Author: allen0997

Good Night, Sunny


Good Night, Sunny ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(Published in ISFN Anthology #1)

My wife, Pseudophia, had become increasingly unable to function. She stayed in her darkened room all the time, lying in bed and staring at the wall screen. If I ever shut it off, she became horribly agitated. At times she projected herself into what was happening in the pictures and if it was turned off she believed she was dead. The only two things in her life that had any meaning for her anymore were the drugs she was addicted to for her illness and the wall screen.

I needed help with taking care of Pseudophia and managing the cooking and household chores, so I took a two-year option on a female domestic robot. When the two years are up, I will either own the robot outright or I can send her back to where she came from. I considered getting a combination domestic model and pleasure model, but I settled for the domestic model only.

After the robot had been with us for about two weeks, I went into the kitchen one evening when she was washing the dinner dishes.

“That was a wonderful dinner, Sunny,” I said, coming up behind her and taking her by surprise.

She turned and smiled at me. “So glad you liked it, sir.”

“How do you like being with us?” I asked.

“I like it fine, sir,” she said. “This is my first assignment.”

I couldn’t help noticing, as she reached above her head to put the plates away, that she looked the same as she had looked in the morning; her blue-and-white check dress appeared freshly laundered and she hadn’t a hair out of place.

“You look so real,” I said. “I can hardly believe you’re a robot.”

“We prefer the term ‘human simulant’,” she said.

“Of course. When I was growing up, I was afraid of the domestic robots. I thought they were monsters. They didn’t look human then. We had one that seemed to be about eight feet tall. Any time it came near me, I ran and hid.”

“Robot technology has come a long way since then, sir,” she said.

“Do you mind if I touch your cheek?”

“If you wish, sir.”

She held still as I ran the tips of my fingers along her cheek, down to her chin.

“You feel warm,” I said. “Human.”

“My body temperature is ninety-eight point six degrees, sir.”

“Just like a living person.”

“Just as you say, sir.”

“Would you like to go for a little walk around the lake with me after you’re finished with the dishes?” I asked. “There’s a full moon tonight.”

“Now, you know I can’t do that, sir.” she said. “If I don’t get my full eight hours recharging my energy supply, I won’t be able to perform effectively tomorrow.”

“Of course,” I said. I turned away and began rearranging the fruit in the bowl on the table.

“I sense that you’re lonely, sir,” she said.

“No, it’s not that. I just wanted to talk to you about my wife.”

“What about your wife, sir?”

“What do you think about her condition? Do you think the situation is hopeless?”

I forgot for the moment that robots don’t think but only reflect the thoughts of the humans they live among.

“It’s not for me to say, sir,” she said. “Surely you’ve consulted with doctors. What do they say?”

“They say she has a rare degenerative disease that will become progressively worse until she dies.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, sir. She’s so young and I can tell by looking at her that she was very beautiful before she became ill.”

“She used to be an excellent knife-thrower and she could walk up and down stairs on her hands. She had musical ability, too; she played show tunes on the musical saw.”

“You’re fortunate to have those memories of her, sir.”

I picked up an apple from the bowl and took a bite of it because I was feeling uncomfortable talking about Pseudophia the way she used to be and I didn’t know what else to do.

“Why don’t you go sit in your comfortable recline chair and I’ll bring you a drink that will relax you and help you to sleep?” Sunny said with a sympathetic smile.

I went into the other room and made myself comfortable, and in a few minutes she brought me a little glass of green liquid.

“What is it?” I asked as I took the glass from her.

“Just something I learned to make in school,” she said. “I don’t think you would have ever heard of it.”

I took a tiny taste of the green liquid and I immediately felt a warming sensation throughout my entire body.

“It tastes good,” I said.

“I was sure you would like it, sir,” she said.

She turned on some soothing music and straightened some objects on the desk and turned off all the lights in the room except for one and turned and faced me with her hands clasped in front of her.

“If there’s nothing else you require, sir, I believe I’ll retire for the evening,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. “Good night, Sunny.”

“Good night, sir.”

I drank all the liquid in the glass and dozed for a while, listening to the music that was, I believe, a string quartet by Schubert. After a few minutes I stood up and, instead of going up the stairs to my own bedroom as I had planned to do, I went into Pseudophia’s room and closed the door quietly.

Black-and-white images flickered on the wall screen, affording just enough light in the room for me to see Pseudophia sprawled on her back on the bed. She was a terrible sight with her mouth open and her hair in wild disarray. Her eyes were wild and staring but unfocused, so I knew she didn’t see me and she knew nothing. It was becoming almost impossible for me to remember the person she had been.

I picked a pillow up from the bed and, without thinking about what I was about to do, put it over her face and leaned on it with both hands. She offered very little resistance—only a slight reflexive movement of the arms and legs—and soon I knew she was dead. When I pulled the pillow away from her face, she looked no different—the only difference was that she wasn’t breathing.

I awoke at about nine o’clock the next morning to the smell of food cooking. Feeling a stab of hunger, I got out of bed and put on my bathrobe and went downstairs.

