Review: Happy ending for the victim of the Rake’s ravishing. Rake ravishes victim, a beautiful maiden out for a walk with her family. She escapes with a crucifix from the apartment in which she was ravished. Victim bears a son as a result of the ravishing. Older, son is in an accident and is cared for in the home of the Rake’s parents. Victim recognizes the scene of her dishonor. Rake’s mother arranges marriage between the Rake, her son, and the victim. Everybody lives happily ever after.
Comment: A bit long-winded, but the prose flows. RayS.
Fifty Great European Short Stories. Ed. Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
Review: A professional con-artist (marriage swindler) who is very professional and business-like, keeps excellent records of whom he swindles but who meets a female con-artist in the same racket. She swindles him. Entertaining story.
Fifty Great European Short Stories. Ed. Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
A one-nighter, or should I say a “one-morninger.” He is a famous writer. He is traveling on a ship. She is the daughter of a dispossessed, once wealthy family, now impoverished and married to a minor official. She is infatuated with his reputation. He is playing the game that all men play. They have breakfast and then go to his room. There, what you would expect to happen happens. Afterward, she is ready to leave the ship. He squeezes her hand and she leaves the ship without looking back.
Probably the story of every brief fling. The title is from a dream she has that she tells him. She dreams that her wealth is restored, and she wishes she had calling cards. Contrast between the wealth and fame of the writer and the impoverished female.
Fifty Great European Short Stories.” Ed. Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
The father, Thord, celebrates the baptism of his son. The priest says that Thord’s son will be a blessing to him. The father celebrates his son’s confirmation. The father celebrates the forthcoming marriage of his son. The father mourns his son’s death by drowning shortly thereafter and before the marriage. He leaves money with the priest to invest it in his son’s name for the poor. The priest says that his son is now a real blessing to his father.
Fifty Great European Short Stories.” Ed. Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
Custodio is a druggist. His knowledge of modern medicine makes him a provider of miraculous cures from the point of view of the ignorant peasants. They attribute his cures to his potions, potions that are made up of young maidens’ hearts which he cuts out. A peasant comes to his shop and offers to cut out the heart of a young maiden, her niece, whom she treats with cruelty, for the price of two gold coins.
Throughout the story a canon scoffs at the ignorance of the peasants who want to believe in the druggist’s black magic. He says there is no sense in trying to tell the peasants the truth about what the druggist does. He suggests that the woman peasant who offered the maiden’s heart could have been put off if he had told her that only he, the druggist, could cut out the heart, not the peasant who offered to. Of course, the druggist scoffs at that type of thinking. But too late now.
Sure enough, the druggist finds the mangled body of a young maiden on the path in the woods. The woman peasant who cut out the maiden’s heart is hanged. Her husband is sentenced to the penitentiary. And the peasants believe the druggist is the true murderer.
The title, of course, is ironic.
Fifty Great European Short Stories.” Ed. Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
The “gamester” is the Devil with whom the narrator shares a sophisticated conversation and a game of cards in which the narrator gambles his soul—two out of three hands. The narrator loses his soul. The sophisticated Devil decides to grant the narrator’s every wish until he dies as recompense for losing the narrator’s soul. The Devil leaves and the narrator begins to have some concerns. He goes to bed and prays fervently to God that the Devil keep his promise to grant his every wish.
Fifty Great European Short Stories.” Ed. Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
The lady has a lover. He hides in a closet when her husband unexpectedly enters her room. The husband suspects that someone is in the closet. Her husband asks if anyone is in the closet. She swears on a crucifix that no one is there. The husband has the closet walled up Then the husband moves into her room to “take care of her because she is sick” He stays there for twenty days without ever leaving. The lady starts to protest. But her husband says, “You swore that no one was in the closet.”
Fifty Great European Short Stories.” Ed. Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
Dermuche is a 33-year-old murderer with the mind of a child. He had killed three people in order to steal their gramophone. But no one realizes the degree to which Dermuche has the mind of a child except for the prison chaplain. Dermuche is fixated on the Baby Jesus. Dermuche prays to the Baby Jesus that he could have his favorite gramophone record in the hereafter, after he is executed.
On the 24th of Dec ember, the day that Dermuche is to be executed, the officials of the town approach Dermuche’s cell. Wonder of wonders, Dermuche has been transformed into a baby. The baby’s fingerprints match the grown Dermuche’s exactly. But justice is justice and the transformed Dermuche as a baby is executed.
And then Counsel wonders that if Dermuche’s adult life has been expunged, maybe no crime has been committed. Straight to the town where the crime was committed. No one has heard of it. The three old people who had been murdered were alive. They had heard about no murders. But a gramophone had been stolen the night before.
