The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh

Source of book: Borrowed from the library. (The last of the ones I borrowed just before the Covid-19 shutdown.) 

  

I haven’t read that much Evelyn Waugh - just Brideshead Revisited, one of his more serious later works. I still haven’t read an early comedy - although I definitely want to. My original intention was to grab a copy of Scoop, but someone beat me to it. The library did have this book, however, so I grabbed it. It contains all of Waugh’s short fiction, including stories written when he was a kid - complete with misspellings and the like. I’ll confess I only skimmed these. They were pretty repetitive, with lots of gambling and guns and justice-served-in-the-end. His college stories were pretty good, however. He was already finding his voice. 

I believe the main body of the book (his published stories) was organized in chronological order. With the exception of the last story, the hilarious “Basil Seal Rides Again,” they show a general progression from humorous and lighter to increasingly dark and disturbingly reactionary in tone. A few of the last ones seem to be as much propaganda against modernity - he has become the old man shaking his cane at anything remotely progressive. (In real life, he was vehemently opposed to the Vernacular Mass - only Latin was good enough for him.) This isn’t to say that the later stories are all bad. “Scott-King’s Modern Europe” is darkly humorous and rather spot-on satire of post-war Yugoslavia and tin-horn leftist dictatorships in general. 

The stories rather run the gambit. There are humorous vignettes, dark farces, serious tales, and so on. Also included is the two existing chapters of an unfinished novel. That one is particularly intriguing, as it involves the hack-writer son of an obscure artist, a love triangle, and some outstanding scenes. I am rather disappointed it was never finished. 

There are also two stories which are related to Waugh’s novel, A Handful of Dust. “The Man Who Liked Dickens” is about a man lost in the Brazilian jungle who is rescued by a crazy man who insists that he read him Charles Dickens. This would become the last portion of the novel. Waugh later wrote “By Special Request,” an alternate ending to the novel in which the protagonist escapes and reconciles with his estranged wife. 

At their best, these stories are sparklingly witty, and deliciously satirical. Waugh’s dark humor can be really good, and it is in many of the stories. In others, particularly late in life, he lost his ability to balance the darkness with the humor, and the jokes start to feel mean and reactionary. 

There are some great lines, of course. From the story “Love in the Slump,” a tale of an ill-advised marriage and an awkward wartime honeymoon in locked-down England, the wife is described thus:

Angela was twenty-five, pretty, good-natured, lively, intelligent and popular--just the sort of girl, in fact, who, for some mysterious cause deep-rooted in Anglo-Saxon psychology, finds it most difficult to get satisfactorily married. During the last seven years she had done everything which it is customary for girls of her sort to do. In London she had danced on an average four evenings a week, for the first three years at private houses, for the last four at restaurants and night clubs; in the country she had been slightly patronizing to the neighbors and had taken parties to the hunt ball which she hoped would shock them; she had worked in a slum and a hat shop, had published a novel, been bridesmaid eleven times and godmother once; been in love, unsuitably, twice; had sold her photograph for fifty guineas to the advertising department of a firm of beauty specialists; had got into trouble when her name was mentioned in gossip columns; had acted in five or six charity matinees and two pageants, had canvassed for the Conservative candidate at two General Elections, and, like every girl in the British Isles, was unhappy at home. 

Another one comes from “Incident in Azania,” about a colonial outpost and the stir caused when the beautiful and marriageable daughter of one of the colonial characters shows up. She is kidnapped and held for ransom...or maybe not. Anyway, the story is hilarious, and this like is classic:

The first demand for ransom came through the agency of Mr. Youkoumian. The little Armenian was already well known and, on the whole, well liked by the English community; it did them good to find a foreigner who so completely fulfilled their ideal of all that a foreigner should be. 

Another delightful comedic story is “Out of Depth.” Two dense youngish aristocratic sorts (think Bertie Wooster) meet the nutty and mildly sinister charlatan Dr. Kakophilos, and despite their best intentions, end up at his apartment after the evening. Already drunk out of their skulls, they are informed they will be used in an experiment in time travel. 

