Reading Journal: Summary for remainder of Week 5 2010
February 8, 2010 by Rob
Filed under Reading Journal
I know it’s coming terribly late in the day (blame all of the upgrading I’ve been doing on my computer systems today), but I thought it would still be worthwhile just tying up a few loose ends with regards to my reading the end of last week. With blogging and research commitments I didn’t do a whole stack of reading, but I certainly read enough to have something of worth to talk about.
You may remember in my last journal entry I’d set myself the task of ticking off another two short stories from the most excellent Fifty-Two Stories website. Well, I certainly did that and it gifted me a most enjoyable reading experience. The first story I read was the uber-short Cricket Hymn by Thad DeVassie. At only three paragraphs long it’s an archetypal example of flash fiction, but it’s laconic size certainly doesn’t make it any less effective in its ability to evoke emotion. It’s a story based around the awakenings from a post apocalyptic event, and it’s difficult to summarise something so short without retelling the whole, so I’ll satisfy myself simply by presenting my favourite line. It’s a line which I think exemplifies completely, those first moments of awakening to a world that’s radically changed:
The soaking it in with wonder and trepidation of a child in an experienced frame, experience that is now meaningless.
The second story – Mother Catherine, is certainly a lot longer than the first but it’s equally as emotive. Written by the iconic writer Zora Neale Hurston (one of the key writers of the Harlem Renaissance), the story centres around a journalist (?) speaking of the time that he/she spent in the presence of the titular character; a character who is probably best described as a kind of living saint, at least in the eyes of the people who worship her (and her own eyes too given that she puts herself on a par with Jesus 
). I really did enjoy the story. It’s warm and endearing, and it not only promotes the whole concept of individuality, but also the unique spirituality of black Christian churches in the south of the United States.
Look out for my official afterthoughts on both of these short stories just as soon as I find the time to write them up.
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Probably the most significant thing to add to my reading journal in relation to the last few days though, is the news that I’ve finally come to the end of my journey through the short stories of Arthur Miller in Presence: Collected Stories (Bloomsbury). True, it’s been a long and fairly drawn out affair getting through this collection, but I’ve enjoyed almost every minute of it. When I last made a journal entry I still had two stories to read. Here’s a quick rundown on how the reading of these two stories went.
The first story, The Turpentine Still is one of the longest in the collection, and for me one of the best. First published in the Southwest Review in 2004 this is one of Miller’s final stories, and in many ways it shows. The story follows main character Mark Levin and his wife Adele as they take a trip to Haiti to check out the development of the island. While there Levin takes a trip with new-found friend Vincent to the Haiti hilltops where an ex-New Yorker has hatched a plan to distill turpentine for its medicinal benefits, despite not having the best of equipment with which to do it with. Levin is rather taken with him.
What I’ve told you above is only a fraction of what happens in this story. It contains so many different elements, from culture to voodoo and senility to relationships lost, and it is one beautifully rendered tale. I say it shows that this is one of Miller’s final short stories, and the main reason for this is the amount of melancholic reminiscing that seems to be thrown up a lot in the story. This is not a bad thing by any means, and it adds greatly to the hue and tone of the story as a whole. I loved it. Story Rating: 
On Saturday afternoon I headed into the final story in the Arthur Miller collection, the titular story entitled Presence. Published in Esquire in 2003, Presence tells the story of an unnamed man who stumbles across a couple in the throes of lovemaking on a deserted beach at the break of the day. It’s a briefer than most, short story so I won’t say more than that in terms of plot, but I will say that despite the story being a little on the odd side, it has a real poetic resonance to it. Did I enjoy it? Yes! But it wasn’t the best Miller short I read. Story Rating: 
With my journey through Presence: Collected Stories now complete, expect to see my final afterthoughts on the collection as whole in the next few days.
::Monday’s reading plans::
- Today is of course Maupassant Monday so two stories planned from the Oxford University Press collection, A Day in the Country and Other Stories. The first story up to the plate is A Farm Girl’s Story, and this followed by a little tale called A Day in the Country.
- You may have seen my forethoughts post yesterday which signalled the start of my journey through Chinua Achebe’s newly published collection of autobiographical essays, The Education of a British-Protected Child (Allen Lane). So today a read is planned of the first essay in this collection, the titular The Education of a British-Protected Child
- Along with my forethoughts for the Achebe collection I also posted my forethoughts yesterday for Neel Mukherjee’s debut novel A Life Apart (Constable & Robinson), so I’m planning on making a start with that one too.
‘Reading Journal’ provides an unedited, on-the-fly record of the bookish highlights in Rob’s reading day.
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Rob, a self-confessed bibliophile, is without any hope of rehabilitation. He gets unnaturally excited over anything book-shaped, and if book sniffing were a crime then he would have been locked up years ago (which wouldn't bother him in the slightest provided his cell were lined with books)
