How a Story Ends

A story’s end can change all that came before. That’s a lot of power.

This is obvious when the story has a moral. How does “The Little Red Hen” end? You can listen / read / watch these versions of “The Little Red Hen” to see some options.  

In Version 1: “The Little Red Hen” ( from short kids stories.com), the ending comes down on the side of justice over mercy: the other animals don’t help the little red hen so they don’t eat. . 

In Version 2: “The Little Red Hen” (from Scholastic Read Along on YouTube), the hen ends up with helpers for the future in this version. The focus is on teaching them to be helpful. It’s a hard lesson but the redemption softens it a bit.

Version 3: “The Little Red Hen” (from SuperSimple TV on YouTube) makes the moral even more explicit than the other versions, as if it weren’t obvious enough (!). The hen feeds her chicks in this one.

The basic story is the same here, but the conclusion varies. Sometimes the Little Red Hen eats everything herself. Sometimes she shares with her children. Sometimes the other animals are punished, potentially with the idea that they learn something and do better next time. It makes the lesson more gentle when the other animals have a chance to redeem themselves. It makes the hen less open to charges of selfishness when she shares with her children at the end.

What of a more complex story? I recently read Haruki Murikami’s Kafka on the Shore, and as I was reading, I was wondering what kind of ending he would go for. It clearly mattered, but because of the range of genres in play in the book (myth, Bildungsroman, fantasy, sci fi, literary character-based fiction), I figured Murakami had options. As I made my way through the book (with a couple of enforced breaks when I had to let the other reader of the library’s digital copy have it for a couple of weeks), I began to see how the story had to end. At some point, most of the major components of the forthcoming conclusion were inevitable, but that didn’t diminish my interest. And because it wasn’t clear quite what sort of book I was reading, even as I was quite close to the end, I wondered about a couple of key elements. Waiting for the end wasn’t what kept me going, though, and the way the end shaped the preceding story isn’t as obvious as it is in The Little Red Hen. Its impact may be more profound, though: a surprisingly uplifting conclusion isn’t what I expected when I first started Kafka on the Shore, and I like the arc it brings to the complete story.

Family Book Review: The Seekers

The Seekers by Hari and Deepti (Hari Panicker and Deepti Nair) is one of the beautiful books our family has been enjoying recently. This story of Mio and Nao and their adventure is told through words, yes, but more important are the gorgeous papercut illustrations.

The people have long told the story of the silver fox and the fire wolf. Nao believes the legend, and he is right, and the people restore balance in the end. This book is about the illustrations: the turquoise of the silver fox, the focus on purples on one page and golden on another, the layering and the precision of the tree roots, the fish in the water, the gloom, the luminescent beauty. The stylized paper cut illustrations match the story and tell it well. 

This is a story of storytelling and the destructive consequences of exploitation, clearly but not (for me at least) overwhelmingly. Part of what makes this work is that the elusive idea of balance underlies the moral. It’s no more moralistic than any other fable or in fact your average children’s story. 

This is obviously for those who want to enjoy the art. It is a story suited for reading aloud to young children and complex enough in its themes for older children, probably with guidance. It’s also a great (meta) illustration of the power of storytelling in a culture and leads easily to questions about the power of stories in raising children and in passing along knowledge and values. 

Unfinished Book Review: Ducks Newburyport

I am the perfect reader of Ducks, Newburyport. During early childhood I lived in Newburyport and fed the ducks. Back then, feeding the ducks wasn’t thought of as an environmental mistake. It was an activity kids did, gleefully breaking up white bread full of refined ingredients, mashing the soft crustless middles of squishy slices, eating some ourselves, crumbling the stale ends, saved for the purpose. The ducks of Newburyport, and elsewhere, were happy, the kids of the era were happy, all innocent of the consequences of such unhealthy sustenance for the ducks.

Newburyport is my father’s hometown, though since I didn’t finish the book, maybe she’s talking about a different Newburyport or for that matter different ducks, but anyway, maybe the place in the title is possibly my first hometown, which sounds redundant, but what with one thing and another, there is no town that for me constitutes a hometown, at least not in the way that people seem to mean it, not that I’m complaining or bragging (unlike noting that I get the literary allusion in the title, which is a kind of bragging), and not that it has to do in any obvious way with Ducks, Newburyport, but in our geographically unmoored world, which I realize sounds negative, but it isn’t fully so and anyway how could I, a person not only without a hometown but also without any dramatic story about immigration or even moving to exciting places—I’ve lived nowhere that would be considered by anyone interesting, unless you count staying somewhere for weeks or months living there, which I don’t, though this may say more about me than I realize, this requirement that I seem to have that living somewhere must mean actually living there, not studying there or teaching for a while from a hotel room where I rinsed my clothes in the sink there, or a piece with this sense that to have a hometown must mean really being from somewhere in a way that is largely outdated—though I’m married to an immigrant from a different country, a different continent even, from somewhere else always, in a much more significant way, but there it is, and here we are, neither of us from anywhere, a contemporary couple from nowhere, but amazingly and appropriately,we live in Ohio (duller and more everyday than Newburyport today, but Newburyport wasn’t like that when I lived there), and living in Ohio is the second fact that makes me the ideal audience for Ducks Newburyport, whose narrator is at least in Ohio, probably her hometown is even in Ohio, if she has one.

