Pariah and Other Stories (1983) by Joan Williams

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Pariah and Other Stories (1983)

by Joan Williams

Arkabutla, Mississippi

Mississippi: 11/18

   I read this slim volume of short stories sitting in court in a single afternoon, waiting for my matter to be called.   Pariah is geographically distinct because it is the northwestern location within the entire chapter spanning Florida to Louisiana.  Louisiana is further west but the northern border of Louisiana is miles south of the northern border that runs through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.  Thus, Arkabutla is closer to Memphis than any large population center in Mississippi. 

  Williams is best known as a protege of William Faulkner- her bare bones Wikipedia page is almost comical in its lack of biographical detail- surely Joan Williams is a candidate for a literary revival?  Perhaps though it's the perspective- like Flannery O'Connor her characters are losers and weirdos- the collection of short stories beginning with three interconnected stories about a mentally challenged person.  There is frequent and unkind use of the n-word- many of these characters can be described as poorer whites who fear and resent the incipient Civil Rights movement, a frequent subject of discussion among the characters.  

 I can see how folks might shy away from reviving stories like these, but I found the obtuseness refreshing, as well as the literary ambition.

The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Awakening (1899)

by Kate Chopin

Grand Isle, Louisiana

Louisiana: 17/28

  No re-reads!  Man, that is a sassy-ass write up below- written during my year of divorce, clearly.  I stand by the analysis, though. 

The Awakening by Kate Chopin (10/17/13)

1,001 Books to Read Before You Die
The Awakening (1899)
by Kate Chopin

  The Awakening by Kate Chopin is often called the American Madame Bovary.  That makes her the fourth and last of the national Bovaries.  Let's see- you've got the original by Flaubert, the Russian Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and the German Effi Briest.  Although The Awakening is the only book of the four to be written by an actual woman there is nothing about it that marks off the presence of a female authorial voice.  The Madame Bovary of the awakening is Edna Pontellier, a bored New Orleans house wife of a wealthy Creole stock market guy.  Edna is unhappy, but she doesn't know why, oh, it must be her husband whom she decides that she no longer loves.

 It is impossible to read any of the quartet of national Bovary novels without reflecting on my own experience.  I have heard the words of Bovary/Karenina/Briest/Pontellier from the mouth of my own wife, and I've been through the marriage therapy sessions that these women lacked, so I am intimately familiar with the thought process that leads a woman from a "happy" marriage to an "unhappy" marriage without any assistance from a disrespectful or malevolent husband.  That is something that all of these protagonist's share in common:  A husband who doesn't "do" anything to merit abandonment.

After reading all four novels I am left with the abiding conviction that all four husbands make the same mistake of treating their wives with respect.  It seems like if all four of these characters had been treated with a bit less respect, they might have stayed married.  Perhaps they would have been unhappy, but they all seem to be pretty unhappy post separation as well, so it hardly seems like an unfair swap.

Ten Seconds (1991) by Louis Edwards

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Ten Seconds (1991)

by Louis Edwards

Lake Charles, Louisiana

Louisiana: 16/28

   Ten Seconds is another familiar tale from the American South, albeit told with some literary ambition. Louis Edwards frames the flashback intensive format through the ten seconds it takes to run a forty-yard sprint, with the narrator reflecting on the poor choices he has made regarding his family, particularly in regard to his wife and young children.   It is well trodden territory for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  I did enjoy the depiction of the narrator's commute the petro-chemical plant where he works- here in Southern California "the commute" is a huge part of everyday life, but I can't think of a single book so far- at least since the chapter on New Jersey, where commuting is even something a character does. 

Biloxi (2019) by Mary Miller

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Biloxi (2019)

by Mary Miller

Willow Avenue and Volunteer Park, Biloxi, Mississippi

Mississippi: 10/18

   Louis MacDonald is a recently divorced 63-year-old man, someone who has retired early from an unspecified job/career in anticipation of a substantial inheritance from his deceased father.  As the book opens, MacDonald is at what you would call "loose ends": He adopts a dog under mysterious circumstances from a quasi-neighbor and spends time drinking full sugar Coca-Cola and ignoring warnings from his doctor about his incipient diabetes.  MacDonald is one of those adult American men who doesn't know how to care for himself- he is seemingly unable to cook for himself and mostly relies for sustenance on leftovers his sad-dad apartment compels neighbor brings home from his job cooking at a chain restaurant (are there any other kinds, here in Biloxi, Mississippi.) 

   I've hit a mini streak of his pathetic protagonists inside the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America. The southeastern Louisiana coast doesn't have a monopoly on the character type, but there is no denying the affinity between the bleak landscape and the bleak lives.  You could put this novel and Frederick Barthelme's Waveland back-to-back and maybe not notice the switch from one book to the next.   The third 1,001 Novels selection from this stretch of coastline is the similarly bleak Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward, which at least had the benefit of solidly depicting the landscape in a way that the protagonists in Biloxi and Waveland seem incapable of doing.  

  

Now I Surrender (2026) by Alvaro Enrique

 Audiobook Review

Now I Surrender (2026)

by Alvaro Enrique

Translated by Natsha Wimmer

 I am a big fan of Mexican author Alvaro Enrique.  I was especially excited for the English language translation of his 2016 novel, Now I Surrender, a combination of multiple novellas taking place in Apacheria.  At times, Now I Surrender reminded me of Roberto Bolaños, 2666, of the corpus of work by Teju Cole and of course, Cormac McCarthy, the forever laurearte of the North American desert Southwest.  The first strand of Now I Surrender is the McCarthy-esque bit- a 19th century Mexican army captain leading a rag-tag bunch of "troops" in search of a kidnapped Mexican woman.  This portion contains the kind of hard to stomach violence that one associates with McCarthy's border trilogy, though the characters have a distinctly Mexican point-of-view, vastly different from McCarthy's affectless Americans.

 The second strand is a writing/rewriting of the events surrounding the capture of Geronimo and the last band of wild Apache Indians.  This section is more like Enrique's other work- a poetic reimagining of very real historical events, with characters who sound like modern people.  

  The final strand is a Teju Cole Esque part about a character who sounds very much like the Author- a Spanish language writer of some repute, living in New York City and struggling with his split Mexican/Spanish identity.  Seeking clarity, he takes his wife and children on a tour of Apacheria, where he muses on the subjects in the other two stands of the book.

  At first, I was a little disappointed, but as the book moved forward, I found myself engaged.  Even though this book was published a decade ago, it still felt fresh, like it could have been published this year. Highly recommend this book and the rest of Enrique's bibliography, he is one of my favorite active writers in any language.