In The Cemetery Where Al Jolsen is Buried by Amy Hempel

In The Cemetery Where Al Jolsen is Buried Reviews

• 
  Dave Schaafsma

  The Language of Grief
  
  “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel is a painfully funny/comically sad story about all sorts of emotions that attend to the dying of one’s best friend. Grief, of course. Stages? One is avoidance, akin to denial, which the two friends demonstrate through the near manic level of joking they engage in. And it took her two months for the narrator to visit her friend, as she did not want to see her in this state, of course. And when the doctor tells her to get out of the room in the hospital, she jumps at the chance to go across the road to the beach, to watch young, lean, (healthy) bodies tanning and lusting in the sun. She returns to extend the avoidance through joking around:
  
  "Did you know that when they taught the first chimp to talk, it lied? That when they asked her who did it on the desk, she signed back the name of the janitor. And that when they pressed her, she said she was sorry, that it was really the project director. But she was a mother, so I guess she had her reasons." "Oh, that's good," she said. "A parable." "There's more about the chimp," I said. "But it will break your heart." "No, thanks," she says, and scratches at her mask.
  
  She and her friend tell each other “useless” stuff, focusing on the trivial, such as the fact that it was Bob Dylan’s mother that invented Wite Out, so they can avoid really talking about her dying. And then (devastatingly), though her dying friend arranges to have a bed for her in the room, she tells her she can’t stay, she can’t handle it. This searing honesty is on one level shocking—it’s her best friend, she should not die alone!—and then again, almost freeing; it’s what we want to do, too, in our worst moments, she is us, alas. Who wants to face the death of someone we love? She gets in her car and drives, the wind in her hair; she has escaped!
  
  At the end, after her friend is buried—in the cemetery where Al Jolson is buried, and who would care about that trivial detail but someone who (like us!) would prefer to talk about stuff like that rather than the fact that her best friend is dead—she returns to the story of the chimp “that will break your heart,” and then she does; she breaks ours.
  
  Here’s Laura Hurwitz, reading the story on her podcast, The Easy Chair (though she says it took four times for her to get through the ending of the story without breaking down). And yet she also says, it is not a maudlin story, it is honest and human and funny and sad all at once.
  
  
  https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR...
  
  A pdf of the story:
  
  
  http://fictionaut.com/stories/amy-hem...
  
  I first read Amy Hempel’s much-anthologized story in the eighties, when I took my MFA. We read as examples of The Short Story Now Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Amy Hempel, Laurie Moore and others exhibiting a deeper humanity with concision and humor and grace. All of those writers are known principally for their facility with the short story, but two of those authors named above we associate in part, for good and ill, with their minimalist teacher, Gordon Lish. Imagine the thrill for any young(ish) MFA student in reading a story that was the very first written by a young author in a similar MFA program, a story that catapulted her—yes, with this one story—to international (okay, okay, short story level) fame. Imagine young writers everywhere astonished by the fulfillment of a dream; could it happen to me?
• 
  BookishGal29

  Read this for school and just didn't care for it.
• 
  Coleen

  A very moving story, I have read it several times and it brings tears to my eyes each time.
• 
  Tina Hayes

  Amy Hempel's In The cemetery Where Al Jolsen is Buried is a moving story of a woman living through the death of her best friend from a terminal illness. The prose is beautifully written and very moving, and very skillfully shows the emotions she is going through without sappy sentimentality. It is amazing to see how this author packs 400 pages worth of emotion into one short story that takes a half hour to read.
  
  Hats off to this author, and I would love to read more of her work.
• 
  Lennie Grace

  This is one of my absolute favorite short stories. 😁 It's so sad and beautiful. And the Audiobook just makes it so much better. Definitely a must read if you like short stories.
• 
  Janelle

  A sad and funny look at the emotions involved when confronting the dying and death of a loved one.
• 
  ي

  Incredibly well written and full of heartbreak.
• 
  Tammy Schoen

  Oh My GOSH!!! Such a beautiful story. Stories about death...and the living....and those left behind almost always are beautiful and in that harsh/human way.
  
  I really identified with the lines: I enrolled in a "Fear of Flying" class.
  "What is your worst fear?" the instructor asked, and I answered,
  "That I will finish this course and still be afraid."
  
