Story read:
Track 12, J.G. Ballard
(from The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard, 2009; 4 pages; finished 9/30/09)

Lessons learned:
Never cross a scientist.
Our greatest pleasures can morph into our greatest horrors.
Pay attention.
Accept no offers to participate in experiments run by crossed scientists.
J.G. Ballard’s twisted sense of humor and humanism is just dangerous enough to keep us terrified and titillated.

Lickable line:
“Max had almost gone now, his fading identity a small featureless island nearly eroded by the waves beating across it.”

Stories bought:
McSweeney’s no. 32

Story read:
At That Time, or The History of a Joke, Grace Paley
(from Later The Same Day, 1985; 4 pages; finished 9/29/09)

Lessons learned:
Most of the world wants a messiah.
The Jews might not want said Messiah.
The world, Jewish or not, might not accept a female messiah.
Women might finally get their due, maybe.
Grace Paley is a blasphemously playful troublemaker.

Lickable line:
“Throughout the world, people smiled. By that time, sexism and racism had no public life, though they were still sometimes practiced by adults at home.”

Stories bought:
We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live, Joan Didion
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays, David Foster Wallace

Story read:
Head, Heart, Lydia Davis
(from Varieties of Disturbance, 2007; 1 page; finished 9/28/09)

Lessons learned:
We can help ourselves, but rarely do.
We are all in this together, and we are all alone.
We don’t listen, at least not long enough.
The feelings will feel have all been felt before.
Lydia Davis’s brevity is the soul of her wit.

Lickable line:
“You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday.”

Stories bought:
None.

Story read:
Incarnations of Burned Children, David Foster Wallace
(from Oblivion, 2004; 3 pages; finished 9/27/09)

Lessons learned:
Boiling pots of water and youngsters just don’t mix.
A moment of crisis can seem an eternity.
Parenting equals the hardest job in the world.
One won’t always get a happy ending.
David Foster Wallace pinpoints pain with gut-wrenching accuracy.

Lickable line:
“If you’ve never wept and want to, have a child.”

Stories bought:
Oblivion, David Foster Wallace

Story read:
The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear, Jonathan Lethem
(from Harper’s, October 2009; 3 pages; finished 9/26/09)

Lessons learned:
Don’t trespass on personal websites.
A man’s blog is his castle.
Rereading won’t always make a paragraph clearer.
You can’t please them all.
Jonathan Lethem is sometimes too brilliant even for fans like me.

Lickable line:
“I offer this, my blog, to the world, but I do not require the world to need it or accept it, for it is my very own blog.”

Stories bought:
McSweeney’s no. 9
McSweeney’s no. 20

Story read:
Temporary, Marisa Silver
(from The New Yorker, 9/28/09; 5 pages; finished 9/25/09)

Lessons learned:
We can’t all be leaders.
Parental motivations are a mystery.
Socialists have needs, too.
Smoking isn’t always elegant, but if you’re dying, you might as well try it.
It might be uneven, but Marisa Silver’s prose packs a punch.

Lickable line:
“His face relaxed and opened up, and Vivian saw how great the barriers were between a person and his happiness, and how little it took to make him think they were small.”

Stories bought:
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace

Story read:
Aunt Liu, Luo Shu
(from Wayward Girls & Wicked Women, 1986; 7 pages; finished 9/24/09)

Lessons learned:
The wisest among us might equal the least obvious.
All men beat their wives.
Eat the water chestnuts first.
Nannies shouldn’t drink.
Luo Shu’s storytelling is serviceable, but a tad dry.

Lickable line:
“Yes, she had certainly changed. She used to feel uneasy only in the presence of my father and mother. Why should she behave like this now in front of me? Wasn’t I the little girl she loved and cared for like a mother? Nevertheless, I knew if she had sat down on a stool and offered to hold me on her knee, so that she could croon the ballads my mother had forbidden, tell blood-curdling stories that might mark a young mind, or ask me to hug her and kiss her red pock-marked face, I would have refused without a moment’s hesitation.”

Stories bought:
None.

Story read:
Fantasy Shirt, Mikhail Zoshchenko [translated by Jeremy Hicks]
(from The Galosh and Other Stories, 2000; 2 pages; finished 9/23/09)

Lessons learned:
Do your own laundry.
Things just aren’t finely-made anymore.
The old things you already own will do just as well.
Someone else always has it worse.
Mikhail Zoshchenko’s satire is pretty effortlessly funny.

Lickable line:
“On Sunday there was going to be a party at our place. I felt like dressing up a bit. I fancied buying some kind of a shirt that was a bit special. Some kind of fantasy shirt.”

Stories bought:
None.

Story read:
The Return of the Dark Children, Robert Coover
(from A Child Again, 2005; 16 pages; finished 9/22/09)

Lessons learned:
It’s hard out there for a child.
Adults mess everything up.
The wisest of a population still might not have the answer.
The story of the Pied Piper was just the beginning.
Robert Coover knows how to tweak a fairy tale to perform his perverse will.

Lickable line:
“Of course it was unconscionable that the children should be sacrificed to save their elders, or even one another. That was the opinion vehemently expressed by parents, teachers, clergy, and many of the other ordinary townsfolk. This was not a decision one could make for others, and the children were not yet of an age to make it for themselves. The elders nodded solemnly. All had to acknowledge the rightness of this view.”

Stories bought:
None.

Story read:
The Fifteen Worst Russian Gay Porn Web Sites, Douglas Cooper
(from Ugly Man, 2009; 4 pages; finished 9/21/09)

Lessons learned:
Gays will think of anything.
Russians will think of anything.
Russian gays have double the imagination.
Said abundance of imagination is still oddly unoriginal in practice.
Douglas Cooper understands prurience better than anyone else.

Lickable line:
“Badcowboys.com
Clues that this is not an American-owned site: (1) They don’t care if there weren’t cars with Ukrainian license plates in the 1800s. (2) They use the word ‘cute’ the way we use the word ‘the.’ (3) Their membership costs $39.95 and it cannot be canceled.”

Stories bought:
Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood
The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard, J.G. Ballard