kaddish.com by Nathan Englander

Oh, how used to staring up at ceilings Shuli had become. Here, camping out in the lovely chill of a Jerusalem night, Shuli looks up and muses his nocturnal musings with nothing to impede them. Without a roof above, his gaze bears on and on into a star-backed sky.

In the middle of Nathan Englander’s kaddish.com, fifty year-old Reb Shuli sits on a bench outside the “principle’s” office with his 12 year-old student, Gavriel. Both are in trouble. Gavriel gets suspended one day while Shuli gets suspended for two weeks. Gavriel has been helping Shuli find the location, via IPS addresses, of a yeshiva that Shuli had contacted twenty years earlier, during his atheist phase, to find someone to say kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, for his dead father.

We don’t completely know why Shuli converted back to his Orthodox Judaism and became a rabbi, but it makes this scene all the more comical. The rabbi’s constant removal of Gavriel from his classes and the extra recesses adds up to farcical brilliance. As Shuli’s admiration for Gavriel’s computer skills grows, he eventually heads off to Jerusalem to find the man who actually said kaddish for his father.

With some more non-computerized sleuthing and some surreal dreams, the story moves from farce to Shuli’s coming to terms with himself, his past, his faith, his family and his father’s death.

The interactions between Shuli and Gavriel gave the book its laughs and its charm; but overall, it’s a sweet story of a man’s personal and spiritual growth.

Crystal Wilkinson: Women’s Secrets

Deal Me In 2021 – Week 44

Crystal Wilkinson’s “Women’s Secret’s” combines the safety and comfort of family and home life with the pressure, oppression and loneliness of living as a woman in the Appalachian community. The themes, though, can easily be transferred to other cultures.

Iola, a young girl, wakes up next to her mother and hears her grandmother and grandfather getting up early in the morning and starting on the household chores. Extremely tired, her mother jumps out of bed knowing she’s late getting started. Iola, staying in bed, then hears the conversation between her mother and her grandmother. The grandmother guesses that Iola’s mother is pregnant and her mother doesn’t say no.

In between the conversation Iola overhears, Wilkinson describes the outdoors, the small house, the breakfast that’s cooking, the warmth of the house as opposed to the coldness outside. All of this provides the small child with comfort even while imagining the harshness of the outside world.

The small actions and sounds of fixing breakfast, opening the screen door, soft crying, serious talking, heart-felt hugs all lead to the family sitting down to breakfast with the grandfather as the only one not “in the know”:

Grandpa just looks from Big Mama to Mama to me and shakes his head ’cause nobody says nothing. I look at Mama and Big Mama looking at each other again and all us women just hold our tongues and keep our secrets.

This story is included in Crystal Wilkinson’s collection Blackberries, Blackberries. I read it for Week 44 of my Deal Me In 2021 short story project. Check out my Deal Me In list here. Deal Me In is hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.

The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis

The Horse and His Boy is what I consider to be the second book in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia mainly because it’s how I read them when I was a kid. On goodreads.com, I found editions that are considered #3 because The Magician’s Nephew got moved from #7 to #1. I’ve also found editions that are placed at #5. Perhaps that’s because the movies that came out in the mid 2000’s started with The Lion , The Witch and The Wardrobe, which was already #2 in the books, with Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as next. The movies never got any farther and also skipped The Horse and His Boy. Maybe some movie related publications moved it to #5.

I do remember that as a kid, this was the most difficult of the books to get through. I’m not sure why other than the entire book takes place in the Narnia realm at a time when the four Pevensie children were Kings and Queens. There isn’t any moving between the “real world” and the Narnia world – which as a kid was the fun part of the stories and took place in all of the other books.

As an adult, though, I found it just as rewarding. Shasta runs away from his “father” when he meets a Talking Horse, Bree, from Narnia. This sets him on great adventures in which he figures out who he really is – both biologically and personally. Aslan, of course, makes important contributions to Shasta’s maturing although Aslan isn’t in the novel as much as I thought he might be.

And the Pevensie children are adults as King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmond and Queen Lucy. This could also be the reason a child might not enjoy this book as much if they are used to these Royal adults being kids.