Sunny was pouring a cup of tea for me when I went into the kitchen and sat down at the table and picked up the morning paper.

“Breakfast is nearly ready,” she said as she placed the cup of tea at my elbow with a smile.

I unfolded the paper, took a drink of the scalding tea and watched Sunny as she walked across the room. She looked radiant in a yellow pinafore with a white blouse and a yellow ribbon in her white-blonde hair. I couldn’t help noticing that her lips were very red and her cheeks looked flushed.

“You look like a ray of sunshine this morning,” I said as she set a plate of food before me.

“You’re too kind,” she said with a becoming blush.

“Did you have a good rest?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Most restful. I was up early this morning, though. The undertaker’s assistants came and took away poor Pseudophia’s body before daylight.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” I said.

“I didn’t want to wake you. I took care of everything. They wanted your signature on a release form, but I signed your name for you. The man said he thought that would be all right. I hope I did the right thing.”

“Of course,” I said.

“If you have everything you need for the moment, sir, I’ll just go upstairs and tidy up.”

“There’s just one thing,” I said.

“What is it?” she asked.

“What was in that drink you gave me last night?”

“Nothing special, sir. Just a drink.”

“That will be all for now,” I said with a grateful nod of my head.

“And if I may say so, sir?” she said as she turned to go out of the room.

“Yes?”

“I think your life is going to be very happy and very bright from now on.”

I heard her footsteps on the stairs as I picked up the fork and began eating my breakfast.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Master ~ A Capsule Movie Review

The Master ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

The new movie, The Master, is said to be loosely based on the life of L. Ron Hubbard, writer and controversial founder of the Church of Scientology. It was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, whose credits include There Will be Blood and the bizarre Boogie Nights, about the lives of a group of people working in the pornography industry in California. While The Master is intelligent, beautifully made and interesting in its way, I found it difficult to like.

The main character in the movie is a young man (or not so young—his face is deeply lined) named Freddie Quell (played by Joaquin Phoenix). He fought during World War II and, since the war ended, is directionless. He is, and apparently always has been, an unrepentant drunk. He is a professional photographer of sorts but doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere he goes. He has no friends, home or family to speak of. He seems emotionally immature, dangerously self-destructive, not very bright, and prone to sudden violence. We learn few facts about his earlier life, other than his father died a drunk, his mother is in a mental institution, and he had a sixteen-year-old girlfriend when he was in the navy to whom he promised to return and never did, finding out, years later, that she married somebody else.

By stowing away on a yacht belonging to a man named Lancaster Dodd (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Freddie becomes part of Dodd’s strange world. (Dodd is the character based on L. Ron Hubbard.) Dodd is a writer, philosopher, doctor, mystic, and—some would say—crackpot. He is a father figure of sorts and, for some reason, likes Freddie; he sees something in him that apparently isn’t visible to others.

Dodd has a small but devoted band of followers and adherents, including a much younger pregnant wife (Amy Adams), two grown children and a son-in-law. His followers seem to have nothing better to do than to go wherever he goes, even if it’s at sea on a yacht. He develops a philosophy—a kind of religion—that’s based on the idea of placing subjects in a near-hypnotic state and allowing them to experience past lives. Freddie seems to fit in with this group of people, maybe for the first time in his life. He becomes a devoted disciple of Lancaster Dodd and, in a way, a part of Dodd’s family.

The relationship between Freddie Quell and the older and father-like Lancaster Dodd is the emotional core of the movie, but it—and the movie itself—seems emotionally sterile. Freddie Quell is so unappealing and unlikeable that we are not able to see why Lancaster Dodd likes him and takes him under his wing. He mumbles a lot of his dialogue, or else speaks with a clenched jaw, so we aren’t able to understand a lot of what he says. Did I forget to mention that he’s annoying most of the time he’s onscreen?

In the end, nothing really seems resolved; the story just seems to stop rather than to end. It’s a movie that, I think, seems better in retrospect, but it is, after all, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. For that reason alone, it is probably worth experiencing for the serious moviegoer interested in cinematic art—rather than in sophomoric laughs, car chases, explosions and titillating sex scenes that Hollywood offers up in abundance these days.   

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Eating for Two

 

Eating for Two ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Carla picked up one of her lesser teddy bears and examined it carefully, front and back. It was pink with little red overalls and white snout, ears and feet. Its eyes were open wide in delighted greeting and its mouth formed a little cupid’s bow, as if delivering a kiss to the world. She shook it vigorously for dust and put it in a pillow case and left for school.

All morning long, everywhere she went, in class after class, people were talking about one thing above all others: Marlene Bowen, just turned sixteen, was dropping out of school because she was going to have a baby. Most of the speculation centered on who the father was, which had not yet been revealed. Carla pretended she wasn’t interested and contributed nothing to the discourse, but she was as titillated by the subject as anybody else.

At lunch she was sitting at a table by herself, wishing it was time to go home, when Jeddah Godric sat down across from her. She had known Jeddah since first grade and had never liked her very much. She had an annoying manner and a funny smell like a closed-up basement.

“Have you seen her today?” Jeddah asked, eyes glinting with excitement.

