| Title | : | Bark |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0307594130 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780307594136 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 192 |
| Publication | : | First published February 25, 2014 |
| Awards | : | Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (2014), The Story Prize (2014) |
These eight masterly stories reveal Lorrie Moore at her most mature and in a perfect configuration of craft, mind, and bewitched spirit, as she explores the passage of time and summons up its inevitable sorrows and hilarious pitfalls to reveal her own exquisite, singular wisdom.
In “Debarking,” a newly divorced man tries to keep his wits about him as the United States prepares to invade Iraq, and against this ominous moment, we see—in all its irresistible wit and darkness—the perils of divorce and what can follow in its wake . . .
In “Foes,” a political argument goes grotesquely awry as the events of 9/11 unexpectedly manifest themselves at a fund-raising dinner in Georgetown . . . In “The Juniper Tree,” a teacher visited by the ghost of her recently deceased friend is forced to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a kind of nightmare reunion . . . And in “Wings,” we watch the inevitable unraveling of two once-hopeful musicians, neither of whom held fast to their dreams nor struck out along other paths, as Moore deftly depicts the intricacies of dead-ends-ville and the workings of regret . . .
Here are people beset, burdened, buoyed; protected by raising teenage children; dating after divorce; facing the serious illness of a longtime friend; setting forth on a romantic assignation abroad, having it interrupted mid-trip, and coming to understand the larger ramifications and the impossibility of the connection . . . stories that show people coping with large dislocation in their lives, with risking a new path to answer the desire to be in relation—to someone . . .
Gimlet-eyed social observation, the public and private absurdities of American life, dramatic irony, and enduring half-cracked love wend their way through each of these narratives in a heartrending mash-up of the tragic and the laugh-out-loud—the hallmark of life in Lorrie-Moore-land.
--jacket
Bark Reviews
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“Había que descongelar los pies, dar pasos a ciegas hacia atrás, arriesgarse a perder el equilibrio, arriesgarse a una caída infinita, para dar espacio a la vida.”
Creo que este es el libro de relatos de Moore más flojo de los que he leído hasta la fecha, lo que seguramente se deba más a las excelencias de los otros que a los defectos que este pueda tener. También es posible que me hayan fascinado tanto dos de sus relatos, Muda y Alas, que, en comparación, el resto me han parecido más grises de lo que posiblemente sean.
De hecho, estos ocho cuentos tienen las mismas cualidades, las buenas y las malas, que los de sus otros libros, como esa jodida manía suya de encadenar frases inteligentes y ocurrentes aunque para ello tenga que dar un rodeo al relato con el único fin, diría yo, de colocarlas. Uno lo disculpa porque en verdad son frases inteligentes y ocurrentes y, como dice uno de los personajes de Alas, sospecho que es pura costumbre y que su verdadera intención es desconocida incluso para ella misma.“La vida no era una alegría encima de otra. Sólo era la esperanza de menos dolor.”
Los cuentos de Moore empiezan en medio de algo y nada se cierra realmente al final. Por el camino pasan cosas, nada extraordinario, el mundo cotidiano que, no obstante, es capaz de reflejar ese malestar, ese mal olor que no se sabe de dónde viene (otra vez Alas), ese dolor de la vida que padecen sus personajes y que cada uno afronta como puede… y hay quién no puede.
En este libro, el late motiv es la soledad, la necesidad de tener a alguien al lado, por muy precaria y hasta dañina que sea esa compañía...“No puedo vivir sin algo de intimidad, compañía, como quieras llamarlo, para afrontar esta locura global.”
… para después, en algunos casos, darse cuenta de lo realmente difícil que puede resultar la convivencia pasado un poco de tiempo.“«El matrimonio es una larga conversación», escribió Robert Louis Stevenson. Por supuesto, murió cuando tenía cuarenta y cuatro años y por tanto no tenía ni idea de lo larga que podía ser la conversación.”
Y esta es otra de las grandes características de Moore, el humor que está presente en mayor o menor medida, en una u otra forma, en cada uno de los relatos. Un humor como escudo protector para los personajes o un tipo de conmiseración hacia ellos por parte del narrador o una forma de decir las cosas sin resultar excesivamente dramático o sensiblero.“En la playa la gente leía libros sobre los genocidios de Ruanda y Yugoslavia. Eso debía de añadir seriedad a un viaje que carecía de ella.”
Sí, creo que este es el libro de relatos de Moore más flojo que he leído… y aun así le doy cuatro estrellas, para que se den cuenta de lo que vale esta señora de las letras americanas que ya es todo un clásico del relato corto.
“Se supone que hay que dejar cosas en Cuaresma. El año pasado abandonamos nuestra fe y nuestra razón, este año vamos a abandonar nuestra voz democrática, nuestra esperanza.”
“Siempre había elegido la mesa de los alérgicos al cacahuete en el colegio porque un chico que le gustaba se sentaba allí: la versión de cafetería de La montaña mágica.” -
Did something bad happen to Lorrie Moore? I don't need to read things that are uplifting. I am not set on having characters that are likable. But this collection was so dark, it left me feeling kind of horrible. This is a collection of stories that looked into the crawl space to find what was rotting there (figuratively, and in one story in this book, literally. I might suggest that if you read this collection, you should consider skipping the half-page after the flashlight is presented and the crawl space opened. I'm afraid it might give me nightmares).
Concern with America's current wars runs through these stories, and I guess that might be what happened to Moore. Late in the book, there's a discussion about Abu Ghraib, and that's as horrifying as the thing found in the crawl space. And there's definitely an ongoing look at marriage, how men and women can fail each other and be cruel.
It just seems that the dark and light are more balanced in her other works. This is bleak. I vowed to stop reading Joyce Carol Oates years ago, because while she's a magnificent writer, her books always left me feeling the way this one does, right on the edge between depressed and sickened.
That said, the language of this book continually amazed me. "The air was filled with the "old-silver-jewelry smell of rain." And then pleasing wry humor like this: '"Marriage is one long conversation," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. Of course, he died when he was forty-four, so he had no idea how long the conversation could really get.' -
Holy smokes, Lorrie Moore is brilliant and sharp and as cutting as broken glass! I do not like short stories, one bit, but darned if I didn't love these ones. In fact, I enjoyed the audio (narrated by Moore, herself) so much that I'm going to buy a hard copy to go back over and enjoy.
