"Typhoon Country"

James Harper

A perfect storm at sea. Filled with the language of a working ship. The reader needs a nautical dictionary to follow it.

Typhoon. Before, during and after, told in a flat, unemotional tone. The way the story is told, there is no emotion, no intensity. The language is almost that of a textbook. But it’s the language of men doing the job they were assigned to do during the crisis of a storm. Tonelessly reported.

The captain of the ship dies of a heart attack during the storm, but that is also an unemotional report of the burial at sea. 

It’s a cargo ship and at the conclusion of the storm, after the captain is buried at sea, the ship takes aim at its next port, ready, though damaged, for its next cargo.

Rating: **** out of *****. (In spite of the “wooden” narration.)

About the Author:  “Master  mariner from Northern Ireland, James Harper started as an able seaman during the 1939-45 war and qualified for his captain’s certificate in 1948. He has been ‘in most countries in the world that have a sea-coast, and on many of the islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.’ Captain Harper’s long association with the sea inspires most of his stories which appear primarily in Great Britain.” P. 105.

Short Story International #27. Ed. Sylvia Tankel. (August 1981), pp. 82-105.

"Missy"

Alice Glenday.

A divorced father is picking up his daughter at her mother’s flat. For an afternoon visit. And nothing goes right. They are awkward with each other. She is obviously angry at her father whom she blames for the divorce. She keeps wanting to go back to her mother.

He tries to entertain her at a playground. She is afraid of the swings and the slide. He buys her a red balloon. She breaks free of him and runs to the car. He catcher and yells at her. The balloon breaks.

And then a police officer, hearing her scream, asks her what is wrong. When the father says he is her father, the policeman asks her if this is true. She says no.

At the police station, he gives the police officer the directions to her mother’s apartment. The police officer dials his wife’s phone number. When the phone is answered, his wife yells at her ex-husband. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

He leaves the police station. The police officer gives him  a half-hearted apology and prepares to take the little girl back to her mother. He says goodbye to his daughter. She says only, “I didn’t want it [the balloon] to break.” He says, “Neither did I.” Their relationship irretrievably broken.

Rating: ***** out of *****.

About the Author: “Alice Glenday came to New Zealand from Canada as a young war bride. She has a passion for reading modern literature, and writing is in her bloodstream. Her stories have been published in England, Canada, Australia and India, as well as in New Zealand. She was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award; her noel Follow, Follow, won the Auckland Centennial Fiction Prize. P. 81.

Short Story International #27. Ed. Sylvia Tankel. (August 1981), pp. 71-81.

"The Revelation."

Sunwu Hwi.

Suh Rang was a poet, who wrote and spoke beautifully. He was Korean at a time when the Japanese occupied Korea. He was a Korean patriot. Choon Won, another literary celebrity, believed that it was best for Koreans to accept the Japanese occupation. It was the only way they could survive.

Suh Rang was about to speak on behalf of Korean nationalism when he was either struck dumb or was feigning it. He left the dais. Now he could no longer speak on behalf of Korean nationalism.

Everyone wondered at the mystery of whether Suh Rang had been struck dumb or had feigned it. The narrator, now a journalist, many years later, encountered Suh Rang’s son, now a doctor. His son revealed that his father had feigned his dumbness, then discovered that he could not speak, and then recovered his voice. He felt that words got in the way of communication and he had learned to “speak” to his son and his wife through signs. But he had never lost his sense of guilt that he had not spoken out on behalf of Korean nationalism and had hidden behind his feigned dumbness.

About the Author: Sunwu Hwi was born in North Korea in 1922.

Short Story International #27. Ed. Sylvia Tankel. (August 1981), pp. 47-70.

"An Old Woman's Tale"

Nathaniel Hawthorne

One of her tales was a dream by David and Esther of “The Night of the Living Dead” in which a whole town’s ancestors appeared, walking woodenly, their features not quite distinct in the moonlight. At an appointed hour, they all fled and disappeared back into their graves—and David and Esther woke from their dreams. It was so real.

Then they remembered they had seen an old woman digging between two trees while the march of the walking dead proceeded. What was the old woman looking for? David discovered the same old iron shovel leaning against the house that the old woman had been using to dig. He rushed to the spot where she had been digging. He begins to dig and finally says, “Oho, what have we here?” End of story.

Title: Tales and Sketches. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Literary Classics of the United States. 1972. Copyrighted by the Ohio State University Press. P. 25-33.

"Mrs. Hutchinson"

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Summary: Mrs. Hutchinson is a religious reformer in colonial New England. She stood down the men who were in authority.

“She stands loftily before her judges, with a determined brow, and, unknown to herself, there is a flash of carnal pride half-hidden in her eye as she surveys the many learned and famous men whom her doctrines have put in fear. They question her, and her answers are ready and acute. She reasons with them shrewdly, and brings Scripture in support of every argument. The deepest controversialists of that Scholastic day find her a woman, whom all their trained and sharpened intellects are inadequate to foil.”

She is banished to Rhode Island, becomes too liberal for their settlers and finally sets up a colony in New York.. She died in an Indian massacre. Only a baby survived among the slaughtered settlers who was reared as an Indian.

Comment: Hawthorne would not have recognized the term, but he was an early Feminist. The Blithedale Romance, one of his novels, deals with the contrast between a woman who is intellectual vs. a pretty young thing who captures the hearts of men, including the narrator. RayS.

Title: Tales and Sketches. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Literary Classics of the United States. 1972. Copyrighted by the Ohio State University Press. P. 18-24.

"The Hollow of the Three Hills"

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Summary: A young woman seeks the help of a withered hag to learn what has happened to her parents, husband and child whom she abandoned to commit sin. She finds that her parents are broken-hearted, her husband distraught and her child dead. She herself dies on the spot.

“ ’Here has been a sweet hour’s sport,’ said the withered crone chuckling to herself.”

Comment: One of Hawthorne’s themes is the consequences of sin. Sin absorbed the consciousnesses of the Puritans of Colonial times. RayS.

Title: Tales and Sketches. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Literary Classics of the United States. 1972. Copyrighted by the Ohio State University Press. P. 7-11.

"Jojo"

P’u Sungling (1630-1715)

Summary: Tao, a young scholar, does not believe in ghosts. So during the summer he decides to live in a mansion on the outskirts of town where he can escape the flies and the heat. The trouble is that the mansion is haunted and three care-takers have died. Their deaths were not accidents.

No matter. Tao settles in and is soon bothered by two pretty female ghosts. Autumn Mien is the older ghost (20years old) and Jojo, the younger (17 years old). After some miscommunication, they help him in his studies and he becomes their teacher—and he falls in love with them—both.

The upshot of the story is that they are both restored as human beings to their families through the intercession of a Taoist priest. And Autumn-Mien as the older becomes Tao’s wife and Jojo becomes his concubine. Apparently a normal relationship.

Famous Chinese Short Stories. Re-told by Lin Yutang. New York: The Pocket Library. 1954.