The Cheater's Guide to Love

by Junot Díaz

 Another Junot Díaz story so soon after the last one?  That works for me.  Díaz has never been a particularly prolific writer - there was a gap of eleven years between his first collection of short stories, Drown, and his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, so seeing him up his output in the lead-up to his new collection, This Is How You Lose Her's release, makes me happy.


In 'The Cheater's Guide of Love', Díaz's narrator (when they are all named Yunior, are we to assume that it's always the same guy, or are these different characters?) is suffering from a break-up.  The dissolution of his longest and best relationship really is his own fault - his fiancee discovers proof that he's had about fifty sucias over the six years of their relationship.


The story runs through the first five years after the break-up, as Yunior goes through bout after bout of depression, becomes an obsessive runner, and then a yoga fanatic when an injury puts an end to his running.  His weight fluctuates, as do the quality of the relationships he begins with other women.  The only constant in his life is the loyalty of his friend Elvis.


As is usual with a Díaz story, there is an abundance of Dominican slang and permanently adolescent men.  His stories are always very entertaining, and this one is no different.

Monstro

by Junot Díaz

 Junot Díaz has made a name for himself by writing perceptive stories about characters that have a certain geekiness to them (such as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), but before writing this story, he'd stayed away from genre writing.

Monstro is a science fiction horror story, set in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the near future.  It is narrated by Dominican-American student at Brown, who has returned to the DR with his ill mother for the summer.  Bored, he starts hanging out with Alex, a school-mate who lives a privileged life in both countries.  Alex has a large circle, including the girl Mysty, who utterly captivates our narrator, who is not used to travelling in such circles.  They spend their summer hanging out and partying, and the narrator steadily works his way closer to the aloof and difficult Mysty, who has no interest in him.

While this is going on, a strange new disease breaks out in Haiti.  People have a strange, fungus-like substance growing on them, and they begin to merge into one another.  They also linger endlessly in a near-death state, and regularly let out a loud wail in unison.  No one knows what the disease is, and Díaz keeps returning to it and its progress while still keeping the focus on our narrator.  Eventually, other, stranger things begin happening in Haiti, leading to violence, and the eventual intervention of outside military forces.

Basically, this is an 'end of the world' story, and a tale of unrequited love, combined with Díaz's own brand of Spanish and futuristic slang.  It's endlessly readable, and whets my appetite for a new Díaz novel.

Black Box

by Jennifer Egan

This year's New Yorker summer fiction issue (which came out a few weeks ago - I'm behind on things once again) has a 'science fiction' theme, although it is full of stories by writers not normally associated with that genre, like Jennifer Egan.

Egan's story, 'Black Box', works on a number of levels.  To begin with, it's written as a series of short instructions, none longer than a Twitter posting.  The story is then divided into 47 short chapters, which can consist of as few as four of these 'tweets', to more than ten.  Consequently, this story looks very unique compared to most other pieces I've read in this magazine.

The instructions are designed to assist their recipient, a 'beauty', in her mission to infiltrate a crime or terrorist organization in the south of France by getting close to her 'Designated Mate', a violent man.  The nameless beauty (the instructions are written in second person, and addressed to 'you') is part of a new movement of citizen heroes, who volunteer for dangerous work out of a sense of patriotism.  The 'beauty' is outfitted with various hidden devices, such as a recorder in her ear, a camera in her eye (complete with flash), and a data port in her foot.  She is also trained in survival techniques, such as 'Dissociation Technique', and the 'Primal Roar'.

The story unfolds through these instructions, as our hero makes contact with her prey, and is later escorted with him to a remote seaside location, where he meets with another man, before she creates a distraction so she can photograph some drawings, and that has a number of consequences.

Egan gives us a James Bond like story, but without the egotism and identity of the hero getting in the way.  There are cool gadgets, mysterious evil-doers, and a palpable sense of danger.  Written in a more straight-forward way, this could have been a good story, but in Egan's hands, it's much more than that.  Egan's writing first caught my eye in this magazine, with a short story that was a part of her terrific novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, and I'm now more curious than ever to read more of her work.

