Summer reading: sand, surf and short stories

Short fiction is experiencing a surge just in time for the days of summer vacation and trips to the beach. A literary genre which can trace its American roots back to Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe, the short story is often a writer's proving ground. This season has brought a number of entertaining collections of short stories to fill those carefree hours of sun and sand. Below are a few selections we recommend that you pack in your basket along with your sandals, tanning lotion, sunglasses, hat, and beach umbrella.

REVIEWS BY ROBERT FLEMING

Carol Bly has built a strong following among readers and writers alike with her skill in creating real people who face real situations. Very few writers can go to the essence of characters with such style, ease, and speed. The people we meet in her latest collection, My Lord Bag of Rice: New and Selected Stories are strangely familiar but still possess a number of surprises, such as the old woman chatting with her practical son about her unsure future in "Gunnar's Sword." Bly also captures a husband trying to deal with his fragile wife's feelings of failure and despair in "The Tomcat's Wife" and the family and friends gathering for a baby's baptism which becomes an occasion for the revelation of some harsh truths in "After The Baptism."


Look out Peter Townshend, Ray Davies, and Bob Dylan! Here is another rock star who can truly write some wicked prose. Graham Parker, a noted rock musician with more than 20 albums to his credit including the classic Squeezing Out Sparks, will raise a few eyebrows with his debut collection, Carp Fishing On Valium. In a series of interrelated tales, he recounts the rise and tumble of Brian Porker, a hard luck rocker. Although many of the stories have a wry edge of humor, there is a powerful feel of reality that comes from someone who knows the music business up close and personal. Look for the hilarious yarn, "Me And The Stones," in which Brian tries out for a gig as lead singer for the famed rock band.


If you thought Sherman Alexie's recent bestselling novel, Indian Killer, represented the peak of his abilities as a writer, wait until you pick up his new book, The Toughest Indian In The World and see the lineup of Native Americans in these poignant, laugh-filled stories. Rich in detail and nuance, each carries a real wallop whether Alexie is writing about a boxer bully looking for a fight, a journalist settling in for an eye-opening chat with a hitchhiker, or a troubled interracial couple seeking to rekindle their love. This hard-hitting collection never disappoints and will be a hard one to forget, even after the final story is finished.


Matthew Klam's Sam The Cat and Other Stories handles the traditional theme of love in a most unusual manner. None of the characters in his book seem to know what to do in the zany or bizarre situations confronting them, like the couple on the Caribbean vacation from hell in "The Royal Palms." An O'Henry winner, Klam knows how to make the reader turn a page with an unending flood of shocks and unexpected plot twists. Among the characters we meet are the man asked by his anxious brother to become a sperm donor to satisfy his wife's need for a child in "Not This," and the slightly confused Sam of the title story.


A favorite character, poet-novelist Langston Hughes's Simple, is back. Gussied up with a new introduction for a new edition, this classic collection, Simple's Uncle Sam reminds us of what a superb humorist Hughes was. In this final volume of the original Simple series, Hughes's alter ego, Simple, speaks his mind on a number of topics in these short, side-splitting stories: love, movies, church, politicians, race, soul food, work, the atomic bomb, dogs, and yachts. Before Richard Pryor or Chris Rock, there was Simple bringing down the house with his own brand of home-spun humor. Just the thing for the dog days of summer.


Imagine the screenwriter of such Hollywood classics as North by Northwest, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sabrina, The Sound of Music, and Hello, Dolly! writing short fiction. With the reissue of Sweet Smell of Success by Ernest Lehman, the old fables of Hollywood and Broadway in their prime are shunned for a more realistic fictional look at the down side of fame and fortune.

Lehman is known for his scathing portrayals of people such as the title novella, "The Comedian," "He Brung Happiness To Millions," and "Do You Like It Out Here?" capture the true flavor of life in Tinseltown and The Great White Way.


Another reissue, Christine Schutt's Nightwork was first published by Knopf in 1996 but has returned to the shelves in a handsomely designed new edition. Using situations worthy of Roth or Kafka, Schutt takes you into a world where the exotic and the strange seem almost normal. She explores the weird configurations among family members, lovers, friends, and strangers with a distinctly feminine eye. Sensational, beautifully rendered, each story pushes the laws of reality to its limits.


Robert Fleming is a journalist in New York.

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