Except I don't think she's Mavis. Ms. Gallant. Finally read the last three stories in The End of the World & Other Stories, partly because I'd just finished Play It As It Lays and wanted a couple stories before starting another novel, and partly because my Facebook profile showed me as currently reading eight books, which was driving me crazy--both because it showed up on the profile as "currently reading 8 books" and partly because of the frequent automatically generated emails asking me if I am still reading Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara, the Koran, and all these pedagogical theory books I am poking my way through and referencing frequently, but won't really have time to read till summer--plus until summer I need to lose myself in fiction.* And the occasional poem, but who can read a book of poems straight through beginning to end, even a little book of poems like Lunch Poems? I don't read poems like that, just like you wouldn't listen to your John Cage box set all in one sitting. At least I wouldn't.
Anyway. Ms. Gallant. The last paragraph of the last story in this collection is one of my favorite conclusions to any story ever, I think. (Though having said that, I'll have to go look at a bunch of others. Except not tonight. But curious to hear about others' favorite endings?) Anyway the conclusion is perfect in the context of the story ("In the Tunnel") and the way things are pulled together, and just how excellently it's about the first "adult" love affair, and that moment of being young enough to believe the first one is all there will ever be, and then realizing there will be the rest of your life and so many pieces to that whole life, love affairs just one of them. But one great line: "She was in love with his mystery, his hardships, and the death of Trotsky."
Also recently reread Flannery O'Connor's story "Parker's Back," because it's about a tattoo. I have been thinking about tattoos a lot, see. Anyway I think I really got "Parker's Back" on this reading (maybe my twentieth? thirtieth? I've had Flannery's complete stories in my top ten [top five?] since about the tenth grade) for the first time, not because of my tattoo, but because it clicked. Sometimes I forget that all her stories are about God and revelation, and then I remember and I am so impressed by her and scared of her all over again. No one else like her. Though Ms. Gallant is a piece of work, too--and I'll never get to read Flannery's complete stories for the first time again, but I still haven't read most of Gallant's.
*Hell of a sentence there, Elissa--you an English teacher or something?
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