“And so,” Dr. Kakophilos was saying, “you must breathe the fire and call upon Omraz the spirit of release and journey back through the centuries and recover the garnered wisdom which the ages of reason have wasted. I chose you because you are the two most ignorant men I ever met. I have too much knowledge to risk my safety. If you never come back, nothing will be lost.” 

Whether the time travel that ensues is real, or if it was just a drunken dream after a traffic accident is never clear to either the reader or the characters. 

“An Englishman’s Home” is a particularly good bit of satire. Mr. Metcalfe, a nouveau riche industrialist buys a house in the English countryside, and does his best to be the perfect country gentleman. However, he declines to purchase a bit of land used for grazing that traditionally went with the house, and becomes embroiled in small-town politics when an unscrupulous blackmailer threatens to build a factory on the site. The opening paragraph is comedy gold. 

Mr. Beverly Metcalfe tapped the barometer in the back hall and noted with satisfaction that it had fallen several points during the night. He was by nature a sun-loving man, but he believed it was one of the marks of a true countryman to be eternally in need of rain. He had made a study and noted the points of true countrymen. Had he been of literary habit and of an earlier generation, his observations might have formed a little book of aphorisms. The true countryman wore a dark suit on Sundays unlike the flannelled tripper from the cities; he loved a bargain and would go to any expense to do his marketing by private treaty instead of through the normal channels of retail trade; while ostensibly sceptical and conservative he was readily fascinated by mechanical gadgets; he was genial but inhospitable, willing to gossip for hours across a fence with any passing stranger, but reluctant to allow his closest friends into his house…..These and a hundred other characteristics Mr. Metcalfe noted for emulation. 

Murder plays a role in a number of the stories - particularly murderous madmen. While some of the stories are dark and bitter, more of them are whimsical farces, such as “The Sympathetic Passenger.” Mr. James and his wife have retired to country, where he can be alone and quiet. His wife doesn’t share this love of solitude, and they end up at odds over the use of the radio. 

The wireless, for Mrs. James, was a link with the clean pavements and bright shop windows, a communion with millions of fellow beings. 

Mr. James saw it in just that light too. It was what he minded most--the violation of his privacy. He brooded with growing resentment on the vulgarity of womankind.

Things take a turn when he, getting out of the house, picks up a hitchhiker who shares his hatred of the radio. And is also a homicidal maniac on the run, just incidentally. 

I mentioned “Basil Seal Rides Again” as one of my favorites. The old rake and scoundrel Basil Seal finds his daughter wants to marry a young man he regards (perhaps correctly) as being rather worthless. His scheme to get them to break off is too good to spoil, but the ending is fabulous. The opening of the story is hilarious too, with Basil and his friend Peter are stuck at a tedious banquet in honor of a poet who was a friend of theirs years ago. The encomium is so delightful, I had to quote it. 

“I hear the cry of ‘silence,’” he said with sharp spontaneity. “It is apt, for surely?, the object of our homage tonight is epitomized in that golden word. The voice which once clearly spoke the message of what I for one, and many of us here, will always regard as the most glorious decade of English letters, the nineteen-thirties,” (growls of dissent from the youthful critic) “that voice tardily perhaps, but at long last so illustriously honoured by official recognition, has been silent for a quarter of a century. Silent in Ireland, silent in Tangier, in Tel Aviv and Ischia and Portugal, now silent in his native London, our guest of honour has stood for us a stern rebuke, a recall to artistic reticence and integrity. The books roll out from the presses, none by Ambrose Silk. Not for Ambrose Silk the rostrum, the television screen; for him the enigmatic and monumental silence of genius…” 

It’s pretty hard to beat that, I must say. 

In any case, I did rather enjoy this collection. It feels unfair to complain that it is a bit uneven, when it is clearly intended to be the “complete” rather than “the best of.” I definitely need to read some more Waugh. I know my wife has a few books, but I need to figure out the best order to read the related books, and locate them in our collection. Oh, and I really want to go back and get Scoop when the library reopens. 

Sing To It by Amy Hempel

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

One of those recent quiz things made its rounds in a book-related facebook group I am part of. A particular question asked who tended to blow up your “To Be Read” list. Well, that would be me. I keep undermining my own reading plans by bringing home random books from the library. Particularly ones from the New Books shelf. This was one of those. 