“Seen who?” Carla asked.

“Marlene Bowen.”

“No, why should I?”

“Today is her last day in school. She won’t ever be back.”

“How do you know she won’t be back? She can come back after she has the baby.”

“I heard she won’t be back because she’s getting married.”

“Who is she going to marry?”

“The father of the baby, silly. It could be the janitor or the football coach. Maybe even the algebra teacher. There’s reason to suspect.”

“It isn’t any of them,” Carla said.

“Do you know something I don’t know?” Jeddah asked, specks of food spraying out her mouth.

Carla shrugged as if she might know something but wasn’t telling.

She was about to leave and go to her fifth period science class to go over some notes before a test, when there was a stir at the entrance to the lunch room. People stepped out the way to let somebody through and a hush came over those already seated.

“Oh, my god!” Jeddah said, turning all the way around to gawk. “It’s her!”

Marlene Bowen had just come into the lunch room alone. Everybody was looking at her but she didn’t look back. She picked up a tray and started moving down the line, not taking her eyes off the food behind the glass. She had a little smile on her lips that seemed frozen on, as though part of a pose.

“How can she be so brazen?” Jeddah said. “How can she hold up her head?”

When Marlene sat down at a table, a couple of boys at the other end got up and left quickly, as though they might be contaminated by being near her. Marlene leaned forward over her tray and began stuffing food into her mouth. She was hungry, eating for two as she was.

The afternoon dragged on exactly like all the afternoons that had come before it. Finally the bell rang to go home. Carla put her books away in her locker and took the teddy bear in the pillow case and went down to the first floor and waited near the door. In a little while she saw Marlene Bowen coming toward her.

“Hi, Marlene,” she said cheerily, as if they were old friends.

Marlene stopped and raised her eyes and looked at Carla. “Oh, hello,” she said.

“Where are you going?” Carla asked.

“I’m going home. Where do you think?”

“I have something I want to give you.”

“What is it? Do I know you?”

“We’ve never met but I feel like I already know you.”

“Oh.”

Marlene started to brush past Carla, as if to bring the conversation to an end, but Carla stood between her and the door.

“I just wanted to give you this,” Carla said. She took the teddy bear out of the pillow case and held it out.

Marlene eyed the bear and huffed with impatience. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

“No, it’s just something I wanted to give you. A little present because today is your last day in school.”

“Why would I want that stupid thing?” Marlene said. She grabbed the bear out of Carla’s hand and threw it in the direction of the trash can and went out the door.

The bear hit the wall and missed going into the can. Carla picked it up and ran out the door after Marlene.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she called to Marlene. “I just wanted you to have it for your baby.”

Marlene turned around and faced Carla. “Today has been the worst day of my life,” she said. “Everybody is laughing at me. I thought I could keep it a secret but when I said I had to quit school, I had to give a reason. When one person found out, then everybody knew. The people in this school are cruel and hateful and I hope they all rot in hell!”

“Do you want a boy or a girl?” Carla asked. “What are you going to name it?”

“You’re the only person who has been nice to me all day,” Marlene said, crying. “I’m sorry I was so rude.” She grabbed the bear from Carla and, holding it to her breast, ran off very fast. Carla watched her down the street until she was out of sight.

When she started to walk away, she saw a shiny object on the sidewalk where Marlene had been standing. She bent over and picked it up, seeing it was a little locket worn around the neck, the kind of locket to keep a person’s picture in. She opened the locket with her thumbnail and saw the face of someone she recognized, a person that anybody in the school would know. It was the face of the new, bowtie-wearing English teacher, Mr. Truex, just out of college. That must mean that Mr. Truex was the father of Marlene’s baby. What else could it mean? He would probably lose his job over impregnating Marlene and might even go to jail since she was legally a minor. It had the potential of the being the scandal of the year.

That evening at the dinner table, Carla said to her mother, “I know a girl at school who’s going to have a baby. They say she doesn’t know who the father is, but I think she does know.”

“How awful!” Carla’s mother said. “What is this world coming to?”

“I gave her a teddy bear.”

“Why in the world would you do that?”

“Today was her last day. I wanted to do something for her.”

“I don’t want you to be seen talking to a girl like that. Do you understand me? You’re not to have anything to do with her.”

“Why do you say a ‘girl like that’? You don’t know anything about her.”

The phone rang and Carla’s mother got up to answer it, ending the conversation. Carla looked at her father but he stood up and went out the back door, suddenly remembering something that required his attention in the garage.

Left alone at the table, Carla took the locket out of her pocket and ran her fingers over it. She opened it and looked at the picture inside, as she had done a dozen times since finding it. Mr. Truex was so handsome and it was so romantic that he and Marlene Bowen were having a child together.

She would wait a few days before she let Marlene know she knew her secret. It must be worth something. Maybe it would open the door to friendship. She could see herself standing by Marlene during the difficult days ahead when everybody else, even her family, abandoned her. For the first time in her life she knew the power of a secret knowledge. She planned on finding a way to use it to her advantage.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ~ A Capsule Book Review


One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

The classic American novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, was first published in 1962. It is set entirely (except for one brief scene on a fishing boat toward the end of the novel) in a men’s ward of a state mental hospital. The book owes a large part of its fame to the 1976 Oscar-winning film version starring Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher.