Fifty Great European Short Stories. Ed. By Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
Review: A wealthy woman shops in a store that caters to wealth. She takes an ash tray because she bet herself she could steal something. She is caught. Her well-tailored gloves symbolize her wealth. The manager and the detective threaten her with exposure. They play a cat and mouse game to see if they can destroy her confidence. Finally, they force her, under a threat to call her husband, to donate 500 francs to an orphanage and purchase the ash tray and take it with her.
As she signs the necessary papers, she lays the gloves aside. Forgets them as she leaves. The detective takes them and puts them in his pocket. She returns, looking for the gloves. She knows that someone has taken them. Morally, they are no better than she. She leaves, empty-handed, her dignity intact.
Fifty Great European Short Stories. Ed. By Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
Review: It’s a beautiful spring day. The mood of Gabriel Andersen is shattered by the appearance of soldiers who are there to punish the villagers for something. Andersen is a school teacher who writes poetry at night. But he observes three villagers shot to death and several flogged mercilessly. This can’t go on. He distracts the soldiers so that an avenging force of villagers can come by the soldiers’ camp and cut them down. Now it’s his turn. He stands as tall as his short body will let him and is shot to pieces.
Quote: “Of his own death he did not think. It seemed to him that he had done with everything long, long ago. Something had died, had gone out and left him empty….”
Quote: “And when they grabbed him by the shoulder and he rose, and they quickly led him through the garden where the cabbages raised their dry heads, he could not formulate a single thought.”
Quote: “Something strange and incomprehensible, as if no longer of this world, no longer earthly, passed through Andersen’s mind. He straightened himself to the full height of his short body and threw back his head in simple pride. A strange indistinct sense of cleanness, strength and pride filled his soul, and everything—the sun and the sky and the people and the fields and death—seemed to him insignificant, remote and useless.”
Fifty Great European Short Stories. Ed. By Edward and Elizabeth Huberman. New York: Bantam Books. 1971.
Review: A doctor encounters a new family. Mother, father and child. The child, a little girl, has had a fever for three days and is determined she will not open her mouth for any reason. She hates the doctor, the narrator, at first sight.
She openly resists the doctor’s getting her to open her mouth so he can take a culture to find out if she has diphtheria. He tries to get a wooden tongue depressor into her mouth. She splinters it with her teeth. Next, the doctor tries jamming a metal spoon between her teeth. She puts up an insane, irrational, very physical struggle, but eventually he gets a good look into her mouth. The problem is tonsils.
Now that the doctor has succeeded in diagnosing the problem, she tries to tear herself from her father’s lap to really attack the doctor, “while tears of defeat blinded her eyes.”
Rating of this short story: **** out of *****.
Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. RP Warren and A Erskine. New York: Dell Books. 1954.
Review: Do you know a dysfunctional family. If you don’t then read this story. Two sisters, one just home from being separated from her husband, with an “adopted” daughter, Shirley T., who could have been the product of a rendezvous with her grandfather or her husband out of wedlock, and the narrator battle with each other with everything in their power. Everybody in the family snipes at everybody else. So that is the reason that the narrator, who is post mistress of the next to smallest post office in Mississippi, is living in the Post Office.
Rating for this short story: * out of *****.
Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. RP Warren and A Erskine. New York: Dell Books. 1954.
Review: A hilarious baseball story. The team is in a tight struggle for first place in the National League. Squawks Magrew is the manager. What really makes this story fun is the “baseballese,” the language used by the narrator.
Magrew encounters a midget. He puts a uniform on him and he tours with the team. It’s a crucial game. With two out and men on second and third base in a one-run game, Magrw sends the midget up to pinch hit for the best hitter on the team, telling the midget not to swing the bat because no pitcher is going to be able to throw a strike to a man 20” high.
Predictably, the pitcher misses the strike zone three times in a row. But somehow he underhands a pitch that is just too good not to hit and the midget swings and tops it fair along the baseline and tries to leg out the hit. With his little legs there is no way he can reach first base before the throw.
Magrew is furious at the midget. The opposing players are falling all over themselves trying to grab the ball to throw it to first base. The first baseman takes the throw and stomps on the bag well before the midget can reach it. Magrew grabs the midget and throws him into center field. The center fielder who is running in because the game is over, catches the midget in midi-air and the umpire calls the midget out. You could look it up.
Rating for this short story: ***** out of *****.
Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. RP Warren and A Erskine. New York: Dell Books. 1954.
