Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 281: Ambrose Bierce, A Psychological Shipwreck (#281)

Ambrose Bierce, "A Psychological Shipwreck" (1879) from Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs:

Not my favorite Bierce, though maybe because I constantly talk and think of him. I don't remember a time before I knew of him, since I grew up with two Bierce books in the house. (Can Such Things Be? and In the Midst of Life.)

The headnote says that this is a favorite for anthologizing and that readers have loved to puzzle out the connections. I can't say I understand why, since it seems both clearly in line with Poe and other earlier writers who played with some idea of trances; and seems clearly related to the late 19th-century obsession with spiritual forces and physical connections.

(I can't remember who wrote it, but there's a story from around this time of a seance where the spirit that comes knocking leaves a number when asked its name--and it turns out to be the number for one of the seance-participant's amputated foot. The idea of spiritual forces behind or inherent in the physical is so big at the point that Bierce is writing.)

What we have here simply seems to be a case of a man's spirit communing with the spirit of a relative; and beyond that, the notion that there are other relatives communing in spirit. What's the mystery?

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 280: Frederick Douglass, Letter to His Old Master (#280)

Frederick Douglass, "Letter to His Old Master" (1848) from Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies:

In grad school, I took a class in the History Department called "Important Primary Sources in American History"--or something to that effect. So in one week, I devoured something like 1000 pages of slave narratives (the Library of America collection, actually).

But it never gets any easier. This short, humorous, cutting letter from Douglass to his former owner doesn't dwell on the horrors of slavery at any length. It mentions them in general (being robbed of education, etc.) or names particular events (being dragged to market, etc.) only sparingly; most of this letter is taken up by the joys of freedom.

And yet, those joys are so obviously contrasted to the crushing pains of slavery that this letter can get me teary eyed. Douglass's great skill here might be in how quickly he can veer from cutting and acid humor to straightforward pathos.

Edit: If you read this letter, make sure to read the LoA headnote, which tells the story of some strange meetings between Douglass and the family that formerly owned him. It's a great reminder of how strange and intimate the institution of slavery really was.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 279: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Man of Adamant (#279)

Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Man of Adamant" (1837) from Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales & Sketches:

A classic sort of Hawthorne tale:

1. It started from a line or two in his notebook. (His notebooks are full of ideas.)
2. It features a fiercely and sternly religious person.
3. There's an elaborate metaphor.

Or maybe not so elaborate: Richard Digby is a hard-hearted man who believes that he's got the true faith, so he leaves society, and finds a cave where the water seems to petrify everything. Oh, also, he's got a medical condition where his heart is hardening. 

So maybe we shouldn't call the metaphor here "elaborate"; it's more like "belabored." How many ways can you connect a guy to "hard" and "stone"? He's petrifying on the outside, while calcifying on the inside. Meanwhile, the petrifying quality of the cave isn't exactly hidden.

From that, you might consider this story a little obvious--and it is, but that's not necessarily a bad point. Back when Hawthorne was writing, this sort of sentimental and obvious tale might be pleasing to people; today, you can read it with a slight wink; and honestly, it's not clear that there wasn't a wink here this whole time.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 277: Wong Chin Foo, Experience of a Chinese Journalist (#277)

Wong Chin Foo, "Experience of a Chinese Journalist" (1885) from Writing New York: A Literary Anthology:

A short and humorous take, reminiscent of the old joke about Hollywood:

Do you know how to make a million dollars making movies? Start with ten million dollars.

Wong Chin Foo sounds like an interesting guy, a sort of Chinese American Mark Twain, making enemies all around the world. This short piece from Puck doesn't really showcase that directly, though he does talk about how he was denounced by white Americans and Chinese Americans; how he made enemies of gambling den owners; etc. But it's all mixed in with jokes about treasurers walking off with the treasury, which is fun, but doesn't really get to the heart of who this guy is.

