Going-short

Certainly there are reflex explanations a dominant society uses to dismiss the inexplicably self-destructive or irresponsible behavior of a racial minority, but the truth is always much more complex. Sometimes fiction is the clearest way to explore complex truths.

Coming Home may be firmly set in Australia, but the conflict between cultures and races explored in it is all too common. I enjoyed reading Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart, which I feel is in the same vein as this book, and those who are students of race relations in America will recognize disturbingly familiar echos in the title story.

Conclusion? Finely drawn stories with an on-location feel that seem to depict universal problems with no easy solutions.

You could call it literature or just a damn fine read. I'd call it both.

Of course many will argue these stories are badly dated. And true, America has moved on (generally for the better) since the early 1950s. But it would be unfortunate to overlook these stories for this reason. Baldwin captures the essence of where American society has come from, and we can all learn from history. I also feel it is unfortunate that nearly all the readers of "Going to Meet The Man' will be African-Americans, unlike myself (..who have the most to learn).

Bottom line: terrific tidbits showing Baldwin's brilliance. A worthy read.

Sonny's Blues is a real gem because it shows three ways out of deprevation, out of the mental ghetto that grows in a real ghetto, like Harlem, out of desperation and dereliction.

One can go upward in society, become a teacher, through hard studies, get married, raise a family. In one way, accept the American Dream and forget about the tragedy, or the nightmare. « God Save the American Republic ! »

One can get into music and into a completely different world of imagination, art, harmony, research, rhythm, melody, all that the world does not provide. That is the Blues, Jazz, the fairyland of OZ. Unluckily you have to go there and come back. « God pity us, the terrified republic ! »

And one can get into heroin, the fabulous horse of American history, the mythical horse of the Great Plains, the mystical horse of the Railroads, the heavenlike horse of Indians and Blacks. Forget all that and shoot your veins. « He who sees his veins can see his pains ! »

James Baldwin is a master in the field of transforming human pain into heavenly light by sharing it with our souls. It does not erase the pain. It just makes it luminous, the light of a new way to some hazardous future. « But where danger is, rescue is ready too », as Hölderlin used to say.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I can't help but compare this Waldrop with the one I met in 1988. This one is far more cynical. This one has withdrawn into his own interests completely. This one is much harder to relate to. If anything, he's an even better writer than he was before. (When you do get what he's writing about, it's a knock-out blow!) Perhaps I should say, he's more eccentric?

But, I think I agree with another reviewer here, in that I wondered several times...WHY was this story written? Does it stand alone, if one is unfamiliar with the research? Some of them do, yes! Others maybe do, maybe don't. Still, his senarios remain completely convincing, and one feels compelled to see them through. Overall, well worth the read (definitely!), but not as classic as his earlier stuff.

Keystone Kops, vampires, werewolves, mummies, and Oswald Spengler! ("Flatfeet!")

Three masked Mexican wrestling heroes must save the world from El CARNE Xipe, El MUNDO Grosero, and El DIABLO Peligroso in a "FREE-FOR-ALL WRESTLING/STYLO TEJAS DEATH-MATCH/ con Barbed Wire!" match! ("El Castillo de la Perseverancia")

Charles Dickens reads his classic story, "The Christmas Garland," featuring Eben Mizer, Giant Timmy, and the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Current, & Yet to Come! ("Household Words; Or, The Powers-That-Be")

The Bremen Town Musicians, Damon Runyon, and the ever-popular art of the musical saw! "Zex! Bleaso! Shut your goozle or you'll have to do a minute! ("The Sawing Boys")

Thomas Wolfe listens to Fats Waller in the passenger lounge of the dirigible, TICONDEROGA, on his way home from the Tokyo Olympics of 1940! ("You Could Go Home Again")

All of these stories and more appear in this outstanding collection by one of my favorite writers. Dubbed "the resident Weird Mind of his generation" by THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD, this book got the following review from LIBRARY JOURNAL: "Clever, humorous, idiosyncratic, oddball, personal, wild, and crazy...Recommended."

"Wowee!" said Fats. "Talk about a rumpus! My old heart can't take much of that."

In any case, the writing made my jaw drop in spots, it was so good, and Green way of looking at things is funny and humane while being mercilessly clear-eyed. The only reason I think they've stopped teaching his books in colleges is because they don't have the sort of things one can write papers about: complicated networks of imagery and whatnot that can be dug out of the text and have a title slapped on them. Green's book are too alive to have anything particularly systematic going on in them, while retaining the structure and unity of true works of art. Amazing books, go out and read them.

But somehow you never want to miss a word. These are books that you can read again and again and again without getting bored. I have no idea how Green does it. He's an absolute magician. Read Party Going and Loving, at the very least.

Regarding the famous title story "Where Are You Going", my husband suggested that it is a dream sequence about a young girl's decision to lose her virginity, rather than an actual occurrence. This makes it a little less tense ~ but only a little.

Every story is very well-written and captivating, though not exactly pleasant. These subjects are hard to look in the eye.

I first became interested in Oates after reading "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been", the short story, for a college English course. After reading the story, I was instantly hooked. It is EXCELLENT, and so worthy of being read you could buy the book for that reason alone. I went on to write a fairly large essay on it simply because I enjoyed it so much, and I felt the need to analyze it so that I could better understand what is behind the story. If I had not done so, I probably would be in the "I just didn't GET it" category like some of the other more casual readers.

