Short-a-Day: Donald Barthelme's "Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft between Milbertshofen and Cambrai, March 1916"

From Sadness, published 1972. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 100.

Barthelme is always a breath of fresh air; watch him as he deals with simple ideas in simple ways, all while emphasizing the ridiculous complexity others put on it. In this story, monologues alternate between painter Paul Klee and his country's Secret Police as he transports an aircraft through Hohenbudberg and copes with its disappearance. The story winds up being about two things: war in practical terms and, more deeply, the existence of God. As Klee puts it, ending the story: "I am sorry about the lost aircraft but not overmuch. The war is temporary. But drawings and chocolate go on forever." As the Secret Police put it, standing in for God: "The pleasure of the comradely/brotherly embrace is one of the pleasures we are denied, in our dismal service." In other words, they exist by not existing, for the moment they are known--called upon to actually perform--then there may be a crack in the perfectly hidden surface of their omnipotence. To do all this in a story that consists only of dialogue--often repetitive and perfectly mundane at that--is a mark of a true fiction writer, one who has cut away unnecessary descriptions and used only that which truly enhances our deeper understanding of the characters.

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Short-a-Day: David Bezmozgis's "The Train of Their Departure"

[One of The New Yorker's 20 Under 40]

Originally published in The New Yorker, August 9, 2010. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 98.

Bezmozgis has great pacing, from the mysteries of the opening ("Before the start of their affair, before he became her husband, before she knew anything about him") to a long flashback that explains not only the mechanics of her courtship ("He courted her with the measured discipline of a person climbing a long flight of stairs") but also her own complicity in them ("At the time, she had been incapable of acting differently"; "Because she didn't want to say no, she said yes"). He also manages a neat flip when he mirrors the first courtship with the second, this time from the dashing but similarly logical Alec's perspective. Though he gets a bit plot heavy toward the end, he remains romantic not just about these Chekhovian characters, but about his homeland, too. That's magical, and highly quotable, writing.

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Short-a-Day: Peter Orner's "No Light"

Originally published in A Public Space 01, Spring 2006. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 55.

Orner's going for mood in this microstory, using a mix of the second person and a more dramatic version of The Actor's Nightmare to put the reader into the story, as a man who has just awoken in the middle of Act II of Chekhov's Three Sisters, unsure of the character, the lines, and of himself. It's an effective use of second person, and the appropriation of Chekhov is fitting, especially in the juxtaposition between Vershinin's lines--whispered urgently from the wings--and the twin feelings of loss and need that we're meant to experience. "She retreats from you, crosses slowly to the other side of the stage, and somehow the distance her steps create is the saddest thing you've ever watched. Who needs words when you can dig a hole like that simply by walking across a room?" 

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Short-a-Day: Amanda Briggs's "The Landscape of Pleasure"

Originally published in The Atlantic, Fiction 2010. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 35.

Such an old, old story, not just because it's a period piece--one that feels artificial, as if it were cribbed out of an episode of Mad Men--but because the tale of rich young girls who think they know it all and then find out, after losing their innocence, that they don't, well, that's tried and true. It hardly matters that Briggs makes the college-bound Diana a first-person narrator, and maintains that no innocence has been lost--that she's made the cool, calculated choices that she's seen reflected in her father's affairs and her mother's barbed tolerance of them. The story feels as lifeless as Diana's mantra: "I already knew when to say nothing and mean it."

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Short-a-Day: Kelly Link's "Origin Story"

Originally published in A Public Space 01, Spring 2006. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 65.

Ah, the whimsical Kelly Link. Very much a matter of personal taste, for her story is largely dialogue-based--a conversation between Bunnatine Powderfinger and the man she calls Biscuit--so there's not much past the novelty of their conversation, or the oddness of their world. The story is entertaining enough, but it feels empty, full of open-ended revelations that, because of the tone of the story, don't really affect the reader. For instance, it turns out that Bunnatine's had a daughter with Biscuit, and he doesn't know about her; also, she was raped by--and/or lost her virginity to--the creepy Robert Potter, referred to as her mother's arch-nemesis. The setting doesn't really hit home either: Link's description of a rundown funhouse-like Wizard of Oz exhibit and her casual mention of the mutants that dwell around it (to say nothing of all the stuffed-tight-wearing superheroes) works on a comic level, but it doesn't enhance the gist of the story--unrequited love?--whatever that may be. At best, it simply doesn't distract from it.

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