I found to be especially touching an interaction between Aslan the Lion and Hwin, Bree’s lady horse friend:

Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh and trotted across to the Lion.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘you’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.’

‘Dearest daughter,’ said Aslan, planting a lion’s kiss on her twitching, velvet nose, ‘I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.’

Loyle Hairston: The Winds of Change

Deal Me In 2021 – Week 43

Waddell Watkins has an exuberant confidence that makes him a likeable protagonist in Loyle Hairston’s “The Winds of Change”. He wakes up in the morning ready to take on the world – and a music audition. He gets dressed and goes to the barber shop which is as much of an experience as the audition.

He auditions but is turned down; however, he also meets two women that make him forget about the audition. They are headed to the UN General Assembly and ask him to go with them. He doesn’t know much about what goes on at the UN but that doesn’t stop him from following along:

So I remember what the NEWS always said about the joint and told ’em I didn’t go because I thought the place was run by commies. They bust laughin’ on me. And that’s when I learnt that Oleta, the princess, was a pure African; and that her brother was a member of her country’s UN delegation. Geez! I mean I coulda hid in the ash tray on the armrest.

Waddell’s slang adds to his excitement about almost anything and everything. When he gets invited to a party by the ladies, it’s back to the barbershop.

The story is short, fun and upbeat. The title is never referenced directly in the story but Waddell does get to experience what might be considered change – even if he doesn’t completely recognize it.

This story is included in Black American Short Stories: A Century of the Best edited by John Henrik Clarke. I read it for Week 43 of my Deal Me In 2021 short story project. Check out my Deal Me In list here. Deal Me In is hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

In Ernest J. Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying, Jefferson is falsely accused of murder, found guilty and sentenced to death. The narrator, Grant Wiggins, teaches on a plantation school in 1940’s Louisiana and, against his will, is strongly encouraged by his aunt to visit Jefferson and be his friend until execution day.

Grant has gotten a teaching degree and becomes the African American community’s hope – again, against his will. Nobody has expectations that Jefferson’s execution will be stayed but many feel Grant can find some sort of dignity for Jefferson.

Gaines’ style is deceivingly simple; however, instead of describing it with the iceberg analogy so many use for Ernest Hemingway, it’s more of a volcano analogy. The simplicity has a lot bubbling under the surface ready to erupt.

The tension between Grant, the agnostic, and the small town preacher, Reverend Ambrose, brings out one of several powerful moments:

‘And that’s the difference between me and you, boy; that make me the educated one, and you the gump. I know my people. I know what they gone through. I know they done cheated themself, lied to themself – hoping that one they all love and trust can come back and help relieve the pain.’

That this tension between the preacher’s concern for Jefferson’s soul and Grant’s concern for Jefferson’s dignity never gets resolved absolutely continues to keep everything bubbling under the surface even after the novel ends.

C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

This is the third time I’ve read C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The first time was when I was a kid and the second time was when my kids were kids. Now my kids are all grown up and reading it the third time brought back fond memories from both of the other times I’ve read it.

I’ll make one hopefully brief comment about the order in which the Chronicles of Narnia are now published. The first time I read them, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was considered the first in the series and I believe it was the first one to be originally published. The Magician’s Nephew was considered the seventh in the series and was the last one to be originally published; however, The Magician’s Nephew is the first story chronologically so it was more of a prequel when it was first published. At some point, I’m not sure exactly when, The Magician’s Nephew began being published as the first in the series. When I read them as a kid, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was the first in the series so this is how I always think of them. I’m not really that much in to picking a side; however, there are those that are very passionate about which way they should be ordered.

But moving on to the story itself. I know there have been many posts about these books and lots have been said about them. I love this series and this book is probably my favorite. The one line that always stands out to me is Mr. Beaver’s explanation of Aslan the Lion:

‘Safe?…Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.

A story aimed at children with a good moral doesn’t have to be boring. Being good doesn’t have to be boring. Maybe true goodness is more like an adventure.

James Baldwin : The Man Child

Deal Me In 2021 – Week 42

…he walked on, and all the earth, for that moment, in Eric’s eyes, seemed to be celebrating Eric.