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is, on the surface, a short story about a 15-year old girl named Connie. Connie is vain and self-involved, full of the sense of superiority that comes from being young and thinking you know everything. She has a strained relationship with her family. Connie believes her mother is jealous of her because the mother's looks have faded with age and children, while Connie is still young and beautiful. Connie's sister June is (in Connie's eyes) "chunky" and "plain". Connie enjoys looking down on other people, especially socially inept or unattractive boys.

One day her family is safely away at a barbecue, and a boy Connie has only once seen before while at a drive-through restaurant pulls up at her house accompanied by a male friend. Typically, Connie is at first only conscious of her appearance--does she look nice enough to greet the semi-stranger? She is unaware of any danger at having a strange man/boy show up at her house while she is home alone. The guy--who introduces himself as "Arnold Friend"--invites Connie to go for a ride in his car. Connie first thinks Arnold is around her own age, but as she stares at him longer and longer suspects something strange is going on: "She could see then that he wasn't a kid, he was much older--thirty, maybe more". And indeed, something strange IS going on.

I don't want to give away the rest of the story. I think I'd rather leave you wondering what happens to Connie and if her parents show up in time to make Arnold high-tail it out of there. In fact, the story has a rather open-ended conclusion, but that makes it all the more tantalizing.

Like most of the stories in the novel, when you first read the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" you are probably not going to immediately understand it. There are those who have said they despise Oates, but those are the people who won't like her writing because they don't WORK at it. Yes, you may have to WORK if you want to understand her stories. The best suggestion I can offer you is--READ EACH STORY THROUGH AT LEAST TWICE if you don't understand it the first time around! Don't get frustrated. Be willing to invest a little extra time in this book; you will be rewarded for your patience. I honestly believe it will be worth your while. You may find my suggestion boring and tedious. It's easy to simply give up on a story when you don't understand it right away. I urge you--don't make that mistake with this book.

Joyce Carol Oates is widely read for a REASON! The novel contains stories which received O. Henry Awards, in addition to other stories which were previously printed in such places as The American Literary Anthology and The Best American Short Stories. Again, Oates's work may not be the most easily comprehensible. But this is a very good collection of her works, and it will give you a great idea of her writing style. I hope you are as taken with it as I am.

We're confronted with a young girl named Connie who just wants her own space, a girl who's tired of being told that she just doesn't measure up to her mother's high standard like her sister Jill; a girl who wants some romance--some love (or lust) in her life; an innocent naive girl who wants the freedom to meet and know boys but who is too young to understand that there are "good boys" and then there are "bad boys."

Connie goes out at night with her friend and meets a guy. They seem to have a good time together, but it's just one of those things where you have a good time and you wake up the next morning having forgotten much of what happened the night before. Life just goes on. At least that's the case with Connie. But she soon learns that that's not quite the case with the boy she met, named Arnold Friend. When her parents leave for a barbecue, she's left home all alone. She couldn't be happier. Finally she has her space, she has nobody talking down to her or criticizing her, she finally feels that spirit of freeom she so craves, which involves the lack of parental supervision and control. But in a very scary way she soon comes to know that this parental security is actually an important safety net, one that every adolescent needs. She comes to realize that independence has a price, and when a naive innocent unsuspecting teenager carelessly invites too much independence, it may turn out to be a dangerous thing.

As I say, Connie is alone in the house and the whole family is away--moreover, they're not expected to come back for a long while. Suddenly, Arnold Friend pulls up in front of her house with his shy music-listening friend. He calls for Connie to come out for a drive. Connie is quite started. She had not been expecting him. She seemingly can't even remember who he is. Arnold seems to know a lot about her, which naturally makes her uneasy given her ignorance of him. He keeps telling her to go for a ride in the car with him, but she refuses. After all, he's pretty much a stranger to her and he's actually quite a bit older than her, although he plays down his real age. The verbal exchange continues, and her anxiety and fear only grow as he peppers his insistent request with threats on her family and even her own life when it comes to telling her he can burn the house down over her head. She locks the door, but it's only a flimsy little screen door; she threatens to call the cops, but he threatens to break into the house if she does. The tension grows with every word, every gesture. Finally Connie loses it and there's no safety net to catch her. She's at the mercy of this obsessed psycho who only the night before came across as such a nice sweet studly type. She makes a feeble attempt to call the police, but it's no good. She's completely under his manipulative sway. She decides to face the consequences of her recklessness and leaves with Arnold rather than to test his threats. Fortunately nothing happens to her, and as a result, she learns the valuable lesson of being careful who you trust in life and what friends or male friends you make, and one is also convinced that by the end of the story, within her is born a new awareness of the meaning and value of family.

David Rehak
author of "A Young Girl's Crimes"

I really enjoyed all three of these earlier Nora Roberts stories, I read this book in one day. All three stories are well-written and will pull you right in. The characters are charming, sassy and sometimes frustrating - totally human all of them. The romantic tension between the main characters is perfection. Nora Roberts writes about the lives of a concert pianist, a doctor, a bush pilot, a schoolteacher, a documentary producer and a Hollywood agent as if she has worn all of these hats herself, the stories flow well.

I really cannot say a bad thing about this collection of stories. Find a sunny porch or patio, a comfy chair and lose yourself in this wonderful book.