I hadn’t read any Amy Hempel before, although I was familiar with the name. Her short stories have been published in a variety of magazines and so forth. This is her latest collection, and consists of a couple of regular short stories, a bunch of vignette length stories (one or two pages), and a longer story that is not quite big enough to be a novella, but longer than the typical short story. 

That particular story, “Cloudland,” is a haunting tale of a woman who gave birth in an unwed mothers home, only to learn later that they didn’t adopt out all the babies: they allowed some to starve to death and secretly buried them in the apple orchard. 

Other stories which stood out were the opening one “The Orphan Lamb” which is a mere four paragraphs long, but gives a striking and disturbing picture of a bad sexual relationship, and “A Full-Service Shelter,” a story about working in an animal shelter. 

Most of the stories are more haunting than pleasant, about bad relationships, affairs, loneliness, grief. The characters are all damaged, but seeking to move forward anyway. 

Hempel is a good writer, and the stories have the virtue of seeming just a little too short rather than a little too long. The book itself is also less than 150 double-spaced pages, so it is a super quick read. It was a good contrast to some of the longer books I am working on right now, and of a totally different style. (Although some of the themes do correspond, so that’s an interesting link.) 

I didn’t really take notes on this one, just read it through in a few days, and enjoyed the writing. It’s worth a read, and I intend to seek out some of her older collections. 

Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

Source of book: Borrowed from my wife.

My wife discovered the small British book publisher, Persephone Books, a few years back, when she was looking for her own copy of The Home-Maker, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, if my memory serves. Although it could have been Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. In any event, the publisher describes its goal as:

Persephone Books reprints forgotten twentieth century novels, short stories, cookery books and memoirs by (mostly) women writers. They appeal to the discerning reader who prefers books that are neither too literary nor too commercial, and are guaranteed to be readable, thought-provoking and impossible to forget. 

From the three I have read so far, I would say this is accurate. These books aren’t in the pantheon of classics, but aren’t exactly fluff either. They are interesting, and represent a different kind of literature than either genre boilerplates or the heavy and turgid literary novels which characterized much of the 20th Century. One might say that they fall in a traditionally disrespected category: women’s literature. For much of history, women were given little shot at literacy - that was for men only. This wasn’t universal, of course, and it started to crack in a serious way with the Feminist movement, which insisted that women were the equals of men - and should be educated accordingly. That said, with the explosion of literate women, the fusty old men who had controlled social standards felt they had to denigrate “novels” as less worthy than the old Greek and Roman “classics” (which, conveniently, were taught only to men.) This prejudice against the things women read - and write - continues into our own time, with “chick lit” incurring particular dismissal, even as male-oriented boilerplate books feature the same (or worse) imaginative and formulaic writing. 

Of the three I have read, I think that this one, a collection of short stories written by Mollie Panter-Downes during World War Two, features the best writing.

Mollie Panter-Downes, despite being British, is actually most associated with American institutions. For decades, Panter-Downes wrote for The New Yorker, in a variety of genres. Much of her writing was regular investigative journalism, reporting from Britain to an upper-middle-class American audience. Other pieces would fall into the category of non-fiction, but not exactly journalism, such as her “Letters from London” series. In addition to this, she occasionally contributed short stories. This particular book collects the 21 stories she wrote during the war, along with one of the Letters from London that serves as an introduction, more or less, to the themes and setting of the stories. (The author didn’t specifically intend that - the letter was written right after Britain declared war on Germany, and before any of the stories were written.) 

The stories are fairly short, and are self-contained. For the most part, they take place in a short period of time, in a single location, and involve a small number of characters - sometimes only one. The stories all focus on the Homefront - the people left behind as the soldiers left to fight in Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, and eventually Europe. The characters are, naturally, mostly women - the men went off to fight. There are two exceptions: the retired Major Marriott, desperate to return to battle; and Mark Goring, stuck in a desk job in London. 

For the most part, these are middle to upper-middle-class Brits - the kind that, before the war, had a few servants, but not necessarily a title or an estate. They are kind of the forgotten middle as far as the literature of the time went. The working poor had recently become a trendy topic in literature, while the upper crust retained its fascination. (Escapism has been a goal of literature for a long time - possibly since the dawn of language.) It seems plausible that Panter-Downes picked this slice of British society both because it was her own class, and because it was likely to appeal to the typical New Yorker reader of the time. 