The first-person narrative of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is told in the voice of one Chief Bromden, a very tall half-Indian-half-white-man, who is a long-time patient (maybe “inmate” is more appropriate) in the ward. He pretends to be “deaf and dumb” but isn’t. He sweeps the floor constantly, allowing him to be in places (closed-door meetings, for example) where he otherwise wouldn’t be allowed. He sees and hears everything. He is the silent observer.

The ward is ruled with an iron fist by one Nurse Ratched, who the men call “Big Nurse.” She is about fifty years old, wears lots of lipstick, has enormous breasts, and is a former army nurse. She is friends with the mother of one of the patients, Billy Bibbit, and, except for that, we know nothing about her life away from the hospital. Is she married? Does she have children? Is she a lesbian? We never know. She remains throughout the novel a rather one-dimensional character.

Over time Nurse Ratched has fine-tuned the ward to her liking. She believes in strict adherence to rules and schedule. The patients are all afraid of her one way or another. She uses fear, intimidation, humiliation—and sometimes electroshock therapy—to keep them in line. She herself is as machine-like and as tightly controlled as her ward. She seems invincible. No one will go against her.

Enter patient Randle Patrick McMurphy, transferred to the mental ward from a state work farm. He is the rowdy nonconformist, the extrovert from the lower classes, the master manipulator. He has been bucking authority his entire life and isn’t intimidated by it. Whether he really belongs in a mental hospital or not is never established. As a work-farm prisoner, he wangles a transfer to the mental hospital because the food is better, the surroundings more comfortable, and the living easier. He has made himself master of his world.

R. P. McMurphy challenges Nurse Ratched’s authority in a way it has never been challenged before. He lets her know that she has met her match in him. He isn’t intimidated by her the way the other men are. He breaks all the rules and leads the other men into doing the same. Finally they have found somebody who speaks for them, who stands up for them. He gives them courage they never realized they had. When he finds that most of them are in the mental hospital voluntarily (they can leave whenever they want to) rather than “committed,” he forces them to look at their lives in a different way: they are masters of their own destiny, most of them, instead of pawns to be manipulated by the “Combine.”

The story doesn’t turn out well for McMurphy, but has Nurse Ratched really won in the end? Hasn’t McMurphy wrought a change that otherwise (if not for him) would not have been possible? It’s the end of the road for him but the beginning of a new and better road for some of the others. In the end he has triumphed over the “Combine” in a way we didn’t expect. He is the classic antihero, the “one against many.”

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp 

by allen0997

Lawless ~ A Capsule Movie Review


Lawless ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

During the lawless days of Prohibition (1918-1933), the illegal liquor trade took off in the United States. Enterprising “businessmen” learned there was much money to be made from the illegal making and selling of the liquor that the public demanded and couldn’t buy legally. The new movie Lawless is the partly true story of the Bondurant brothers (Forrest, Howard and Jack), who thrived as bootleggers for a time during the early 1930s in a rural community in Virginia.

Jack Bondurant (Shia Laboeuf) is the youngest brother. The story is told mostly through his eyes. He is a little too sensitive for the line of work he’s in. The brains of the operation is the oldest brother, Forrest (Tom Hardy), who is tough as nails and knows how to deal with the competition and with the forces of the law that are trying to put him down. A sort of legend grows up around the Bondurant brothers that they are invincible, mostly because of the toughness and tenacity of Forrest Bondurant. When Forrest’s throat is cut, a horrible injury that he survives, Jack is forced to develop some toughness of his own. When their bootlegging business is thriving, they are producing a thousand gallons of bootleg whiskey a week. Jack Bondurant, during this time, develops a penchant for clothes and cars and courts a reluctant minister’s daughter named Bertha Minnix (love that name) whose father would gladly kill him if given the chance.

The law is represented by one Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), a creepy (for some reason he has no eyebrows) “special agent” from the city who dresses in a dapper manner and wears perfume. He is sent to Virginia to quell the bootlegging industry there and has a very condescending manner toward the locals. At one point he declares, “these hillbillies are a sideshow unto themselves.” When the local sheriff tells Charlie Rakes he doesn’t much like him, Charlie says, “Not many do.” This simple statement defines his character better than anything he says or does.

When Charlie Rakes delivers a brutal beating to Jack Bondurant because of who he is rather than for anything he’s done, Jack doesn’t even try to defend himself. The score, however, is ultimately settled.

A world-weary dame from the city named Maggie (played by Jessica Chastain) shows up and becomes a sort of employee of the Bondurants. She helps Forrest—at one point saving his life—and eventually falls for him, although very little screen time is given to their “romance.” That’s not what this movie is about.