  Isn't 'fear' our worst fear?? Always?
  
  The story does a beautiful job of showing our need...our desperation to control outcomes. "It never happens when you're thinking about it," she once
  observed. "Earthquake, earthquake, earthquake," she said.
  "Earthquake, earthquake, earthquake," I said.
  But...eventually our efforts are futile. We are NOT in control...we don't get to choose the 'ending.'
  
  One line of the story says...."anger is stronger than fear." I don't know if I agree. I think we use anger to distract us from our fear. Anger is a cloak we use to 'cover' our fear, which is still really there just waiting to greet us.
  
  This story is beautiful, upsetting, scary and real.
• 
  Vedang Manerikar

  A tale of facing a close friend's impending death. Incredible writing.
• 
  Unity

  My heart aches.
• 
  Amy

  This story pulls no punches, and the way Hempel combines voice and prose is absolutely outstanding to me. Her use of language is economical, and from a literary perspective I highly admire how she has constructed this story. The story itself isn't complex, but the protagonists are developed incredibly within such a short time frame, their raw emotions and inner conflict spread throughout the story.
  
  If you had to read ONE contemporary story, make it this one.
• 
  Angela

  "I had a convertible in the parking lot. Once out of that room, I would drive it too fast down the Coast highway through the crab-smelling air. A stop in Malibu for sangria. The music in the place would be sexy and loud. They'd serve papaya and shrimp and watermelon ice. After dinner I would shimmer with lust, buzz with heat, life, and stay up all night."
• 
  MollyK

  That was pretty amazing for a short story. Definitely worth a reread at some point.
• 
  Justine

  4.5 Stars out of 5 Stars
  
  Review to come.
• 
  Marissa

  This is, quite simply, perfect short fiction.
• 
  Jo

  Powerful and moving story about grief.
• 
  Maria

  1.5 stars. I read this for my short story club. It was poorly written (felt choppy); and not so much about grief as it was about the stifling effect of being close to one who is dying and the desire to escape and LIVE. Which I can understand that reaction, but it could have had more impact if written better and if her friend was someone she was closer to. The story is less than 3000 words, yet probably 1/3 of that is trivia (told to her dying friend). It felt like she already had one foot out the door while visiting her friend. There were a couple clever phrases and symbolism, but at that point I felt like she was trying to make it more profound. She mentions earthquake weather throughout and speaks of the dangers of things "that just lie there, like this beach" (like her friend). She is consumed by how she, herself feels the need to escape. Some of the other readers mentioned that there was humor, but I didn't really see anything very funny.
• 
  Savannah :)

  I didn’t particularly enjoy the writing style and frankly i found it quite abrupt overall.
  
  The most memorable aspect in my eyes was simply the facts and anecdotes shared between the characters that i personally found heartwarming.
  
  Even though i wasn’t a very big fan of this short story, there is no denying that the final page is beautifully crafted and really allows the story to become full-circle.
• 
  Kenny

  Amy Hempel isn’t someone I read. I was working hard to rephrase inner frustration into sense, and I like that she lays out her aim At the beginning tell me things I will forget and fulfills it.
  
  I didn't pick up on it being a story about grief. Yet, you feel entangled in language - how it is both a wall and yet all we have to express ourselves, sometimes.
• 
  Caitlin

  - Grief is hard to face, and even harder to know you will have to face
  - I enjoyed the metaphor of the main character’s fear of still being scared of flying even once the lessons end
  - “I missed her already”
  - I didn’t really enjoy the writing style but I understand the fear and desire to escape from death, especially a loved one whose memories resonate with so much of your life
• 
  Lindsay

  This could have been better than it was. It wasn't so horrible and I appreciate the sentiment but he writing ruined what should have been a touching exploration of grief, though it was touching it ways, I found it a little too awkward to be sweet.
• 
  Lizabeth Tucker

  Not a happy short story. Listened to an audio version, beautifully read. I found the ending particularly abrupt. 3.5 out of 5.
• 
  Maggie

  Sad story about being there for a dying friend.
• 
  Noelle

  A short story of loss and grief. Brutally honest.
• 
  ZanD

  Ganda ng last sentence. :)
• 
  Lucie

  Loved the content, the nuance and the ideas behind the story but I'm not keen on this sort of writing style.