As Panter-Downes notes in a few stories, however, this particular way of life was rapidly changing. After the war, the petit-bourgeoisie largely faded away, with only the wealthy being able to retain servants. 

In general, I found the writing to be good, the human portraits to be well drawn, and the psychological profiles of the effects of war and change and stress to be perceptive. I am an aficionado of the short story, and these were good ones. 

I won’t try to describe all the stories in this post, but figured it would be good to hit a few highlights. 

The first was in the preface, written by Gregory LeStage, and it was a fact I either didn’t know or had forgotten somehow: in the years 1939 through 1941, more British civilians were killed than were soldiers. The Battle of Britain took a heavy toll in lives as well as infrastructure. The homefront was in essence the warfront. It is difficult for an American in the 21st Century to really grasp this. There has been no war on our own soil (excluding Pearl Harbor) in a century and a half - and the mainland of the US hasn’t been under legitimate threat since, well, probably the War of 1812, more than 200 years ago. 

The collection starts off with a bank, with “Date With Romance,” featuring Mrs. Ramsay, a recurring character. Widowed, she meets an old friend for dinner - he apparently was interested in her back in the day. However, he seems to think of her as old now, and we find out eventually that he hopes to marry a far younger woman. Mrs. Ramsay’s poisonous thoughts are rapier sharp during and after the encounter, and make for a witty contrast to the mansplaining guy. 

Also razor sharp is the opening of “In Clover,” about a rather clueless and classist woman who takes in a lower-class family during the Blitz. The woman in charge of farming out the evacuees from London is described thus:

She had smiled as she spoke, the flashing and more than necessarily kind smile that she reserved for the lower orders, who hadn’t, don’t you know, had quite the advantages that we have. 

I also found “As the Fruitful Vine” intriguing. It is essentially a story of two sisters, the elder of which seems to have upstaged the younger. This becomes even more apparent when, with the war raging, the younger sister gets pregnant on her honeymoon, and everyone disapproves. The sibling dynamics are certainly interesting, but it is this passage that really caught my eye:

After a few days’ honeymoon, Philip had to rejoin his ship, and it was with the greatest astonishment that Lucy discovered in due course that she was going to have a baby. It seemed less like a marital than a botanical incident, the result of a chance brush between a bee and a flower: this discovery of motherhood ought to have been stirring, but again a big moment didn’t quite come off. Paternity would catch up with Philip somewhere in the West Indies or the Mediterranean or wherever Lucy’s startled letter reached him; his reply would reach her long after any emotions which she might have been feeling at the moment of writing his letter had passed. To be truthful, those emotions were not overpowering. It was difficult to work up emotion over a tender secret which had to be shouted to a bee who was now winging his way God knows where. Once more, Lucy felt, life had treated her cruelly.

There are several stories featuring the ladies’ sewing circles, all of which are amusing. Panter-Downes pokes gentle fun at the casual prejudices of the members. In one section, a discussion on what sort of pajamas the Greeks might wear, unexpectedly results in some bigotry being aired. 

Mrs. Twistle coughed gently again and remarked with implacable softness that the Greeks were very marvelous, no doubt, but in her opinion it was a pity that England had to have foreign allies monkeying about with her war. 

After it is pointed out to her that allies are, well, by definition, foreign, Mrs. Twistle kind of doubles down. 

“There’s no doubt, Mrs. Peters, that they’re a fine lot of men. It’s only that if I had my way, we’d have nothing to do with foreigners. We’re better off without them, though there are those in high places, I’m well aware, as don’t see eye to eye.” 

Hmm, this sounds more than a little bit like a lot of white Boomers I know. “I’m sure all those [immigrants, foreigners, African Americans, etc.] are fine people, but why can’t they just stay where they are?” For what it is worth, Mrs. Twistle considers Americans to be suspicious foreigners too. As with Americans - and Brits - today, the delusional dream of Empire casts a rosy glow and paints an illusion that things would be better if we could just go back to a day when foreigners knew their place in the hierarchy.

