Short Story Wednesday, "How to Make Love to A Physicist"

 

I put this aside some time ago and just ran across it yesterday. I think I have only read half of the stories. This one is about a couple that meet at a STEAM conference. She is in the arts and only there to oversee. He is a physicist and this story documents the relationship that follows. She does everything she can to put him off but he hangs in there. I am not sure all men would allow this latitude but lucky for her. Deesha Philyaw won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her debut short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

 

Todd Mason 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Short Story Wednesday: "The Wife On Ambien," Ed Park

 https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/the-wife-on-ambien

As someone who takes Ambien, I can attest to some unusual things that happen under the influence. Although usually it's Amazon orders that I remember considering but not ordering. For instance, I considered making my NYT subscription digital rather than print and apparently I did do that because no paper was here today but a change in billing email was. Also I sometimes find cracker crumbs on my chest in the morning. I also have had deliveries of clothing in the wrong size so I am not as careful under Ambien.

A bit worrisome. I have been advised to powder the hall in front of my door to make sure I don't leave the apartment at night.  As a child I walked in my sleep so it may not be the Ambien at all. 

Fun story anyway.  

Jerry House 

George Kelley 

TracyK 

Kevin Tipple 

Casual Debris 

Todd Mason 

Short Story Wednesday: "The Project" from THE NEW YORKER

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/01/project-fiction-rachel-cusk

 

I really wish I had picked up the collection of short stories set in British grand houses I saw at the library sale because I am sure discerning their meanings would have been easier than this one. Maybe I will go back and get it if the sale is still on. 

The protagonist has several themes in The Project. Two friends experience childhood's end in different ways, the story of her husband's time in a hospital and their subsequent move to a city with their children. This is probably the sort of story you need to read twice and I didn't. It was easy enough to read but I didn't quite pull the strings together.  I don't mind a story that doesn't have a traditional style but this one seemed like three stories-one of them perhaps borrowed from Alice Munro's daughter. 

Todd Mason 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

Short Story Wednesday "Something Has Come to Light" Mirian Toews

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/25/something-has-come-to-light-fiction-miriam-toews 

 

Perhaps you have read novels by Miriam Toews or saw the excellent movie based on one of them, WOMEN TALKING. A memoir by Toews comes out this month. Toews, who fled her Mennonite community at 18, has said she feels the need to write about who she might have been if she stayed. 

This story is set in the Mennonite community in Manitoba. A farm wife near death at an old age tells the story of a boy she met, and refused, as a girl. It is quite short but paints a good picture of a religious community and this particular woman.  

We get so few stories about Mennonites or the Amish. Their world is rarely talked about although there is quite a large community in Sarasota, FL and I see they do have their own publishers and books.  

 

George Kelley 

Tracy K 

Jerry House 

Short Story Wednesday, THE AGE OF GRIEF, Jane Smiley

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres—a luminous novella and short stories that explore the vicissitudes of love, friendship, and marriage. • “A glorious achievement….. Infinitely satisfying….. A triumph.” —The New York Times Book Review

In “The Pleasure of Her Company,” a lonely, single woman befriends the married couple next door, hoping to learn the secret of their happiness. In “Long Distance,” a man finds himself relieved of the obligation to continue an affair that is no longer compelling to him, only to be waylaid by the guilt he feels at his easy escape. And in the incandescently wise and moving title novella, a dentist, aware that his wife has fallen in love with someone else, must comfort her when she is spurned, while maintaining the secret of his own complicated sorrow. Beautifully written, with a wry intelligence and a lively comic touch, The Age of Grief captures moments of great intimacy with grace, clarity, and indelible emotional power.

A Thousand Acres was Smiley's most successful book-it was a modern take on King Lear. But she was a fine short story writer too. I read this collection in 1988. 

 George Kelley

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Neeru

Short Story Wednesday: "The Necklace" V. S. Prichett

 

The New Yorker, February 15, 1958 P. 31

A window-cleaner finds a pearl necklace and turns it over to the police. He recalls his actions on the day that it was found, and also how he met his wife, Nell. He remembers her incessant reference to her well-to-do- Aunt Mary throughout their courtship. Later she admitted that Aunt Mary died the previous year. Also apparent is Nell's hatred of liars, of which she constantly reminds her husband. After questioning each one separately, the police bring them together. Nell claims that the necklace was hers, and not found by her husband. Further investigation revealed that she had stolen jewelry previously, and credited her Aunt Mary, who never really existed, with having given it to her. Nell was sentenced to three months in prison.

