They got Amy Hempel to edit the collection this year, and she picked quite a few shorter stories than you normally see in this anthology. For instance, Padgett Powell’s “Cry for Help from France,” is a two-page plotless rumination on courage, an interesting read but a kind of bizarre story. I didn’t love everything in here — in fact, I was having trouble stomaching some of the more blatant “southern” pieces, and wondered if I was losing interest/faith in southern literature. Fortunately, Elizabeth Spencer came in near the end and restored my sensibilities. Some highlights:

• Ann Pancake, “Arsonists” — Pancake is a relatively new Appalachian writer, and this story, about a man cracking up in West Virginia strip mine country, takes on an important political topic through its characters, who have their own private drama within the larger system. A very good read.
• “Aaron Gwyn, “Drive” — This story is about a guy who, after a fight with his girlfriend on the road, speeds up and cruises into the left lane, nearly killing them in a wreck. The action cures their relationship, temporarily, and they embark on a series of reckless “drives.”
• Kenneth Calhoun, “Nightblooming” — A 20-year-old drummer joins a jazz band with a group of partying septogenarians. Need I say more?
• Tim Gautreaux, “Idols” — A few years ago, some editor asked a bunch of favorite southern writers to write an O’Connor-inspired story, which has led to several fun stories. Gautreaux takes a couple of O’Connor like characters — Julian and Parker — and puts them to work on a decaying mansion in Mississippi.
• Brad Watson, “Visitation” — Watson has two stories in this anthology, but this one was my favorite. It’s a simple story about a divorced guy visiting California and staying in a motel with his kid, but the psychology of the story is spot-on, including the guy waking up at 3 a.m. from the whiskey he drank to put himself to sleep.
• Elizabeth Spencer, “Return Trip” — This is the second of Spencer’s stories that I’ve been really, really impressed with. This story is about a husband and wife living in a borrowed cabin near Asheville, and they have two surprise visits — their son from college, and the wife’s third cousin, with whom she has had quite an ambiguous past. The only other writer I can think of to compare Spencer to is William Trevor, in that both authors take fairly simple stories and knock you out with the results. I don’t say this lightly: Spencer is an effortless writer. In just a few paragraphs, you know these characters and care about them. And it all starts with such an innocuous sentence: “It was during a summer season Patricia and Boyd were spending together in the North Carolina mountains that Edward reappeared.” You know Edward spells trouble, and boy does he.

These stories, by the editor of Willow Springs, are about a series of hard-luck characters on the verge of some major change, be it a divorce or abandonment or murder. The prose is vigorous, and reminiscent at times of Gordon Lish-edited Carver. For instance, the title story is about a family trying to avoid a collision with a drunk driver. The narration is so detached that the characters hardly have names, predominantly referred to as “the mother,” “the father,” “the sister,” and “the brother.” This objectivity is the right tone for these stories, which could easily have become sentimental or melodramatic. I read the book in two sittings, however, and reading it that fast the tone is a bit overpowering — some of the stories are a bit too spare for my taste, and left me wanting more. But several of the stories are about a recurring character, Nikki, and those stories were terrific. Nikki, a 17-year-old runaway, knocks around in Providence for a while, living with a drug dealer and washing dishes at a lesbian bar. Then she catches a bus for Austin and takes up with another set of bad-luck characters. I’d love to read a whole novel about Nikki, and hope Ligon continues her story in future publications.

This is quite an exciting novel, published in 1973. The 28-year-old narrator dude, separated from his wife and lolling about in Key West, fishing and boozing and messing around with women, gets drunk in a bar with a Vietnam vet with a messed up face and a girlfriend up in Georgia. The narrator casually suggests “they” are planning to dam up the Grand Canyon, and the two men hatch a plan to drive out to Arizona and blow up the dam. Along the way, they pick up the Georgia girlfriend, some drugs, and some dynamite. The novel reminds me of Johnson’s Angels, in that it’s a drugged-out American road novel about burn-outs. Harrison’s language is tough and spare, and you just feel like these characters are on a genuine highway to hell. Well worth the read.

Bonus: the 1973 book jacket has an author photo of Harrison sporting a ’70s print shirt and mustache, and lying in a field with what I presume is his 6-year-old daughter. The author bio reads in part, “Jim Harrison is an outdoorsman and man of letters who lives with his family in northern Michigan.” You don’t hear too much about men of letters anymore.

I’m still enjoying the Rabbit quartet, though I think the first one is still my favorite. In Rabbit Is Rich, Harry is running his father-in-law’s Toyota dealership, earning fat paychecks for mediocre work, and like his in-laws before them he and his wife take vacations to the Poconos. The central conflict here involves their son, a college drop-out, who moves home and alters the power dynamics in the family. Harry is confronted with his past, his incompetence, his failures, and his mortality.

