Willa Cather: ‘Neighbor Rosicky’

 On Nov. 3, I tried to list 12 short stories that I’d include if I were editing an anthology. I’m already dissatisfied.

The glaring omissions are Willa Cather’s “Neighbor Rosicky” and Guy Davenport’s “John Charles Tapner.” I don’t know which two from the original list would have to go to make room for these two, but I couldn’t do without them.

I’ve written about “John Charles Tapner.” (See “A peculiar kind of short story,” Sept. 22, 2021.)

I can’t explain the absence of “Neighbor Rosicky.” Michael Leddy, commenting on the challenge to choose a personal anthology of 12 stories, said he’d include the three stories collected in Cather’s Obscure Destinies. “Neighbor Rosicky” is one of those. Last year, I wrote this sentence: “I think ‘Neighbor Rosicky’ was Cather’s masterpiece.” But I didn’t say why.

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t read “Neighbor Rosicky” and think you might, stop here. 

“Neighbor Rosicky” does something that’s hard to do: It captures what a good person is like. It’s easier to write about great men and women than it is to capture ordinary people who somehow embody goodness.

Rosicky was a Czech farmer who died of a bad heart at 65. He was the kind of fellow who would tell the storekeeper to round up his bill and throw in some candy and fabric for the women back on the farm.

He thought of others and showed them hospitality. He tried to ease their burdens. He knew what was bad in this world — our stressful workplaces aren’t nearly as toxic as the factories of the Gilded Age —  and he tried to steer younger people away from that pain.

His “American” (non-Czech) daughter-in-law, Polly, slowly realized that Old Rosicky had shown her love. She was shocked when she realized that no one — not even her mother — had loved her like Old Rosicky.

It was as if Rosicky had a special gift for loving people, something that was like an ear for music or an eye for color. It was quiet, unobtrusive; It was merely there.”

That passage has the heft of scripture to me.

There are many small pleasures in this story. Rosicky had a bad heart and wouldn’t follow his doctor’s advice to take it easy. I love the doctor’s lament that a Bohemian can’t be separated from his coffee or his pipe. And I love the space that Cather created called “Father’s Corner,” a spot near a plant-filled window, where Rosicky had his chair, surrounded by Bohemian newspapers and books, tobacco, pipes and tools.

• Source: Willa Cather, Great Short Works of Willa Cather, edited by Robert K. Miller; New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1992.

Walter Benjamin on his library

 I am looking at deep piles of books, stacked against four walls. I’m supposed to be thinking about what kind of shelves would make order out of this chaos.

Instead, I’m thinking of Walter Benjamin’s essay “Unpacking My Library.”

I tell myself this: I like to write, which is just a way of thinking. And because I write, I think I might use all these books before I die.

Having a library is practical, I tell myself. 

But that’s not completely true, and Benjamin points out why it’s not. To a collector, each book is a prize, not just an object. It has a history as well as a use.

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.

I can see, in these stacks of books, evidence of the passions of a younger self, interested in Greek thinkers and grammar, Wittgenstein, Hume, botany, astronomy and poets, essayists and short story writers.

Shalamov: ‘In the Night’

 A recent note about Faulkner’s story “The Bear” prompted some doubts and second thoughts.

The note focused on Faulkner’s use of details — his showing, rather than telling.

But there’s a related art in conveying a story: pacing.

One example is Valam Shalamov’s “In the Night.”

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t read this story and think you might, stop here.

This story is only 1,300 words or so, but it unfolds slowly. 

We are looking over the shoulder of Glebov, who is with a group of men in a camp. As the men go out at night, led by Bagretsov, it becomes clear they are in a prison camp.

It slowly becomes clear that the men are going to rob a grave. When a prisoner dies, the other prisoners can’t let warm clothes and boots go to waste. Sometimes, cigarettes are found in a dead man’s pockets.

Bagretsov cuts his hand, digging stones from the cairn. The bleeding won’t stop.

Glebov examines the wound and says, “Poor coagulation.” 

“Are you a doctor?” Bagretsov asks sarcastically. And then it hits you: Of course he was a doctor, before the gulag. That’s the kind of place a gulag is.

Details make a story. But they aren’t just reported. A story, as opposed to a report, is allowed to unfold at its own pace.

Shalamov was a master at pacing.

• Source: Short Shorts: An Anthology of the Shortest Stories, edited by Irving Howe and Ilana Wiener Howe; New York: Bantam Books, 1983, pp. 159-62.

If I were in a book club, I might say this

 The running question for the past three days has been about what we can and can’t discuss in book clubs.

Sometimes, I hold contradictory thoughts:

• William Faulkner played a role in a culture that was violently racist.

• All of us who grew up in this culture — especially those of us who grew up in the South — played a role, great or small, in this tragedy. If you are trying blame, you’ll find that it doesn’t focus on any one person. 

• Faulkner’s writing about people of African descent is painful to read. But the fact that something is painful doesn’t necessarily count as a pass to ignore it.

• Knowledge about our shared history is better than ignorance. I think it’s especially important to look for information about casual attitudes, attitudes about which there was no trace of anguish or moral doubt. Some racists had to be reassured that it was morally OK to separate parents from children when selling human beings. By contrast, the use of racial slurs usually needed no reassurance. That was casual — unquestioned, almost unnoticed. Historians like primary sources — diaries, letters, speeches, newspaper articles — when they look for information about those kinds of attitudes. But it seems to me that fiction often throws better light on how individuals came to accept the unacceptable.

