McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #34 - Spring Issue
In the middle of the story's second act, it lost me. At this point in the story, it has become - like several stories from McSweeney''s first three issues - too bogged down in its postmodern sentence structure to be effective. It became simply too wordy, offering sentences stuffed with extra clauses and factual tidbits that the author could not precisely juggle into a smooth act. If the section in question had a voice, it would be that of a lecturer who speaks through a mouth of mashed potatoes. This is the story's major flaw, and otherwise there are few others.
The story is a very conceptual piece you might expect from a student working towards his MFA. It is about the house of a famous actor and the actresses who lived there directly before and after he did. "The Actor's House" is designed to discuss what it's title suggests it would, and probes into the lives of three celebrities through the ways in which they effected the house and how their presence changed the public's conception of the home.
The story is not incredibly moving, but it is well-crafted. It, unfortunately, is one of the quarterly's weaker pieces - which is a shame when considering that the author has published such strong contemporary short fiction - but it is not bad or long. It's a worthwhile read just to examine the craft put forth by one of America's most promising young writer, especially considering that this piece is less than ten pages long.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
"Free Fruit for Young Widows" by Nathan Engalnder
The New Yorker May 17, 2010
This week the New Yorker ran an excerpt from the forthcoming novel by Nathan Englander, an author the magazine predicted, along with writers Jonathan Franzen and Jhumpa Lahari, to be one of the “twenty writers for the twenty-first century.” The story concerned and Israeli father's own war stories and the stories of one of his brothers in arms.
The story began with a vignette in which the father, in 1965, was joined at a battlefield lunch table by four Egyptian soldiers who, through a French alliance re-alignment, wore wearing the same uniforms as the Israeli soldier. In other words, Private Shimmy Gezer did not realize he was sitting with the men he had shot at hours before. Shimmy's comrade, Private Tendler, did realize. He approached the table and shot the four point blank. Gezer tackled Tendler and demanded why he killed the men, why he did not take them prisoner and spare their lives. He landed a few good blows on Tendler before Tendler fought back and beat him until he was level with the sand.
Years later, Shimmy’s son, Etgar, would always ask his father why he gave free fruits and vegetables to Tendler, not ever charging him. When Etgar turned thirteen, Shimmy told him why. He told him a story about Tendler’s escape from a World War II prison camp.Tendler, Shimmy said, had survived by hiding piles of dead Jews. He had food slipped to him until the first American soldiers rolled through. Then, he ran back home to his village. He, now an orphan, ran for days and discovered his house occupied by his family’s nurse, her husband, two sons, and baby daughter. This was a mild shock, but Tendler quickly accepted that he could live happily with them and could start anew. But that night, he overheard his former nurse ordering her sons to kill Tendler as he slept. The mother was afraid the boy would reclaim his property and leave them homeless. Instead, Tendler woke in the night, shot the two brothers, the mother, the father, and the baby sister.
The story's prose is smooth and unobtrusive, allowing the plot to do the heavy lifting. This is not to say the the prose is dreadfully plain, for it is not at all, just that it steps to the side, continues simply, and allows the stories within "Free Fruit For Young Widows" to take center stage.
Englander’s story is one of philosophy, of moral codes. It asks who governs right and wrong, and more importantly, how these questions are answered by people of different backgrounds. Conflicting judgments are passed as result of to the judge’s age, personal history, and nationality. This story expects each reader to respond differently to each moral question.
But aside from personal qualities, what difference does context make when condemning or condoning a person’s actions? The state of mind a person possesses when acting definitely affects how their decisions should be evaluated, and on that basis Professor Tendler’s actions are both somewhat justified. It may be difficult to excuse a young boy for murdering those whom with he was once so well acquainted, but it becomes easier when seen through his perspective. Tendler returned home from the concentration camp, where his life was threatened everyday, and to find himself in a not too different situation. When imagining that Tendler saw the Nurse’s plan as a continuation of the threats on his life, it is not at all difficult to imagine that he killed the family just as excusably as he would have shot the guards at his concentration camp.