Mrs. Ramsay’s sewing circle reappears in later stories, in one of which, “Mrs. Ramsay felt that she was sitting in at a sewing bee of the Fates, all busy with shears and thread, snipping at a life here, twinning two strands with a knowing cackle there.” That’s a good line right there. 

Perhaps the most poignant story in the bunch is “Good-bye, My Love,” about a young couple. He is on brief leave, but then must leave her again. 

Language was inadequate, after all. One used the same words for a parting which might be fore years, which might end in death, as one did for an overnight business trip. She put her arms tightly round him and said, “Good-bye, my love.” 

The title story is rather interesting. “Mrs. Craven” is never given an actual name, for reasons which appear as the story progresses. The “she” from whose perspective the story is told, is the mistress of Mr. Craven, who is married with children. They go out to shows together, and always eat at Porters, where she is greeted with “Good evening, Mrs. Craven.” 

At first, this amuses them, but eventually, when the war starts, and he is given deployment orders, she realizes that she is, legally speaking, nobody. (Hence why she never gets a name.) He could be killed in battle, and she would have to wait for the official casualty list to find out. And what if he was just injured?

“Don’t think I’m being stupid and morbid,” she said, “but supposing anything happens. I’ve been worrying about that. You might be wounded or ill and I wouldn’t know.” She tried to laugh. “The War Office doesn’t have a service for sending telegrams to mistresses, does it?” 

It is a bit of a haunting story too, because there is no good ending to this relationship, no matter what happens. 

There are two stories that involve an elderly lady and her elderly servant. (Different characters in each.) In one, “This Flower, Safety,” the lady is terrified by any signs of the war, and keeps moving around to try to escape it. (And probably never does.) In the other, “Cut Down the Trees,” the roles are reversed. Mrs. Walsingham adjusts to the changes with aplomb, even hosting a Canadian regiment on her grounds. (The title comes because they cut a couple of trees down to fit their equipment.) Old Dossie, on the other hand, rages and fights against all change, trying to keep her employer from eating in casual clothes, and in the kitchen no less! When Mrs. Walsingham’s son visits, he is struck by both the changes, and the reactions to them. His mother explains:

“She’s an invaluable creature in lots of ways. Her trouble is that she hates adjusting to the war and she doesn’t like me to adjust, either. She has always refused to adjust to anything. I sometimes think that if there’s ever a social revolution in England, they’ll string Dossie up first before they bother about me.”

Speaking of social revolutions, in “Year of Decision,” one of the stories with a male protagonist, the wealthy couple each have difficulty adjusting. With no servants, they both have to learn how to keep a house themselves. The wife works herself into complete exhaustion, while the husband fantasizes about being able to fight in a real war, not just make important plans for it from behind a desk. 

War had differed from peace only in that one worked harder, smoked more, and was progressively more and more uncomfortable at home. But discomfort was hardly danger; except for dodging a few bombs in the blitz, his had been a remarkably safe war. It had taught him none of the stinging, salutary lessons that he had expected. Instead, he had picked up all sorts of curious, unlikely bits of information, such as how to make a bed, scour a greasy saucepan, and lay a breakfast table so that it did not too greatly resemble the haphazard design of the March Hare’s tea party. 

Times have indeed changed more than a bit. But that is part of the fun of this book. By turns humorous and poignant, it captures the ways that war and stress and trauma change us, and shines a light on the fact that those on the homefront experience war too. I rather enjoyed this book, and would like to seek out some of Panter-Downes’ other writings.  

The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I don’t entirely remember how this book got on my list, but I suspect it was off of a “Latinx Book List” of some sort. I make a concerted effort to read diversely, and that includes seeking out books outside the white, male, Anglo-American, and straight world. Not that there is anything specifically wrong with old dead white guys - and goodness knows, as a lover of classic literature, I read plenty of them as well - but a variety of voices is necessary, particularly if one reads to expand one’s universe. Part of this diversity involves reading books which were not originally written in English. If you count live theater and poetry, this is my 10th book this year that is in translation. 

Since I don’t remember exactly where I got the recommendation, I am also unsure exactly why this book, of Allende’s books. It is a collection of short stories told, Scheherazade style, by a character in one of her other books. That said, it stands alone just fine, as far as I can tell. Perhaps it would be enriched by knowledge of the title character, but the stories are enjoyable on their own.