This story finishes James Baldwin’s collection Going to Meet the Man: Stories. It’s one that has at least a slight surprise ending that kind of reminds me of a Flannery O’Connor story or at least Southern Gothic in style. The ending is suspenseful and once it’s ended the reader, even if they didn’t see it coming, can say “All right, that makes sense”.

Eric is eight years old. He doesn’t necessarily understand what’s going on in the adult world of his parents and his father’s friend Jamie. Baldwin wisely lets us mostly know only what Eric knows and what Eric is told by his father. That makes us try to put the pieces of information together and figure out what’s going on with the adults. In the end, we realize we don’t have all the information. Neither does Eric.

I read this story for Week 42 of my Deal Me In 2021 short story project. Check out my Deal Me In list here. Deal Me In is hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie: Book Three

Book Three of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children ends the novel in a messy, convoluted delight.

This section starts with Saleem not knowing his name, being called “buddha” by army friends as he travels into the jungle like Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now. I’m not sure why I keep comparing this novel to other novels or authors. They just seem to jump out at me. At the same time, Rushdie does put all of this together on his own with his own style.

As Saleem gets his memory back, he continues to narrate in the present. We finally meet his wife Padma in his story – we’ve already met her in the present. Through snake charmers and green chutney, Saleem tells us what happens to midnight’s children and their relationship to India’s history during the 1970’s.

In what might seem odd but actually is just right, Saleem ends his history in a pickle factory. Pickling appears to remind him of what he’s doing – preserving history:

To pickle is to give immortality, after all: fish, vegetables, fruit hang embalmed is spice-and-vinegar; a certain alteration, a slight intensification of taste, is a small matter, surely? The art is to change the flavor in degree, but not in kind; and above all…to give it shape and form – that is to say, meaning. (I have mentioned my fear of absurdity.)

One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history. They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of truth…that they are, despite everything, acts of love.

Sally Benson: Apartment Hotel

Mr. and Mrs. Morrison lived in an apartment hotel in the East Thirties. They had moved there from an apartment hotel in the East Twenties that had been torn down to make an office building.

The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Morrison in Sally Benson’s “Apartment Hotel” mingles both heartbreak and comfort. It’s a very short story and much of it deals with implications. We know their baby dies just before they move to an apartment hotel which provided them a reason to not keep house. They continued to live in one for thirty years. So we know they are not necessarily young.

In the middle of the story, Mrs. Morrison overhears some younger people on a bus discuss their previous evening of partying which includes an address that she mistakenly thinks is an Italian restaurant. She and Mr. Morrison realize its a mistake when they try to go there. Again, it’s heartbreaking – with a little humor.

Before and after the restaurant incident, the Morrison’s lives get described in small details of what could be considered hum-drum. One gets the idea that the restaurant visit is an attempt to liven things up. But the small and hum-drum can also be interpreted as resilient. The Morrisons seem to have survived and don’t need the life of the young and partying.

This is another story in Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker edited by David Remnick.

Zora Neale Hurston: Magnolia Flower

Deal Me In 2021- Week 41

‘Of course not! But John, listen, did you ever hear a river make such a sound? Why it seems almost as if it were talking – that murmuring noise, you know.’

‘Maybe, it’s welcoming us back. I always felt that it loved you and me, somehow.’

Zora Neale Hurston’s “Magnolia Flower” has the feel of a fable. The title is the name of a Native American daughter of a slave man. She marries John against her father’s will.

The beauty in the story to me is twofold. First, the story is being told by the natural world in which Magnolia Flower and John live. The River speaks to the Stream as a parent would speak to a child. The “parenting” of the River is in stark contrast to the parenting of the humans in the story. Second, Magnolia Flower and John’s story remains enchanting and seems to be one of those “happily ever after” stories. Again, their relationship stands in stark contrast to that of Magnolia Flower’s parents.

Ultimately, this is a sweet story that makes for a pleasant read.

This story is included in Zora Neale Hurston’s collection Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick: Stories. I read it for Week 41 of my Deal Me In 2021 short story project. Check out my Deal Me In list here. Deal Me In is hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.