• We Americans still live with racism, and we’ve got to get beyond just being bewildered by it. A lot of what passes for American politics is overtly racist, and many of us — including me — sometimes throw up our hands and claim to be bewildered. We just can’t comprehend how we got to this place. But if you look at the historical records, you will be a little less bewildered. If you read newspaper advertisements offering human beings for sale, you will be less bewildered. If you see the casual use of racial slurs in public speeches and newspaper articles you will be less bewildered. And if you look at our literature you also will be less bewildered. Knowledge is better.

• It seems to me that part of the difficulty in having discussions about literature is that so much of the writing about American life is still painful and that this pain is not evenly shared. It’s not fair to make a person of African descent go through the pain of discussing a Faulkner story for the enlightenment of a white person. It’s also not fair to make two students — one who is wounded by the racism in a Faulkner story and one who is delighted to see the racism exposed — discuss the story. It doesn’t matter whether both those students are of African descent. Or whether they are not.

• Consent seems to be crucial. I don't think you can have a productive discussion with unwilling participants. Yet I'm an excellent counterexample. Time and again, good teachers kindled a passion for learning about an unlikely subject in an unwilling, uncooperative student.

At this point, I just don't know. I think there is something of value to learn in our painful history and literature. But I don’t know how to teach that. (I admire those who do.)

I also think this: The world constantly changes. There are writers today who can reach today's readers  in a way that Faulkner’s stories cannot. A lot of the writers I read are from my generation and those before. I need to catch up. Maybe if I did, my imaginary book club would too.

What I learned from Faulkner's 'The Bear'

  When I was in my 20s, I would have told you that William Faulkner’s “The Bear” was perhaps the greatest short story written by an American.

But the world that Faulkner portrayed was racist. It was a society that exploited people, and turned to violence when the exploitation was questioned. Faulkner’s role in that way of life makes it unlikely that “The Bear” is going to be read by the local book club.

I can tell you what I admired about it.

The story is about a quest. Year after year, some men hunt a bear that is so smart and strong that it escapes. The bears been shot several times, and its tracks are distinctive because of its trap-mangled toes.

A boy who grows up hearing about the almost mythical bear finally grows old enough to tag along. One day, the boy followed the bear’s tracks, got lost and stopped at a fallen log …

seeing as he sat down on the log the crooked print, the warped indention in the wet ground which while he looked at it continued to fill with water until it was level full and the water began to overflow and the sides of the print began to dissolve away.

Faulkner could have written that the bear was very close and that the boy realized it. He could have written that the boy experienced wonder and fear.

But the details of the track — so fresh that it is still filling with water — let the reader know, without being told, just how close the bear must have been. Those details let the reader feel that wonder and fear. The art of the story is the difference between experiencing a character's feelings and being told about them.

Like the boy in the story, I grew up a little, as a reader and a writer, when I first read it. 

Yesterday’s note was on an essay about what we can and can’t talk about in discussing books. I don’t know what I think about that topic, and so this is an essay or trial run — a stab at it. As you might guess, the question has become one about short stories, rather than about books.

• Source: William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses; New York: Vintage Books, 1973, p. 208. And, yes, I’ve mentioned this passage before: “Or maybe look at a story by Faulkner,” Feb. 9, 2022.

How we talk about fiction

 I take Naomi Kanakia’s essay “The Dreariness of Book Club Discussions” as a challenge. I’ve got to get better at reading and talking about fiction.

Kanakia points out some obvious things. When we talk about fiction with friends, most of us simply state what we like and what we don’t. It’s a short discussion.

When we read nonfiction, on the other hand, we are reading about ideas — something we can argue about. Those discussions tend to be more interesting. As a result, some book clubs — and some literary reviews — lean heavily on nonfiction.

The people enjoy fiction. They want to read it. The interest and passion just doesn’t show up in the discussions.

That’s a broad statement. No doubt there are book clubs that have discussions of fiction that are ripsnorters. But my experience is in line with Kanakia’s. 

Her essay has stuck in my mind. I’m still thinking about a constructive way to respond to it.

• Source: Naomi Kanakia, “The Dreariness of Book Club Discussions”; Los Angeles Review of Books, Nov. 2, 2022.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-dreariness-of-book-club-discussions/

How long does it take to write one?

 When Lydia Davis’s Collected Stories came out 15 years ago, readers usually said something like this: The book makes you think about what a short story is.

Some of her stories were remarkably short.

I like short shorts. They were popular in the 1930s, when some magazine offered readers a short story that would fit on one page. The short short’s descendants have been known by other terms, including flash fiction and sudden fiction. The terms are still evolving.

Some of the thinking about the form of short shorts is interesting. But I think there might be a simple explanation.

Some writers do their best work when they can work through a draft in a single sitting. In earlier times, a Chekhov or a Tolstoy might have had all day — and perhaps all day for several days. Today’s writers seem to be living, and thus working, at a faster pace.

For example, Claudia Smith:

I found that I did my best work when I could write through a piece from beginning to end with­out much inter­rup­tion, and for a flash piece, that usu­al­ly was about a half hour. I’m not say­ing the piece would be fin­ished, just that I would have a draft done. 

Perhaps a lot of the theory about compressed form might be explained by the compressed time that a writer can give to a draft at any one sitting.

I imagine that most readers, like most writers, are living a faster pace. I’m one of those who appreciate the shorter stories. 

• Source: Tiffany Sumner, “Flash Interview: Claudia Smith Chen”; FlashFiction, April 10, 2014.