Even though the Bondurant brothers are on the “wrong” side of the law, we are on their side and want them to succeed. Deep down, they are decent fellows just trying to make a living in hard times. They resort to violence only when they must to defend their interests. At one point, Forrest states that it’s the fear they have over people that makes them survive in the very ugly and brutal business they are in. Don’t mess with them and they won’t mess with you.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

My Three Least Favorite Words in the English Language

My Three Least Favorite Words in the English Language 

Any writer who has ever sent out manuscripts to publishers for possible publication has probably received a superficial form rejection letter. More often than not, the rejection letter will say something like this:

“Thank you for sending us your story, but UNFORTUNATELY it doesn’t fit our editorial needs at this time.”  

Why UNFORTUNATELY? Is UNFORTUNATELY supposed to make me feel better that my work is being rejected? One person (very possibly a person 22 years of age who just doesn’t “get” my story) has decided my work isn’t worthy of publication. Fortune has nothing to do with it. These “gate keepers” work for literary magazines and are supposed to be writers themselves, for heaven’s sake! They are judging my work, and they can’t think of anything more fitting to say than UNFORTUNATELY? Isn’t it a writers’ job to avoid being trite and lazy? A little originality couldn’t hurt here. UNFORTUNATELY is a junky word that should be avoided in speaking or writing, but especially in writing. Just because UNFORTUNATELY is a long, five-syllable word doesn’t mean people will think you’re smart if you use it.

Another overused word that I truly despise is HOPEFULLY. When you are around anybody doing any talking, you can’t go for more than a few minutes without hearing something like this:

“HOPEFULLY I will get sick after lunch so I can go home for the rest of the day.” 

This is a grammatically incorrect sentence! Didn’t anybody sit through eighth-grade English? HOPEFULLY is an adverb. To be used correctly, it must have a verb to go with it, as in:

“We waited HOPEFULLY for good news from the front.”  

And that brings us to the Queen Mother of all meaningless, overused, cringe-inducing words! If somebody could count up the number of times that BASICALLY is used in a year, it would be in the tens of millions. BASICALLY as a word doesn’t mean anything. What exactly does it mean, anyway? There isn’t any sentence that contains BASICALLY that wouldn’t be a better sentence without it.

“The hurricane will BASICALLY hit landfall around midnight.”  

All right, what does BASICALLY add to that sentence? You are saying the same thing with fewer words and not making anybody cringe if you just say:

“The hurricane will hit landfall around midnight.”  

There are at least two news reporters on Fox News who can barely speak a sentence without throwing in BASICALLY. If they don’t use BASICALLY in the first sentence or two, they are sure to use it in the first thirty seconds of their report. That’s when they lose me. That’s when I reach for the remote to channel over to the comforting and unreal world of Turner Classic Movies. Isn’t that the Wavishing Kay Fwancis?

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway ~ A Capsule Book Review

  

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway ~ A Capsule Review by Allen Kopp 

Ernest Hemingway is probably the best known and most identifiable American writer of the twentieth century. He is known almost as much for his adventurous life and for his travels as for his writing. He wrote about the manly pursuits of big-game hunting in Africa, bullfighting in Spain, and boxing wherever it happened to be. He was a newspaper reporter for the Kansas City Star, drove an ambulance as a young man on the Italian front in World War I (which formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms), was among the “Lost Generation” of artists, writers and painters who expatriated to Paris between the World Wars, went to Spain to fight with the anti-fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War (leading to his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls), and served as a war correspondent on the European front in World War II.

Throughout most of his life, Hemingway suffered from the mental condition known as manic depression, which is now called bipolar disorder. He underwent electroshock therapy, which affected his memory and his ability to write. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot would in July 1961, a few days before his sixty-second birthday. He left behind a body of work that has stood the test of time. In addition to his dozens of short stories and nonfiction work, he wrote at least three novels (The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls) that are considered among the best of the best of twentieth century American writing. His style of writing (terse, clean, straightforward, simple without being spare) has often been imitated but never equaled.

This summer I undertook the monumental task of reading all 650 pages of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. The book is divided into three sections. The first section is “The First Forty-Nine” stories that Hemingway wrote as a young man. It contains the most famous and well known of his stories and was published as a collection in 1938. The second section contains the stories that Hemingway published after 1938, and the third section is stories that, according to the preface, had never been published before.

The section of previously unpublished work contains some fragments of unpublished novels that (sort of) stand alone as short stories. The last selection in the collection is a forty-five page novel “fragment” called “The Strange Country” that later became Islands in the Stream, a novel that was published in the 1980s, long after Hemingway’s death. If it was anybody other than Hemingway, this meandering, rather pointless fragment probably would never have seen the light of day. It’s about a middle-aged man with several failed marriages to his credit on a road trip through Florida with a much-younger woman. They drive, they drink liquor, they talk a lot, they eat, they sleep, they have sex. Was Hemingway writing about himself? It seems a little self-indulgent.

The stories are apparently just in random order, rather than in the order in which Hemingway wrote them. The African stories (“The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “An African Story,” etc.) are interspersed with the bullfighting stories (“The Capital of the World,” “The Undefeated”) and the stories of the Spanish Civil War (“The Denunciation,” “The Butterfly and the Tank,” “Night Before Battle,” “Under the Ridge”). The two “Henry Morgan” stories later became incorporated into the novel To Have and Have Not. The “Nick Adams” stories, which Hemingway wrote early in his career, were inspired by summers he spent with his family in Michigan as a boy. The longest of the Nick Adams stories, at forty pages, is “The Last Good Country,” which, for some reason, was never completed. Of the “groups” of stories in the collection, I like the Nick Adams stories the best.

