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August 19, 2007
MY COFFEE TABLE IS COVERED WITH SHORT STORIES
Yesterday, the cafe was short-staffed and my son agreed to work if I took him in and then onto his friend's place at the end of his shift so he could watch football. My husband asked if I could keep an eye on the counter as well in case they needed me to take orders.
I took a couple of books with me and managed to read about four pages in three hours because I was constantly aware of everything that was going on in the cafe. At some point, a woman called Donna (have I remembered right?) sat next to me and asked about the Granta upon which I had propped The 2007 Pushcart Prize XXXI BEST OF THE SMALL PRESSES. I had begun reading Richard Burgin's Vacation (the four pages) and I finished it this morning. I'd forgetten that I'd started it because of 'my coffee table that is covered with such a treasure trove of short story anthologies and collections'. I'd picked up Colm Toibin's Mothers and Sons and finished another story - Famous Blue Raincoat - and was thinking of the musical setting and how that was so much the Ireland I'd visited around the time the story took place.
I told Donna that she ought to, absolutely, read this collection by Colm Toibin. It is suberb. She told me that she liked his work anyway. I said that I did as well but this was beyond first rate.
I also recommended the 2007 Pushcart which I have been reading cover to cover - I love the arrangement of fiction, poetry and essay here in a 'Best Of' selection. Besides, it has Kim Chinquee's FORMATION, a wonder that originally appeared in the literary magazine Noon.
In reading Kim's story, I was reminded of reading Noon when I was in New York, cover to cover, and the story, The Caterpillar by Lydia Davis, that appears in her SSC from Farrar Straus and Giroux, Varieties of Disturbance. But more about this book in my next post.
Now I should be excused for a moment -- a friend of ours has become a grandmother, her twenty-old-daughter has just had twins, girls. WOW!
Back again - It is by accident that my coffee table is full of these marvellous SSCs. Mothers and Sons came via the library, but the others are from my last Amazon order. In my next post - a full list.
But more about the gems in the Pushcart 2007: Cool Things by Brian Doyle from Oregon Humanities. Check that journal out. The Medicine Man by Kevin Moffett. I wondered why the name was familiar until I realized that Kevin Moffett's SSC had won the Iowa Prize the year before Jim Tomlinson did, and that I'd fondled both books at the Atlanta AWP before buying Jim's (there is only so much one can carry across international waters). Poetry by Louise Gluck, fiction by Laura Kasischeke with the fabulous title: If A Stranger Approaches You About Carrying A Foreign Object With You Onto The Plane.
That's it for now. I am ready for my Lunch and more Reading!
Posted by girija at August 19, 2007 01:49 PM