Citizen Conn

by Michael Chabon

Bless Michael Chabon for using his fiction writing to address historical wrongs in the comic book industry.  His excellent novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay examined the injustices heaped on Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster through the lens of Kavalier and Clay, a pair of Jewish boys who created The Escapist, the world's best-known superhero.  They were cheated out of their rights to the character, just as were Superman's creators. 

Now, in Citizen Conn, a short story published in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago (I've fallen horribly behind in my magazine reading), Chabon turns his gaze on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

The story is narrated by the female rabbi at Zion Pointe, an assisted living centre for 'independent' seniors.  Resident in the complex, and suffering from incurable bone cancer, is Mort Feather, an elderly artist.  The rabbi doesn't know who Feather is, but her husband, a man who has never abandoned his love for old comics, does.  Feather is the creator of a number of Golden Age characters who he then, with his partner Artie Conn, revived in the Silver Age to great success and acclaim. 

Conn continues to visit Feather, who refuses to see him.  Slowly we learn that after Conn signed away rights to their characters in exchange for a pay-out in the late 60s, the partnership between the two began to fail, with Feather eventually being fired from Nova Publications, and Conn being recognized sole creator of much of their joint work.  Sound familiar?

The story follows Conn's attempts to reconcile with Feather before his disease takes him, and is quite touching.  It's a shame that the person Conn was based on never made the same attempt. 

Chabon is an excellent writer, and I appreciate his work in dramatizing the stories of an industry I dislike as strongly as I appreciate some of the work it has produced.  I would love to know what Stan Lee thought, if he read this.

Los Gigantes

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

I was first introduced to the work of T. Coraghessan Boyle in my final year of high school by a teacher who used his short stories to teach writer's craft.  In the almost twenty years since then, I have read almost a dozen of his books, and have always enjoyed them, although I often find his short stories to be better.  Partly, that's just because I prefer short stories these days anyway, but still...

Los Gigantes is a great example of Boyle's sense of humour and weirdness.  It's set in an unnamed Latin American country, and stars a man who is unnatural in his height and his strength.  He and other large men have been recruited into the military to aid in the President's eugenics program.  They spend their days mating with equally large women, as the President hopes to build an army of giants (there are also rumours that elsewhere in the jungle he has small people working at breeding a corps of perfect spies - within a couple of generations, they are expected to be little larger than a housecat).

While this all sounds great - especially when the President's former pastry chef is hired to prepare the meals, our giant soon chafes (literally and figuratively) under the regimen, and begins the first of a series of escape attempts.

This story is great.  It's a good example of Boyle's ability to identify a theme, get in and start messing with it, and get out again in a matter of pages.  His writing is always taut, plausible, and often skewering.  I should get back to reading some of his newer books...

The Apostate

by Lawrence Wright

This has to be one of the best articles I've read in the New Yorker in months.  Lawrence Wright, in twenty-six full pages, thoroughly examines Scientology.  The article is centred on Paul Haggis, a filmmaker who has recently decided to leave the church after some thirty-four years in the organization.

Wright does not limit his reporting to Haggis's story though.  Instead, he digs into the history of the religion, the myths surrounding its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and layer upon layer of hypocrisy and deception.

Again and again, we read stories of Scientologists being assaulted by David Miscavige, the head of the organization.  We also learn about people held in confinement for years on the Gold Base, the headquarters of the Sea Org, the militant branch of the faith (where teenagers sign billion-year contracts to work for slave wages).

Much of what Wright reveals about Scientology is deeply bizarre, even to someone who has seen the episode of South Park where Scientology is eviscerated.  The intergalactic cosmology of the faith is ridiculous, but even stranger is the willingness of educated, talented people, to buy in to this stuff.  At the same time though, Wright makes some of the tenets of the faith, such as the way people can apply Scientology to disagreements and debates, fully credible.

I'm sure that the New Yorker is going to receive a lot of flack from the Church for printing this article, but I feel that in addition to being a stunning piece of reportage, it is important to expose this 'faith' for the cult that it is.

Youngthing

by Nuruddin Farah

I've never read or heard of Nuruddin Farah before.  From what I've gathered, he's a Somali novelist who has written a number of books.