This collection is about various characters in their middle age, with each having a date or spouse or significant other in the story with them. There is a sadness and disappointment in some of them, but not all, but there are so many goofy little plays on words, that I found myself smiling throughout. She writes scenes of despondency and hilarity with equal skill - bikers who are hired to break up a wedding end up going to the wrong nuptials, and a man leaves his woman friend after 8 years because he cannot handle her schizophrenic son, despite the boy viewing him as his only father.
There is witty commentary about the placement of a billboard advertising hospice services next to a traffic sign:“HOSPICE CARE: IT’S NEVER TO SOON TO CALL read a billboard near the coffee shop in what constituted the neighborhood’s commercial roar. Next to it a traffic sign read PASS WITH CARE. Surrealism could not be made up. It was the very electricity of the real.”
She describes somebody's wide, open laugh like this: "She could see the creamy yellow of his teeth, his molars with their mercury eyes."
I loved her novel,
A Gate at the Stairs, and was impressed by
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, but suddenly I'm a lover of short stories. Am off to go purchase anything I can get my hands on because her phrasing is something to go back and enjoy again.
She brings in a good bit of political commentary, and while I am not a liberal and don't agree with her views, it was beautifully done. She does some of this with great flair - one character has a sinus infection and he is described as waterboarding himself in the bathroom with a Neti Pot. His partner knocks on the door and asks if he'll confess yet.
This is also the only book I've ever read that compelled me to Google the term "rat king." Oh. My. God. FIVE STARS -
When I want to remind myself how to write, I turn to Lorrie Moore.
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I recently read a quote by Stephen King on the art of writing the short story. From memory it went something like this..."short stories are harder to write than a novel. You have to take the direct route, no side streets, no stopping to chat." And he is right.
I am ambivalent about these stories, a few seemed to me to have little or no point to them. Others I enjoyed immensely.
Broadly these stories are about human relationships and idiosyncrasies. How the things we love in a person can, over time, become irritating (as in familiarity breeds contempt); how we can think we are in accord with another person, but are actually at opposite ends of the spectrum; about the things we will do to "fit in" or to try and revive a relationship in it's death throes. Lorrie Moore is not afraid to bring to light our little insecurities and absurdities.
I can't say this is my favourite collection of short stories, but there were a couple that I listened to twice. And I will probably go back and listen to this collection again at some point, and maybe then will adjust my review rating. -
Lorrie Moore has achieved short-story sainthood in books like Self-Help, Like Life and her 1998 masterpiece, Birds Of America. But even her greatest devotees will find her latest collection, her first in over 15 years, woefully uneven.
Moore, with her poet’s eye and playful use of language, has always been able to find a savage, dark humour in pain and heartbreak. And there are glimpses of that in these eight stories, in which people, in the shadow of 9/11, confront divorce, illness and death with wisecracks.
This time around, though, a lot of those laughs seem forced, and too many of her characters – a male poet here, a hipster singer there, a single mom attending her child’s former nanny’s second wedding – sound the same.
Moore still creates images of startling power. In "Wings," an intriguing but rather aimless take on Henry James’s The Wings Of The Dove, a character says a dying spider plant "looks like Bob Marley on chemo."
And in "Paper Losses," Kit, who’s on a pre-booked Caribbean family vacation even though her husband’s announced he’s leaving her, breaks down on a massage table and describes her nose as a little drainpipe for crying. Exquisite. But Moore’s images frequently pile up clumsily, and the puns emerge awkwardly from characters’ mouths.
Two or three stories feel like drafts or exercises. The war on terror forms a backdrop for many, but to no purpose.
Still, there are a few gems. "The Juniper Tree" is a haunting fable about guilt, competition and the death of a friend. "Debarking" finds a Jewish divorcé dating a WASP pediatrician who’s got an unnatural attachment to her own teenage son.
And in "Referential," a modern reworking of Vladimir Nabokov’s classic tale "Signs And Symbols," a disintegrating couple deal with the woman’s mentally unbalanced son.
The writing here is clear and suggestive, the emotional undercurrents deeply felt, suggesting Moore doesn’t always need to fall back on jokes to write memorable fiction.
https://www.nowtoronto.com/books/stor... -
This is a super short book of short stories, that felt more than anything like a hard drive dump. It's like the publisher said "How many have you got?" and Moore said "8 or so, but some of them are pretty old" and the publisher said, "I can work with that, send them over" and thus we have a book.
That's not to say there aren't nuggets of pure Moore brilliance in this book. There are many. She's a great writer and she can hit the nail squarely on the head! How could someone have come so close to death, so unfairly, so painfully and heroically, and how could he still want to strangle them?" on a cocktail party conversation.
This book is categorized as "literary humor" and there are some laugh out loud moments, but I wouldn't call this a humorous book. Nor would I purchase this book for any more than $1.99. It's about 2 hours reading at the most, and while I'm sure the stories were work at the time they were written (an Oliver North reference? Pre-Iraq War, Post 9/11) it just doesn't feel like much effort was put in the overall collection.
"You're supposed to give things up for Lent. Last year we gave up our faith and reason; this year we are giving up our democratic voice, our hope." -
Снова об отношениях, снова все плохо, но язык местами такой хороший, что становится не так страшно. И отличный рассказ про визит к мертвой подруге.
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Mi impresión acerca del libro fue cambiando a medida que transcurría la lectura. Los primeros no me gustaron demasiado en una primera instancia, aunque la relectura me permitió descubrir lo más interesante: cómo por debajo de diálogos o situaciones aparentemente intrascendentes se escondía una historia apenas esbozada. Todo ello a través de una prosa irónica y humorística que tensaba el sentido de los cuentos, donde personajes en el entorno de la cincuentena pugnaban por encontrarles un rumbo a sus vidas. Y lo mejor había quedado para el final, en los cuentos largos, Muda y Alas, donde creo que estamos cerca de la excelencia: al primero es notable. Dejo para el final Referencial, un cuento breve y diferente a los demás, donde el drama expulsa al registro burlón, y redondea una también excelente historia "a lo Carver". Parece que las anteriores colecciones de relatos tuvieron mejor recepción que esta, por lo que pronto habrá que volver a Lorrie Moore.