Quite an odd little story. DeMaupassant's story THE NECKLACE is an influence. The story is read by Paul Theroux on THE NEW YORKER website. 

 George Kelley

Kevin Tipple 

Short Story Wednesday "The Heroine" Patricia Highsmith from TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES, Sarah Weinman editor

 

Lucille is hired by a family in Westchester to care for their two children. Almost immediately you sense this will not turn out well and the tension never lets up. She is not ill-intentioned but she is crazy. She longs to do something heroic for this family. What will it be. And a strange life the family has-with the children rarely leaving their nursery. A good reminder to always check out references. 

I have read most of the stories in this anthology and have not been disappointed. 

Putting together this anthology was one of Sarah Weinman's first endeavors. Now the mystery and  crime editor of the New York Times Book Review, Sarah has written SCOUNDREL, THE REAL LOLITA, UNSPEAKABLE ACTS, EVIDENCE OF THINGS SEEN and has a new book WITHOUT CONSENT debuting in the fall. All non-fiction, her books look at true crime.

 George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK 

Short Story Wednesday: "Face- Time" Lorrie Moore from THE NEW YORKER, Sept. 2020

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/28/face-time

 

You can tell by the date above, what was going on then. And this story, well-written and sad can stand in for a million stories like it. The protagonist's father is in the hospital. A surgery is followed by Covid. His daughters can only visit on Face- time as was so much the case then. It is hard to read this and be taken back to that hopeless time when we didn't know how long a vaccine might be in coming. But it wasn't that long because we believed in science and labs and the scientists working in them. And now we don't. Or at least our government doesn't.  

Todd Mason 

Neer 

George Kelley 

TracyK 

Short Story Wednesday, "Premium Harmony" Stephen King

 from THE NEW YORKER.

 A couple, who fight over meaningless things, (his smoking, her weight) stop at a roadside store to pick up a ball for her niece. The husband and their dog wait in the car. It's a very hot day and after too long of a wait for her small errand, a woman comes out to tell him his wife has collapsed. He goes inside and waits until EMS arrives and confirms her death. She is only 35. He returns to the car where the dog has also died from the heat. I am not sure I would identify this as a King story if not for the references to Castle Rock. It was written in 2009. 

George Kelley

Jerry House 

Todd Mason 

Short Story Wednesday: "Something is Out There" Richard Bausch

 

Originally in MURDERLAND, this ended up the title story in his collection. 

A family returns home from the hospital where the father is spending some time after falling off the roof after being shot. They are having a rare snowstorm, and the boys begin to shovel the driveway and walk. The women try to piece together what has happened. The man who shot the father has been captured and was a former business partner. They are also waiting for the return of another family member away at college. They are worried about him out on the icy roads.

The dread in this story is palpable: the storm, the fate of the college student, knocks on the door, is the father involved in some crime? And then the power goes out. 

Bausch takes his time to make you feel what they are feeling. In fact, when a knock came at my own door (something very rare nowadays) I almost fell out of the chair. (It was the mailman). 

Bausch understands that the threat of violence can be more frightening than actual violence. He gives you enough information to understand, sort of, what might be going on. The story ends with the woman, standing at an upstairs window, with a loaded gun. The kids wait downstairs baseball bats and knives at the ready. The other woman waits too.

 Superb. There are probably pdf's online if you care to read it

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Steve Lewis 

Kevin Tipple 

Todd Mason 

Short Story Wednesday: "Button, Button" Richard Matheson

"Button, Button", Richard Matheson 

A package arrives at Norma and Arthur Steward's house with a gadget inside with a button on it. Shortly after a man arrives and announces to the couple that if they push the button they will kill someone in the world, and receive $50, 000 in exchange. Norma is intrigued by this, insisting that they are part of an experiment, and nothing will happen if they push the button. Except maybe they would get paid and could do the many things she was longing for. Arthur is repulsed by the idea and by his wife. This is a very well -written story although you will probably guess the ending. This was, of course, on the Twilight Zone. You can watch it on you tube. It was also the plot of the 2009 movie THE BOX.

