They Do It with Mirrors

About ten years ago, I ran into an old collection of short stories entitled “The Best American Short Stories of 1977”. It is a selection of twenty stories published during that year, culled from various US and Canadian magazines. As I went through it – and its level of enjoyment being what it was – the question came – how far back does this series go?

It turns out it goes all the way back to 1915.

And then a bright idea hit me. (Yes, it IS possible!) What if I could start all the way back in 1915, and start reading every one of those issues?!

Year after year – walk through history as it gets played right before the eyes.

History as told by narrators of yester-years. Just imagine – what a treat that would be!

Going all the way back to the First World War! The rise and fall of one regime after another – of one thought process after another – of a people transforming – from a nation still trying to settle down into a viable entity – a nation still trying to come to grips with its history, its heritage, its heart, its heartaches, its highs and its hollows, its heated hangovers and its hotbed – its humble, honest heartland!

That heart of gold – glistening in glory – from the days of the gold rush to the days of the school bus! From the alcohol ban, to that shady Klan – from the days of segregation to the days of creationism and xenophobia and isolation – to the evolution of intelligent design by design!

From those lands where the cowboys reign! McCarthyistic contortion to the politics of abortion!

Every one of the major wars!

The crooks who claimed the cookie jars!

A clear un-fudged glimpse into times when people would call a spade a “spade” – and would feel little guilt or shame in wholesale stereotyping! When white was white and black was black – and never the two were to meet! Two separate worlds inhabiting one land! Those bad old days of the “good old days”!

It was a fascinating idea. The reality of how much time it would require and how little it jibed with practicalities affecting lives of simple janitors never was a consideration – it seldom is for some people – for such people have no clue when to hold back!

So the project started and took a life of its own. It continued for several years and took its reader all the way to the nineteen eighties at which point it fizzled out. Part of the reason of course was that other commitments and events disrupted the train – but it was a fake reason – for one can always find time for something that one truly wishes to do.

The other reason, the real reason, the subtler reason – was a loss of heart in the effort –when it was realized that the objective would never be accomplished. For after going through the first forty volumes or so, it was eminently clear that the whole idea was based on false premises.

Those landmark events that we read of – in history – when all those great and not so great things took place – were conspicuous in that series.

By their absence!

References to contemporary events were few and far between – fleeting, if not false –it was futile to figure out the frame of father time simply by savoring those sweeties.

Sure, there were occasional glimmers of light to mark the night – like a story which has tuberculosis as its theme would not be considered a recent acquisition – or if a couple of characters are discussing Hitler, chances are the story predates 1945. And a reference to ten dollar monthly rents and twenty-five cents per gallon gasoline would not be considered applicable to recent times. But these trivialities were few and were only made in passing.

You see, if somebody were to take those short stories from the past – jumble them all up – hide the author names – names such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Saroyan, John Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, and a whole bunch of other writers – all true artists of the trade – and give them to a simple person (let’s say a janitor) to read – somebody who had not read them, there would be virtually no way to tell which year any particular story was written in.

I had missed the operating word. These were not the “run of the mill” stories for a given year – these were the BEST American short stories – and therefore, the time frame was merely incidental. So the BEST stories of yesteryears were really little different from the BEST stories of today, except for a bit of superficial stuff.

For those stories were about us individuals – and what is best about us does not change over time!

So what made each one of those stories stand out from the rest of the stories “out there” and to make it into its collection does not change with time! We the readers put a premium on them because something in them connects with us. Those short stories simply reflect the best of its very ordinary characters – of its very ordinary citizenry – as simple human beings! When we read it – what we see is just another part of us – perhaps a part that fill us with wonder. We don’t really see those people and places of yesteryears, we just see – us!

Those shades of gray and those many hues of beauty are not intrinsic to that dog-eared book that we hold in our hands – it is a part of us – yet at first we are only able to see it through the story as the medium. The story is that mirror – a magic mirror, for sure – but a mirror nevertheless! The story speaks to us – in a language that we feel we understand at some level – a language we sometimes did not know that we knew – a little like a piece of art, in prose.

Those characters in stories, their acts, and their little lives and their little events talk to us. They can talk to us even when they don’t attract us – like the times we don’t too much like what we see – after all we all have pre-conceived images of what we are like. Could that strange creature staring back from those pages have any resemblance to what we carry in our heads? The gut reaction is – no way! And those thoughts – and those deeds – could they ever have been ours – or could EVER be ours – or have been ours? Absolutely never – we tell ourselves emphatically!

Yet, the separation is not as wide as we would tend to think. That image in there is a lot closer than we imagine – in fact, it’s absolutely too close for comfort for many!

Our lives never follow a smooth trajectory – or it would be an extremely boring life! Its zig-zag nature results from the series of choices that WE make at various points – some good, and some that we would rather forget – at a later time, of course.

The lucky ones get to make their own choices! Not every one has the same degree of luck.

The ends would not be much different either. What stands the test of time is also what represents the best part of us individuals – and unlike time, it waits for us – every one of us, until there is nobody left to wait for, until only the husk remains!

Until it’s time to go!