Englander’s story did not seem incredible when I set the magazine down. I thought it was very good, but had read many better. However, my opinion of the piece improved greatly when I found myself wrapped up in many philosophical questions about the nature of murder in the context of war. Did that context excuse Tendler’s execution of the Egyptians who sat down for lunch? Questions of this nature still pester me, proving “Free Fruit for Young Widows” is a good story because like all of the best ones, it stays with you.
This week the New Yorker ran an excerpt from the forthcoming novel by Nathan Englander, an author the magazine predicted, along with writers Jonathan Franzen and Jhumpa Lahari, to be one of the “twenty writers for the twenty-first century.” The story concerned and Israeli father's own war stories and the stories of one of his brothers in arms.
The story began with a vignette in which the father, in 1965, was joined at a battlefield lunch table by four Egyptian soldiers who, through a French alliance re-alignment, wore wearing the same uniforms as the Israeli soldier. In other words, Private Shimmy Gezer did not realize he was sitting with the men he had shot at hours before. Shimmy's comrade, Private Tendler, did realize. He approached the table and shot the four point blank. Gezer tackled Tendler and demanded why he killed the men, why he did not take them prisoner and spare their lives. He landed a few good blows on Tendler before Tendler fought back and beat him until he was level with the sand.
Years later, Shimmy’s son, Etgar, would always ask his father why he gave free fruits and vegetables to Tendler, not ever charging him. When Etgar turned thirteen, Shimmy told him why. He told him a story about Tendler’s escape from a World War II prison camp.Tendler, Shimmy said, had survived by hiding piles of dead Jews. He had food slipped to him until the first American soldiers rolled through. Then, he ran back home to his village. He, now an orphan, ran for days and discovered his house occupied by his family’s nurse, her husband, two sons, and baby daughter. This was a mild shock, but Tendler quickly accepted that he could live happily with them and could start anew. But that night, he overheard his former nurse ordering her sons to kill Tendler as he slept. The mother was afraid the boy would reclaim his property and leave them homeless. Instead, Tendler woke in the night, shot the two brothers, the mother, the father, and the baby sister.
The story's prose is smooth and unobtrusive, allowing the plot to do the heavy lifting. This is not to say the the prose is dreadfully plain, for it is not at all, just that it steps to the side, continues simply, and allows the stories within "Free Fruit For Young Widows" to take center stage.
Englander’s story is one of philosophy, of moral codes. It asks who governs right and wrong, and more importantly, how these questions are answered by people of different backgrounds. Conflicting judgments are passed as result of to the judge’s age, personal history, and nationality. This story expects each reader to respond differently to each moral question.
But aside from personal qualities, what difference does context make when condemning or condoning a person’s actions? The state of mind a person possesses when acting definitely affects how their decisions should be evaluated, and on that basis Professor Tendler’s actions are both somewhat justified. It may be difficult to excuse a young boy for murdering those whom with he was once so well acquainted, but it becomes easier when seen through his perspective. Tendler returned home from the concentration camp, where his life was threatened everyday, and to find himself in a not too different situation. When imagining that Tendler saw the Nurse’s plan as a continuation of the threats on his life, it is not at all difficult to imagine that he killed the family just as excusably as he would have shot the guards at his concentration camp.
Englander’s story did not seem incredible when I set the magazine down. I thought it was very good, but had read many better. However, my opinion of the piece improved greatly when I found myself wrapped up in many philosophical questions about the nature of murder in the context of war. Did that context excuse Tendler’s execution of the Egyptians who sat down for lunch? Questions of this nature still pester me, proving “Free Fruit for Young Widows” is a good story because like all of the best ones, it stays with you.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Promulgation
Throughout the next several years, this blog will be a forum for reviews of current short fiction. Here will appear discussions of stories published in recent issues of publications like The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Harvard Review, and many more. Some will be in-depth and some will not. Sometimes reviews may even be intertwined and used to reflect on one another.
However, this blog will sometimes also post critiques of less recent stories. These stories, which will most likely have been written in the past fifty years, will be ones believed to be of above average quality and worth re-visiting.
However, this blog will sometimes also post critiques of less recent stories. These stories, which will most likely have been written in the past fifty years, will be ones believed to be of above average quality and worth re-visiting.
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