Steve Lewis 

George Kelley 

Martin Edwards 

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

Short Story Wednesday: "The Pilgrimage" William Maxwell

 

William Keepers Maxwell Jr. (August 16, 1908 – July 31, 2000) was an American editor, novelist, short story writer, essayist, children's author, and memoirist. He served as a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. An editor devoted to his writers, Maxwell became a legendary mentor and confidant to many of the most prominent authors of his day. Although best known as an editor, Maxwell was a highly respected and award-winning novelist and short story writer. His stature as a celebrated author has grown in the years following his death. 

"The Pilgrimage" almost certainly is a story based on something experienced or something heard by Maxwell. It gets so much right about tired tourists on the road. The Ormsby's are an American couple touring France. On the way to Paris, they make a detour to find a restaurant that friends have told them about, saying "it was the best dinner they had in their life" How can the couple not have dinner at a place that specialized in truffles and also " deserts made from little balls of various ice cream in a beautiful basket of spun sugar with a spun-sugar bow." 

They drive through village after village and finally come on a place that seems right except the menu has neither of the dishes they are seeking. And neither does another place on the town square. They are completely obsessed with having the things they were told about and act in the way Americans are always accused of acting. 

This is a satirical story, of course, meant to point out the problems with tourists in foreign settings. Maxwell is a master of this sort of story. And I can't say enough about the quality of his novels, especially TIME WILL DARKEN IT, THE FOLDED LEAF and THE CHATEAU.

 TracyK

George Kelley 

Casual Debris 

Todd Mason 

Short Story Wednesday 2 Wednesday's Child, Yiyun Li

 Incorporating her own story about the death of her two sons, this story is about a mother who loses her only child when the fifteen year old lies down on a train track. Traveling in the Netherlands, she recalls her mother's cruelty to her after that death and how her failure to form a relationship with her mother may have contributed to her daughter's death. 

Li has a new book out about her double death. It was reviewed last week in the NYT Book Review.  This collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Short Story Wednesday

Lots of your favorite mystery writers on tee shirts at TEEPUBLIC. 

This is mine.  

I will collect your links.  

Short Story Wednesday "The Richest Babysitter in the World" Curtis Sittenfeld

 

Curtis Sittenfeld likes to write stories and novels that intersect with real people-celebrities that is-- and she is often good at it. In "The Richest Babysitter in the World" from SHOW DON'T TELL, a college student is hired by a couple to care for their young child in the hours that the wife is working on her dissertation. Very little happens in this story although the writing is lucid and we find out by the end that the couple are stand ins for the Bezos. Although I liked the story, I did not find any compelling reason to write it-unless perhaps Sittenfeld did babysit for the Bezos'. There is a brief examination of the problems of using a service like Amazon-and the realization that in society today it is hard not to. Also an examination of how he treats his employees as contrasted to how they treated her. (Bezos' wife is a philanthropist and you can see that tendency in how she treats the babysitter compared to him)  I don't mind stories where nothing happens, but this took that pretty far. The story originally appeared in THE ATLANTIC.

George Kelley 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK 

Todd Mason 

Richard Horton 

Jerry House 

Casual Debris 

Short Story Wednesday: "The Terrapin" Patricia Highsmith

 

Several times, Patricia Highsmith named this as her favorite of her short stories. It appeared in the October 1962 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. 

Victor, at eleven, lives with his mother in New York City. She insists that he wear short pants, recite poetry for her friends, and in many ways humiliates him. One day she brings home a terrapin with the idea of making turtle soup. Victor, friendless himself, begins to play with the terrapin. But his mother quickly begins preparation for her soup. She mercilessly throws the animal in hot water and carves him up. That night...well, you can guess if you haven't read it yourself. 

Many claim the mother in this story bore a strong resemblance to Highsmith's mother. Mary Highsmith told everyone she had tried to abort Patricia using turpentine.  Patricia did not attend her mother's funeral. 