This short story (with a nice illustration from Emmanuel Guibert), is set in contemporary Mogadishu, and concerns Youngthing, a recruit into the Shabab, the militant wing of the Union of Islamic Courts.  Youngthing failed as a suicide bombing candidate, and has instead been given the task of securing a house for the group to use against an expected intervention of Ethiopian troops.

Being uneducated and not very knowledgeable, Youngthing occupies the wrong house, which is already inhabited by an old man named Dhoorre, who is no friend to the movement.  When Youngthing's three bosses arrive, there is trouble waiting for just about everyone.

Farah's writing is nice.  He tells the tale in a straightforward way, but keeps shifting the narrator's perspective from one character to another, so we are given the fullest picture.  There are, perhaps, a few too many passages that exist simply to update the casual reader on what is going on in Somalia, but I suppose they are necessary.  I am interested in checking out more from this writer.

The Warm Fuzzies

by Chris Adrian

The last of the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" summer fiction series is one of the best stories of the last little while.

Adrian's story is all about Molly, one member of the Carter Family Band and, by definition, the Carter family, a large tribe of home-schooled Partridge Family wannabes, who sing and talk about Jesus on small tours of mega-churches.

Molly's parents almost always add one foster child, him or herself always black, to the mix.  Most of these foster children do not last long; the rest of the Carters are rarely able to remember them or note their passage.

When the story begins, Molly finds herself going through a number of changes.  She's developed a hard, cynical, and mean voice in her head which is able to see her father's sad and tyrannical idealism for what it is, just as she can see through the bitchy machinations of her older sister.  When Peabo, the latest foster arrival, comes on the scene, Molly finds him fascinating.  She begins to hold strange conversations with him through their tambourines (their instruments in the family's songs), and their relationship starts to become a little more than that of foster child and sister.

The story is quite amusing as it gives us a glimpse into the Carter family, with their visits to a church where every member of the family ends up speaking in tongues, to their elaborate family prayer rituals.  Adrian is non-judgmental in his writing, which makes his send-up of the family all the funnier.  Highly recommended.

On the Prison Highway

by Ian Frazier

Since I was little, I've found myself drawn to abandoned places.  It's hard for me to drive past run-down and empty houses on the highway, without wanting to explore.  I would love to go to a place like Detroit, just to climb through some of the buildings there, except fear for my safety keeps me from doing it.  As a teen, my friends and I frequently explored a closed brickworks and quarry (since revitalized as a farmer's market and green-living experiment).

So, there's a lot I can relate to in Ian Frazier's latest article on his journeys in Siberia (there was a two-part article published about a year ago), this time specifically hunting for abandoned lagers, or what we would refer to in the West as Gulags.

He does come across one, and his descriptions of it are lovely, sad, and very evocative of a horrible period of Russian history.  He follows his experience with a description of the growing popularity or nostalgia for Stalin among modern Russians, a strange phenomenon.

What I think attracts me to the idea of traveling through sites like the one he found, is that they are not sanitized through the act of historical interpretation.  He imagines the site turned into a museum, but I feel like that would cause me to lose all interest in it.  I have no desire to visit a place like Auschwitz, Choeung Ek, or that church in Rwanda with all the skulls, as they have been put on display, no matter how much they were also left in their original state.  But to wander through an abandoned lager, covered in snow, and with no one around, one would feel the weight of the history of the place in a much more visceral way.  I envy Frazier the experience.

Apparently, he has a book being released soon about these trips.  I should probably check that out.

The Dredgeman's Revelation

by Karen Russell

The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 slate of summer reading continues with this excellent short story by Karen Russell, author of a book of short stories and an upcoming novel. 

This story covers the months spent by Louis Thanksgiving Auschenbliss on a dredging operation in the Florida swamps in 1934.  Louis was 'born dead', and adopted into a farm family which mistreated him horribly before he fled at the age of seventeen, ending up in the Florida swamps and getting steady work at the height of the Depression.