Also, the fact that this is from the Writing New York anthology seems extra bizarre, as there's nothing particularly New York-y about it.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 275: Anna Cora Mowatt, The Morning of the Débût (#275)

Anna Cora Mowatt, "The Morning of the Débût" (1856) from The American Stage: Writing on Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner:

Meh. Nothing much to say here. Anna Cora Mowatt was a writer and actor, who wrote both a biography and a fictional account of stage-life. This is from the fictional version, but clearly close to some actual experience: a young actress first going on stage in a major role. Rather long, didn't keep my interest.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 272: Elizabeth Keckly, Lincoln’s Assassination (#272)

Elizabeth Keckly, "Lincoln’s Assassination" (1868) from The Civil War: The Final Year Told by Those Who Lived It:

Another record of Lincoln's assassination, this time from freed slave and dressmaker to Washington, Elizabeth Keckly. (The LoA note on this says that she was born a slave, married a free man of color, bought her and her child's freedom, and eventually separated from her husband--which is all sorts of interesting, but not anywhere in this story.)

The end is what you'd expect it to be: Lincoln shot and people astounded and grief-stricken. What's more interesting to me is the beginning, which records Lincoln alive: rehearsing for a speech, talking about his beloved pet goats, using the goats as lead-in for a discussion of political/social issues.

But again, all Lincoln stories end up with the tragedy of his death. And I wonder what the cult of Lincoln would be like without that martyrdom. Mind you, I'm fully in the cult myself: his intelligence, humanity, grace, humor, kindness, firmness--all of it combines to make him a fascinating figure for study and emulation. But again: would he have become a fat Elvis joke or a terrible reactionary or would he have gone on and retained his aura of greatness?

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 271: Edith Wharton, The Fulness of Life (#271)

Edith Wharton, "The Fulness of Life" (1893) from Edith Wharton: Collected Stories 1891–1910:

I doubted Edith Wharton for a long time in this story: a woman in an unhappy marriage dies, enters a spiritual realm, and meets the man who is her soulmate. That takes up about 2/3rds of the story, the part where I seriously doubted.

The writing here felt somewhat overheated and there was a lot of nothing going on in this section: a rather boring and confusing set-up of her death, a long description of how this woman felt seeing an old church, the "finishing the other's sentence" part of the soulmate meeting. And all seemingly in service of an off-putting message about finding the person who can fit you exactly.

(Don't take me wrong: finding someone who can finish your sentences is fantastic. But I'd hate for people to wait around to find someone who can finish all your sentences. Even worse, the person who knows and loves everything you know and love cannot teach you anything.)

But then Wharton pulls the rug out from under us: yes, this young, unhappy wife has found her soulmate, but... it wouldn't really be right to leave her husband alone and it wouldn't really be home without the little annoying things her well-meaning husband did. Which turns the story from a romantic fantasy about finding the one (after death) to something much weirder. Something worth a paper or a late-night talk with friends.

Like: Is she merely used to her vexing position? Is she somehow addicted or emotionally profiting from it? Or is it just a selfless act from a generous person to help another?

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 270: Sallie Brock, The Fall of Richmond (#270)

Sallie Brock, "The Fall of Richmond" (1867) from The Civil War: The Final Year Told by Those Who Lived It:

Another Civil War memorial, this time from a Southern women who witnessed the fall of Richmond. Which is one of those funny "falls" where the main damage was done by the departing Confederate army and panicked Southerners before the Union army attempted to stop the fires.

And yet Sallie Brock still describes the “Stars and Stripes” as "the ensign of our subjugation." I can't say I'm very sympathetic to Brock after that and some disparaging remarks on blacks and the Union army as "representing almost every nation on the continent of Europe."

The best part of this week's story then is LoA headnote with the unfortunately worded sentence about Brock and her husband's later life:

The couple lived and died in Brooklyn for over two decades, but both were buried in Richmond.

They died for over two decades? Like, over and over? Or is that a philosophical statement about how life is really death? Whoa, man, that's like deep.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 269: Stephen Crane, His New Mittens (#269)

Stephen Crane, "His New Mittens" (1898) from Stephen Crane: Prose & Poetry:

Not much happens here, plot-wise: a boy with new mittens is tempted to join in a snowball fight--and then he does, against the admonition of his mother; his mother punishes him, which results in him running away into a snowstorm--until he goes to the butcher, who brings him back home. Not really all that much. Perhaps if you've seen the movie Boyhood (I haven't), you could make the connection: a young boy and nothing really happening.

