BASS: Fiction Anemic's Review of My Brother Eli

"Hey Louie, you don't happen to know Jacob Foxx Greer, do you?"

So, after a nice break with young characters, we're thrown right back into Elderlyland with Joseph Epstein's "My Brother Eli", the story of a man looking back on the life of his self-centered writer brother.

Almost from the get-go, I kept looking at this story and Ann Beattie's "Solid Wood". In that story, the narrator was literally left picking up the life tab of his self-centerd famous author mentor.

While Beattie's narrator is just figuring out that his mentor was a destructive prick, Louie, Eli's brother, knows it from the start. Eli borrows money, writes about Louie and his mechanic business in a bad light, marries woman after woman only to abandon them and his children in the end, etc. Few people realize this, however, and Eli develops a literary following.

In the Contributor's Notes, Epstein says he was playing with the idea that artists are entitled to special rights and priviledges (i.e. if Mozart hadn't fooled around on his wife, we might not have Marriage of Figaro). Do lesser artists get the same pass? Epstein's goal is to say no. Staggering work of genius or not, artists are just as accountable as everyday people.

It's a nice sentiment, but Eli is so thoroughly unlikeable that I don't know if I see it. It would be nice to maybe see some of Eli's prose perhaps to make it more udnerstandable why the literary types are drinking the Kool-Aid.

I'll leave the more thorough analysis to Synedochick, but I will ask the question, why are audiences (or writers) so fascinated with the flamboyant author? This is (at least) the second story in this anthology like this. Is it because so many of these writers (Mailer, Vonnegut, etc.) were around for so long, entertaining us in their larger than life style, and are now going or gone?

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SynedoChick’s Review of “Riding the Doghouse” (Best American Short Stories 2007)

FictionAnemic, I had a similar reaction to this story. It seemed like a breath of fresh air--finally, I thought, a story about something other than the problems of the very very rich.

This kid’s childhood—riding cross-country in his father’s rig—is a far cry from the precious upper class New York world of “Pa’s Darling.” But the more I read, the more similar these stories seemed …

Obviously, in both stories, narrators reminisce about somewhat troubled father-child relationships. In both stories, that trouble revolves around generational differences in social class. In Auchincloss’s story, the narrator (or maybe the world in general) has failed to live up to her father’s New York upper class values. In DeVita’s story, the narrator is troubled by his father’s lower class status. Although little is said about the adult narrator’s class status (the frame “story”—in which the adult narrator watches his son sleep—is really pretty thin), we do know that he went to college, distancing himself from his working class origins.

FictionAnemic, I like your analysis of how the narrator passes through these phases—loner, loser, rebel—to achieve maturity (or loss of innocence, depending on how you look at it). The narrator changes as he becomes aware of the class differences between his father and his friend’s father. I thought this was an interesting and poignant theme. The dialogue seemed a little on the nose when the narrator and his father argue, actually saying things like, “Sitting in air conditioning ain’t work.” The emotional subtext of the story was perfectly clear without having the characters spell it out.

I also wondered what Midnight was supposed to represent—and I agree that on some level, he does seem to be harbinger or death. But it is interesting that Midnight appears in the story—and threatens his father’s life—just after the narrator has insulted his father's work. It is fitting that Midnight is another trucker, someone who stalks the narrator’s father on the road, takes pictures of him asleep in his truck. Midnight is innately tied to the father’s working class job. And the father fittingly dies during his son’s first semester in college—the son’s first step out of that working class life.

In Stephen King’s 1981 book Danse Macabre, he talks about a type of horror he calls “economic unease.” I think this story fits into that category. Midnight might represent death, but he also represents the working class life the narrator has escaped. And perhaps what’s made the narrator an insomniac is the fear that he has not escaped that life completely—or the guilt that his class aspirations were a rejection of his father and, in some irrational way, responsible for his death.

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Randy DeVita's "Riding the Doghouse"

FictionAnemic coughs her way through a review of Randy DeVita's "Riding the Doghouse" that should have happened a month ago. Careful, I'm still contagious.

Originally, the first blurb that this review was going to have was, "Finally, a story by someone under the age of 40." Of course, four weeks ago, I had a lot of different plans than I have now after trying to get over a really relentless strain of the flu and then catch up with everything else in my life.

But yes, finally a story by someone new, a fresh young voice. Gone are some of the WASP-y end of life themes we've seen - illness, retirement, accumulated wealth, etc. Instead, our ominous story focuses on a pre-teen boy taking a trip with his truck driver father.

While reading this story, I thought of a book I recently read on adolescent boys called "Loners, Losers, and Rebels." The thesis of the book is how boys have to go through three stages of seeing themselves as a Loner, a Loser, and a Rebel. Like much of adolescence, each stage is painful, but boys can't skip any of these stages without having major problems later on down the road.

Throughout this story, the main character is going through two of these stages. He questions his father why he doesn't have an office job like his friend (rebel). At certain points, he sets himself apart from his father (loner).

The Loser stage takes place at a truck stop late one night. The boy's father establishes that his son should touch none of the controls. When the father steps out of the cab, the boy does exactly that (another rebel act) - using the CB to get in touch with the mysterious Midnight, supposedly another truck driver. Only when it's too late does the boy realize he's made a mistake.

If there is one end of life theme going on here, it's mortality. Midnight is also at the truck stop. In an ode to Rear Window, the boy looks over to another truck and sees the tip of a cigarette goal orange and then disappear. Midnight threatens the boy, saying he might come after his father.

My question is, is Midnight a real trucker - some psychopath, or is Midnight death in physical form? Either way, the boy has paid the price to be a man - he's aware of his father's (and ultimately his own) mortality.

The story is bookended by the narrator (the boy) as a grown man overlooking his own pre-teen son asleep during a thunderstorm. One wonders what his son will do as he goes through his own three stages.

While I liked the story a lot and the respite from old people stories, one thing I wondered - is this truly one of the best american short stories? Sure, it's extremely well crafted, but I can't help but wonder if this has something to do with Stephen King being the editor? But, there I go again, being the lit snob. What do you think SynecdoChick?

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