story: “Taking Care”
author: Joy Williams
year: 1972
where: NYUAD Library
note: POV is so interesting in this story; I like how Williams keeps us locked onto the character Jonas, but then flies over to his daughter in Mexico or into the future.
a line: “She is going to Mexico, where soon, in the mountains, she will have a nervous breakdown. Jones does not know this, but his daughter has seen it in the stars and is going out to meet it.’”
theme(s): Afterlife, Anagogy, Family
story: “The Lonesome Bodybuilder” & “Q&A” & “Fitting Room”
author: Yukiko Motoya
year: 2018 (English translation)
where: Around Hiroshima
note: “The Lonesome Bodybuilder” had a very different ending than I had expected, but “Fitting Room” was probably the most strange and enjoyable of the three, though they all have their own level of discomfort, of being a bit off-kilter.
a line: “I stood up and went to the window, and nervously struck a pose at him. Both arms up and bent by my head, chest out, emphasizing my V-taper. My husband looked incredulous as I posed in my bikini.’”
theme(s): loss of identity, lack of intimacy
story: “Dramas”
author: Edna O’Brien
year: 1989
where: mio ufficio
note: from the Paris Review
a line: “When the new shopkeeper arrived in the village he aroused great curiosity along with some scorn. He was deemed refined because his fingernails looked as if they had been varnished a tinted ivory. “
story: “New York Mining Disaster”, “Airplane: Or, How He Talked to Himself as If Reciting Poetry”, “A Perfect Day for Kangaroos”, “The Ice Man”, “The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes”
author: Haruki Murakami
year: 2006 (from Blind Willow, Sleeping Willow)
where: everywhere!
note: a batch of stories (I’m behind on my chronicling)
a line: “’Even after I’d lost almost all sensation, I still knew this: The husband here at the South Pole is not the husband I used to know. I couldn’t say how he’d changed, exactly, for he still was always thoughtful, always had kind words for me.’”
story: “Dance in America”
author: Lorrie Moore
year: 1998
where: home, sleepy and dreamy
note: I am rereading…and searching for a quote I know is in the collection Birds of America…somewhere. Why did I not mark it?
a line: “I sit between the bulletin board and the window.”
story: “Wild Berry Blue”
author: Rivka Galchen
year: 2014
where: some backseat taxi, some bedroom
note: the strongest, in my opinion, from her American Innovations collection
a line: “He was my first love, my first love in the way that first loves are usually second or third or fourth loves. I still think about a stranger in a green jacket across from me in the waiting room at the DMV. About a blue-eyed man with a singed earlobe that I saw at a Baskin-Robbins with his daughter. My first that kind of love. I never got over him. I never get over anyone. ”
bonus line: “A part of me decides I am taking him back into my heart. Even if no room will be left for anything else.”
story: Joan of Arc Sits Naked in Her Dorm Room
author: Rachel Engelman
year: 2018
where: Abu Dhabi, airport apron, sitting inside one of those bulging A380-800s.
note: author is a current UT Austin/Michener MFA student
a line: “He is very politic and always asks Joan about her classes, or the book she is reading, or the fish she keeps in a wine decanter.”