But rather than place us in the boy's head, and giving us the grand melodrama as the boy feels it, Crane gives us a close third with more omniscience and coolness than we might think appropriate. Crane's not exactly holding up Horace as a figure of humor. In fact, according to the LoA headnote, there's some reason to think that Crane--loner, exile, sufferer--saw himself in Horace, the picked-on kid. Yet we never really entirely inhabit Horace's POV and there is some grim humor at Horace's expense. When the little kid decides to run away and then reconsiders--why not start in the morning, after the storm?--there's a glimpse of the tiny self-important hypocrites that children can be.

So a blank plot allows Crane the chance to play some interesting game with tone and POV here, positioning the hero of the ordinary as ... actually very ordinary. Horace--loner, exile, sufferer--isn't so much a vision of Crane as he is a vision of all of us at some point.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 267: Herman Melville, The Lightning-Rod Man (#267)

Herman Melville, "The Lightning-Rod Man" (1819–1891) from Herman Melville: Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Billy Budd, & Uncollected Prose:

I haven't read Moby Dick in years, so take that into account when I say that The Confidence-Man is my favorite novel of Melville's--largely because it's such a mess as a novel. Take all the things you usually find in a novel: a plot that runs for hundreds of pages; characters that continue or at least reappear; maybe a theme or two. Confidence-Man pretty much ditches the first two and leans hard on the third, but not in any way where you can say, as if writing a paper, "Melville shows us that..." Because what does he show us? There's something about faith and trust and confidence and how people relate to each other (along with a whole host of characters that are stand-ins for 19th-century contemporaries of Melville).

"The Lightning-Rod Man" is a lot like that; and as the LoA headnote says, there's a lot of different readings of this sort of ambiguous sketch. The plot, as such, involves a lightning-rod salesman coming to the narrator's house and making what we would consider a hard pitch for a sale, before the two get into a fight. The characters, as such, are both a little odd, as if they might be stand-ins themselves: the narrator is humorous, but a little cracked; the lightning-rod salesman is either pious or devilish. The theme or themes circle around piety, science, punishment, obedience.

And I don't have anything really cute or clever to say to wrap it up. Which is maybe why I like these stories and novels of Melville's that seem a little off. In a letter to Hawthorne, he noted that he couldn't really write what the market demanded, but he tried, and so "all my books are botches." He's talking about a different mechanism there, but I still tend to think of some of these stories as botches, both because they're a weird hash of stuff; and because they tend to revolve around people involved in botches of their own.

For more on this, I would recommend his stories "The Happy Failure" (crazy uncle has new invention to dry up swampland, which doesn't work, leaving him--remarkably happy) and "I and My Chimney" (no one respects character's relationship with his chimney, but he persists--all alone except for his chimney).

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 264: Charles W. Chesnutt, A Matter of Principle (#264)

Charles W. Chesnutt, A Matter of Principle (1899) from Charles W. Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, & Essays:

I don’t know how I can say it differently, except maybe to be as explicit as possible: read Chesnutt and be a better human being.

Or maybe the second doesn’t exactly follow from the first. After all, the LoA headnote says that Chesnutt is humorous when he writes about the color line in America and sometimes tragic, whereas it seems a lot more accurate to say that Chesnutt is humorous about a tragic situation that he also emphasizes the tragedy of. 

Which reminds me of Dean Howells's response to Marrow of Tradition. I hate to go back to this (i.e., I love to go back to this), but when Chesnutt writes about a white riot and Dean Howells says that the book is “bitter, bitter,” it feels less like a problem of Chesnutt’s than a problem of Howell’s. (It’s like blaming the whistleblower for the problems of the institution. It IS blaming the whistleblower for the problems of the institution, except here that institution is American racism.)

