“Unless one is wealth there is no use in being a charming fellow.  Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed.  The poor should be practical and prosaic.  It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.  These are the great truths of modern life which Hugh Erskine never realized.”

“Poor old man fellow,” he thought to himself, “he wants it more than I do, but it means no *hansoms for a fortnight.”  (*I looked it up, hansom is a cab that was designed and patented in 1834.)

If you would like to participate in Short Story Mondays, go to John of The Book Mine Set. He has a short story review every Monday and a place for you to link your short story review. Come join in the fun and add to my short story TBR!

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I reviewed  The Broom of the System by David FosterWallace back in January.  I was impressed by the variety of quirky characters and Wallace’s sharp sense of humor but was underwhelmed but the story and plot.

When I recently came across this short story, I thought to myself, “why not try one of his short stories.”

The unnamed narrator, received a toy cement truck as a young boy.  It was mad of wood with a string to pull it.  His parents told him it was a “magic” cemnt truck.  When he walked with it, pulling the string the cement mixer drum spun like a real one, but only when you didn’t watch it.

“months were henceforward spent by me trying to devise ways to catch the drum rotating. Evidence bore out what they had told me: turning my head obviously and unsubtly around always stopped the rotation of the drum. I also tried sudden whirls. I tried having someone else pull the cement mixer. I tried incremental turns of the head while pulling (“incremental” meaning turning my head at roughly the rate of a clock’s minute hand). I tried peering through a keyhole as someone else pulled the cement mixer. Even turning my head at the rate of the hour hand. I never doubted—it didn’t occur to me. The magic was that the mixer seemed always to know.”

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Last week I reviewed Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston.  I had downloaded it along with The Gilded Six-Bits, so that’s what I decided to review here.

“Nobody ain’t gointer be chunkin’ money at me and Ah not do ’em nothin’,” she shouted in mock anger. He ran around the house with Missie May at his heels. She overtook him at the kitchen door. He ran inside but could not close it after him before she crowded in and locked with him in a rough-and-tumble. For several minutes the two were a furious mass of male and female energy. Shouting, laughing, twisting, turning, tussling, tickling each other in the ribs; Missie May clutching onto Joe and Joe trying, but not too hard, to get away.”

One Saturday, Joe got off early from work.  He thought he would surprise Missie May and sneak into bed with her.  The surprise was on him.

I really enjoyed this story, despite being poor, Joe and Missie May loved each other and didn’t let his low pay bother him.  They got by on what they had and enjoyed what they did have. Hurston started out with a playful story but then, like in Sweat, turned it around and packed a punch to her readers.  Though a small part of it was predictable it was how she lead up to it and beyond that held my interest.  Highly recommended.

You can read both Sweat and The Gilded Six-Bits, here. 


If you would like to participate in Short Story Mondays, go to John of The Book Mine Set. He has a short story review every Monday and a place for you to link your short story review. Come join in the fun! 

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