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3.5 estrellas.
Este es el primer libro de Lorrie Moore que leo y me ha resultado un tanto abrumador. En primer lugar por haberlo leído en inglés. El estilo y el vocabulario de Lorrie Moore tienen su complejidad, y además había algunas referencias a la cultura estadounidense completamente oscuras para mí (ahora al menos sé qué demonios es el Sadie Hawkins Day). Pero lo que principalmente me ha enervado durante esta lectura es haber tenido que estar todo el rato a la altura de una escritora de inteligencia tan chispeante. En cierto modo, me ha recordado un poco a Lionel Shriver, pero si bien imagino que a esta le importa entre poco y nada que le sigas el ritmo, con Lorrie Moore tengo la sensación de que en todo momento desea que seas cómplice de la broma. Su uso constante del humor lo agrava todo: el tener que ser, ahora sí por narices, tan listo como ella, y también la desazón que te producen las historias. Su sentido del humor contiene una buena dosis de mala leche: ¿a quién se le ocurre comparar los tonos de los vestidos de unas damas de honor con los de las pastillas de distintas dosis de clonazepam? En esa búsqueda del desequilibrio, de la inquietud, no es extraño que los protagonistas de estos cuentos sean en su mayoría personas a quienes han «divorciado» en contra de su voluntad. Es decir, gente que pensaba que su matrimonio y la estabilidad proporcionada por este durarían quién sabe si para siempre, pero al menos no tan poco, y ahora viven cada día en la extrañeza de estar con los sentimientos metidos en cajas de mudanza. Divorciados y también padres y madres de adolescentes, otro modo de que alguien que antes te amaba se revele de pronto como un desconocido a quien buena parte del tiempo pareces sobrarle. El relato que más me ha gustado es «Referential», donde se deja de tanto comentario ocurrente y va directa a mostrar la negrura en la vida de una mujer cuyo hijo está internado a causa de una enfermedad mental, y cuya segunda pareja cada vez disimula peor las ganas de largarse y olvidarse de tanto drama. Resulta que ese cuento está basado en otro de Nabokov, «Signs and Symbols», y aunque toma prestadas líneas enteras de este, Lorrie Moore lo hace completamente propio y le da una orientación nueva, y al final no tiene nada que envidiarle al cuento original. Olé por ella ahí.
Y, bueno, me he sentido apabullada, pero también hipnotizada por cómo presenta a los personajes. Las situaciones, los gestos, las elecciones que hace cada uno resultan tan vívidos, que no puede evitar sentirse una un poco voyeur (voyeuse, quiero decir). Creo que ese componente humano es lo que hace de estos relatos algo tan interesante, algo que, si faltara, convertiría toda esa exhibición de inteligencia en algo vano. Y así, se puede cerrar este libro y pensar «Esta gente está un poco de la olla», y sumirnos acto seguido en nuestra vida donde toparemos con reacciones y lances similares. Ojalá poder contárnoslos a nosotros mismos con la misma agudeza con que lo hace Lorrie Moore. -
When I was studying for my MFA in Creative Writing (which is longer ago than I want to remember), Lorrie Moore was the golden goddess whose prose and sensibility almost every fiction grad student wanted to emulate. We prostrated ourselves before her devastating humor, her effortless wordplay, her skewering of every late 20th-century pretension. Once when I met her at a reading, I think I freaked her out by being too adoring. Most writers would have been thrilled, but Moore is not most writers.
A couple of decades on, my impression is that Moore's writing has not grown as much as it could have. Maybe that's because she's devoted a lot of energy to teaching other writers: it's hard to be a really dedicated teacher AND top-of-your-game practitioner. 'Bark,' her new collection of stories, has some of her trademark brilliance but overall feels a little flat, as did her 2009 novel 'A Gate at the Stairs.'
Like all of Moore's work, 'Bark' is situated at the nexus of social satire and existential despair. The characters here are mostly middle aged, and dealing with the dead weight of disappointment. Loved ones have died, romances have fizzled into acrimony, careers have not soared in the imagined way. Death is constantly waiting in the wings. As the narrator in the final story, 'Thank You for Having Me,' remarks (while attending a wedding, no less), "I had seen a soccer mom become a rhododendron with a plaque, next to the soccer field parking lot, as if it had been all those matches that had killed her. I had seen a brilliant young student become a creative writing contest...I had seen a public defender become a justice fund."
At its best, 'Bark' is vintage Moore. One can pull any number of individual lines that sparkle--as, for example, this exchange between middle-aged Ira and his eight-year-old daughter Bekka on the subject of her mother's new boyfriend moving in, in the opening story, 'Debarking':
"Bekka shrugged and chewed. 'Whatever,' she said, her new word for 'You're welcome,' 'Hello,' 'Goodbye,' and 'I'm only eight.' 'I really just don't want all his stuff there. Already his car blocks our car in the driveway.'
'Bummer,' said Ira, his new word for 'I must remain as neutral as possible,' and 'Your mother's a whore.'"
My favorite story here is 'Wings,' based on Henry James' 'Wings of the Dove,' in which a failed female singer named KC befriends a dying man, Milt. Their relationship has a real sweetness, although it's continually threatened by the financial desperation felt by KC and her hapless boyfriend Dench, who suggests that Milt might write KC into his will. The ambiguity here — that KC can genuinely care for Milt while also considering Dench's suggestion — is something Moore handles perfectly. And there are some weirdly great lines, like, "God is off in some cybercafe, so tired from all those biblical escapades that now he just wants to sit back and Google himself all day."