Some of the stories in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway I had read, but most of them I was reading for the first time. I liked most of the stories and found them engaging and worth my time, although some of them are not really to my taste. I’m not a fan of either bullfighting or big-game hunting and cringe at some of the long passages about killing animals, but it is, after all, Hemingway, so he must be indulged in his passions. Nobody else demonstrates such a breadth of subject matter in a body of short stories. He is a master of the form. For a great reading experience, though, read either of the novels A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls. Both of them are love stories in a war setting and are superb.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Camp Bonhomie

 

Camp Bonhomie ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

August put the strap of his duffle bag over his shoulder and looked around the room as if seeing it for the last time. His eyes lingered fondly over the books, the closet that held his clothes, the door to the bathroom, the writing desk, the bed that (he realized now) was the best and most comfortable bed in the world. He wouldn’t be back for two weeks and two weeks is a long time when you’re going someplace you don’t want to go. He was already homesick and he hadn’t even left yet.

He had been going to take the bus but his father agreed as a kind of concession to drive him the hundred miles to camp. He was silent the entire way, staring grimly out the window. When he saw a sign that said they had only ten miles to go, his mouth went dry and he felt a sick feeling in his stomach.

“You’re going to have such a good time,” his father said, as if reading his mind.

“I don’t want to do this,” August said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“You’re not going to be sick,” his father said. “ You’re going to be fine. Look, we all have to do things we don’t want to do. That’s the way life is. Sometimes those things we don’t want to do can turn out to be very good for us.”

“Mother wouldn’t have made me go.”

“Your doctor had to pull some strings to get you accepted. Not everybody can get into this camp.”

“I wish I had been one of the ones that couldn’t get in.”

“He believes it’s the best thing for you at this point in your development.”

“He’s an idiot. I’d like to see him spend two weeks away from home in a strange place with a bunch of strangers he doesn’t care to know.”

“Give it a chance, August. Please, for my sake.”

“How do you know I won’t run away when nobody’s looking.  Hitchhike back home?”

“Is that what you’re planning on doing?”

“No, I’m just saying ‘what if’.”

“I don’t want you hitchhiking. You’re only thirteen years old. You don’t know what the world is like yet.”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“I don’t want to find you in a ditch with your throat cut and God only knows what else.”

“It might turn out to be a good thing.”

When they came to the camp, his father pulled off the highway and went up an enormous hill where the trees were so thick they kept out the sunlight. He turned in at a gate marked “welcome” at the top of the hill and drove around a winding drive to a low, rustic building where new arrivals were supposed to check in. He parked the car and turned off the engine.

“That’s all right,” August said. “You don’t have to wait. You can just drop me off.”

“No,” his father said. “This is your first time away from home. I want to see where you’ll be staying. I want to talk to the person in charge.”

They went inside. His father waited patiently while August stood in line to sign in. When he had his room assignment, his father insisted on going to the room with him and seeing it. He wanted to have a picture in his head to take back home, he said, of the place where August would be staying.

Each cabin had four rooms with four boys to a room. August was in room two of cabin eight. The three other boys who would be staying in the room with him had already arrived, so August had to take the bed that was left over. He didn’t mind because it was the bed that was the farthest from the others. He threw his bag down and turned to his father.

“You can go now,” he said.

“You’ll be all right?” his father asked. “You like the room?”

“Does it matter?”

“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to me before I go?”

“Good-bye.”

“Won’t you miss me?”

“Probably not as much as you think I should.”

His father put his hands on his shoulders, patted him twice, and then left him alone in the room. Out the window August saw him talking to one of the counselors, a thin young man dressed all in white. His father had his back to the window but August could see the face of the counselor as it went from jolly to seriously attentive. He knew his father was telling him August’s history of emotional problems and how they had all been trying to get August to open up to others and emerge from his self-imposed isolation before it was too late.

After his father drove away, August lay down on the bed, not knowing exactly what he was supposed to do. In a little while his three roommates came in and August stood up. They introduced themselves and shook hands like little men. Two of them, Ricky and Eddie, were younger than August and had a callow, frightened look. The third was half-a-head taller and a year or two older. His name was Randall. He had a self-confident swagger that August found intimidating. If August had trouble with any of them, it would be with Randall.

“There’s something I think I should tell you about myself,” August said, when the others had stopped talking and he had a chance to speak.

“What’s that?” Randall asked.

“I don’t want to be here and I want to be left alone. If you don’t mess with me, we’ll be fine, but if you’re thinking about playing any little tricks on me like putting a snake in my bed or dipping my toothbrush in the toilet, I have to tell you I’m not right in the head and I can snap. I have a big knife and I don’t mind using it.”

Ricky and Eddie sat side by side on the bed looking at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. Ricky smiled but Eddie looked scared.