This story is like the great movie The Women, sold with the tagline, "It’s all about the men." Here’s a story about the black community of Groveland (a disguised Cleveland) which barely mentions white people at all--but the story is really all about white-black relations. And yet, and here’s why I think you should read Chesnutt, he also brings in class awareness and gender awareness: the protagonist is a well-off, light-skinned black man who is interested in marrying off his daughter to someone who is as well-off and light-skinned.

Naturally, this being a Chesnutt story, things don’t go well for the protagonist, whose prejudice against dark-skinned blacks gets in the way of marrying off his daughter to a congressman. (Instead she marries a poor relation who has gotten into the family business, which is to say that the poor relation is marrying up and she’s marrying without moving up. So she’ll still be able to employ a white maid, like her parents do, but she’ll probably not be totally accepted by the whites.)

That praise said, I do have to note that the story does sometimes make a joke and then make sure that we understand it, which feels a little old-fashioned.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 263: Gideon Welles, The Giant Sufferer (#263)

Gideon Welles, “The Giant Sufferer” (1865/1960) from President Lincoln Assassinated!! The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial, and Mourning:

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles recorded his thoughts and experiences on the assassination of Lincoln; and while this was revised by him and by his son, a 1960 version of his memoirs is (supposed to be) close to the original. And that's what we have here in this new collection from the Library of America, entirely focused on this one event.

(Which, like the volumes on WWI poetry, seems like an interesting departure for them. I'm not sure I'd be interested in this book, but I know there are some Lincoln enthusiasts who would be.)

As for Welles's recollections, they are the sort that many people may recognize from their own brushes with history or any sort of trauma:

• initial confusion and denial (the messenger isn't making any sense, there's no way that Lincoln and Seward could've been both attacked);
• a mix of sharp memories ("I exchanged a few words in a whisper with Dr. V. Secretary Stanton who came almost simultaneously with me spoke in a louder tone.")...
• ...and more vague perceptions ("Several surgeons were present, at least six, I should think more.");
• and the ever-present ordinariness pressing in.

In Welles's account, that last part has to do with the struggle for political power, or at least the appearance of struggle and politicking. Did Stanton purposely not invite him to a meeting? Did he come late for real reasons or as part of a power play? Etc.

Still, if you're looking for an argument about the power of simple language to carry maximal emotional force, you could do worse than Welles's memory of Lincoln on his deathbed:

His features were calm and striking. I had never seen them appear to better advantage than for the first hour, perhaps, that I was there. After that his right eye began to swell and became discolored.

I mean, there's a moment of almost saintly sanctity: Lincoln looks even better now that he's been martyred. And then Welles punctures the moment with that swollen, discolored eye. There's an image for you.

[Note: I missed this last weekend, so I'm putting it up late, but backdating it, so I can find it more easily.]

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 262: Sarah Orne Jewett, In Dark New England Days (#262)

Sarah Orne Jewett, "In Dark New England Days" (1890) from American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps:

I recently wrote a story--first draft, nothing I'll share with you--where I avoided the big action scenes (not that they were all that big or full of action) and instead wrote around them. Should I show the hero getting captured by aliens? Nah, let's show the hero in a cell instead and let everyone imagine what happened. (What happened? He got captured by aliens.)

Why? Because it doesn't really matter how he gets caught; what I was really interested in was how he and his captor would get along afterwards.

And in her own way, Jewett does something very similar. Not with aliens--I'm not that lucky. But her story of two daughters dealing with two losses gives us a very particular view of the scenes that would make up this story.

We don't see the daughters dealing with their overbearing and stingy father. We see them after his funeral. We see them uncovering the treasure he hid all these years--but then we skip the robbery and jump straight to the court case against the neighbor, given the ultra New England name of Enoch Holt. And we don't see the younger daughter's curse take effect, we hear two townsfolk talk about how the Holts have a tendency to, well, lose their right hands.

Given my taste for the Gothic and horror, I tend to love these ambiguously eerie tales of Jewett: the narrow towns, the open secrets, the simmering feuds, and the great unknowable world that envelopes it all. So here, she's certainly at her ambiguous best: is there a real curse or just happenstance? Are the daughters really visited by the cobwebby ghost of their tyrannical father?

