Short stories are interesting things. I've written them because I have yet to actually sit my ass down and complete the novel that I've been carrying around with me for so long; but, I don't read them that much, except for the fact that the project lists are riddled with them. Kate loves the short stories; I LOVE plays. If I'm not reading novels, I'm reading Williams, O'Neill, Ibsen or any other playwright that I can get my hands on. There's something about the theatre. I can't get enough of it, and reading plays is almost like being there, sometimes it's even better, since you can imagine, then, in your head, exactly who you would cast, where they would stand, what the set would look like, based on the playwright's direction.

Until getting into the lists of Pulitzers and Governor General winners, I never really got into short stories, I think mainly because I love rich, meaty novels, drenched in multi-generational character development, rife with poetic quotes and descriptions. Short stories just always seemed, well, too short. I didn't feel like there was ever enough time to really get to know a character, to feel their soul; short stories never ripped through me with the sheer, raw quality of human experience that many of my favorite novels have.

Hugh Garner's Best Stories is of a different animal. Garner won the Governor General in 1963 for his collection of short stories, and I know very few Canadians who even have any idea who the hell he is. Well, they'd better pick up this book and find out. At first, I had a hard time with the stories, because they are so incredibly raw, and express the some of the basest human emotions and desires out there, which was a little depressing, but as I got through the collection, I became more appreciative of what it had to hold. The stories are all fairly brief, but so tightly crafted, they are rich despite the length. A contemporary writer, Jhumpa Lahiri, of whom I've written before, wrote a similar collection of short stories that won the Pulitzer in the past 10 years. Her collection is about people of Indian descent both in the U.S. and abroad, unlike Garner's characters which inhabit a variety of places in Canada, but the stories evoke similar emotions, and are fine examples of people who have mastered the art of short stories.

Hugh Garner writes about a mentally diminished man whose anger, frighteningly to the young boy who has befriended him, drives him complete and totally brutal destruction of a neighboring farm. The descriptions are visceral, gut-wrenching; real. Garner writes about a boy becoming a man, and watching the town whore go from being glamourous in his eyes to desperate and tired.
Nuns, and dried up old spinsters, reminiscent of Dickens' Miss Havisham, also have their own stories in this collection. There are boys that lust after young, unattainable women(something I have faced myself), there is a man who visits his young son after the death of his mother and years away at sea, only to find the child, through the influence of his maternal grandparents, does not want to have anything to do with him. Factory workers watch the physical destruction of a man's body after their foremen had ignored the deterioration of faulty equipment. A woman lets herself be taken advantage of, and violated, in the name of love. These are experiences that some human being has somewhere every minute of the day. They are not pretty, they are often heartbreakingly sad, but they are still there, and if you look at us all as one great collective experience, which I believe that the human race is, these experiences are a part of all of us, as we are all part of each other.

My favorite story, by far, and possibly one of my most favorite short stories of all time(this is a list that gets added to all the time), is "The Nun in Nylon Stockings." I was lying in bed, reading this story before I went to sleep, and actually exclaimed "Holy Crap!" (to the cats) when I finished it. It's the kind of story that I want to thrust in the face of anyone who questions this project, who questions my desire to even read as much as I do in general; I want to thrust it in their face and say "Read this Motherfucker!" It is a simple story for all intensive purposes, about a man on a train, bored and perhaps a little lonely, who strikes up a conversation with a young nun about her reading choice for the trip, Field & Stream. This story is all about the assumptions that we make about strangers, and how we can consistently recreate our own history, or better yet, withhold that which we do not want to confess. I'm not going to go on any further, you're just going to have to read it for yourself. If I ever had any doubts about this book, which I did in the beginning for sure, this story killed them all for me. Hugh Garner is a master of short prose, going up against Robert Olen Butler, Michener, Lahiri, and Mavis Gallant to name a few. I would include Alice Munro in this list, because her short stories are quite well crafted, but I do feel like she's a bit overrated. It's time to give others out there a voice in the short story canon.:)

