I've been having trouble reading, writing, and paying attention to anything at all recently. It's been cartoons from childhood and intermittent yoga, along with Almond milk and avoiding all the healthy food we buy at the grocery store. Long story short, I've been in a kind of blue haze; a funk that's an indescribable blend of all the things that are wrong with my life and an attempt to do something about it. I celebrated my birthday with my family, and then my grandmother's birthday, and can't believe how little I've accomplished for my age. This sounds like a complaint-fest, but it gets better, I promise.
After serious emotional downs, I had nothing to do but attempt the things that have made me happy in the past. Over the last day, I've knitted a Boba Fett hat and finished a book of short stories by Anne Hood, the title of which is also the title of this blog post.
Let me begin with my personal opinion on the short story. I think it's a little bit more true to the form of life than novels or poems. A poem describes a moment, a novel describes a lifetime, and a short story describes the condensed essence of a phase in life. There are always exceptions to every rule (including this one, I would hope) but that's the long and short of it. Novels, when in a series, also tend to describe large phases in a character's life--like the short story--but novels in a series always stay in my mind as if they were an entire novel. In a way, they are. I think life is made up of a series of phases, but you never remember every detail. The details are important and add a sense of verisimilitude, but you never remember every moment of every day in the stark shades painted by novels. Short stories are a series of impressions collected over a period of time, and when the details and nuances of prose and thematic elements of a novel fade, every novel turns into a short story whose synopsis can be given in a space of time shorter than waiting for your meal to arrive in a restaurant.
Hood's stories almost invariably take place in or around Providence, Rhode Island. Her protagonists are (with one or two exceptions) women at different points in their lives as they grapple with heartbreak or stagnation and emerge cleansed. Sometimes, the cleansing process only just begins, but Hood's sense of dramatic irony and heart-achingly poignant resonance is unparalleled in my experience. Even when the ending of the story isn't necessarily happy, it's logical, neat (in an emotionally messy way) and realistic.
These stories are stark but gentle, tender but firm, truthful and absolutely haunting. It's impossible to choose a single favorite story, but I very much like "Total Cave Darkness," the very first story in which an alcoholic who's trying to stay dry runs away with a pastor. They escape for weeks, sleeping in cheap motels and enjoying free HBO and each other. Finally, they decide to explore caves together, and the protagonist finds something in the struggle she's been undertaking. "The Language of Sorrow" is about a grandmother who has her grandson thrust upon her unexpectedly after he gets a girl in trouble, and it made me cry. It's all about the people we love, how they sometimes leave us, and how there's no language for the pain it brings. These stories are about relationships, about emotions deeper than language, about mourning, naturalism, and forgiveness.
Highly, highly recommended for anyone with any interest whatsoever in humanity.
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