But I'm still hung-up on the structure, which seems to capture something of the themes of the story: here we have a story where two adult daughters are waiting for something to change their lives--and it never quite happens. That is, the death of the father should free them up, should enrich their lives, quite literally with all of dad's hidden gold. And instead, poof, the wealth disappears. It's a story about absence: the marriage that never happened, the wealth that was only there for a moment, the neighbors not invited to stay the night, and the empty sleeves of the Holt family members. Goddamn, she's good.

(If you wanted to, we could connect this notion of absence with the idea of patriarchal power and the nullification of women. One of the first man-woman scenes we see is one neighbor carefully crafting her response so as not to set off her husband. Though the wife is upset, she has to cover those feelings.)

I mean, look at that final scene: two friends walking home (one will stay over because the other's husband is absent), out of breath (another absence), the landscape suffused with golden light of sunset (both a presence--gold, like dear old dead dad's treasure--and the upcoming absence of sunset), and Enoch Holt making his way across the landscape with only one good hand.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 259: Jack London, The White Silence (#259)

Jack London, "The White Silence" (1899) from Jack London: Novels & Stories:

Confession: I almost didn't finish this story. About halfway through--when the Malamute Kid, Mason, and Mason's native wife are mushing through the wilderness--I felt I'd rather be eating than reading about people being cold in the awe-inspiring majesty of all that white silence, and yes, I think I will have tuna fish tonight, but what about the bread?

Not that the story started off boring, it just, well, if you've read Jack London before, you know that he can write about setting a lot. Which is nice if you're reading your first story about the arctic. If you feel like me, and feel like bailing on the story, DON'T. I'm not saying that it ends particularly well or that the story has aged well. But from about the halfway point, things start happening.

Or rather, one thing happens and it throws the simple journey story into complete disarray. Which is like a tiny master class in writing: character wants something (to travel from the wilderness to civilization) but can't for some reason--or rather, reasons, as the obstacles rise: food running out, dogs turning savage, and finally, large tree. (Oh, but don't forget those savage dogs and the dwindling supplies. Just because a bigger obstacle threatens the characters, doesn't mean the little ones go away.)

It's also a useful example for writers to look out because the stakes don't get raised all that much in the traditional way. Or rather: the real stakes become apparent only later on. At first, we might worry that this party of three is going to die, but that's it: they aren't bringing the vaccine to a dying town or carrying an amulet that will save the world.

And by the end, there's still a danger that they will all die (well, except for the one who does die); but the stakes for the Malamute Kid have changed a bit: it's not about survival or even what he'll do for survival, but what's the right thing for him to do in the situation and whether he'll be strong enough morally to do it. It's really interesting how London presents this horrible physical challenge of violence, cold, and hunger--and then completely redirects us towards this other challenge.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 258: Anonymous (A Kentucky Soldier), “Like a Sea of Blood” (#258)

Anonymous (A Kentucky Soldier), “Like a Sea of Blood” (published 1926) from The War of 1812: Writings from America’s War of Independence:

A first person account from the trenches--or rather the brestwork around New Orleans. (I don't know if that spelling is idiosyncratic or historical, since we write "breastwork" now.)

The battle of New Orleans is one part of the War of 1812 that gets wide play, possibly because it was such an American victory against long odds (the British had more men and lost a lot more); possibly because it led (eventually) to Andrew Jackson's presidency; or possibly because it's a classic example of looking back at history and thinking, "those dolts!"--which always makes us feel better today, never realizing that some future people will think we're pretty doltish ourselves--since the battle took place after the peace treaty. I've always liked that pirate Jean Lafitte took part in the defense.

(Though what if Andrew Jackson had been killed? Or merely failed to defend the city? What would a US be like without his presidency?)

This anonymous Kentucky soldier tells his experience of the battle, which wasn't much: there's a lot of shooting in the dark and some antics by American soldiers, each with their own idiosyncrasy. There's the death of one American that seems like friendly fire. There's the surrender of the British, which leads to the narrator helping a young man over the wall, giving him some water, and then being there when he dies, which is a curiously empathetic scene. I mean, and this has come up before in war reporting, how curious that one moment you can be firing at and killing people, and the next, feeling bad for a young man who dies.