Other stories, like 'Referential' and 'Subject to Search' are so short that they feel like sketches for a story rather than the real thing. And even 'Wings' falls short at the end, tacking on a coda that feels unsatisfying. While I don't agree with everything Michiko Kakutani said in her snarky review (she didn't like 'Wings,' for example), I'd have to agree with her that "There are some deeply affecting moments here — mostly involving children — but they remain just that: moments, islands in stories that, for the most part, are heavy-handed and forced." Sorry, Lorrie. -
gece ilk öyküyü -40 küsur sayfa- 1 saatten uzun bir sürede okudum. çünkü çevirisi çok rahatsız ediciydi. sonra yattım. dedim ki "ikinci öyküye şans versem mi?"
ve verdim. ama maalesef aynı kötü çeviri ve sıfır editoryal çalışma. bunu nereden anlıyoruz, iki kere tekrar edilmiş sözcüklerden mesela, çevirmen bir kez çevirip yollamış yayınevine, kimse de bakmamış.
yazarın özel bir yabancılaştırma efekti yoksa -ki araştırmalarımda öyle bir şeyden bahseden yok- hakikaten zor okunan, zor anlaşılan, anlatım bozukluğuyla dolu bir çeviri.
ayda 20 kitap çıkarınca böyle olması normal tabii. ama arada iyi yazarlar kaynıyor. ona üzülüyor insan. -
The cover of the issue in which the book's title story, "Debarking," first appeared:
A while ago I read a review of Lorrie Moore's Bark that intrigued me: There was something about her short stories being populated with extraterrestrials. I must have thought there would be a touch of sci-fi. Maybe there is, but not in the sense that I was thinking. Some of the characters are almost reptilian, with other characters caught in their clutches. The word "extraterrestrial" actually is used twice. Well, only once, in reference to the dialogue between a parent--a divorced parent--and her single teenaged offspring. The other time, it was "space alien," and that was how a woman saw her soon-to-leave-her husband, only she didn't know that yet. I was thinking it's a good thing I was listening on audio. I was thinking this is what's wrong with short stories. They're about weird--make that bad--things that are observed, that just are: the ones that leave me feeling empty, wondering why did I read that?
That's not fair, though; it wasn't that bad! There was kindness (people who let you depend on them?), or either there wasn't, just a fact: nothing to be done about it.
Two of the stories are around 50 pages long, apparently not too long to call short stories, though, in all the reviews. For the most part they were the best. One of them was just awful, though--the subject matter, I mean; not the quality. A woman folk singer/band member who's approaching middle age and in a bad relationship befriends an elderly man, or at least they befriend each other. The relationship is "I --it," not "I -- Thou," rotten at bottom, but it's the old man who loses sight of that at the end, and she's the one who springs the trap. That one leaves me feeling slightly sick.
Many of the professional reviewers describe the author's work as both dark and comic. I wasn't seeing the latter. The stories are beautifully read by the author, and I was hearing the unfunny and painfully absurd. But within a minute of picking up the book itself and reading the next-to-last one, a funny line struck me. The protagonist is at a Paris restaurant, ordering in French and not quite sure of her pronunciation and usage:When lamb was a food, was it a different word, the way pork and pig were? Perhaps she had ordered a living, breathing creature mewling in broth and fleece. (p. 162, "Subject to Search")
The last story, "Thank You for Having Me," was both the funniest and the best--about the absurd but not necessarily tragic.
The observations were mostly acute. You say, Yes, that's the way it is, but the insight doesn't help.
For those in the know, Lorrie Moore is said to be Nabokovian, an observation that goes over my head since only read the one and that was an era or two ago.
I am not sorry I finally read Bark. The stories are gems, but they are dark gems, like ice crystals. I'm not sure about letting them lodge in my heart. -
Muy buena colección de relatos cortos.
Moore es dueña de un crudo sentido del humor que me hizo reír en voz alta más de una vez, a pesar del trasfondo sombrío de sus cuentos, en general protagonizados por personajes solitarios y profundamente heridos.
El abandono en todas sus formas es uno de los temas recurrentes en la mayoría de las historias que componen este volumen, aunque la autora también alude a la culpa, la resignación y la desesperanza. A pesar de la seriedad de estos tópicos, y contrario a lo que se podría imaginar, el libro resulta asombrosamente fácil de leer ya que Moore demuestra un excelente timing para introducir observaciones inteligentes y cómicas a la vez.
Sin dudas se trata de una autora que volveré a leer. -
Total inspiration! I barely could get through this short collection of amazing short stories because I kept putting down the book and picking up a pen to write! What a dummy I was—I read these stories when I went to bed, and I ended up pulling several all-nighters. I’m too old for this! But I’m a pathetic amateur; I would kill to be able to write like her.
She makes me listen hard and play hard. Every sentence is unique and precise, lovely and wild. And the way she plays with words; she’s an acrobat! Her stories are bizarre and off-kilter, yet they’re strangely familiar. She respects her characters and treats them tenderly. Oh, and there’s a lot of humor—how could I forget that?
I know I’m being too abstract and using way too many adjectives but I can’t help myself. I’m in awe and can’t come up with enough right words to explain what it is Moore does that makes her writing so magnificent.
Reading this was like some fantastic LSD trip: you see things in a buzzy, crazy light, and strange things are said and strange things happen. And yet, when you finish the trip, you realize these are real people, people who are vulnerable and disappointed. People who are sad and lonely, people who mourn losses they don’t expect and who mourn the youth they so sadly know they are losing.
Being the ever-picky editor, though, I did find two faults, minor indeed but bothersome nonetheless: Moore used the “frog gradually dying in lukewarm water” bit in two stories. And she referred to the Amish in three stories. An editor should have caught these repeats—when you find ideas or words appearing in multiple stories, the magic goes away—but just for a minute or so. It just proves that Moore isn’t perfect, though she’s close to it.
A couple of favorite quotes:
“The bridesmaids were in pastels: one the light peach of baby aspirin; one the seafoam green of low-dose clonazepam; the other the pale daffodil of the next lowest dose of clonazepam.”
And:
“He had never been involved with the mentally ill before, but he now felt more than ever that there should be strong international laws against them being too good-looking.”