The third fact that makes me the perfect reader for Ducks, Newburyport is my recently demonstrated appreciation for long sentences. This massive book is essentially one interminable steam of consciousness sentence.

The fourth fact that makes me the perfect audience for Ducks, Newburyport is that I, like the aforementioned Ohio narrator, am a mother overwhelmed by the chaos of motherhood.

The fifth fact is that, I, again like the aforementioned Ohio narrator, am a person filled with thoughts and observations about the world around me. And that is why I am unlikely to be finishing this book any time soon. I spent, according to my app, 33 minutes reading, and it felt like weeks. I have my own stream of consciousness to manage, and, for the moment, that is enough.

Book Review: The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam

Ann Marie Fleming was curious. She wanted to know more about her great-grandfather Long Tack Sam. Her grand mother and great aunt had, as children, visited him and their grandmother Poldi in their NYC apartment for Christmas one year. Or every Christmas. Memory being what it is, this point, and many others in the story, are not settled. The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam is “an illustrated memoir” after all, and it is about memory and story as much as it is about the most famous magician you’ve never heard of—for all of the reasons.

Magic is out of fashion. As a Chinese performer in the West, Long Tack Sam was constantly marginalized. When Hollywood wanted to cast Chinese actors as laundry workers and bad guys, Long Tack Sam, who seems to have eschewed politics as a showman, refused on the grounds that it was racist and would harm his people. His daughters, who with their white Austrian mother were biracial, were deemed “too beautiful” to play Chinese parts. The family rejected Hollywood, which had become the way forward for performers. They were subsequently to a large extent written out of history, a point Fleming does not belabor but one that her work seeks to remedy. Long Tack Sam mentored Orson Wells. Long Tack Sam brought Chinese magic to the West. Long Tack Sam performed alongside the greats of the day.

This history did not live on in Fleming’s family, a family scattered around the world, descendants living in many the places where their ancestor once performed. Still, it was easy enough for Fleming to determine that Long Tack Sam and Poldi had been hit by a car and moved back to Austria, where Poldi was from and where they had a villa, to recuperate. That is where they died. She finds that he was born in 1885 into a time of famine in Northern China, and from there, the details of how he learned magic diverge, a point illustrated delightfully in the graphic novel by a series of classic comic tales of Long Tack Sam. Fleming, a film maker, has fun with the graphic form creating a collage montage of photographs and clippings and illustrations in different styles. If it all sounds confusing, don’t worry, she includes a character of herself, Stick Girl, to guide you through. A time-line of events runs through the book, adding context from what is happening in WWII to what is happening in entertainment.

In pursuing her grandfather’s story, she ends up in the world of magic, from Chinese acrobatics to Vaudeville, from China to Australia to Austria to Canada. Fleming traveled everywhere, talking to magicians, searching personal archives of magic, talking to her relatives. She created a film and then a graphic novel, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam to share the story—the stories, some contradictory—of Long Tack Sam.

I imagine that this would be a great read for people with a prior interest in magic. It’s definitely well worth reading for those interested history and graphic memoir, in the way peoples’ lives are threaded through world events, in the challenges of being an international family, in who is remembered.

Catching up on what is good

A reflection on blogging, success, failure, and clarity

When I started this blog with a daily challenge, I thought it would be somewhat difficult to keep up with. My life felt very full and hectic and busy. I was starting another semester with my eighty-whatever new best friends, and I have young kids. I always had more than enough to be behind on already. I decided to try the whole daily blog idea in part because I thought it might help me be less of a perfectionist.

Every idea doesn’t have to be amazing. Every word doesn’t have to be ideal. I would write and I would let it go. In my more pessimistic moments, I thought it could be something else to be perpetually failing to do as well as I felt I should.

As it happened, I found daily blogging to be easier and more invigorating than I expected it to be. I liked having a small challenge, an achievable task. Other areas of endeavor that I find myself engaged in simply don’t provide much of an opportunity for completion, let alone success. Teaching, academia, parenting—these are long-haul projects full of endless effort, complexity, and balancing. By giving myself a context in which done was good enough, I was able to taste completion and success regularly. Salutary.

After a brief hiccup of pandemic productivity, I hit a wall and let myself stop. That was the only thing to do, even if it may not have been the right thing.

It was certainly contrary to the spirit of the daily post idea but aligned with me personal reasons for undertaking such a project.

I’ve definitely learned something even if it’s not always clear what.