 George Kelley

Kevin Tipple 

Steve Lewis 

Jerry House 

Crimereads 

 

Short Story Wednesday, Ron Scheer looks at LIVIN' ON JACKS AND QUEENS,

 

Robert J. Randisi, ed., Livin’ on Jacks and Queens

This is an entertaining anthology of 14 stories about gamblers and gambling in the Old West. Editor Randisi has assembled a notable gathering of western writers, providing an array of storytelling styles and imaginative treatments of the subject. The names of several contributors will be quickly recognized: Johnny Boggs, John D. Nesbitt, Matthew P. Mayo, Nik Morton, and Chuck Tyrell.

To these he has added a story of his own, plus the yarns of two women writers who may be new to some readers: Christine Matthews and Lori Van Pelt.

My favorites of the bunch include Ms. Matthews’ “Odds on a Lawman,” which tells of a succession of sheriffs who each assumes a tenure of service to a frontier town, before dying or disappearing for various reasons, on which the townsmen place bets until the turn of events claims one of them the winner. It’s an amusing and well-written tale that brings its Dickensian cast of characters to entertaining life, while we wait to see the fate that befalls each of the town’s series of sheriffs.

For a colorful portrayal of the daily life and business of a riverboat gambler, Nik Morton brings that world vividly to life in his story, “Hazard.” In “Acey-Deucey,” John D. Nesbitt’s central character is hired by a woman to retrieve an emerald pendant once given to her by a paramour. Finally locating the current owner of the gem, he has to win a game of cards before he can take possession of it.

Robert Randisi

Randisi’s story, “Horseshoes and Pistols” is so quirky, I kept thinking that it qualified as Twilight Zone material. In it, two men are forced to bet their lives on a game of horseshoes. Matthew Mayo’s “Pay the Ferryman” veers off in another direction, as a man on the run escapes into what might well be called “the heart of darkness.”

My favorite story in the collection was penned by a favorite storyteller, Chuck Tyrell. His “Great Missouri River Steamship Race” evokes a period of river travel from the point of view of a youngster working as a fireman aboard a steamship with a regular route between St. Louis and Fort Benton. Tyrell brings his gifts for characterization, dialogue, and suspense to this story with its echoes of Huckleberry Finn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK

Short Story Wednesday: "The Piano Tuner"s Wives" William Trevor (The New Yorker)

 https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction/yiyun-li-reads-william-trevor

 

The piano tuner is a blind man who marries Violet and later Belle. This is a ghost story as much as a love story. Belle's real interest is the now dead Violet and her competition with her.

It especially drives her crazy that Owen would have chosen the less attractive woman first. Although the less attractive woman was a devoted wife and companion. And what does a blind man know of beauty. Except that of the soul.

Above the story is read by Yiyun Li who chose the story. I am a great fan of William Trevor's stories and novels. The discussion after her reading of the story is good too if you have an hour and fifteen minutes to spare.   

George Kelley

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Todd Mason 

Kevin Tipple

Short Story Wednesday

 George Kelley

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK

Short Story Wednesday: THE HARDBOILED DICKS, An Anthology by Ron Goulart, (reveiwed by James Reasoner)

 

originally reviewed on Friday, April 30, 2010

Forgotten Books: The Hardboiled Dicks - Ron Goulart, ed.

Like it was yesterday, I remember it: a very foggy December evening in 1967. I was 14 years old, and when my mother went to Seminary South with my older brother and my sister-in-law, I tagged along. Seminary South was the first major shopping center in Fort Worth, built in the mid-Sixties as an open-air mall much like the various outlet malls that now sit beside many of the Interstate highways. It was on Seminary Drive in south Fort Worth, hence the name. The main attraction it held for me at that time was a small bookstore called The Book Oasis. I was able to stop in there for a little while that night, and while I was there I found a book I knew I had to have. It had a bright, pop-art style cover that showed a strong-jawed guy in a fedora socking a thug. The title?

THE HARDBOILED DICKS, of course.