There are a total of 23 stories, plus a brief prologue. For the most part, they are stories about women and sex. Well, that fails to cover it, somehow. Perhaps they are about the relationship between women, female desire, sexuality, power, violence, class, and society. All of the above, wrapped up together. The setting is an unnamed South American country (or countries - the settings seem pretty varied), likely based on Chile, where Allende was raised, or Peru, where she was born. Or both. The politics are unfortunately recognizable, although these too vary. The autocratic dictator, born out of a revolution, figures prominently. And also colonialist rulers, corrupt bureaucrats, bandit kings, and more. The time frames are rarely actually stated, but the specifics of life indicate that the stories may well span the entire 20th Century. 

The women certainly form the center of all the stories. Men may be main characters, but they turn out to orbit around the women. The men may have the power, but women find ways to survive, to assert their humanity even as it is being dismissed. 

The woman who “sells words” as talismans, essentially, who falls in love with the rebel leader, El Mulato, and draws him with “Two Words,” the title of the story. The woman, who, having given birth to two gravely disabled children with her husband, has two healthy children as the result of an affair she keeps secret until the very end of her life. The wife of a foreign diplomat who runs off with the dictator, then disappears from society (and him) in his abandoned vacation villa. The creative prostitute who saves a small fortune servicing (well, mostly manipulating) the workers on a remote plantation, then retires and abscondes with the first man who proves to be her equal. There are darker stories too, about a deaf child stolen from his parents by fraud - and their quest to find him. The women seduced and abandoned. The holocaust survivor who tries in vain to save a young girl trapped in a lahar. In all of these, Allende skillfully evokes the emotions of the characters, the time and place of the setting, and the visceral feel of the narrative. 

I was particularly struck by the way Allende writes female desire. Here in Western culture of the last few hundred years, we have this idea in our consciousness that females either don’t desire sex for its own sake, or only in the context of “committment” (meaning marriage), or that they trade it for “committment,” meaning a promise to financially support her. (Which is different from prostitution solely in the length of the contract…) This wasn’t always so. Previously, it was believed that females were sexually insatiable, and that men were the rational ones. Exactly why this changed is not entirely clear, although there are a few theories floating around which might be at least partial explanations. However it happened, the expectation currently is that women have the responsibility to preserve their “purity,” and police the boundaries of a romantic relationship. Males, meanwhile, are expected to push those boundaries. And if they succeed, it is generally considered the woman’s fault. (That’s your quick summary of the purity culture I was raised in, although my dad at least made it clear that women could and did enjoy sex - my sex ed was vastly better than average.) Oh, don’t forget that applied to white women. Women of color were assumed to be seductresses, sexually insatiable, which is why a white man could rape them with impunity…

Allende, on the other hand, treats female sexuality much the same as our culture treats that of men. Women are fully sexual in these stories, often from a young age. They make their choices (some good, others questionable), and live with the consequences. (The men often avoid the consequences for a while - just like in real life - but are often bitten in the butt later.) I would also say that this book is another point in favor of my belief that women, on average, tend to write better sex scenes than men. My theory on this is that because of the combination of toxic masculinity in our culture, and the fact that human reproduction doesn’t require female pleasure, men are not as observant of the details and emotions which make a scene actually sexy, rather than just...awkward. Just a theory. 

The messiness of life, love, and relationships is on full display in these stories. Whether tragic, humorous, poignant, or horrifying, Allende’s stories let their characters be complex, human, and unpredictable. 

I think this book was a good introduction to Isabel Allende, and I intend to read more of her books in the future. 

The Best of Gene Wolfe

Source of book: Borrowed from my brother

Books have always been a huge part of my life. My parents read stuff to us - crazy advanced stuff - from our elementary school years. As in, we ranged from ages five through nine when my mom read us David Copperfield. Then The Scarlet Letter. We had bookshelves in every room, and saved our money for more. 

All this to say that my brother and I both have extensive collections as adults, and read voraciously in our spare time. Our tastes overlap a lot, but there are some differences. While I have read some science fiction (and still do from time to time), he has been a huge fan since his teens. I have a bit of Asimov and Bradbury and a few others in my collection, but he has literally hundreds of books in that genre. His taste is (other than Clive Cussler) rather good, so if he recommends or lends me a book, I know it will be worthwhile. 