Louis is an interesting character.  While everyone he works with hates the smell, bugs, and remoteness of the swamp, he finds endless joy in the landscape, and in the company of these rough and hard men.  Russell's prose is straight-forward and avoids overemphasizing the lifestyle; these are largely quiet people, and that comes through in the writing.

I see that Russell's other books are also set in the Florida swamps, and I'd be curious to read more of them.

Emptying the Skies

by Jonathan Franzen

I don't think of Jonathan Franzen as a journalist; in my mind, he's strictly a novelist, and so I was surprised to see him writing a piece about, of all things, the illegal songbird poaching industry of Mediterranean members of the European Union (I use this awkward description because it seems strange to refer to Cyprus and Malta as Europe).

In this lengthy article, Franzen accompanies members of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter as they tear up lime stick traps in the Cypriot countryside, wanders through the almost lifeless regions of Malta, and explores the backwoods (and backwards) regions of Italy.  I had never thought of songbirds as being an expensive meat (called ambelopoulia in Cyprus), but apparently this is an industry worth billions of Euros a year.

Franzen's article is clear and well-written.  He got attacked in Cyprus, although he ran while other members of his group got beaten up.  He also sampled the forbidden food, although to his credit, it brought forth more guilt than anything else.

This was an interesting article, portraying the EU in a different light than one normally sees.  You can detect a little bit of schadenfreude in Franzen's comment about how usually it is the European lecturing the American about ecological excess, but that little potshot can be forgiven, as this article helps raise awareness of this issue.

Also, I want to point out the lovely Adrian Tomine cover to this week's issue.

An Honest Exit

by Dinaw Mengestu

I was very impressed with Mengestu's debut novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, and was pleased to see him included in the New Yorker's '20 Under 40' summer fiction project. 

His story, 'An Honest Exit', is narrated by a young Ethiopian teacher at an expensive private school in New York City.  After the death of his father, he is compelled to tell his student his father's story, explaining how he left Ethiopia for Sudan, where he worked until he had enough money to pay for passage to Europe, and eventually, America.

The students become enthralled in this tale, which spreads over many classes and many days.  What they don't realize is that their teacher does not know his father's complete story, and is instead making up most of the details as he goes.  The story, while embellished, carries with it a feeling of authenticity and detail that make it feel real and important to the students, who come from a privileged background. 

I liked this story for a few reasons.  To begin, the writing is sharp and straight forward. I'm quite interested in that part of the world, having worked with many children with roots in the Horn, and I always appreciate insight into that complex and very old place. 

The father's friend, Abrahim, is an interesting character. On the one hand, he is portrayed as generous and kind, but he also has things that he wants from the father, who he is placing all his hopes on.  Theirs is a strange relationship, reaching a level of grudging symbiosis.

Mengestu is a talented writer, who I hope to see more from.  I also liked the illustration at the beginning by Emmanuel Guibert, as I always appreciate it when the New Yorker publishes work by some of my favourite comics artists.

Dayward

by ZZ Packer

I wasn't loving the New Yorker fiction issue for this year until I got to this story by ZZ Packer, an author whose work I've noticed in the magazine before. 

Dayward tells the story of Lazarus and his deaf sister Mary Celeste, who, following emancipation, have decided to seek out their mother's people in New Orleans rather than stay on the plantation in Mississippi where they had been slaves.  Lazarus, being about fourteen and mouthy, couldn't leave without insulting their former owner, Miss Thalia, who set hounds on them.

When the story begins, the hounds are chasing the brother and sister through the woods.  The prose immediately sucks the reader into the story, as he or she slowly pieces together what is going on for these two abused children.  Lazarus must make a difficult decision to save his sister, sacrificing a part of himself to be able to stop the dogs.

This is a story about some very tough kids, and their determination to rise above their unfortunate beginnings.  I'm not sure if this is the entire story or if this is an excerpt from a larger novel.  If that is the case, I would gladly read the rest of it, as Lazarus got into my head.

Also - I love the Chris Ware cover.

Free Fruit for Young Widows

by Nathan Englander

Normally, I have little desire to read Holocaust stories.  I love a good war story, but that particular aspect of the Second World War is not something I enjoy reading about, and truthfully, I don't understand how people can enjoy it.  The stories, while often instructive, are just too bleak and depressing.

