The Long Story – 2006
2006
Annual
Sheheryar B. Sheikh
A long story has the possibility of incorporating a handful of moments, and spanning a story over a considerable length of time. The narrative space of three pages might not allow for an engaging tale spanning several years as much as twelve to twenty pages do. One common theme running through the stories in this issue is that of entrapment. Protagonists are incarcerated in three of the eight stories, while in another a girl is branded with the letter “J” on her forehead. Three gems in the collection are Shawn Hutchens’s “Midnight and the Fleeing Phoenix,” Peter Chilson’s “Toumani Ogun” and Bruce Douglas Reeves’s “You Only Live Once.” Chilson’s story is a chilling and funny take on Africa’s multiple problems, and the continuing hopelessness of Western aid organizations in their ability to understand the situation, let alone bring it under control. Reeves’s Prohibition-era first-person narrative of a luckless bootlegger is tastefully layered with the antithesis of ordinary situations: a flood that smashes the protagonist’s booze-laden truck and also his future, and the way he hunkers down in a movie theater afterwards, plagued with hunger and danger as equal threats. Hutchens manages to create a credible bull (the animal) with feelings—no mean feat, even in a non-fabulous long story.
A long story has the possibility of incorporating a handful of moments, and spanning a story over a considerable length of time. The narrative space of three pages might not allow for an engaging tale spanning several years as much as twelve to twenty pages do. One common theme running through the stories in this issue is that of entrapment. Protagonists are incarcerated in three of the eight stories, while in another a girl is branded with the letter “J” on her forehead. Three gems in the collection are Shawn Hutchens’s “Midnight and the Fleeing Phoenix,” Peter Chilson’s “Toumani Ogun” and Bruce Douglas Reeves’s “You Only Live Once.” Chilson’s story is a chilling and funny take on Africa’s multiple problems, and the continuing hopelessness of Western aid organizations in their ability to understand the situation, let alone bring it under control. Reeves’s Prohibition-era first-person narrative of a luckless bootlegger is tastefully layered with the antithesis of ordinary situations: a flood that smashes the protagonist’s booze-laden truck and also his future, and the way he hunkers down in a movie theater afterwards, plagued with hunger and danger as equal threats. Hutchens manages to create a credible bull (the animal) with feelings—no mean feat, even in a non-fabulous long story.
There are moments where the other stories shine, especially Paul Johnson’s “The Summer She Was Seven,” in which a seven-year-old girl teaches her six-year-old cousin the secrets of pre-pubescent sexual bliss. Johnson proves again that for a story, sex never gets too old, nor too young. Compelling as these stories are, they are made more so with the editorial “Prelude,” which argues successfully for the force of language, and dismisses linguistic and conceptual jadedness as a sign of an individual’s defeat rather than the loss of language as a medium. “[…] words are relational,” it says. And, “Nothing left to say? It is a ridiculous statement which is only possible to maintain when total self-absorption blinds someone to the pain and suffering of others.” If in need of an espresso shot of inspiration, this editorial is a worthy gulp. At the tail end, Laurel Speer’s poem “Abraham and Isaac in Armory Park” brings a grin at its anachronistic subjection of a prophet. The title says a lot, but it’s worth the read.
