tumbling lessons

Back to the Collected Stories of Amy Hempel. This is a good book for the kind of reading that, unfortunately, I'm doing lately -- picking up and putting down, stealing minutes here and there. The tiny stories -- it's tempting to say jewel-like, but what a cliche that is -- as potent and substantial and satisfying as what, as condensed milk. Like condensed milk, they can be almost too much sometimes. But they are never sweet and cloying. So maybe condensed milk isn't it. Maybe... they're jewel-like?

The novella, "Tumble Home," reminds me so much of Lynne Tillman's American Genius -- the narrator discusses her experiences in some sort of sanitorium/retreat facility, and like in AG she seems sometimes to be voluntarily there, sometimes not. Here too, the narrator obsesses over the lives of her fellow patients, and spins out into tangents about art and the human body (especially skin) and animals, particularly dogs, and the disappointments and sadnesses of being a pet-owner, specifically the ways in which the narrator(s) have failed various dogs. Isn't that interesting? I read an interview with Joy Williams once where she was asked why there are so many dogs in her stories and novels, and she answered that you could tell so much about a person by the way they interact with dogs. I tend to agree, but then again, I live with a dog.

Anyway,"Tumble Home." I'm fascinated by the mysterious narrator. Reading this reminds me of how I am as a reader. In the midst of novel revisions, I find myself faced with the same old question (I seem to always get this from someone or another about things I've written) -- what makes a character sympathetic; does she have to be likable to be sympathetic; does the reader have to understand her motivations. And reading this I'm reminded that I don't really judge what I'm reading that way -- maybe that makes me a flabby sort of reader. I finish this novella not fully understanding why the narrator has gone to this place and written this letter -- I know it has something to do with the death of her mother, the connection she feels to the painter to whom she writes, her attempts to bridge art and life. But she's more interesting to me, and I'm thinking about the story more, than if she were loveable, or easily understandable.

In a story like this we have to be satisfied with statements like, "What can I say about myself today? That I am the last to close a window when it rains." and, "No one has ever told me that I am good with children," and, "Sometimes I worry that we don't talk about ideas." That seems like more than enough to me... but perhaps I'm in the minority? In fact I think I must be.