Listen Here This Week: William Faulkner and Louise Erdrich

The Listen Here! Short Story Reading Series rolls into its 12th week with readings at Manjares Fine Pastries, this Tuesday, 838 Whalley Avenue (on West Rock Avenue), May 25, 7 p.m. Our Theme? “Romeos & Juliets”

Our Stories? Louise Erdrich’s “The Plague of Doves” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”

Why these? Ah, Louise, again. We just couldn’t help ourselves, and besides, this story fits the theme so well. “A Plague of Doves” is a wonderfully touching story of young love, too young to grasp fully the story it finds itself engaged in. This, too, we discovered while waiting in an airport and perusing The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford. The story first appeared in The New Yorker.

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a classic of the southern Gothic tradition. Spinster, possibly wandering lover, gossipy townsfolk—it’s all there, and Faulkner manages to bring it together with the same Southern polish he gives much of his short fiction.

Listen Here This Week: Louise Erdrich and David Sedaris

The Listen Here! Short Story Reading Series rolls into its 11th week with readings at Bru Cafe, 141 Orange, Street, this Tuesday, May 18, 7 p.m. Our Theme? “Brothers”

Our Stories? Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible” and David Sedaris’s “You Can’t Kill the Rooster”

Why these?

Louis Erdrich is one of our best-known Native American writers (she is part Ojibwa on her mother’s side) and is a prolific novelist. She’s also a helluva a short story writer, and “The Red Convertible” nicely illustrates this aspect of her storytelling talent. This tale addresses the impact of the Vietnam War--and the then emergent understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder--on the American Indian community of the early 1970s. The story originally appeared in Mississippi Valley Review in 1981 and was collected in Love Medicine in 1984. Its blend of pathos and pain are a reminder of the terrible price of war paid by the families who stay behind.

David Sedaris became universally known for his display of caustic wit on This American Life with his reading of the “Santaland Diaries.” But “You Can’t Kill the Rooster” is equally one of the funniest stories he has ever written, with the added blessing of being probably the most vulgar that Listen Here! has presented to date. (In other words, you ain’t gonna ever hear this one on NPR!) We found this in the edited collection Brothers, put together by New Haven Review subscriber Andrew Blauner, a really wonderful collection of stories on just that topic.