whoopsitswhump

Total: 1 book

- The Institute by Stephen King. Blew through it in a day. Very Stranger Things-esque. 

Short stories: 52 total

- Civil Peace by Chinua Achebe;
- Africa Emergent by Nadine Gordimer;
- The Collector of Treasures by Bessie Head;
- Shingles by William Faulkner;
- The River by Flannery O'Connor;
- The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Flannery O'Connor;
- A Stroke of Good Fortune by Flannery O'Connor;
- Where I Live by Kurt Vonnegut;
- Cloud, Castle, Lake by Vladimir Nabokov;
- Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster by Vladimir Nabokov; 
- The Enormous Radio by John Cheever;
- I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen;
- Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin;
- Ghost Bird by Nic Pizzolatto;
- The Man of Adamant by Nathaniel Hawthorne;
- Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne;
- The Conversion of the Jews by Phillip Roth;
- Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor;
- Nineteen Fifty-Five by Alice Walker;
- A Temple of the Holy Ghost by Flannery O'Connor;
- Amy's Watch by Nic Pizzolatto;
- The Prussian Officer by D.H. Lawrence;
- Who Will Stop the Dark by Charles Mungoshi;
- 1987, The Races by Nic Pizzolatto;
- Two Shores by Nic Pizzolatto;
- The Striding Place by Gertrude Atherton;
- A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner;
- The Last Feast of Harlequin by Thomas Ligotti;
- The Dachau Shoe by W.S. Merwin;
- Spiders I Have Known by W.S. Merwin;
- The Approved by W.S. Merwin;
- Postcards from the Maginot Line by W.S. Merwin;
- In Bed One Night by Robert Coover;
- Sucker by Carson McCullers;
- The Siege at Whale Cay by Megan Mayhew Bergman;
- The Artificial [HP Lovecraft's Cat] by Flannery O'Connor;
- Between Here and the Yellow Sea by Nic Pizzolatto;
- Fingerprints by Justin Bigos;
- Happy Ending by Kevin Canty;
- Fountains in the Rain by Yukio Mishima;
- Pigeon Feathers by John Updike;
- A Circle in the Fire by Flannery O'Connor;
- Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver;
- By the River by Joyce Carol Oates;
- The School by Donald Barthelme;
- Moving On by Diane Cook;
- Traveler's Joy by Noel Coward;
- A Late Encounter with the Enemy by Flannery O'Connor;
- Emergency by Denis Johnson;
- The Priest and the Acolyte by Oscar Wilde;
- Bride by Julia Elliott;
- The Big Cat by Louise Erdrich. 

I discussed most of these already. The ones I read in the latter half are:

The Artificial [N word] by Flannery O'Connor -- excellent short story, not really a justified title. It follows a (white) grandfather and the grandson he takes care of. Both resent each other, but the grandson is ultimately far more moral... The grandfather takes him to the city, where he plays a mean trick on him, then publicly denies that the kid is his, even though everyone can see their faces are copy-pasted from each other. The shame of this moment is overwhelming for him, and the fact that his grandson forgives him anyway leaves him shaky and uncertain. 

(The title comes from a racist lawn jockey-type statue they see on a rich person's lawn after the grandpa's betrayal; the boy has been giving his grandpa the silent treatment, but when he sees this statue, they're both amazed and can't puzzle out why anyone would want an "artificial" ... well...)

Between Here and the Yellow Sea: The most interesting Pizzolatto so far. This one is narrated by a young man who has agreed to help the high school football coach locate--and even kidnap--his adult daughter. The young man had a crush on her in high school but never dated her, and he knows that the girl ran away as a teen and is now a porn star. He unquestioningly agrees with the old man that his daughter needs "rescued," maybe deprogrammed. But when they make their way to L.A., where she lives now, her reaction to her dad implies something very seedy, and the young man is unsettled, unsure of himself, has to reconsider his own motivations. 

Fingerprints: A very lyrical, poem-y story told in vignettes, all centered around a complex father-son relationship marked by alcoholism and mental illness. Hard to describe but worth the read. 

Happy Ending by Kevin Canty: This one I loved. An older guy lost his wife years ago, and now his daughter has moved out of the house and is in a state far away. In his loneliness he seriously considers visiting a happy-ending massage parlor. It goes against his morals but he reflects that his morals were never really decided upon by him, himself, anyway. So he goes, he loves it, and at the same time he tries out the Christian singles group, and at the same time he assesses and re-assesses whether these massage parlors are harmless after all, with no easy answers.