Okay, enough gushing; I’ve joined her fan club and now have to go back and read her other stories, starting with her last collection, “Birds of America,” which was written 15 years ago. I hope we don’t have to wait another 15 years, because I probably won’t be here, or I’ll be too senile, to read it. Now that’s a depressing thought. Hurry up Lorrie Moore! I need you!
Highly recommended, though you might want to savor these stories during the day so you don’t have to pull any all-nighters. -
There’s a reason Lorrie Moore is so beloved by her baby boomer brethren: she’s smart, she’s funny, her eye is even sharper than her tongue. In Bark, her latest collection of stories, all those qualities are well on display. “He had never been involved with the mentally ill before,” she writes of her mid-life anti-hero in the (sort-of) title story, "Debarking." "[B]ut he now felt more than ever that there should be strong international laws against them being too good looking.” Acerbic? Check. Knowing? Check. Says out loud on the page what we less talented, less observant mere mortals wish we could form so well in thought? Check. Check. Check. The only reason not to read these seven stories is that, perhaps, they’re just too accurate and perceptive about the way we live now--but then, why would you ever want to read stories that were anything else?
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Cada vez me dan más envidia esas personas que, de pronto, en una conversación, sacan a colación alguna cita de un libro que han leído recientemente… Y la verdad es que esta envidia no viene propulsada por el hecho de que a mi no me ocurra lo mismo, sino por la sutil variante de que a mi ya no me ocurre casi nunca. No sé si será porque acumulo demasiadas lecturas a mis espaldas, si es que ya nada me sorprende, si he puesto el listón muy alto o si resulta que la era del déficit de atención también ha llegado hasta mi y no me sumerjo en lo que leo con la misma profundidad con la que lo hacía antes.
Y si digo todo esto es porque, durante la lectura de “Gracias por la Compañía“, el nuevo libro de relatos de Lorrie Moore (publicado en nuestro país por Seix Barral), no podía parar de volver sobre las mismas líneas una y otra vez, releerlas, saborearlas, repensarlas, aprehenderlas y, al fin y al cabo, dejarme llevar por la prosa de una autora que parece mimar cada oración como si fuera un hijo con necesidades especiales. Será por eso por lo que el formato de relato corto es el ideal para Moore: puede que, en novela, perdiera esa capacidad que tiene la literatura de Lorrie de ser una especie de puñetazo en la boca del estómago. Algo rápido, conciso, certero… y doloroso.
Al fin y al cabo, los relatos de Moore siempre están teñidos de dolor. Pero no del dolor exhibicionista de otros autores: el suyo es el dolor silencioso, casi sordo, de la vida contemporánea. Las historia de “Gracias por la Compañía” están repleta de seres que sufren básicamente por y para un mundo moderno en el que las relaciones entre personas (hombres y mujeres, madres e hijas) son posibles, están al alcance de la mano, pero al final nunca ocurren. No de la forma dulcemente óptima con la que nos han aleccionado gran parte de ficciones de los últimos siglos a partir de aquella invención trovadoresca de la palabra “amor”.
Los personajes de Lorrie Moore, por el contrario, son divorciados incapaces de quitarse el anillo de casados, amargadas que se creían eternamente ligadas a la infelicidad de su matrimonio hasta que su marido las deja por otra y entonces el resentimiento se dispara más todavía, buscavidas que se aprovechan de la soledad de los extraños… Son gente que viven en un líquido amniótico estático en el que la felicidad, como la dulzura, aparece a modo de luces en la lejanía, borrosas. Señales en la niebla. Son escasos los relatos como el de la madre y la hija en una boda o el de la pareja de ancianos en una cena institucional, en los que las relaciones tradicionales operan dentro de una normalidad mínima (aunque nunca plenamente funcional).
Y, de hecho, si hay un relato en “Gracias por la Compañía” que funcione como síntesis de lo que significa Lorrie Moore, ese es precisamente “Sujeto a Registro“, donde dos espías se encuentran fugazmente para revivir un amor que no pudo ser… pero que tampoco podrá ser nunca, cambien las circunstancias que cambien. En este caso, hay un leit motif casi de thriller que actúa de impedimento, de “ruido” en el mensaje entre las dos partes de una relación. Es fácil entender este caso por sus características concretas, pero es que, al fin y al cabo, si quitas la coartada de thriller, encontrarás que el resto de relaciones retratadas por la autora funcionan exactamente igual. Solo que encuadradas en un marco mucho más realista.
La voz de Moore es fascinante: suele arrancar in media res y, en ocasiones, el lector necesita bastantes páginas para obtener un panorama real de lo que está ocurriendo (eso si al final llega a obtener tal panorama). Y ahí está la génesis de la fascinación que provocan los relatos de “Gracias por la Compañía“: en que no te dan nada mascado, en que no son narrativos sino mentales y emocionales. La pureza de la pluma de Lorrie Moore es salvaje pero sosegada: sus pinceladas son milimétricas y puede que no te dé todos los detalles que querrías, pero sí que te ofrece todos los detalles que necesitas. Literatura de la depuración. ¿No sabías que las bebidas alcohólicas, cuanto más puras, antes llegan a la sangre y te desbaratan el resto de sistemas del cuerpo? -
From what I’ve heard from other critics (e.g. Philip Hensher’s somewhat harsh
Guardian review), this really wasn’t the best place for me to be introduced to Moore’s short stories. My only prior experience with Moore’s writing was one story in an anthology about libraries (In the Stacks) and the decent novel A Gate at the Stairs – probably her least representative book.
I enjoyed the collection well enough, but some of the stories did feel rather thin, and also a bit dated – predicting Obama’s election, or reflecting on the start of the Iraq War, for instance: “Last year we gave up our faith and reason; this year we are giving up our democratic voice, our hope” (from “Debarking”). Still, I enjoyed some of Moore’s snappy, evocative turns of phrase, such as “eyes a clear, reddish hazel, like orange pekoe tea,” “the bridesmaids were in pastels: one the light peach of baby aspirin; one the seafoam green of low-dose clonazepam,” “a dried-out spider plant...like Bob Marley on chemo,” or “Why are these things called napkins rather than lapkins?” I’m struggling even now to remember each story’s plot, however, which suggests to me that they won’t have much lasting significance.
