More stories

One thing that has intrigued me about this whole McChrystal affair is that I saw a segment on him on Sixty Minutes several months ago and I came away from the piece thinking that he was an interesting guy who didn’t always play by the standard conventions and thought outside the box. Had a good head on his shoulders. There is a take-home message here for writers who are interviewed. Reporters know that after a while you let down your guard and forget about the tape recorder or the camera. It seems strange, but it’s true. Case in point.

I read a few more stories in Stories: All-New Tales. Walter Mosley has a vampire story called Juvenal Nix that has some interesting premises that aren’t exploited to their full potential, unfortunately. After a black civil rights activist is turned into a vampire, he loses all interest in racial matters. In fact, he effectively becomes colorblind, in the metaphorical sense. That could have been interesting. The story of his conversion and the relationship with the white female vampire who turned him is erotically charged. Then, after a couple of decades of mostly existing and feeding, he decides to use the powers he has acquired as a vampire to help people. He hangs out his shingle, sets up shop, runs ads, has a web site designed, the whole nine yards. Also an idea with lots of possibility. The story derails when someone hires him to slay a strange creature that is feeding on homeless people living in the subway system. Nothing about this story development seems to arise from anything before.  It’s just weird. If this had been a creation story about Juvenal Nix, a character from another book or series, this might have proved important, but it left me scratching my head at the end.

Richard Adams, of Watership Down and Shardik fame, contributes a quirky little story called “The Knife” that on the surface seems to be about an abused child’s revenge but is really about the storytellers reaction to being told this long-secret story. At first I thought it was a trite story, but the way it is resolved stuck with me.

Jodi Picoult’s story, “Weights and Measures,” is about the way a husband and wife react to the death of their young daughter. She has amazing control of the English language and some creative ways of saying things that impressed the hell out of me. In addition to the usual grief aspect of the story, there is a magic realism element that pushes it beyond the norm. A sad, sad story, but also a poignant and effective one.

I’m partway through “Goblin Lake” by Michael Swanwick, which starts out by being about the legend of a lake where things that are dipped into its waters come back changed. It then suddenly becomes an underwater fantasy with a strong metafictional overtone.

I’m looking forward to next week’s episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. It’s being staged like a classic whodunnit murder mystery like something out of Agatha Christie.