Which is especially interesting considering the report ends with one British guy trying to escape and making rude gestures--and getting shot for them. So, yeah, not everyone is going to switch so quickly from firing to feeling bad for the people fired on.

Also, the "sea of blood" image isn't actually blood--it's the Britishers' red coats.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 257: Washington Irving, Christmas Eve (#257)

Washington Irving, "Christmas Eve" (1819) from Washington Irving: History, Tales and Sketches:

What is our current equivalent of the "sketch," an old form where people just wrote about things they observed? Is it the blog post, the Facebook status, or tweet, that simply records having seen some person? My friend Adrianne is a killer at this form, recording micro-transactions with just enough context and just enough isolation to give a whole glimpse of an imagined person.

Washington Irving takes a different tactic, recording at length his outsider impressions of an old English Christmas Eve. It's very much what you'd expect of his sketches (assuming you read his earlier "Christmas Dinner" sketch): the narrator arrives with a guide at the old Squire's house and just sponges up everything going on around him, from old English games, to the current love affairs blooming among the youngsters.

Again, there's something implicitly melancholy--or at least narrow--about the Squire's attempt to keep the world and history out of his house; in a way, the symbol for this might be both the squire and his bachelor relative, both of whom have frozen history at a certain point. For instance, the bachelor may be full of family history and genealogy, but he won't be contributing to that genealogy, even if he is still a bit of a flirt.

And so, even if Irving keeps the observations moving, and presents a world of cheer and song, I can't help remember that Rip Van Winkle's important skill is sleeping through history; and how much Anglophilia there is in Irving's work, as if all these sketches are an attempt at capturing a moment in history--and not letting time move on.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 256: Mary S. Mallard, Union Looters (#256)

Mary S. Mallard, "Union Looters" (1864/1972) from The Civil War: The Final Year Told by Those Who Lived It:

Mary Mallard spent part of the last year of the Civil War at a plantation owned by her mother; and here's her memoir of the mostly awful Yankees who came and stole all their stuff. Which brings up some interesting stuff, like: jeez, but these women come off somewhat privileged. I mean, when a man comes in with a gun, Mary continues to argue with them; and continues to think that they have the right of history on their side.

Which is probably why my favorite parts are when she reports how the plantation servants (she never says "slaves") react to the Yankees coming and stealing all the white people's property. I mean, I easily can imagine that the freedmen really do complain to Mary--but I don't know that they really mean what they say.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 255: Annie Parker, Passages in the Life of a Slave Woman (#255)

Annie Parker, "Passages in the Life of a Slave Woman" (1853) from American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation:

Really, I should tag every blog post with "race" and "class" and "gender" and probably a few other tags as well. For instance: "ability/disability" is an axis of normativity--the often invisible struggle to define what counts as normal, as Other--that I'm really only beginning to become aware of. I mean, we tend to label a story about black people as having to do with race in a way that we wouldn't label a story about white people. And yet, even if it's a story just about white people, there's lots of race involved.

(A: Remember, "white" is a relatively new construct for race, and in the old days, people used to talk about everything from "the Irish race" to "the Alpine race." B: New favorite exemplary quote, from Billy the Kid: talking about a boss named Tunstall, "who was the only man that treated me like I was decent and white." For more fun, Tunstall was Irish and the Lincoln Country War might have had to do with Irish/English immigrant hostility. Totally unrelated but still fun trivia: Billy the Kid was born in NYC.)

Anyway, enough about my general failings to correct my privileged position, let's move on to the story, which is all about privileges:

• the privilege of the white male slave owner to make a mistress of a slave;
• the relative privilege of the slave mistress compared to the other slaves;
• a pretty common trope in slave literature, that of the slave who doesn't fit with the other slaves;
• the privilege of the slave owner to sell away any inconvenient slave, as Mr. Lee does here with his slave son, Jerry, who looks so much like him;
• the privileges of knowledge and ignorance: the narrator who knows all, Mr. Lee who knows--and hushes--all, the kind Northern mistress of the house who knows nothing because it would hurt her too much and no one wants to give the nice lady any pain.