By this time I was fairly familiar with the concept of the pulps from reading Doc Savage novels and the Lancer editions of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. I even owned a pulp, a 1931 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY that I had picked up in Thompson’s Bookstore in downtown Fort Worth a year or so earlier. (In those days you could still buy tons of Gold Medals and Dell mapbacks from Thompson’s for ten cents each – and I did.) THE HARDBOILED DICKS was my introduction to the sort of fiction to be found in BLACK MASK, DIME DETECTIVE, and other hardboiled detective pulps. Originally published in hardcover a couple of years earlier, it was reprinted in paperback by Pocket Books and had a great introduction by Ron Goulart.

But it was the stories themselves that grabbed me immediately and wouldn’t let me go. What a line-up of stories, authors, and characters:

“Don’t Give Your Right Name” by Norbert Davis (Max Latin)
“The Saint in Silver” by John K. Butler (Steve Midnight)
“Winter Kill” by Frederick Nebel (Kennedy and MacBride)
“China Man” by Raoul Whitfield (Jo Gar)
“Death on Eagle’s Crag” by Frank Gruber (Oliver Quade)
“A Nose for News” by Richard Sale (Daffy Dill)
“Angelfish” by Lester Dent (Oscar Sail)
“Bird in the Hand” by Erle Stanley Gardner (Lester Leith)

I knew that Lester Dent was really “Kenneth Robeson”, the author of many of the Doc Savage novels I was reading and loving every month, and of course I’d heard of Erle Stanley Gardner, having read some Perry Mason and Donald Lam/Bertha Cool novels already. Frank Gruber’s name was vaguely familiar to me. But the rest of those guys were brand-new, as far as I was concerned. When I read the stories, I loved them and wanted more. As much as I could get my hands on, in fact. Oddly enough, the stuff wasn’t as easy to come by then as it is now, at least not to a kid in a small town in Texas.

That copy I bought at The Book Oasis in 1967 was lost in the fire a couple of years ago, of course, but I knew that THE HARDBOILED DICKS was one of the books I had to replace. And having a week for Forgotten Short Story Collections was the perfect excuse to sit down and reread it (although, technically, most of the stories in this book are novelettes, not short stories). I was interested to see whether or not they would hold up after all these years.

The answer is simple: Boy, do they.

I recall that on reading them the first time, I didn’t like Gardner’s Lester Leith story or Whitfield’s Jo Gar story as much as the others. They’re good, just not as good as the others, plus the Gardner story isn’t particularly hardboiled. Rereading them confirmed that, but they’re still great fun. The stories by Norbert Davis, John K. Butler, and Richard Sale are all fast-paced and very funny in places. I’m always amazed by how much plot pulp authors could pack into a story. Frederick Nebel’s “Winter Kill” impressed me even more this time around. A lot of people say Nebel was almost as good as Dashiell Hammett, and I agree with that. Frank Gruber’s story about Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, is so good that I’ve already ordered a replacement copy of BRASS KNUCKLES, a collection of Quade stories that came out a year or so after THE HARDBOILED DICKS. It’s another old favorite of mine that contains a long introduction about writing for the pulps that Gruber expanded into his book THE PULP JUNGLE. And then of course there’s Dent’s “Angelfish”, one of two stories he wrote for BLACK MASK about private detective Oscar Sail. These are classics and deservedly so, and in rereading “Angelfish” I was more impressed than ever with Dent’s use of language. It’s just a great yarn. As a matter of fact, that description could be applied to any of the stories in this book.

Seminary South existed much like it was then until sometime in the early Eighties, although The Book Oasis went out of business years earlier. I remember going to Seminary South with Livia several times during the first few years of our marriage. Then somebody got the idea of enclosing it and making a regular mall out of it, and the place lost most of its charm as far as I’m concerned. Now it’s been at least twenty years since I’ve been there, probably longer. I think it still exists in some form, although it’s gone through numerous remodelings and name-changes, but I’m not sure about that.

I know, though, that it still exists vividly in my memory, along with The Book Oasis. I bought other books there over the years, but THE HARDBOILED DICKS was the best. If you like pulp detective yarns, it gets my highest recommendation. You can find copies fairly inexpensively on-line.

Of course, that won’t be like picking it up brand-new and flipping through those red-edged pages and knowing that you’d found something really wonderful. You had to be there for that, and I was. Yesterday, it seems. 

 

 George Kelley

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple 

TracyK 

Steve Lewis

Todd Mason