"At The Edge of The World by Krys Lee (from Drifting House).

"At The Edge of The World" is the third short story by Krys Lee on which I have posted.  Her stories are perfectly structured works of art, beautifully written, incredibly insightful as regards her characters and a joy to read.  Most of her stories are about life in North Korea or about Korean immigrants to America.

There are three central characters in the story.   A married couple and their ten year old son.   At sixteen the mother, while living in North Korea, had been sold to a Chinese man who got her pregnant,  she met her husband while walking across China to gain entrance to a special refugee program for the USA.

When we meet them they are in Los Angeles.   There son is a super achiever in school, at ten he is already determined to go to medical school.   Most in the Korean community have become devout Christians.  In one very telling line we learn the husband is an atheist, he got enough of region when he was forced to treat the Korean dictator as God. The parents drift apart, the boy has his first crush.

The beauty in this wonderful story is in the amazing details.  I loved the subplot involving the Korean shaman who moved in next door.

I endorse this story to all lovers of the form.  

Krys Lee was born in Seoul in The Republic of Korea and raised in England and the United States.  Her debut collection of short storiesDrifting House (2012) is drawing great praise from all over the world, with the exception of North Korea where I suspect being caught with a copy would get you in very serious trouble

" A Report to an Academy" by Franz Kafka (1917)

Recently I read a very interesting article by Tessa Hadley, author of Married Love (a highly regarded collection of short stories)  in the Manchester Guardian in which she listed ten of her favorite short stories.   The first story she mentioned was "The Dead" by James Joyce followed by Anton Chekhov's devastating "Ward Six" about life in a late Czarist era mental hospital.  Most of the stories I have read.   One I had not was "A Report to an Academy" by Franz Kafka.   

I have posted on several of Kafka's works.   No one would say they are light reads by any standard.   The major short stories of Kafka are must readings for anyone seeking to understand modern literary, especially European,  sensibilities.  Given a full focus and respect, his works are immensely rewarding.   

I hope you will read this story (it is about five pages and a translation is in the pubic domain) so I will just post briefly on it more to help me recall it in the future.   The story is told in a very elegant and sophisticated fashion by an ape, speaking to an academy of highly learned members about his conversion from wild ape to a "civilized" one.  We learn of his horrific capture in the jungle and his caged shipboard return to Europe.   We learn of the process where he became less ape like and more human.  We sense deeply buried his self loathing.   Underlying the story is a deep contempt for what passes for humanity.   

Mel u

  Tessa Hadley's Ten Favorite Short Stories

A Farewell to Prague by Desmond Hogan (1995, republished 2013 by Dalkey Archives, 2013). My Meeting With Desmond Hogan

On May 2nd of this year I had the great honor of meeting Desmond Hogan.  Shauna Gilligan, PhD, invited me to a reading at his publisher, Lilliput Press in Dublin.   Shauna and I were early so I took a seat in the lovely public area.  I was the only one there when a man knocked on the door.  It was Hogan and I let him in and introduced myself.   I was deeply moved when he profusely thanked me for my posts on his amazing short stories.   We talked as if we had known each other for years. He was currently reading Zora Hurston and we talked about her life in Florida.  I asked him if he had read Nathaniel West and it turned out Des knew the power of West  well. It is hard to describe the reading only to say it was amazing.   To me it was as if Des was an ancient poet reading from depths of pain and insight most cannot close to fathom. 

I have posted on a number of Hogan's short stories and his beautiful first novel, The Ikon Maker.   I anticipate posting on and reading Hogan the rest of my life.  I have copies of about twenty short stories I still have not read. 

Farewell to Prague is considered by some his best work to date.  It is very different from The Ikon Maker and is similar to some of the short stories.   

I am under the weather so I will not be doing a long post on this work.  I am sorry my health makes it hard right now to do justice to this great book. It is a dark work, full of pain, death saturated.   In it the central character roams Germany, Prague, Northern California and Alabama, among other places.

I will read this book again soon and endorse it as among the greatest works I have ever read.   I think Nathaniel West would be proud to have his work compared to Hogan.  I know I am proud to have met and conversed with Desmond Hogan. 

Mel u

"Girl On a Leash" by Krys Lee (2013, 5 pages)

Krys Lee was born in Seoul in The Republic of Korea and raised in England and the United States.  Her debut collection of short stories Drifting  House (2012) is drawing great praise from all over the world, with the exception of North Korea where I suspect being caught with a copy would get you in very serious trouble..  

I posted last year on the title story in her collection, "Drifting Home".   I was very happy to find a new story by Lee in a recent issue of Guernica.  Lee focuses on Koreans.   Some of her stories are about life in North Korea, some in Seoul, and some deal with first and second generation Korean immigrants to the USA.  

