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Members will remember my original promise to start the Short Story Fan Club with O. Henry, followed by Alice Munro and then Hemingway. At the May meeting where we voted to start the club, new member Angie quietly suggested we might consider the Roald Dahl collection called Kiss Kiss. In the future said I, silently resolving to check out this unknown author.

I tracked it down and ordered it. First published in 1953, a paperback was reprinted in 1973 and again in 2003. (I bought it from my favorite book website called half.com. It is also available at another great website called bookfinder.com)

Wow, it turned out to be maybe the best short story collection I have ever read, and if you looked at my library, that is a mouthful. This will be our August selection, mainly because my main agenda is to see how many readers I can seduce into this literary genre. If Kiss Kiss does not make you a short story fan, nothing else will. Here is what Angela has to say about the book:

We all know him for his imaginative tales for kids like Charlie and the Choclate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, but Roald Dahl has also written riveting tales for adult readers. If you like well-crafted, easily digestable short stories with truly memorable twists and surprise endings, Dahl's Kiss Kiss collection is unforgettable reading.

Enough members expressed interest at our May meeting to begin our Short Story Club, which will meet the second week every month. Our first meeting will be THURSDAY July 12 at Borders. Borders management informed me after the May meeting that Wednesdays are precluded. Only Angie was still there so we picked Thursday for July, but we will pick a permanent day and place at the July meeting.

We will read a collection of stories from O. Henry for the opening. The paperback, 41 Stories by O. Henry is a representative collection of stories written by the man who popularized and defined the genre in the opening decade of the twentieth century. It?s readily available on line for five-six bucks.

William Sydney Porter was born in North Carolina in 1862. He moved to Texas at age twenty where he worked at a variety of odd jobs, including ranch hand, draftsman, pharmacist, and bookkeeper. He skipped the country after being charged with embezzling bank funds and lived for a time in Honduras, but returned as his wife fell desperately ill. She died and he was convicted, serving three years in federal penitentiary. While in prison, he began writing short stories under the pseudonym O. Henry in order to provide support for his daughter.

After his release, he moved to New York in 1902 and soon became the most popular fiction writer of the time, writing more than 350 short stories before his death from alcoholism in 1910 at age 47. He died penniless.

One reason Shakespeare remains popular 400 years after his death is that his characters and plot lines are ageless, reincarnated over and over by fiction writers and dramatists in the language and settings of each generation. In a sense, O. Henry was America?s Shakespeare, enriching the American version of the English language and writing plot lines that became icons of American creative fiction. Literary purists howled, and many still do, at his use of slang and his frequently outrageous ironic style that twisted purposely misspelled words into new meanings. Critics decried his humor and satire, mocked his sentimentality, and moaned about his penchant for surprise endings, but at the end of the day, the public applauded and his stories have become an essential part of American culture. Sadly, O. Henry is no longer a part of the school curriculum, the excuse given by teachers: Too many big words, which itself says volumes about the state of American education.

I picked the following stories as good examples of several themes. Some are humorous commentary on human nature and some are heartfelt appeals to conscience and morality. All, however, leave the reader ample room to continue the narrative in his own mind, developing conclusions of his own invention and this is the essence of short story writing.

We will discuss these stories in this order:

The Social Triangle
Tobin?s Palm
The Last Leaf
Schools and Schools
Springtime a la Carte
The Gift of the Magi
The Green Door
The Furnished Room
A Retrieved Reformation
The Higher Pragmatism
Conscience in Art
Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet
The Sphinx Apple
The Princess and the Puma
A Chaparral Prince
The Enchanted Kiss
A Double-Dyed Deceiver

Well, our April meeting went off with only a few small glitches, and we are pleased with our new location. As for May:
We picked the May book at the March meeting: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. And why, pray tell, did we choose this collection of short stories?

First, many of us are dismayed at the number of people who sign up for the book club and then never attend a meeting, usually giving lack of time to read the book as the reason. Many of us live busy lives, and although we proclaim our love of reading, the demands of work and family understandably take precedence. One solution is to read short stories instead of novels, a series of twenty-five page bites being realistic where five hundred seems impossible.

An even better reason to read short stories is that this is where one finds the ultimate in literary expression, or as my cranky old literature professor often proclaimed, any damn fool can write four or five hundred thousand words, but only real talent can tell a story with twenty-five thousand. Short story writers use language like a scalpel instead of a machete, crafting sentences that replace paragraphs and paragraphs that replace chapters. Hemingway and Faulkner are remembered more for their short stories than their novels, and many carried enough content to be made into motion pictures. More recently, the Oscar-winning film, Brokeback Mountain, started life as a short story by Annie Proulx.

Our first project is a collection of nine stories so delightful the book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1999. The author, daughter of Indian immigrants, grew up in Rhode Island and the stories all involve insightful vignettes of first- and second-generation Bengalis encountering American culture. She is a dazzling storyteller, and at the end of every story, I was conflicted between reading it again or hurrying on to the next. We will all argue over which one is our favorite, agreeing only that Jhumpa is the sort of writer we want to talk about with our friends, even those who are not readers. She also wrote an equally captivating short novel in 2003, The Namesake, which has been adapted into a motion picture.

At the May meeting, we will discuss the stories sequentially, so start reading at the beginning, thus being able to participate even if you do not finish the book. I will be surprised, however, if everyone does not finish because the stories average 22 pages and the entire book is only198 pages long. If there is sufficient interest we will discuss the idea of a second club just for this genre.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Thank you once again for a wonderful discussion at our February meeting! We had a wonderful time discussing Cold Mountain, and have looked for something a little different for March. For March, we have chosen "Wicked: The Life and Times of Wicked Witch of the West" by Gregory Maguire. The novel is a political, social, and ethical commentary on what good and evil really are. It takes place in The Land of Oz, before Dorothy dropped in. The story centers around Elphaba, the misunderstood green-skinned girl who grows up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.
The book has sold more than a quarter million copies, and currently has been adapted into a hit Broadway musical. It is available on half.com in paperback for a couple of bucks or hardback for eight-nine dollars, plus postage.
We hope to see you at the next meeting!