The Kiss and Other Stories
Anton Chekhov
damn, i am BURNT OUT on short stories. i can't even get into Chekhov.
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2003
The Beauty of the Husband
Anne Carson
all the Anne Carson books i'd like to take out at the library are always missing from the shelf—i finally took this one out so i could stop frowning at it. as i thought, i'm not so into the story here: it's "the story of a marriage" and throughout the characters are called "the wife" and "the husband" but other characters have names. i love the way she writes though, the way she approaches her ideas and presents the concepts. i think over half the references went right over my head.
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The River of Lost Voices
Mark Brazaitis
written by one of sandi's professors at wvu, these stories are all set in guatemala. it's a little weird reading stories about guatemala from the perspective of a white american, but he seems to bring light to the tense and sometimes tenuous relationships between the indigenous people, those of spanish decent, and less frequently the foreigners.
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Power Politics
Arundhati Roy
we saw arundhati roy speak last month, with her cleverly titled Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free). i expected nothing less than these eloquent essays about globalization and privitization of public assets in india. her writing is so engaging and accessible that it's gratifying that she writes on these topics.
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Ship Fever
Andrea Barrett
the back of the book claims these are "set against the backdrop of the nineteenth century." i don't want to nitpick or anything, but several are mostly set in the twentieth century and two are set in the eighteenth century.
the stories all hinge on the sciences—from genetics to zoology to public health to several other branches–and that is definitely what makes this collection so outstanding. i love the concept of the littoral zone (in the story of the same name):
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New Addresses
Kenneth Koch
another recommendation from elissa, poems addressed to various things like "life" and "yes" and "the italian language" and "wars" &tc. a nice study in anthropomorphism with prying reflection.
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The Stories of John Cheever
John Cheever
i only read about a third of this, since 700 pages of short stories seemed like a bit much all at once. even if i have been reading so many short story collections lately. these are set mostly in nyc, various times between the 1930s and 1950s with a range of class focuses. Cheever has exciting insights into his characters. i loved the slightly twilight zone feel to "The Enormous Radio" and the impressingly epic "The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well."
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Camera Lucida
Roland Barthes
theories on photography by someone who is not a photographer. knowing little of the technical aspects of photography, Barthes attaches his own kind of technicality by applying his own terminologies to the observation of photos. the first section is much heavier, laying out his basic theory; though the second part, written at a later date and after the death of his mother, repeatedly references a photograph of her that is not printed in the book. a kind of frustrating work.
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Disobedience
Alice Notley
i guess i gave up on this one. maybe i just wasn't in the mood or maybe it's a little too challenging for my undeveloped poetry palate. (i love the cover photo though.)
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Close Range
Annie Proulx
sometimes i don't know if it's that the stories get better as they come or if it just takes a few to get into the general feel. having been in wyoming last year, it's nice to have a sense of how attuned the descriptions of scenery and atmosphere are in this collection. the longer stories are easy favorites: "Pair of Spurs" falls open in well-measured time; "Brokeback Mountain" is just heartbreaking, two tough cowboys in love and trying to make sense of it.
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