“I don’t believe you have a knife,” Randall said with a sneer. “Let me see it.”

“Oh, you don’t want to see it,” August said.

“You’re not supposed to have weapons here.”

“Well, nobody needs to know about it. Just knowing it exists ought to be enough.”

“Maybe Captain Jack should know about it too,” Randall said.

“Who’s Captain Jack?”

“He’s the head counselor,” Eddie said.

“He doesn’t need to know about it,” August said. “It’s just for the four of us to know.”

Ricky and Eddie nodded their heads and smiled as if a mystery had been cleared up.

“Big man,” Randall said. “Big, crazy man.”

At dinner in the cafeteria, he imagined that people were looking at him oddly, whispering about him and avoiding being near him, so he figured that Randall must have told people what he said about having a knife. After dinner he went back to the room and lay on his back on the bed with his hands across his chest. Eddie and Ricky came in and asked him if he wanted to go for a walk to see the lake, but he said he was sick from the terrible food and he couldn’t get up off the bed.

That night he couldn’t sleep because the bed was hard and narrow, he was hot, and the chirring of the insects kept him awake. He was still awake around two in the morning when a thunderstorm moved through and nearly tore the roof off the cabin, which the others didn’t seem to notice.

Breakfast was at seven-thirty. After breakfast everybody was required to attend an orientation meeting in the assembly hall, at which the rules of the camp were explained. At the end of the meeting, each camper was given a schedule of events and activities. Failure to follow the schedule resulted in demerits. A certain number of demerits resulted in expulsion from the camp. August glanced briefly at his schedule and crumpled it up. Just like school, he thought, only worse. At school he at least got to go home at the end of the day.

His first scheduled activity was a demonstration of wood carving. He was trying to figure out where he was supposed to go when the young counselor he had seen talking to his father approached him.

“Are you August Gilpin?” the counselor asked, not unlike a police officer serving a summons.

“Who wants to know?”

“Don’t get cute with me. I know who you are.”

“If you know, then why are you asking?”

“Captain Jack wants to see you in his office right away in the administration building.”

“What for?”

“We don’t tolerate any shit here from you city kids, even the crazy ones. You’re about to find that out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” August said. “I haven’t done anything.”

“They’re waiting for you, little man.”

“Let them wait. I don’t care. They can go to hell.”

He looked over his shoulder to see if anybody was watching him and then he left camp. He didn’t go out the front gate and down the road but instead went around by the lake and into the woods. He found a path through the thick trees and heavy foliage on the other side of the lake but he didn’t know where it led. It led away from camp and that was the important thing.

He followed the path for a long way and then he came to a converging path going in another direction. He was tired of going the same way so he took the new path. It seemed to hold promise in a vague way that he didn’t understand. Maybe the path would lead him to what he was looking for, but he didn’t know yet what that was.

After a while the path ended, or turned back on itself, but he didn’t mind. He kept going because the pathless foliage was not as thick as it had been or the trees as forbidding. It was easy walking for as far as he could see.

Coming to a high hill with some large rocks, he sat down to rest. From that vantage point he could see a long way, perhaps miles. He saw some houses and a road, so he knew he wasn’t hopelessly lost in the woods. On the road he saw a few cars and large trucks on their way to the city. He would hitch a ride with one of the truck drivers. He would tell him he was hiking in the woods with friends and got separated from them, became lost on his own, and wanted only to get back home and let everybody know he was all right.

The road was farther away than it appeared. He was sweating when he reached it, out of breath and thirsty. He began walking in the direction he believed was home. Cars whizzed past him going very fast. He didn’t know how he was ever going to get anybody to stop.

He had walked maybe a quarter-mile or so with his back to oncoming traffic, when a big car, an old white Cadillac, slowed, passed him and pulled off onto the shoulder ahead of him. He didn’t understand at first if somebody was offering him a ride or if it was something else.

The driver rolled down the window and motioned for August to come to him. August saw it was an older man, much older than his father.

“Where you headed?” the man asked him.

“I’m not really sure,” August said.

“You look like you’re pretty well done in. Get in and we’ll give you a ride.”

He reached behind him and pulled the latch on the back door, opening it partway. August grabbed onto the door and got in. He saw right away that there was a woman in the car with the man.

“This is my wife, Nellie Fritchie,” the man said.

“How do you do?” the woman said. She turned around and faced August but he knew she couldn’t see him because she was blind. Her eyes rolled around in her head like loose marbles and her eyelids fluttered. Her face was very wrinkled and she wore a blond wig that seemed too young for her and lots of lipstick.

“And my name is Johnny Fritchie,” the man said.

“Hello,” August said.

“And what might your name be?”

“Carl Heinrich,” he said. It was the first name that came to him, the name of an older boy he knew from school.

“And how old are you, Carl?”

“Thirteen.”

“That’s pretty young to be walking along the highway in this part of the United States alone, Carl. Are you sure you’re not in some kind of trouble?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I’m not even going to ask you where you live, Carl, because I don’t think you’d tell me the truth. Would you like to know where we live?”

“Where?”

“We live hundreds and hundreds of miles from here in the state of Maine. Have you ever been to Maine, Carl?”