It's also a super Southern Gothic story, about two slave siblings, separated by slavery, who decide to get married; and the narrator's attempts to prevent that incest without letting anyone know. And you know what the solution is to the hurt caused by slavery? Mr. Lee simply sells away the daughter that he kept. Remember: this is also his daughter that he's selling away.

What's really killer to me is the title, as an added layer of misery: this isn't an exceptional story about people selling away their family or what's stolen from people by slavery. This is simply some passages in the life of a slave woman. Check out that indefinite article: "a Slave Woman" could be any slave woman. It could be many slave women. This could be going on all the time, says this story, written in 1853.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 250: Edgar Allan Poe, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (#250) (Catching up)

Edgar Allan Poe, "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" (1845) from Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry & Tales:

And so, following 12 solid weeks of learning web development, where I fell off my schedule, here I am hoping to catch up with the last four weeks of LoA stories. Luckily, my first story, back on the horse, is my good friend Poe.

Which reminds me of a story about Kafka: we tend to think of Kafka as very existential and dark and brooding. As--dare I say it?--Kafkaesque. But back in his day, Kafka would sometimes read his work to friends and have them rolling on the floor.

Poe tends to get a somewhat similar treatment: he's a Halloween author, whose stories of mad killers get brushed off once a year. Or, for those in grad school, he's one of the canon, who is constantly commenting on the American condition.

And so, the LoA headnote informs us that this story--about a lunatic asylum run by the lunatics--might be "a satire on democracy, an invective against abolitionism, or a parody of writing by Dickens and Willis—or, as seems quite possible, all of these."

Yes, OK, sure. (Though let's be clear about that Abolition reading and its problems: the asylum here is in the South (of France), so check; but all the weirdness of the house's inhabitants is explained away--incorrectly, but plausibly--as having to do with their Southernness and oldness. It's less a satire on a failed slave revolution than it might be a comment about how underclass people tend to mimic the upperclass.)

I'm not saying that there's nothing to be read into here. Only that we shouldn't miss the layers of humor: not just that the lunatics run the asylum, but that the observer--even when this is pointed out to him--still thinks that they might have a point.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 248: Mark Twain, Playing Courier (#248)

Mark Twain, "Playing Courier" (1892) from Mark Twain: A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, Other Travels:

Let's talk about the word "lesser" as it pertains to writers' work. When I say a story is "lesser Hawthorne" or "lesser Lovecraft" or "lesser Poe" (which I would never say, since Poe is never lesser), I generally mean something like:

1. this story isn't as stylistically or technically perfect as their other work; or 
2. this story doesn't capture some theme that seems important to the core of the author's work; or
3. this story doesn't add anything new to what we see elsewhere.

Now, if you squint, (2) and (3) can seem a little contradictory. Take, say, Lovecraft: if you think of his work as being irreducibly about cosmic nihilism (that's a core theme in his work) and then you read, oh, I don't know, let's say "The Cats of Ulthar," with its story of revenge against people who are mean to cats. Not so much cosmic nihilism in that story (unless you think that cats are avatars of cosmic nihilism, in which case, you are correct). In fact, you could say that "Cats" does add something new that we don't see often in Lovecraft: a sense of cosmic justice.

So, on one hand, it misses something core to Lovecraft; and on the other, it adds something that seems peripheral--but it's still added. Is "Cats of Ulthar" "lesser" or not?

Which brings me by a roundabout way to talking about Mark Twain's story of European misadventure, "Playing Courier." This story/anecdote is about a time when Twain tried to move his family along on their European travels and failed. It's apparently fictional, but you could've fooled me.

You couldn't have fooled me if you told me this was an important work of Twainiana. It's not that this is a badly written story. I mean, this is Twain: he is almost always in control of his technique, and if nothing else, his use of under- and over-statement can get a smile.

But there's just no there there to this story. The narrator bumbles around, failing to deal with train tickets, trunks, cabs, local authorities, and etc. And then there's some more bumbling around. Followed by a little more. Some of it is humorous, but ultimately... yeah, it feels like lesser Twain.