One of These Things is Not Like the Others

Posted December 31, 2011, under fiction
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by Stephanie Johnson
ISBN: 9780982151211

I get irritated when I read yet another article about how short stories don’t sell. I no longer read much past the headlines of these pieces, because I think they are foolish. People love stories. We never get sick of good stories, we’ll listen to them over and over (and read them more than once, too). Ok, fine, most people probably don’t buy them in book form as often as I do, but that is really because most people don’t buy as many books as I do.

I liked this collection of stories. They have good pain in them, the kind of thing that you recognize and maybe wince when you read. Johnson writes about real life (“My Neighbor Doesn’t Remember Everything She Forgets”) in such a way that even when she is referencing a famous movie character (“The Real Mrs. Robinson Takes a Moment to Reconsider”) you know she is talking about real things not movie and tv things, and certainly not “reality” tv things. She’s also funny, but in the less obvious, not a laugh track kind of way (“Marriage”, “Dragons”).

Because some of the stories feel like a gut punch — can you say that and add “in a good way” or is that too weird? as generally speaking gut punches are not good things — I will be looking forward to her next collection.

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Blue Nights

Posted , under memoir
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by Joan Didion
ISBN: 9780307267672

This most recent of Didion’s books is the first I’ve read. (This is somewhat surprising, as my sweetie frequently urges me to read Didion, one of her favorite authors. I don’t really have a good reason I haven’t done so until now.) You know going in that this will not be an easy book: it is about the death of her daughter.

As much as this book is about her daughter, it is also about questioning assumptions and decisions, and it is about aging. Didion seems surprised to find herself in her seventies and no longer immune to the frailties and indignities associated with becoming or being old. She is a tiny person, appearing delicate and from the vantage point of 40s, older — and razor sharp, and not likely to suffer fools gladly. At a reading we attended, she ended some less than useful paths during the Q&A with a definite yet not quite discourteous “thank you” followed by silence.

I was surprised at how willing Didion is to cast herself in unflattering light. I suppose I shouldn’t have been: what she is really after is a relentless pursuit of the truth, of figuring out what things mean, and writing her way there. Which is probably why my sweetie has urged me to read her work for so long.

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