“No.”

“Would you like to see Maine?”

“I guess so.”

“We have a big house on the coast of Maine with more room than the two of us need. Would you like to come and be our guest for a while, Carl? For as long as you want, really. You don’t have to answer me right this minute, Carl. Just sit there and think about it. I admire a man who takes his time to make decisions.”

August lay down on the broad seat and put his legs up. He turned over on his side with his face toward the seat back. The leather smelled good and felt cool against his face. He felt perfectly relaxed and at ease for the first time in a long time. As he drifted off to sleep, he felt the tires underneath him turning, turning, putting miles between himself and everything he wanted to leave behind.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

True Blood, Season 5 ~ A Capsule Review

True Blood, Season 5 ~ A Capsule Review by Allen Kopp 

HBO’s Southern gothic vampire series, True Blood, is in its fifth season. Sookie Stackhouse, the Louisiana waitress, is still deeply involved with vampires, good and bad. The good vampires want to “mainstream” with humans, while the bad vampires want to enslave humans and use them as a source of food, by way of their blood. These two factions of vampires are frequently at odds with each other. The bad vampires—that is, members of the “Sanguinista” movement—are personified by one Russell Edgington, a vengeful, gay vampire thousands of years old. In the previous season, he made an impromptu appearance on a TV newscast, in which he ripped out the spine of the newscaster and vowed to “eat the children” of humans, after which he would eat everybody else. “And now time for the weather. Tiffany?” Good stuff.

Anybody familiar with the character of Sookie Stackhouse knows that she is no ordinary waitress. She is a “telepath” (she can read the thoughts of others) and a kind of fairy. It seems that vampires have long had an affinity with fairies and believed fairies to be extinct. Fairies taste and smell especially sweet to vampires and can, at times, enhance their power.

Since the beginning of the series, Sookie has had an on-again, off-again “relationship” with one Bill Compton, one of the good vampires, who has only been a vampire since the Civil War, a relatively short time. Vampire Bill is a soft-spoken Southern gentleman whose vampire nature is frequently at odds with his human nature and his desire to “mainstream” with humans. I can’t tell you how many times Sookie has been in deadly peril and Vampire Bill has come to her rescue. Any other vampire might have just killed her right off and been done with her, but not Vampire Bill.

Sookie has a handsome, dimwitted brother named Jason. He has a good heart but seems to lack judgment and, at times, good sense. He knows his own faults better than anybody and wants to live a better life but doesn’t seem to know how. He is waiting for somebody to show him the way. His libido seems to always lead him down the path of danger.

Sookie’s lifelong best friend is Tara Thornton, a black girl with an unhappy history and her own share of woes. Her latest travail is that she was shot in the head while trying to protect Sookie (it’s a long story) and, to keep her from dying, Sookie and Lafayette (Tara’s gay, restaurant cook cousin) enlist the aid of the sardonic girl vampire, Pam, to turn her into a vampire. It was either that or death. Tara is not happy about having been “turned” and will never forgive Sookie and Lafayette. She has always hated vampires and has had more than her share of scary experiences from her association with them. She’d rather be anything than a vampire.

There are other interesting characters, not the least of whom is Eric Northman, a perfectly formed Nordic type who was a “Viking” at the time he was turned into a vampire a thousand years ago. His “maker” was Godric, a good vampire, who immolated himself in sunlight on the roof of a hotel during one of the earlier seasons. He was over two thousand years old. Then there’s Jessica, the teen girl that Vampire Bill “turned” by orders from the vampire “magister.” Vampire Bill had to “turn” Jessica as a kind of penalty for one of the times he saved Sookie’s life. Jessica was a hellion of a girl vampire at first but seems to have calmed down a lot, thanks to the influence of her “maker,” Vampire Bill, and is mainstreaming with humans. She had a human boyfriend named Hoyt Fortenberry (who can’t seem to get out from under his mother’s influence), but they broke up. Sam Merlotte is the owner of the honky-tonk (roadhouse and bar) where Sookie works as a waitress. Sam is an all-around good guy and can usually be counted on to help out when trouble is brewing, but he is a “shape shifter” and has his own share of troubles, including a werewolf girlfriend and a trashy family. Arlene is a ditzy waitress at Merlotte’s with beet-red hair and an odd husband, Terry Bellefleur, who can’t seem to shake his wartime experiences. Andy Bellefleur is the sheriff and cousin of Terry Bellefleur. He is a recovering addict and a not-very-effective law enforcement officer, frequently bewildered by all the supernatural goings-on in the town.

True Blood is based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris. While it is sometimes silly (as in the case of Sookie being more in love with Vampire Bill or with Eric Northman), it’s never boring. There are at least two dozen characters and most of them are interesting in their own way. The plot line is constantly shifting. If something is going on that you find not all that interesting, wait about two minutes and the story will shift to something else. With lots of sex scenes and lots of swearing and gore, it’s definitely not for everybody and not for the younger set. What it is, though, is inventive, surprising, suspenseful, well written and well acted. Those Southern accents are impeccable.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp  

by allen0997