his drinking days were behind him. Oh, joy! Not another shit-faced, snockered, plastered, oiled, loaded, bombed, wasted minute ever again! No more guilt, remorse, rehab, or jail! Free at last!
"Calming down, he remembered that his hope lay in his visit to Florence Ewing, the good witch." (From the story The Refugee).
I often look back to the two stories that have always stayed with me: Ishiguro's "A Family Supper" and Richard Ford's "Rock Springs". Both speak with such honesty and clarity, they are sometimes too difficult to finish for how masterfully written they are.
I wonder then after finishing a book of stories like "The Boat", will I ever remember the plot, the characters, a line even, from that work. It is with me now, so I'll say that the risks Nam Le takes are wonderful, and the ability to enter the worlds unknown, such as in "Cartagena", where a drug lord's pawn is forced to make a crucial decision concerning his life and the life of a friend, inspire to let go of the fear of writing about something you don't know, and embracing the idea that strikes us in dreams or in early morning silence, the calling, the source. I enjoyed five of the seven stories, though the one that seems to have propelled his book toward its lauded reviews, "Love and Honor and Pity, etc.", a narrative one knows is true yet stripped and sculpted into an arc, felt very out of place once I had finished the book, which is strange considering it's clearly used to establish unity in the collection.
It would not be fair to match Le's work with the work of McGuane and Stone, nor to match McGuane and Stone, though both do embrace the chaos of chance. While I can see the conflict, climax, reverse expectations, and resolution of Le's work very clearly, Stone fires out like a shotgun spray, as if a journalist just picked up along a dirt road and entered into a world he had no idea he was about to record. Stories like: "Porque No Tiene, Porque Le Falta" begin in the scene, offer only the most minimal exposition, and reveal the characters through one of the strongest forces of fiction, dialogue. There is always the possibility of each story collapsing under its grandiose conditions, but the thrill of reading Stone is that the characters work themselves up to such a state that if they didn't snap, we may as well for them. So, I'm invested.
All three I recommend. Beautiful books unconcerned with anything other than the line, the beat, the voice.