As with the previous books, Updike has his moments, but this book didn’t feel as fresh to me as Rabbit, Run. The prose is a bit long-winded, sort of baggy and soft like the character has become. Nevertheless, I will note that Updike has really done an amazing job of following a character over the years. In the late ’50s, when he started writing about Harry, Updike couldn’t have planned where it would go into the ’80s, but things have fallen into a logical place. It’s fitting that Harry would take over his father-in-law’s dealership (maybe that could have occurred to Updike in 1960), but it’s also fitting that he’s selling Toyotas during the energy crisis, an example of art serendipitously connecting to historical events. I’m curious to see what Updike does with the Reagan years.

I made it through about 200 pages of this and abandoned it. I hate to admit it, because I’ve been on such a Dostoevsky kick lately. One thing I’ve really been impressed with is his handling of society, in that by writing about his characters’ spiritual crises he also presents a vision of society, a perspective on law and politics. Demons is supposed to be his big political novel, one of the best ever, so I was stoked. My friend Mark said of it that there’s probably a really great 300-page novel in here, but unfortunately Dostoevsky cranked out a 700-page beast. I’m also reminded of an old professor’s commentary on Eliot and Pound. The professor (Bishop Hunt, for you CofC folks) said you had to work hard to read Eliot, but the payoff was there; you also had to work hard to read Pound, but the payoff wasn’t there. Likewise, you have to work hard to read The Brothers Karamazov, but the payoff is there. I’m not sure Demons has such a payoff.

Both novels start similarly, in terms of narrative design. The way I’m thinking of it is Dostoevsky laying rope in a circle around the reader as he slowly builds his characters. As the novel progresses he ties the rope in a noose, then cinches the knot, pulling faster and faster as the pacing speeds up until he’s absolutely hooked you. He does this with Karamazov, and the payoff begins with the crime. I’m not sure I got that far in Demons. Plenty of character building, but by page 200 I still didn’t feel like I understood the main players. Everyone has at least three names, and there are about 10 major players, some of whom are more interesting than others.

But the real kicker is that the plot is something of a soap opera. There’s this woman whose son is something of a philanderer, and to protect her son’s reputation along with the reputation of a young woman, she tries to get her friend to marry the young woman. That’s followed by a week or so of hemming and hawing on everyone’s part. That’s it. That’s 200 pages. I’ll close by reaffirming that Pevear and Volokhonsky are the translators to go with. They make the prose funny in places, particularly in sending up certain characters. (I wonder if anyone’s ever done  a study to compare Dostoevsky to Thomas Pynchon?) But those short bursts weren’t enough to keep me going through another 500 pages. At least not this year.

I read most of this anthology on the plane back from Florida, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the Keys. Key West has quite the literary heritage, partly I think because of the weather but also, I think, because the island traditionally was quite remote. Driving down U.S. 1 from the mainland, you realize how far off the map you’re getting, and even now, when Key West has become so commercialized, you still feel a sense of privacy when you’re there, meaning that despite all the crowds of people you can still carve out a quiet niche for yourself to think.

The pieces in The Key West Reader are mostly short. One thing about the island’s literature I’ll note off the bat is it feels like you’re under the shadow of Hemingway wherever you go. In fact, I said that to Emily, that I’m not sure I could live there because of that shadow, and right as I said it a trolley passed by with the driver announcing something about Hemingway. But he didn’t write much about Key West. Some of To Have and Have Not and some journalism might be it, to my knowledge. He wrote extensively about the Caribbean, notably in Islands in the Stream and The Old Man and the Sea, but not much is specifically set on the island itself.

My favorite piece from this anthology is Philip Caputo’s essay “The Ahab Complex,” about fishing for marlin. I also enjoyed Jim Harrison’s A Good Day to Die, which I’ll be reading in its entirety soon. Thomas Sanchez’s Mile Zero might be the definitive Key West novel; Thomas McGuane and Hunter Thompson also make surprise appearances (I didn’t realize they had a Key West connection), along with the usual suspects, Elizabeth Bishop and Wallace Stevens.

I’m still here! Last week, during Emily’s spring break, we took a few days to visit Key West, mostly for a relaxing vacation but maybe also because I’m taking notes for a story set partly down there. You can view a secret photo of me at our friend Anna’s blog (we met her and her husband down there). I’ve got some reading write-ups to catch up on, mostly books I’ve started and then abandoned. Come back this weekend for more.