By far my favorite of the eight stories was “Wings,” even if, as Hensher hedges, it’s a tired theme: washed-up rock chick meets sweet old man and forms an unexpected friendship. I like KC as a main character, though, and the gentle tone of regret and the inevitability of aging (“She’d been given something perfect — youth! — and done imperfect things with it”) resonated with me. (I also love that the old fella starts his own Little Free Library.) Moore writes great banter-filled dialogue, especially the dinner party political debate in “Foes.”
I will certainly seek out more short stories by Lorrie Moore; you always hear about her in the same breath as Alice Munro or Anne Tyler — two more masters of wry, suburban observation. Even if this wasn’t the best collection for me to start with, I can see Moore has a keen eye for the absurdities and wonders of everyday life, and a striking way with words.
I was delighted to win a copy through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway. -
I really did not like this story collection, but I had to go with 2 stars based on the quality of the writing, which is often brilliant. Once again, I have finished reading Lorrie Moore and wondered why her work does not appeal to me at all. Instead of feeling engaged and satisfied and moved, I feel like I've just gotten off a roller coaster. I went for a crazy ride, zig-zagged and looped, but in the end I got nowhere and have a slight headache.
"Living did not mean one joy piled upon another. It was merely the hope for less pain, hope played like a playing card upon another hope, a wish for kindnesses and mercies to emerge like kings and queens in an unexpected change if the game." (Referential)
I am never one to shy away from reading about the darker sides of life, but this collection of characters was just miserable. I think she's exploring relationships, but truly, there was no hope in any of these stories. All of the protagonists were bitter and/or angry.
"Rage had its medicinal purposes, but she was not wired to sustain it, and when it tumbled away, loneliness engulfed her, grief burning at the center in a cold blue heat." (Paper Losses)
Only two of the eight stories really came to any life for me, the above-mentioned Paper Losses, told by a woman on the brink of divorce and Wings, my "favorite" twisted tale of an intertwined woman and elderly man. Even those left me unsatisfied, but at least interested while I was reading.
I know Moore has passionate fans, some of whom are my good friends, but I saw none of the humor or tenderness or truth they find in her work.
"A woman had to choose her own particular unhappiness carefully. That was the only happiness in life: to choose the best unhappiness. An unwise move, good God, you could squander everything." (Paper Losses)
I cannot recommend this particular unhappiness to anyone. Skip it. -
Stvarno dobre priče i Lori Mur zaista leži ta forma. Ima odličan sarkastični smisao za humor i za detalje. Jedino što su u stvari svi likovi nesrećnici, obični mali nesrećnici, ali mi je bilo teško na duši nakon završene knjige.
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3.5
Nie polecam osobom, które lubią, gdy literatura mówi o czymś konkretnym.
Z grubsza: to impresje o ludziach i życiu. W moim ulubionym klimacie dramat/komedia. I choć chwilami byłam skonsternowana i nie do końca pewna, czy wiem, o co właściwie chodzi, to ogólnie odniosłam dobre wrażenie, a przynajmniej raz zostałam poruszona. Nie powaliło mnie to wszystko na kolana, ale z ciekawością sięgnę po inne opowiadania Moore, za które jest ponoć bardzo ceniona. -
First I'll just voice my irritation upon leaving the bookstore and learning I'd just shelled out $30 for a sub-200-page book. That's okay, though, it's got a nice Carol Devine Carson jacket and it's a new Lorrie Moore collection, so it's definitely worth the money. Until, of course, I discovered that the first four (of a total eight) stories had already been published in her Collected Stories collection, which I already own and have read. So in essence I've just paid $30 for half of a 200-page book. Yeah, we've waited fifteen years for this, as everyone has been chirping—and so shouldn't we get more than four new stories? Sure, sure, sure, these have all been published previously in magazines, but still. I mean, really.
I remember not having loved those four previously published stories when I read them in her last book, and again I found them good but not fantastic. At her worst, Moore's witticisms read like non-sequiturs that take you out of the narrative; they read like Moore trying to be funny. Whether or not this is actually the case is beside the point—I have to believe that Character X would actually say witticism Y, and considering they sort of all sound just like Moore, that can oftentimes be difficult to fully buy. Anyway, once past the first four previously published stories, things got some kind of wonderful. The first of the second four is considerably longer (as is the first of the first four), and it's a great story with a nice balance of humor and pathos. It's a fairly quick sprint to the end thereafter; the final three stories take up maybe 40 pages, but they get better as they go along (making this whole sad tale worse is the fact that I'd read one of the new-new stories in Harper's recently, so really only three of these stories were new to me). Things take a bonkers turn in the final story when a biker gang shows up at a wedding, but Moore pulls it off in classic Moore fashion.
While I think she's considered by a lot of people to be "a funny writer," Moore can also be super dark, and I find these darker stories most successful—the ones that balance the quirky witty humor with some real human suffering. This comes to a head in "Referential," possibly my favorite story here. Echoes of Canonical Babbling, a little bit. Overall, a nice collection to have and have read, with some good stories and some great ones, but you can't not be disappointed by a 15-years-in-the-waiting collection that offers only four unpublished stories. -
3.8. Este el segundo libro que leo de Lorrie Moore, a quien conocí por ser un referente constante de Leila Guerriero. En este libro de relatos uno encuentra reflexiones honestas de situaciones cotidianas, esbozadas con ironía y humor de alto nivel.
La última historia, Gracias por la compañía, que es justamente el título del libro, es maravillosa. En ella hay frases como: “...para eso se había inventado la fe: para criar a los adolescentes sin morir. Aunque por supuesto también era la razón por la que se había inventado la muerte: para escapar a los adolescentes por completo”.
Me gusta su agudeza, seguiré explorándola. -
A wonderful grouping of eight short stories, the first by this author in many years. I liked all of them, I really do not have a favorite, don't think that has happened before. They are all such a mixture of social and political commentary, many with laugh out loud moments and others with pithy witticisms. She does a masterful job exposing the flaws in her characters and doing it in such a way that they find acceptance, oddities and all.The strange becomes the reality or the norm.
