Five Must Read Short Stories By Aimee Bender!

I recently discovered the beauty and magic of Aimee Bender's short stories. In my opinion, she is a very talented writer, and I would definitely recommend reading some of her work if you haven't already. Once I pick up one of her books, I find it really hard to set down! She wrote a bestselling novel called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which I enjoyed, but I think I like her short story collections even better! In no particular order, I've listed my five personal favorite stories here at least from one ones I've read so far. If you've ever read her work, I'm curious as to what your favorites are too, so please feel free to add your comments below!

1) Death Watch (Willful Creatures)

"Ten men go to ten doctors. All the doctors tell all the men that they only have two weeks to live. Five men cry. Three men rage. One man smiles. The last man is silent, meditative. Okay, he says. He has no reaction..." This is how the story begins and ultimately the rest of the story expands on the basic idea that people can have very different reactions to the idea of their own death. Within a mere five or six pages, this story is filled with ironic and humorous twists as well as a few brilliant observations on the deeper meaning that often lies behind the simplest of our actions.

2) Tiger Mending (The Color Master)

This is a story about a girl who travels with her sister deep into Malaysia, after her sister was hired for a special job of mending injured tigers. The need to find out what it is exactly, that causes the tigers to need mending, leads to an unsettling discovery. There are some great sad-but-sorta-true quotes in the story including my two personal favorites:

"During the descent, she gave the doily to the man across the aisle, worried about his ailing son, and the needlework was so elegant it made him feel better just to hold it. That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. That's why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in."

"It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moment..."

3) The Meeting (Willful Creatures)

This is a story about meeting someone that is not the type of person you were looking for, yet still being irresistibly attracted to them for a reason that you cannot comprehend. "It is these empty spaces you have to watch out for," the story says, "as they flood up with feeling before you even realize what's happened; before you find yourself, at the base of her spine, different."

4) Fruit and Words (Willful Creatures)

This is a story about relationship troubles that lead a women to a magical discovery that seems wonderful at first but turns out to be horrible. I can't say for sure what Bender intended the story to mean, but to me, it's a great allegory for a rebound relationship. We often trade the dullness or troubles of one world, for a new discovery or person that first seems more amazing, magical, and liberating than anything we had hoped for, only to find out that what lies beneath the surface isn't quite as sweet.

5) The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers (Willful Creatures)

This is a story about a man that attempts to explain a murder mystery by considering the meaning behind a couple's collection of salt and pepper shakers. It's extremely clever!

Blood-Remembering

I just had to share this beautiful passage from Rainer Maria Rilke's book, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Bridge. It almost made me cry.

"Ah! but verses amount to so little when one writes them young. One ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, and a long life if possible, and then, quite at the end, one might perhaps be able to write ten lines that were good. For verses are not, as people imagine, simply feelings (those one has early enough), —they are experiences. For the sake of a single verse, one must see many cities, men and things, one must know the animals, one must feel how the bids fly and know the gestures with which the little flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and partings one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents whom one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illnesses that so strangely begin with such a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars—and it is not yet enough if one may think of all of this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the window open and the fitful noises. And still it is not yet enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance and gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—not till then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them."

                                                                         

Rereading "The Little Prince"

There’s nothing like rereading one of your favorite books years after first discovering it to make you realize how life’s experiences have inevitability changed your perspective on things. I first read “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry during the summer I was seventeen. It immediately became one of my favorite books and still is. However, there are a few messages about love, friendship, and responsibility that I absolutely loved the first time that now seem like they are missing an important “but…” Maybe this means I’m more pessimistic and jaded now or maybe it simply means that somewhere in past 10 years I just grew up.

The first such passage goes like this, “People have forgotten this truth," the fox said. "But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.” This basically says that you are responsible for the people that love you. Forever is such an idealistic word. What it doesn’t say is that sometimes part of growing up is learning to let people go. It doesn’t warn about what can happen if you let that responsibility weigh you down so much that you become a much worse version of yourself. It doesn’t tell you that there is a difference between loving someone and being good for someone, and that you shouldn’t feel guilty for walking away from something that might not be in your power to fix.

There is another passage that says, “If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers...” But what if loving the flower doesn’t make it sweet to look at the sky? What if it just makes you terribly sad? What if your whole life becomes bitter as you dearly desire and miss something that you cannot have and will never have again? We all learn eventually that memories can be both a blessing and a curse.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think that this is a brilliant book and makes a lot of great points. I still enjoy reading it and reflecting on all of the messages that it contains. If you have never read it, I would certainly recommend that you do. The fact that I can no longer read it with the innocence that I once did, does not mean that I don’t appreciate it, I just think that life has taught me that love and relationships are not as simple as I once may have thought.

My Favorite Passage From "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

I wanted to share a passage from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera that in essence suggests that we all need to feel important somehow the only difference is to whom. I think that there is a lot of truth to this. In my opinion, Kundera has moments in his work where he shows a brilliant understanding of human nature and this is one such example.

“We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.”