When I looked for reviews or something about A Bell for Adano, the 1945 Pulitzer Prize winner, I found a review on Amazon by this guy who said he'd read it in high school and had never forgotten it, then re-read it again as an adult and rediscovered how great it was. Even though I read this book almost 3 months ago, I have to agree and say it is pretty freaking incredible. It is one of the best war novels I have ever read, probably because, though it takes place during a war, it's not actually about the battles, etc. This novel is about the people of the war, most specifically the townspeople in Adano, Italy, and the American soldiers who are forced to take it over and maintain it as a military stronghold after they kicked out the Fascists. A Bell for Adano is like M.A.S.H. for World War II. Ironic, since this book came out a generation before the movie and tv show, however, to the present generations, M.A.S.H. resonates more. I loved it for that purpose. The novel surrounds a man, Major Joppolo, an Italian-American, and his trials and tribulations as now mayor of the town of Adano. As soon as the Major gets there and is put into his unbelievably ostentatious office, he meets the people of the town and discovers their biggest grievance. It's not that they are poor, and starving, and thirsty and frightened(which of course they are all of these things and more), but the main problem is that they have no bell. This is not entirely true. They actually do have a bell in the town, more than one, but they are only church bells. The bell in question was the town bell, and it rang every hour. According to the townspeople themselves, the bell was like the mainstay of the community, and its sound was most exquisite. The Fascists took it down and took it away to use for metal in the purpose of war, and the town has been despondent ever since. After hearing all these tales from the people of the community, Major Joppolo decides that he is going to, if nothing else, get this town a bell before the war is over. He actually does much more than that, though. He helps establish order in the town; he bases his rule on the American model of democracy. In this town, people who never had a voice before, can now express their opinions and their needs. Joppolo gives them a sense of what all human beings need, empowerment. If things are unfair, he resolves them so that they will be more fair. The townspeople, used to the bureaucracy and red tape of the old Fascist government, are appalled when he works with a guy in the Navy to open up the waters around Adano so that the people can have fish, a mainstay of their diet but something that has been denied them for so long. Every page in this book is stunning, and funny, and touching. I'm not sure I'm even doing it justice here, I just hope that people go out and read it. It is an easy, fun, enjoyable read, with never a dull moment. I happen to have found a beautiful edition by happenstance in a store in West Seattle while shopping with Kate, probably a year ago November. It was a used, but in pristine condition, Franklin Library edition, with the hardbound leather cover, gilded pages, and silk inner covers. It also has color plates/illustrations of some of the scenes in the novel too. It's definitely a "personal library" copy. Getting back to the novel, though, I think what touched me the most is just the interactions between foreign soldiers and the townspeople in the area in which their occupying. I possibly found this all the more interesting because right now, as I write this, the U.S. is engaged in wars with/active occupations of two countries. This made me wonder what it is truly like for these soldiers, in the day to day. What is it like to be a foreigner who is forced to create order and lead, without any real prior knowledge of what these people's cultures are like, what they need, who they are? Ultimately, it comes down to those universal themes of literature, and the world as a whole. Almost all people are looking to have a good life, a satisfying life, a safe life(at least free from harm). The pathway to getting there may be very different from one person to the next, but the ultimate goal is the same. Even though the book took place in Italy during World War II, sometimes I couldn't help but imagine that it was taking place in present-day, in Iraq. It wasn't that hard to do; both places I have only ever seen on the television, so they are pretty much equally obscure to me. But, I can imagine the same kind of confusion, culture shock, the loneliness that all soldiers face being away from their loved ones and cultural community, all the while wondering if when they wake up in the morning this is the day they are going to die. One of my favorite lines of the whole book is one that resonated for a long time after and probably will continue to do so for many years to come: "The war aim of most men is simply to go home." It's interesting to look at war from that angle, and not the angle most Republicans would have us look at it. If the point of war is to really get home, what does that mean about what you do when you're not home? When you fight abroad? Is it patriotism or homesickness that propels you forward? According to the introduction, this book was published in '44, but was awarded the Pulitzer in 1945, on the day victory was declared in Europe. Particularly fitting I think. I'm not sure about giving away the ending here, because I think that when I do put all of my notes together into some kind of readable book for the general public, I'm going to have to cut out endings and just give enticing plot summaries so that people will discover these books for themselves. At least I still have this one to refer back to if need be.:) Does Major Joppolo get the town of Adano a bell? I'll let you discover that for yourself.:)