Brilliant collection.
Arc from publisher. -
Married for two decades of precious, precious life, she and Rafe seemed currently to be partners only in anger and dislike, their old lusty love mutated to rage. It was both the shame and the demise of them that hate like love could not live on air. And so in this, their newly successful project together, they were complicitous and synergistic. They were nurturing, homeopathic, and enabling. They spawned and raised their hate together, cardiovascularly, spiritually, organically. In tandem, as a system, as a dance team of bad feeling, they had shoved their hate center stage and shown a spotlight down for it to seize. Paper Losses
I'm the type of reader who likes to find a book's title within its pages and plumb it for deeper meaning. Lorrie Moore's
Bark begins with excerpts from three poems: one that mentions a tree's bark, two about dogs. And although there is no story within this collection with the title “Bark”, the word itself is used repeatedly: about dogs and trees; as a criticism about the way a person talks or laughs; to describe the protective cover of the brain; in the expression “sparky bark” as a nickname for weed. I suppose whether it's on a tree or brain, or issuing from a dog's muzzle, all barks are used protectively; and if there's one unifying idea the variety of characters in these stories are in need of, it's protection: from the harming world and from each other. I don't think there's one happy marriage in this collection (the narrator in Foes seems satisfied, but there are hints that his wife is less so), and while divorced parents are definitely bonded with their children, these relationships aren't necessarily healthy or enough. Moore constantly skirts the edge between tragedy and comedy – the laughs are darkly so – but while there was much that I admired in this collection, it didn't exactly wow me. Some highlights, nevertheless:
Debarking sees the narrator, Ira, starting to date again after his wife of fifteen years left him for another man. He muses:
It had been so long, the whole thing seemed a kind of distant civilization, a planet of the apings! – graying, human flotsam with scorched internal landscapes mimicking the young, picking up where they had left off decades ago, if only they could recall where the hell that was.
After Ira has sex for the first time with a woman not his wife, she asks him, “Did you get off?” and that immediately reminded him of the time he was debarking a plane and stopped on the tarmac to tie his shoe and an airport employee had asked him that exact thing, “Did you get off?” So, “debarking” seems to be reinterpreted literally; as in to remove the protective layer of bark and open yourself up to another. (I fear, but don't actually think, that I'm reading too much into that because of my habit of looking for the embedded title. And can't decide if it's too deliberate.) To return to Paper Losses and a woman who doesn't realise that her husband is about to mail her divorce papers, even as they live together as a married couple:
It had been a year since Rafe had kissed her. She sort of cared and sort of didn't. A woman had to choose her own particular unhappiness carefully. That was the only happiness in life: to choose the best unhappiness. An unwise move, good God, you could squander everything.
The Juniper Tree – replete with a variety of transplanted trees that fail to thrive in an unsuitable zone – is a mournful story involving the twilight years of those Baby Boomer women who have rejected traditional gender roles:
Every woman I knew here drank – daily. In rejecting the lives of our mothers, we found ourselves looking for stray volts of mother love in the very places they could never be found: gin, men, the college, our own mothers, and one another.
So, again, is that tree imagery too deliberate for the subject matter? Wings – a definite highlight until its corny ending – shows a middle-aged woman stuck (creatively, financially, romantically) with a man she can't quite unstick herself from:
She loved Dench. She was helpless before the whole emotional project of him. But it didn't preclude hating him and everything around him, which included herself, the sound of her own voice – and the sound of his, which was worse. The portraits of hell never ceased and sometimes were done up in raucous, gilded frames to console. Romantic hope: From where did women get it? Certainly not from men, who were walking caveat emptors. No, women got it from other women, because in the end women would rather be rid of one another than have to endure themselves on a daily basis. So they urged each other into relationships. “He loves you! You can see it in his eyes!” they lied.
And I also really liked the last story, Thank You for Having Me; about a woman raising a daughter alone after her husband left (so many husbands/fathers leave in these stories; whether dying young or climbing out a restaurant's bathroom window):
Aloneness was like riding a bike. At gunpoint. With the gun in your own hand. Aloneness was the air in your tires, the wind in your hair. You didn't have to go looking for it with open arms. With open arms, you fell off the bike: I was drinking my wine too quickly.
I understand that this collection came fifteen years after Moore's previously lauded
Birds of America, so while Bark was released in 2014, I can sort of appreciate why so many of the stories here felt slightly anachronistic; rooted in the early 2000s. Not only is Ira worried about embarking on a new relationship at the dawn of the second Iraq War (which he compulsively follows on TV), but there is mention made of Ollie North losing his senate bid, an evil conservative at a fundraiser sneers about Obama's missing birth certificate and links to old hippy terrorists before the 2008 presidential election, and a CIA spook needs to leave a Parisian love nest in order to return to America and do damage control just as the Abu Ghraib scandal is hitting CNN. I can't decide whether these references make the collection feel already dated (in the today of 2017) or if it will stand as the perfect encapsulation of the times.
I picked up this collection because I had recently been delighted by Moore's short story How to Be an Other Woman, but unfortunately, nothing in Bark approaches that story's heft or humour. Other reviewers have noted that this collection doesn't seem to be up to Moore's usual standard, so I won't feel bad awarding it a middle-of-the-road three stars. -
Nagy kár, hogy nincs respektje a magyar piacon a külföldi novellistáknak – minimum Nobelt kell nyerniük, ha ötnél több olvasóhoz akarnak eljutni –, pedig vannak ám köztük drágakövek. Itt ez a Lorrie Moore-kötet például, ami az írónő művészetébe vezet be minket nyolc elbeszélésen keresztül – és bátran állíthatom, eme írások kétharmada (az 5,333 novella, ha jól számolom) igen közel áll a tökéleteshez: gyöngyházfényű mandzsettagombok ők a kispróza esküvői szmokingján. Moore jó amerikaiként elsősorban az emberi kapcsolatokra (és azokon belül is a párkapcsolatokra) fókuszál, kicsit franzenesen: három lépés távolságból, de éles szemmel; ironikusan, de helyenként robbanásszerű együttérzésrohamokat váltva ki az olvasóból. Moore-nak ezen felül még elképesztően jóízű humora is van, ami az első elbeszélést konkrétan woodyalleni szférákba emeli, valamint szemmel láthatóan vonzódik a váratlan és/vagy morbid fordulatokhoz is, ami hozzásegíti, hogy elkerülje a patetikusság csapdáit. Mindemellett még felettébb könnyű tolla is van, aminek köszönhetően szárnyal az ember alatt a szöveg – egy percig nem figyelünk oda, és már ripsz-ropsz, el is repült ötven oldal. Amivel nem árt vigyázni, mert így észre sem vesszük az emberi kapcsolatok szakadékait, amelyek fölött elsuhanunk, és amelyekről (így egy kötet után megkockáztatom) kevés kortárs tud olyan lényeglátón nyilatkozni, mint Moore.