Fountains in the Rain by Yukio Mishima: A young man breaks up with his girlfriend. Not because he really dislikes her, but because he's never broken up with anyone before, and he wants to try it. Really, that's the whole reason he dated her to begin with--to break up! But when he tells her, she bursts into tears, which embarrasses and annoys him. And the tears grow, and become ever more absurd, and his feelings change to panic, to ecstasy, to madness...

Pigeon Feathers: My favorite non-O'Connor of late August. Rivals "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin. It's by John Updike, and it's really a simple story of an adolescent whose faith in God is shaken in a very mundane way--by reading that atheists exist in one of his mom's books--and is further shaken by the realization that everyone around him (parents, classmates, pastors) believe that heaven/hell aren't literally real. At the end, he hunts pigeons at his mother's request, and the description of the feathers is so detailed and beautiful that you'll feel like you're on shrooms.

A Circle in the Fire by Flannery O'Connor: A great little story. A cautious, even cowardly old woman who believes strongly in good maners is troubled by the appearance of three rascally, disrespectful boys on her farm. They follow no rules, no social norms. They take over her farm, torment her animals, steal and damage property, and eventually even burn her farm down. It's awful, it's so grimy. It's also weirdly awesome to read. 

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver -- guy gets cheated on, has a menty b about it, goes for a long walk. Really quite good. 

By the River by Joyce Carol Oates -- girl does some cheating, leaves her husband AND her lover AND her baby about it, gets murdered. 

The School by Donald Barthelme -- Short, surreal, very conversational. A teacher tells you, quite casually, about the escalating waves of death in his elementary school classroom, starting small (plants) and moving up to absurd, grotesque human deaths.

Moving On by Diane Cook - Interesting, kind of Margaret Atwood-esque short story in a not-very-fleshed out dystopian world. Widows and widowers (maybe also divorcees?) are not allowed to remarry freely; instead they're sent to halfway homes where they must take classes to improve their value (for instance, knitting, cooking, makeup lessons) and the caretakers will show their files to prospective brides/husbands who are for some reason free on the outside. One recent widow is advised to suppress her grief entirely and forever, and fails to do so. 

Traveler's Joy by Noel Coward - a vain, elderly twink/actor meets a lonely hunch-backed spinstress. They have sex.

A Late Encounter With the Enemy by Flannery O'Connor - maybe my least favorite story of hers so far, just didn't grip me as much as they usually do. It follows an elderly ex-Confederate whose mind has largely left him, and whose daughter or granddaughter is parading him onstage for her college graduation. 

Emergency by Denis Johnson -- LOVED IT. Vignettes, hysterically funny and super moving, about E.R. employees who steal drugs from their patients and go on terrifyingly bad adventures. 

The Priest and the Acolyte -- attributed to Oscar Wilde. Not a very good short story in terms of writing mechanics. Also not very good in terms of subject material XD It's about a 28-year-old priest who "falls in love" with his prepubescent altar boy, and eventually persuades the boy to kill himself (suicide pact) when they're caught. This is very much an unabashed pro-pedophilia story, there's no other interpretation. It's very bald-faced. 

Bride by Julia Elliott -- reminds me of Benedetta, the movie about gay nuns, and Immodest Acts, the book it’s based on. It follows a young nun at the start of the Black Plague who punishes herself fiercely every morning (flagellation, self starvation) but is also becoming enamored with a new sister, an Irish girl with wild hair. When the Abbess dies of plague, the POV character and her crush break into the Abbess’s tower and feast on her hidden cache of delicacies, some of which shocked me although off the top of my head I can’t think of any reason these delicacies shouldn’t exist back then—marzipan bunnies, almonds. Almonds? Anyway it’s a great vividly written story about ascetism, masochism, quarantine, sexuality and the devil, with an abrupt but memorable ending where the devil arrives in the flesh.

The Big Cat by Louise Erdrich — sad and moving and funny. A married man suffers through his wife’s snoring, which sounds like a buzz saw or a wild cat. All the women in her family snore ferociously. When they eventually get divorced, he gets a good night’s sleep for the first time in years, but his teenage daughter starts worrying that she’ll never find love because she snores too. 

My favorites for the second half of the month were Pigeon Feathers, Emergency, A Circle in the Fire, and Happy Ending :)