Prior to reading this book, I was not particularly familiar with Gene Wolfe. Which, I suppose, shows that my knowledge of modern SciFi is rudimentary at best. He is, it turns out, considered one of the best of all time - and indeed, one of the best modern American authors in any genre. He recently passed at the age of 87, leaving behind a large number of books. 

The Best of Gene Wolfe is a 2010 collection of short stories. I started it back in January, but finally made it through the nearly 500 pages of smallish print. It is a long book, containing 32 stories, several of which are really novellas, not short stories. In addition to the length, there is the fact that Wolfe’s writing is dense, full of allusions (some of which required research for me), and often filled with puzzles to be solved. Depending on your perspective, this is either great fun, or a bit annoying. I can’t decide myself. 

A bit about Wolfe. He was a devout Catholic, and this definitely shows in his writing. In many cases, specifics of Catholic theology and ethics are apparent, and the biblical allusions are everywhere. I wouldn’t say he is preachy, though. More that if you came to his writing without a solid foundation in the bible and in historical Catholic/Christian ethics, you might miss some important things and come away even more puzzled. 

Some of this is due to the fact that he loved to use unreliable narrators. What they say cannot always (or often) be taken for truth - or even their truth in some cases. This is both good and bad, in my view. Wolfe tells interesting stories, and the narrators are important to the effect. But sometimes, if you can’t believe anyone or anything, it is difficult to figure out the point. 

Wolfe didn’t start out as an author. He got his degree in engineering, and worked as an industrial engineer for years. His most known contribution to that field was contributing work on the design of the machine which makes Pringles potato chips. This background is evident in his writing as well, both in the places where machines are described (his accuracy and detail is admirable) and in the stories which touch on corporate bureaucracy. 

The stories themselves are “Science Fiction” in genre, but that is an oversimplification. Some even seem to me to be Magical Realism or even just regular realistic short stories. A number seem particularly concerned with post-colonialism, owing a debt to Conrad and Michener among others. There is a lot of variety, and Wolfe writes well in all of them. 

There are a few standouts that I thought I would mention. There is a trio of stories related to each other in the titles and themes (although not in the characters or even worlds those characters inhabit.) The collection kicks off with “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories,” a rather dark twist on the Walter Mitty idea. A boy survives an abusive and drug-saturated household by withdrawing into a fantasy world, which owes a lot to The Island of Doctor Moreau. Next in the “series” is “The Death of Dr. Island,” which takes a rather different look at abuse. Two young mental patients are essentially tortured by a sentient “island” in an attempt to cure a third patient. It is a rather horrifying story, honestly, but it sticks with you - which is probably the point. The third in the series, “Death of the Island Doctor,” is likewise completely different from the others. An ancient professor teaches a last class - on islands - and tries to pass on his love for them to a pair of students. The connections are loose, but definitely there. I loved a line in the third story. 

And there came a time, not in fall, but rather in that dreary tag end of summer when it is ninety degrees on the sidewalk and the stores have Halloween cards and the first subtly threatening Christmas ornaments are on display... 

Ah yes, Christmas Creep - when August heat combines with the first appearance of the Christmas Industrial Complex. 

Another notable was “The Fifth Head of Cerberus,” which is somewhere between a story and a novella in length, looks at cloning, among other issues. It shares the idea of a robot schoolmaster with a number of other stories - I think Wolfe was fascinated by the idea. This story was one of those that required a good bit of work to puzzle out and understand just what was happening. 

My brother particularly mentioned “Forlesen” as notable, and I have to agree. It contains its own version of horror - existential horror. By reducing a life as a cog in corporate meaninglessness and as a provider for a rarely-seen family, it taps into that fear that has haunted humanity ever since we evolved self awareness: that our lives might indeed just be meaningless. There is a particularly great line at the end, when the protagonist is about to experience death. He is being fitted for his coffin, in essence. 

“Now have you decided about the explainer?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Didn’t you read your orientation? Everyone’s entitled to an Explainer - in whatever form he chooses - at the end of his life. He-”

“It seems to me,” Forlesen interrupted, “that it would be more useful at the beginning.”