This short story, by Nathan Englander, was deceptive.  It starts out as a war story - the war between Israel and Egypt, and it begins with an odd little anecdote about how the two sides wore identical uniforms supplied by the French, and what happened when Israeli and Egyptian soldiers sat down to eat together at the same field mess.

At this moment, the reader meets Shimmy Gezer, a kind-hearted Israeli soldier, who is 'rescued' by the future Professor Tendler, who immediately after saving his life, gives him the beating of a lifetime.  Later, Gezer operates a fruit stand in the market in Jerusalem, and he gives the Professor free fruit on a weekly basis, something that mystifies Etgar, Shimmy's son.

Eventually, as Etgar ages, Shimmy tells him more and more of his experiences in the war, and finally, one day, tells him of the Professor's experiences in the Holocaust and immediately afterward.  This is a story about morality, and kindnesses earned and given.  Englander does a great job of capturing the moral clarity of youth, and then proceeds to muddy it, approximating the effects of aging.

A very strong story, with an illustration by Emmanuel Guibert, himself no stranger to a good war story.

Prefiguration of Lalo Cura

by Roberto Bolaño

What a nice surprise it was to find another Bolaño story in the New Yorker so soon after the last one.  This time around, Bolaño revisits the character, or perhaps just the concept, of Lalo Cura, who first appeared in the incredible 2666.  I am confused though, as to whether or not this is the same Lalo Cura.

In 2666, the young cop Lalo Cura does not know the identity of his father, and it is hinted that it could have been one of the principal characters of The Savage Detectives, Bolaño's earlier novel.  His mother's life is described in detail, although I will admit that I don't remember many of those details right now.

In this story, Lalo Cura is the son of a renegade priest and a Colombian porn actress, making it impossible for it to be the same character.  More likely, Bolaño is simply returning to the name because it is a brilliant one for a character (la locura means 'madness' in Spanish).

Much of Cura's story consists of descriptions of the bizarre porn films constructed by Helmut Bittrich.  These sound a little like the porn Jodorowsky might have made; strange surrealist confections with fixations on lactation or cannibalism, constructed for a European audience.  One recurring figure in these films which starred both his mother and aunt was the actor Pajarito Gómez, a strange individual who was not particularly built for porn (if you catch my drift), but instead 'vibrated' on film and commanded a great deal of attention.

This is a very strange narrative, without much of a plot or purpose.  It feels more like it is an excerpt from a larger piece of writing.  It is well worth reading for the strength and power of Bolaño's prose.

The Pink Panthers

by David Samuels

It has become increasingly rare for The New Yorker to print long-form articles, but this one, clocking in at 19 pages, is one of the longest ones I've read in a while.  In it, Samuels explores the Pink Panthers, a loosely-organized group of diamond and gem thieves, mostly believed to be operating out of Serbia and Montenegro.

These thieves have hit multiple jewelery stores in places like Italy, England, France, Japan, and Dubai over the years, and while many have been caught, many more remain free.  Samuels tries to nail down the organizational structure of the group, but this task seems to be impossible.  In all likelihood, the thieves do not have a hierarchy, but operate more like cells, with decentralized groups acting independently.

Like some of the best crime reporting, Samuels re-creates the circumstances of many of the crimes, digs into the past lives of many of the lower-level operatives who have been caught, and travels through some unappealing Balkan regions.  This article is a fascinating read, made all the more human by Samuels's growing affection for some of the players.

The Pura Principle

by Junot Díaz

I've been a fan of Díaz's writing since I read Drown the year it came out (I don't remember when that is, but it must have been more than ten years ago). His Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was one of my favourite books of the last couple of years. And so, I saw it as quite a treat when I saw that he had a story in this issue of the New Yorker.

Once again, his fiction is narrated by a character named Yunior, who is more of an observer in his surroundings than a willing participant. Yunior's brother, Rafa, is one of those stereotypical tough New York Domincan guys; he bounces from girl to girl, fights, deals, and frequently disobeys his adoring mother. Rafa is all of this, but he also has cancer, and is having a hard time holding on to his status in the wake of chemo treatments.