"Girl on a Leash" has three main characters, a married couple.  The father mops the floors at an American college at night.  He graduated from the University of Seoul, he resents the barbarians, as he and his wife call Americans.  They save to open a laundry. 

They also have a late teenage daughter. They keep her,not sure if we are to take this literarily or metaphorically, on a leash.

"She had always been latched to a leash. Had grown up with a handsome pink leather collar encircling her neck, a leather strap holding her at rigid attention. Everywhere she walked, her father and mother trailed behind, slackening or tightening it.

They worried. If she fell asleep, the downbeat of the leash shuddered her alert. When she was slow, her father snapped it against her clavicle. But when shadows scudded along the lintels, they drew the leash in and harbored her in the cove of their arms."

There biggest fear is that American college boys will sexually prey on their developing into a beauty daughter.   They fear her sexuality will be her downfall.  They repeatedly warn her to trust no American men.  They constantly search her room for signs of trouble.  When they find love letters, they tighten the leash so if she resists she will fall over.

This kind of parental tyranny often leads to trouble and can produce the very results parents fear.

This is a very powerful story.  I recommend it to all.   It is an excellent introduction to what most may find a wonderful new writer.

Mel u

Read "Girl On a Leash" here

"The Finding" by Valerie Trueblood (2013, from Search Party: Stories of Rescue)

Search Party:  Stories of Rescue by Valerie Trueblood is receiving a lot of positive notices.   Her previous short story collection, Mary or Burn, was short listed for The Frank O'Connor Prize.  

"The Finding" is a very emotionally intelligent deeply moving story.  A woman, a nurse, is at the office of an optomologist awaiting an examination.  The doctor comes out and tells her his nurse just quit.  He seems at a loss.   He tells her he will have to wait until his daughter arrives as he needs a woman in the office during examinations of females.   The woman worked near the doctor in a hospital.  He is a decent man, frazzled. He tells her his wife has left him and he is living in a hotel.  Her eyes are dilated and the doctor offers to drive her home, she took the bus there.  He tells her that once he drops her off he is going to go to his house as his wife, who hates dogs, has kept his beloved old dog just for spite.  The woman says she wants to stay with him until he get the dog, to support him.  The doctor nearly breaks down when he sees his poor old dog's neglected condition.  The woman feels deep sympathy for the man.  She senses the humanity in him, where he had at once just seemed remote.  

I don't want to disclose more of the plot of this story other than to say it ends with the rescue of more than just the dog.  Pet lovers will totally get this story.  

If you download a sample of the book, you can read the story.

Valerie Trueblood grew up in rural Virginia, USA, studied with John Hawkes and John Berryman, worked as a caseworker in Chicago and as a reference librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. In 2006, Trueblood’s first novel, Seven Loves, came out from Little Brown and was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers”. She lives in Seattle and the Methow Valley.

Mel u

Let The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor (1960)

Flannery O'Connor (1925 to 1964, Savannah, Georgia, USA) is tremendously influential very highly regarded writer working a style called "Southern Gothic".  I have now read all of her short stories and both of her novels.   Virtually all of her work has deeply religious themes.   There was nothing moderate about O'Connor's commitment to her version of Catholicism.     Certainly she believes literally in damnation.   The plot in Let the Violent Bare it Away centers on a man and his nephew.  The uncle is certain the nephew is detained to bring a revelation. When the nephew rebels, he is in revolt against God.   Almost every sentence is a wonder.  As in her work, people are strange, given to violence.  There are things to ponder in O'Connor.  Why are women who have sex with men they are not married to called "whores", why do white characters nearly all call people of color "niggers"?  By 1960 this was unacceptable language, even in Georgia.  

This is a powerful work many will find disturbing.  

Of her two novels, I prefer Wise Blood".   

Her short stories are required reading in Masters in Fine Art programs focusing on creative writing.

Mel u

The Ikon Maker by Desmond Hogan (1976, republished 2013 with an epilogue, 146 pages)

I hold Desmond Hogan in very high esteem.  I have done about twenty posts on his short stories.  The Ikon Maker is his first novel.   For the work of a young man, twenty six, it is amazing for its profound insights and the beauty of the prose.  I read it twice.   Once in a kindle edition and once in a traditional book.  

I think most readers of this novel will before they begin think it is a coming out story of a young Galway man.  It is this but it is much more.  It is the story of a woman who loses her husband and her son.

You should read The Ikon Maker as soon as you can.

Please excuse this short post, I am a bit under the weather.

 an excellent post on The Ikon Maker from Shaunna Gilligan , PhD

Mel u