Clouds and Eclipses
In general I tend to avoid collected stories from celebrated or beloved authors under the following circumstances: 1) they aren’t really known for short stories; 2) the stories are almost exclusively from when they were very young. Some obvious exceptions occur. Philip Roth’s stories in Goodbye Columbus are all very good, two being some of the best writing he ever did. But Gore Vidal is known primarily for two things: novels and essays. He did some other things too, sometimes very well like write engaging, but not very literary plays. But no, he’s not known for short stories. In fact, he was published so young, and for a novel, that unless he really devoted himself to the craft of short stories, it doesn’t really make much sense to publish or read his collected stories except in a kind of completionist way. What I mean about the first point is that he established himself young as a novelist, and he wasn’t out there scrapping, both because he grew up rich and in a famous family, but also because of the early success. The same goes for Norman Mailer, who didn’t grow up rich, but did hit it big with novels early, and his short fiction is sometimes fine, but never great.
Anyway, this collection is about what you would guess from a collected stories that is 150 pages, and only covers about 5 years of a 60 year writing career. It’s interesting; there’s promise; and none of the stories are very much good.
Brother Bear’s Favorites and Little Bear’s Favorites
Call this one a morbid curiosity.
I haven’t picked up a Berenstain’s Bears book in ages, mostly because I am in my early 40s, but once they were quite precious to me. I was born in 1981, and they captured my attention early. Specifically, the absolute squalor of the kids bears’ room in The Messy Room leading into the organizational system by the end of the book. The art in this scene is so fantastic from half-eaten sandwiches and apple cores and broken games and tennis rackets to specially crafted toy boxes and peg walls. I am not especially neat and tidy, but I loved it. The darkness of the art in Afraid of the Dark, same thing. What I found especially appealing about them was the wide array of topics. What a celebration of people’s foibles, and attempts to be better. All the bears had flaws, and they all sought out being better as part of the process of living. I loved the sense of earned redemption that comes from them. I remember when I was a little older how confusing it was to hear politicians call out The Simpsons for their behavior, when the same basic thing was true about them in the early years. They lived a life; they made mistakes, and when they were asked to atone for their failings, they did and every one grew from the experience.
When I was in elementary school, I had one of my brand new Berenstain Bears books stolen from me. We would often bring our little collections into school and during reading time share them with each other, which was especially great because to some large degree it was not about having more than others, but sharing the resources. If you had one someone else didn’t, send it over and get one in return. I was especially happy with the new one: The Bad Dream, in which Brother goes to a movie he’s not supposed to see — the experience that all of us 80s latch key kids know: the forbidden cinema experience — and the movie scene is illustrated with a full two-page spread of the robots and bad guys and science fiction array of wonderfulness. But of course he has that bad dream because the movie is too scary. And lessons are learned.
I brought it to school, and fucking Randy M stole it from me. He denied it. He didn’t have the book, and then all of a sudden he did. Why didn’t I write my name in the book you ask? I did. And in the spot where I wrote my name Randy had scribbled over a huge chunk of the page in black crayon, marking over name. My teacher looked over it and couldn’t decide that it proved anything, and my sense of justice and trust in the American system was shattered forever.
So anyway, I had heard that the BBs had taken a weird turn. And my god they have.
Michael Berenstain has taken over his parents’ legacy, and the results are grim. When I was becoming a little atheist, rejecting my evangelical upbringing, it’s not that Berenstain Bears were some kind of beacon of liberal godless light in the darkness, but they weren’t a reminder of the past I was trying to leave behind. The new books still sometimes have the earned moral lessons that they used to, but it’s not the same first off because it usually doesn’t follow — mistake, realization, redemption — anymore. But also the lessons are just empty. And worse, way more boring. We don’t need a Bible verse that kind of applies to a situation to teach a social lesson that applies without it. It just feels like shunting scripture onto good citizenship is a way to tell a lot of people (most of the world) that the thing that was built to belong to everyone, is no longer for them.