His mother continues to devote her life to him, her only pleasure or outlet being her Bible group, who Junior refers to as the Four Horseheads of the Apocalypse. As Rafa tries to speed up his recovery, he gets a short-lived job at the Yarn Barn, where he meets Pura, a Dominican illegal with a young son, who Rafa's mother emphatically does not life.

What follows is a tight little domestic drama, told in Díaz's usual sharp prose, with a liberal sprinkling of Spanish phrases and expressions. Díaz keeps control of his pop culture references here - Junior is not half the geek that Oscar Wao was - but still delivers with some very nice observations and figures of speech. I hope this story signals the arrival of another novel soon.

Strangers on the Mountain

by Ben McGrath

You would never think that people could be living in rural poverty and yet able to see the spires of Manhattan from their property, but that is the subject of McGrath's excellent article on the Ramapo Indians, or the 'Jackson Whites' of upstate New Jersey, along the NJ/NY border.

These people, living in areas like Stag Hill and Ringwood, come from a mix of Aboriginal, African, and European heritage. The area was home to many escaped slaves, who married into the local aboriginal population, and then, apocryphally, later added to their community a number of white prostitutes who fled Revolutionary New York (although this story is largely debunked now by historians, it is still accepted truth on the mountains).

The current inhabitants of the area are private folk, distrustful of outsiders and 'new people'. That did not stop them from having a couple of run-ins with state representatives - park rangers and state police, in 2006, one of which ended with the death of one of the Ramapo. McGrath follows the trial of the officer involved, and attempts to reach an understanding of this poverty-stricken community living just out of the shadow of one of the richest cities on the continent.

He treats his subjects with sensitivity, taking the time to meet them in their homes, and to share meals with them in an effort to understand their culture. They are nowhere near as backwards as they are portrayed in the local media and by local townsfolk, yet they do come across as distrustful of wider society. That many of them are living alongside industrial sludge from the sixties, or are finding that their property is getting swallowed into sinkholes, helps make their reticence understandable.

This is an interesting portrait of the type of community most people wouldn't know exists.

William Burns

by Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño has become my new favourite writer I think. This issue of the New Yorker (I know I'm way behind) has a four-page story which I believe is excerpted from his recently released (in English anyway) novel 'Monsieur Pain'.

Regardless of where it comes from, the story here is classic Bolaño. It follows a very Borgesian set-up. The story is being narrated by someone who was told the story by its central character, William Burns. Burns moved into a house in some summer mountain resort town, which was being shared by two women of vastly different ages, both of whom he was engaged in a relationship with. The house was strangely built, with oddly-spaced windows (another Borgesian touch).

The women wanted Burns there because they were afraid of another man, who they called 'The Killer', and with whom they had both been in a relationship at some point in the past.

Bolaño's writing is clear and concise, and he does not dwell on the confusion and disconnectedness his protagonist feels. He lets events play out, and while we feel that they had more repercussions for Burns than he shows, they are left for another time (perhaps in the novel?).

Safari

by Jennifer Egan

Every once in a while, I read a short story and partway through it come to the realization that it is just about perfect. This is one of those stories.

Egan gives us a tale set on safari in Kenya. Lou is a divorced record executive, who has taken his two children, Charlie (Charlene, 14) and Rolph (11) on this trip, along with his girlfriend Mindy (just into her twenties), and a strange entourage of musicians, an actor, and his travel agent.

Egan packs the story with complex relationships: Lou and Mindy have not been a couple for long; Rolph worships and despises his father in equal measure; Charlie is trying to become Charlene, a grown-up in both her own eyes and her father's. Mindy catches the eye of Albert, an employee of the safari company. Toss into this mix some amusing side characters, like the old birdwatching ladies and the obvious-stating actor, along with a good lion mauling, and you have the makings for a great story.

What makes this piece perfect though, is the way in which, towards the end of the tale, Egan jumps through the rest of the main characters' lives, demonstrating how this trip was such a turning point for each of them. It's a powerful and emotionally resonant piece of work.