I’m going to keep at it, in a haphazard way, consistently inconsistent, and I’ll see what happens.

The Annoyance of Wasted Effort

Lost Effort

I have wasted writing effort in many ways. I nominate as the most annoying way to waste one’s time writing the experience of completing a document, saving it multiple times along the way in a trusted way, and then having it mysteriously frozen, unable to open, from thenceforth, into perpetuity. I realize that this is far from the most disheartening writerly experience, but for a frustrating pesky irksome tiresome and pointless kind of waste, it is unparalleled. 

That’s why this post is not about what it is like to read too many books at a time.

Genoise cake and the pursuit of perfection

I started making Genoise cakes when I was in high school. I had one recipe in one book. I didn’t have a baker’s scale or an instant read thermometer. Such tools are now commonly found in the kitchens of amateur bakers. At the time, we didn’t know what we were missing.

Instead of precision, I had practice. My intuition developed with each attempt at scooping and filling a measuring cup, with each double boiler of eggs and sugar. I stirred with my hand so that I didn’t overcook the mixture. My fingers learned when to turn off the burner. I can still feel the dissolving sugar and slightly thickening eggs, the heat of the bottom of the pan, even though now I use a thermometer and therefor use a whisk.

When you’re making a Genoise, one of the most efficient and spectacular ways to make a disaster is to let this mixture get too hot. I did this once, and only on the edge of the pan, and from then on, my fingers knew something, knew what just too far past 149 degrees felt like. I wasn’t making sweet scrambled eggs. I was making the dry, ethereal masterpiece that is a 2 plus inch Genoise.

Many aspects of the Genoise Cake experience remain the same: the fear of some element of the alchemy going awry is not eliminated by the new tools. My very worst Genoise came into its disappointing existence not long ago. I was possessed of a desire to try a different method of combining the whipped eggs and sugar, the flour (and cornstarch—I’m a proponent, 8 grams, maybe?), and the butter (How much can you get away with? How much do you even want to get away with?). The cookbook author was so enthusiastic about Genoise, and he directed that the butter be added directly to the whipped eggs and sugar, all at once, before the flour. I’m sure this method has worked for some people before, but it will never work for me because there is no way that I will volunteer to risk having to watch the massive deflation that took place as the butter went in.

Knowing that such a disaster is always possible is half of what makes this cake so appealing. Usually, though—fortunately—the disaster is simply a sinking middle during cooling that results in a still tasty cake than can be easily split in two layers.

The unique quality of a successful Genoise is the other half. What a cake! It is not moist but, equally, it is not dry. It absorbs soaking solutions and syrups while maintaining its integrity. It’s not too rich or too sweet to be eaten daily, plain with coffee or tea. It is delicious with jam, if you must. The fact that its detractors characterize it as dry, bland, and boring simply adds to the appeal.

I just took a lemon Genoise out of the oven, and it sank a bit in the middle, and it will be delicious anyway. I’m disappointed but resolved to enjoy it fully and try again another day. I’m honest enough to admit that if I could get it to work every time, I would make far fewer Genoise cakes.

Supernatural Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is a subject near and dear to me. For a brief and fascinatingly bizarre piece on bureaucracy, check out Checkpoints by Ji Yun (1724-1805) Translated by Yi Izzy Yu and John Yu Branscum . The straightforward tone and approach to the supernatural consequences of missing paperwork after death is a great instance of the “strange story.”

These strange stories have quite a tradition in China. In “Strange Tales Indeed: A close look at Pu Songling’s short stories,” Carlos Ottery writes,  “It turns out that years of  education, coupled with a harsh spoonful of bitter failure and ample free time, are a recipe for authorial success. Chinese literature is so littered with failed mandarins that it sometimes feels like flunking the imperial exam is a pre-requisite.”

In the case of Ji Yun, such failure was not necessary. He had an impressive career and also produced strange stories.

The way in which life is made impossible by problems with paperwork has troubled me, in ways large and small, forever. With a full legal name too complicated (apparently) to say, file taxes online in the early days of online filing, or print in its entirety on a boarding pass, I have had many problems with paperwork, ranging from brief annoyances to multi-year battles with motor vehicle departments. I have at least one protracted discussion about my name and identity when I go vote. Every. Single. Time. I have been advised by the local board of elections not to attempt to do anything to “fix” this problem but to instead request that instead of attempting to check me in digitally, I should ask to be looked up manually. For the curious, this strategy does not work at neighborhood precincts.  I could go on, but my tales of bureaucratic woe is far less entertaining than Ji Yun’s. 

What he learns is that the way in which paperwork mediates and shapes and comes to constitute reality is so intractable that even death itself is no escape.

• I’m in no way an expert on this subject but have tried to verify the linked items. I’m open to corrections!

Playing with Ink

I’ve finally been playing around with dipped ink. It’s a lot of fun to explore, but it’s frustrating. I definitely need to get some more appropriate paper if I’m going to do enough to get better.