“---may be a novelist, aged loremaster, National Hero, warlock, or actor.”

“None of those sounds quite right for me,” Forlesen said.

“Or a theologian, philosopher, priest, or doctor.”

“I don’t think I like those either.”

“Well, that’s the end of the menu as far as I know…”

And then, there is the ending.

“I want to know if it’s meant anything,” Forelsen said. “If what I suffered - if it’s been worth it.”

“No,” the little man said. “Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Maybe.”

Well, damn.  

On the more positive side, I should mention the very brief “Westwind.” In his comment after the story, Wolfe notes that he realized years after he wrote it that The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton was kind of like a longer version of the story. (Not exactly, but there are definite similarities.) Wolfe was a huge Chesterton fan, apparently, and considered that an influence on his writing. I agree. While Wolfe is an order of magnitude darker than Chesterton, the same use of paradox and unorthodox thinking shows through. And also, a general good-naturedness that pervades Chesterton’s works. The darkness of subject matter can’t hide that about Wolfe. 

Speaking of dark, some of the stories are really more horror than SciFi. One of those is “And When They Appear,” which combines a crumbling society with a christmas gone wrong. Or, “The Tree is my Hat,” which is a bit of a supernatural horror story. 

If I had to pick a favorite, though, it might be “Bed and Breakfast,” about an incident in such an establishment just outside the gates of Hell. I liked the ambiguity about who is human and who is demon, who is living, and who is dead, and the mystery about just who the narrator is. (Assuming you can believe anything he says.) I snickered at this line, about the demons who stay at the lodging. 

“I see.” She picked up another piece of chicken. “Nice demons.”

“Not really. But the old man tells me that they usually overpay and are, well, businesslike in their dealings. Those are the best things about evil. It generally has ready money, and doesn’t expect to be trusted.” 

So, there were definitely a lot of things I enjoyed about the stories. The writing quality is high, and the ideas often intriguing. There were a few sour notes, however. 

Probably the most annoying was that Wolfe is a bit retrograde on gender. The stories were written from 1970 to 1999 - not exactly a pre-feminist era. And yet, he indulges in lazy gender stereotypes on occasion. Perhaps worse, the stories are all very male-centric. I do not recall a single female protagonist - the women are foils for the men, rather than equal participants. I realize this is an endemic problem in SciFi, notwithstanding the accomplishments of luminaries such as Ursula Le Guin (who praised Wolfe, for what that is worth.) Still, I was surprised to see that the stories were as modern as they were - I honestly expected something more like the 1950s given the way they were written. 

My second complaint is less serious, and is a matter of taste. While I don’t mind having to pay attention while reading, some of the puzzles were a bit too involved and obtuse for me. I am thinking in particular of “Seven American Nights,” wherein a Middle Eastern man visits a post-collapse United States. The premise was great. The first few chapters (it is novella length) were fascinating and drew me in. But then, after all the setup, it fizzled out into an ending that answered nothing, and left the questions unanswered. I tried to look back and find the clues, but didn’t really figure it out. I then used the power of the internet. Fortunately, Wolfe has a huge fan base who loves to discuss the stories, and I did find a thread on this one. The best I can be sure of is that Wolfe intended that the original narrator be replaced by a machine trying to throw the person (in the framing story) off the track of what really happened. This makes sense in light of a few clues, and also in the “mistakes” the machine makes. So far, so good. But Wolfe’s fans can’t agree on when this occurred, and even less on what the “real” story actually is. The more I read the discussion, the less confident I felt about any of the theories. And, I also realized that there were even more loose ends that I hadn’t noticed. Things that were (I presume) intended to be clues, but were so unclear that there were a dozen theories about why they were there, or what they meant. My beef with all of this is that the story started out so good and compelling and then...fizzle. A puzzle that made sense only to Wolfe, and remains opaque to everyone else. 

There were a few stories like this, and, depending on how good they were to start, I either tried to figure them out or didn’t bother. 

All that said, I still found the book enjoyable, and several of the stories are ones that will stick in my head. Wolfe’s writing qualifies as literary fiction, not mere genre fiction. Whether or not you like SciFi for its own sake, these stories will appeal for their literary merit, their thoughtful exploration of universal ideas, and for their creativity.