Review: The spinster of the title is a now motherless teen ager living with men—her father and brother in the house. She has to learn to live with masculinity—the worst trait of which is drunkenness. Mr. Speed is a drunken neighbor who staggers past her house two or three times a week. He symbolizes what is wrong with the masculine character. She slowly begins to learn her power to cause harm and she usurps the authority of the men in her life.
Mr. Speed, the representative of masculinity’s worst trait, drunkenness, one night drunkenly enters the house, curses at the black maid, stumbles and falls on the porch as he leaves, collapses and falls down the steps. She calls the police a course of action of which her father disapproves. The police come and take Mr. Speed away in the paddy wagon. She has expelled the symbol of evil masculinity from her house. I guess.
Rating of this short story: * out of *****.
Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. RP Warren and A Erskine. New York: Dell Books. 1954.
Review: Reunion with her son at boarding school. She is uncomfortable in the presence of her son and he is uncomfortable in the presence of his mother. They go through the motions, visiting required places on the campus, struggling to get through the day. The day seems as if it will never end. At last it is time to go. She in the taxicab, waves goodbye. He, on the steps, waves to her. Both exhale with relief. The taxicab drives off. He bounds up the steps to the safety of his friends.
Rating of this short story: *** out of *****.
Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. RP Warren and A Erskine. New York: Dell Books. 1954.
Review: Pepė is the son of his mother, Mama Torres. She is a widow, her husband having stumbled and fallen flat on a rattlesnake. “When you are bitten on the chest, there is nothing much that can be done.” Pepe is good with a knife.
Pepe is still a whimsical, lazy, laughing boy when he is given the responsibility to ride to Monterey. He is to stay with friends overnight and wear his father’s hat and green scarf. While at the friend’s house, they drink wine, someone says something insulting to Pepe and Pepe kills him with a well-aimed knife.
What follow is an excruciating tale of flight through the mountains while he is hunted by the law. His horse is shot. His arm is wounded. He is almost done. He tries to avoid one bullet. Then he struggles to his feet to receive the next bullet. He tumbles down the hill and lies, his head buried by the small landslide that accompanies his fall down the hill.
A boy becomes a man when a man is needed, says Mama Torres. I have known boys who were forty years old. Pepe faced his destruction like a man.
Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. RP Warren and A. Erskine. New York: Dell Books. 1954.
Review: Daniel is a professor on sabbatical from his college because he sick with tuberculosis. May is his wife. They decide to get away from the turmoil of the city by buying a house in the country with an antique sleigh in the front yard. That sleigh, distasteful to them in the beginning, becomes symbolic of their marriage. They do nothing to rid themselves of it. At first, excited about their new country environment, they explore together the house and grounds and decide not to give away the sleigh.
Daniel becomes very sick. He hallucinates and accuses May of some secret infidelity. She has no idea what she could have done. But as he shuts himself away in his study to write his book, she imagines a phantom lover sitting in that sleigh, responsive to her as Daniel is not. Now she truly feels guilt.
Daniel has been cool and indifferent to her. And now she is cool and indifferent to him. She retreats to the sleigh, the symbol of doing nothing, and wonders what she will do with the rest of her life.
Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. RP Warren and A. Erskine. New York: Dell Books. 1954.
Review: 15 years ago, Christian Darling caught a pass in practice and ran for 80 yards after the catch. He was twenty-years old and he felt as if he could do anything. His girl friend Louise kissed him, worshipped him, told him how handsome he was. They married. That eighty-yard run had been the highlight of his life. After that, the decline and Louise began to move up through an arty society, a society Christian could not manage. The roles reversed. Now he longed for her. She treated him as a hopeless ninny. “A star is born.”
Quote: “Darling half-closed his eyes, almost saw the boy fifteen years ago reach for the pass, slip the halfback, go skittering lightly down the field, his knees high and fast and graceful, smiling to himself because he knew he was going to get past the safety man. That was the high point, Darling thought, fifteen years ago, on an autumn afternoon, twenty years old and far from death, with the air coming easily into his lungs, and a deep feeling inside him that he could do anything, knock over anybody, outrun whatever had to be outrun. And the shower after and the three glasses of water and the cool night air on his damp head and Louise sitting hatless in the open car with a smile and the first kiss she ever really meant. The high point, an eighty-yard run in the practice, and a girl’s kiss and everything after that a decline.”
Comment: Everyone has his eighty-yard run. RayS.
Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. RP Warren and A. Erskine. New York: Dell Books. 1954.
Review: Two ex-college roommates who never graduated, reunite at the home of one of them. They trade stories about the men in their lives, drink too much, and unconsciously reveal the frustrations of their lives.
Short Story Masterpieces. Ed. RP Warren and A. Erskine. New York: Dell Books. 1954.