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I received an uncorrected ARC as a First Reads giveaway.
Torn. I think it's more like 3.5 stars, but the writing is so spectacular in places it's well worth the read. Moore is the mistress of black humor. I laughed out loud. I dogeared half the book, and I even think I might need to change a story of mine because she already wrote it. (Good thing I read this book; what if I hadn't?) The issue is that a lot of the stories feel more like vehicles for great lines and sharp observations than like stories. I'm not sure I minded too much. The characterizations are vivid, and so are the descriptions. You feel as though you are right in each piece. Her endings are better than most short-story writers' these days, though I still felt that some of the stories petered out a bit.
A few of the stories really popped. There's one about a couple having a quick lunch in London, before he has to depart for the States. Turns out he's CIA or something of that ilk and has to go mop up after the Abu Ghraib disaster--what sort of mopping isn't clear, but either he has to salvage his career, for it sounds as though he had been partly responsible for what happened in that prison, or at least to do PR crisis management. The story stands out because it's about real issues and real-enough-seeming people intersecting with them in a way that most of us wouldn't have access to. There's a joke about happy endings at the end, but of course there can't be any in story like this... a PR crisis that threatens to be like My Lai, not to mention what actually happened to the prisoners in Abu Ghraib, or to the troops, who "are kids. They don't know what they're doing. They're sheep."
He claims he told the troops never to do any of the things they did in Abu Ghraib, but "She thought she could see what he was telling her. *Don't* code for *do.* It was what doctors sometimes did for the terminally ill who wanted to die: *whatever you do, don't take this entire prescription all at once with water.*"
Anyhow, there's a lot going on in this piece about understanding different languages and cultures, missed cues, middle-aged regrets, choices you can't undo, and things started that will never come to fruition. "'If you're suicidal,' he said slowly, 'and you *don't actually kill yourself,* you become known as wry.'"
Which is what this book is. Wry. "By June the chemical weapons of terrorism might prove effective at weeding the garden. 'This might be the sort of war I could really use!'" one character says. My kind of dark humor, love it.
In another story, in which the main character misses her chance to say goodbye to a dying friend and then has a sort of paranormal experience about it, one man has dated several of the characters. "'Her garage was a pigsty!'" the man says of the deceased. "Now I was coming to realize that a lot of people baffled this guy, and that I would be next to become incomprehensible and unattractive. That was how dating among straight middle-aged women seemed to go in this college town: one available man every year or so, just to make the rounds of us all." Later, during a visit to the dead woman's house, the narrator describes the house's whacky front yard. "Why would a man focus on a garage when there was this crazed landscaping with which to judge her?"
In one brutal story about a divorce between a couple who had met in the peace movement, making no-nukes signs but who now want to kill each other, have "become, also, a little pro-nuke," the wife wonders at her husband's changed behavior. "It was like being snowbound with someone's demented uncle. Should marriage be like that? She wasn't sure." And... "Of course later she would understand that all this meant he was involved with another woman, but at the time... she was working with two hypotheses only: brain tumor or space alien."
The stories that worked best for me came toward the end, "Referential," in which a woman with a mentally ill son realizes that the long-time boyfriend she acquired when her son was well is not going to be there for her, or the son. "Subject to Search," mentioned first above, and "Thank You for Having Me," which just had so many true, funny gotchas in it that there's no way not to like the story.
I wasn't that sure about the title. Based on the epigraphs, I assume it's a play on both dogs and tree coverings. Okay, so dogs: loyalties and betrayals. We betray every pet we have, I suppose. There are a few dogs. Perhaps there's one in every story, but if so I didn't notice. So trees: this makes a lot more sense because all of these characters are muffled and wrapped up with extra skin. It makes them tough, and perhaps resilient, but clearly they miss a lot, at least for long periods of times in their lives. The friend dies in the hospital while you are telling yourself you can always visit her the next day.
I was glad I read this. As you'll see, most of what I quoted was the funny stuff. There are more profound lines and sections, but somehow they don't pop as much. I suppose that's the issue with snark. It bites out the rest of the story sometimes. -
keywords: the attractive ones are always crazy; more truth than they bargained for; the real, true history of the McDonald's House hostess; Hell's Angels at the wedding; you can visit me after I'm dead
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I can't decide what I think of this. I may give it another star tomorrow, in a year, a decade. I loved the structure and the unexpected, unresolved endings to so many of these. Other times, though, I felt like the characters were quite thin, or that whole interactions were merely set-ups for a particular joke. Moore suffers from having an army of copycats, so that her unique voice sounds weirdly stale at times; it's too often imitated, which of course is not her fault. There is a bitterness to this collection that I found off-putting and also marvelous, in equal parts. It confused me, this one. Maybe that's a good thing? Ah, Lorrie Moore, what should I do?
Also: This book was slightly wider than a traditional hardcover and it really bothered me! Take note, Knopf, take note. -
Lorrie Moore has such a knack with the short story. She nails the situation in the first sentence, and goes from there. Some of the stories seem too abrupt in closure, but reveals another side of today's world from the norm. Characters are painted in broad strokes, jump off the page early and keep going. There are moments that cause a bark of laughter (for me, that's the reason for the title, even if she didn't intend it to be so). As with any collection, some stories stayed with me longer than others, but that's to be expected. I hope I don't have to wait another 15 years.
