Originally published in Canada in 2001, The Middle Stories by Sheila Heti has been recently republished by McSweeney’s with nine more stories.  Now, if you know me at all you know that there are two things in the world of books that I adore more than anything.  One is McSweeney’s the other is short stories.

I’m in heaven.

In case you’re unable to tell from the above picture of the cover of The Middle Stories that is indeed a mermaid giving you the finger.

Even more heaven.

If you’re not yet convinced this book is amazing…read this:

   “I have a mermaid in a jar that Quilty bought me at a garage sale for twenty-five cents.  The mermaid’s all, ‘I hate you I hate you I hate you,’ but she’s in a jar, and unless I loosen the top, she’s not coming out to kill me.

I keep the little jar on my windowsill, right behind my bed, right near my head so if I look up in the middle of the night, up and back, I can see her swimming in the murky little pool of her own shit and vomit, and I can smile.

‘Hello, mermaid!  How are you this fine evening?’  I can say, and sometimes do.  ‘How very said it is that you’re so beautiful, and you’re so young, and you’re so fucking trapped you’ll never get out of that bottle, ha ha!’ ”

– “Mermaid in a Jar” The Middle Stories

Amazing.

by Zita

Over the last few years we’ve put some really nice train and railroad books on the shelf, but the one that caught my eye was just published this year. The black background and colorful logos of North American Rails just pop. The book doesn’t disappoint, either. After an introduction that’s more like an abbreviated history of railroads, the book goes alphabetically through the top 100 most historically significant railroad lines. The best part of the book, however, is the photos — everything from black-and-white images of steam trains and turn-of-the-century advertisements to fully labeled railway maps and gorgeous full-color modern trains.

I am delighted to announce the arrival of this book to all of you! Frankly, sometimes I walk into the fiction room and think, “I want to read something by a woman.” Sometimes that can mean reading prose that’s about female protagonists who have to be brave in some subtle and graceful way, or just prose that has an abundance of characters in it that I can really relate to. But in this case, our writer is just truly modern, executing solid style that gracefully carries a variety of influences.

The best part is that these stories are welded so seamlessly that you won’t once stop reading to think about the writer herself or any of this technical business.

Not only is each story a delight, but the threads that unite these stories are more like great big ropes that you could use to rappel out of the second story of your parents’ house on a summer night in the Nevada desert. There really is something about Claire Vaye Watkins’ writing that makes me feel like I am on my own grand adventure. The best part is the book itself, and this isn’t my bookseller talking—this is me the person. Battleborn as a unified whole is gorgeous, un-kitschy, great prose. It is a book that I have to have, and it is standing up on my bedside table next to some collected stories volumes like that of Cheever.

Watkins’ writing reminds me of many a late-and-greats’ storytelling, yet she isn’t shy about using somewhat contemporary forms. Many stories come to us from a perspective that is complicated by the fearless way it rides the line between good and evil. And one is composed only of letters—written to someone who never, ever responds. And that is exactly what this entire book is: a letter to our world, about our country’s people, taking place in this vast and sunny desert landscape where (if you will) “everything is illuminated.”

Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins, Riverhead Books, $25.95

by Whitney

Having grown up in Jackson, I can remember having Eudora Welty sightings around town.  I mostly had mine at the Jitney 14 and along State Street, while Miss Welty was driving maybe back and forth from Lemuria.  I had grown up with Miss Welty’s great nieces and nephews and remain friends with them all today, and I was lucky that she came and spoke at my school (but I do wonder if that day I understood the enormity of what I was witnessing).  Now, I work at Lemuria, Miss Welty’s bookstore, and though she was not coming to the store anymore when I started, her presence and influence is still felt here everyday.

When the Welty House opened, Lemuria became a Jackson stop for many of the groups that came to tour the house.  I began to notice that some of the groups had begun to ask for me.  At first I was bewildered, how did these women know my name?  I then realized that my Dad, Coleman Lowery, was sending them to the bookstore.  As a part of his being ‘docent to the world’; he had begun giving tours at the Welty House.

If you know my Dad, you know he loves to talk and tell stories.  Growing up we would be driving down the street in Jackson and he would all of sudden start talking about a party he had gone to in a house we had just passed.  The party, however was in the 1960s and the hosts don’t even live there anymore.  He loves to point out a house and say, “I drank a lot of whiskey in there!”  If my Dad is telling a story that would normally take 5 minutes you can count on it lasting 15-20 minutes because he ‘editorializes’ as I affectionately call it.  I can guarantee you that if you were in his tour group at the Welty House the tour lasted at least 20 minutes longer than normal.  Most of the ladies who ended up at Lemuria would go on and on about how fun it was to have Daddy as their tour director because they felt like they got a lot of Jackson’s back story and history.

Unfortunately, my Dad is unable to do tours anymore but when we decided to do this Welty project in honor of A Daring Life by Carolyn Brown, I asked him to share with you some of his “editorializing” . . .

Here’s his Miss Welty Story:

From the summer of 1946, when I was in the 8th grade at Bailey Junior High School, until the spring of 1951, when I graduated from Central High School (called Jackson High School in Brown’s book), I was a package boy at the Jitney 14 on Fortification Street where Miss Eudora was a regular customer.  She tipped the package boys a dime.  We were making thirty cents an hour-so we fought over the ladies who tipped.  Mrs. Fred Sullins and Mrs. Robert Kennington both tipped a quarter!

In the fall of 1951, I entered Vanderbilt University, where I graduated in 1955, and that fall in my freshman English class we read “Why I Live at the P.O.” During the discussion that followed, I raised my hand  and said “I know Eudora Welty.  I carried her packages at the grocery store at home.”  That semester I received an A in freshman English which was one of the few A’s I received during my college career at Vanderbilt.

–F. Coleman Lowery, Jr.

Photo of the Jitney 14, ca. 1950, courtesy of The Mississippi Department of Archives and History

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If you have story about Miss Welty that you would like to share on our blog, please e-mail them to lisa@lemuriabooks.com.

Click here to learn more about Carolyn Brown’s A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty

Click here to see all blogs in our Knowing Miss Welty series

You know the point in a book that makes you stop and swoon and realize that you are going to love a book? Joe mentioend that point yesterday when he wrote about Dog Stars. I’m going to share my Dog Stars moment with you, but first let me give you a little set up.

The main character Hig is remembering when he went back to his house to get some of his poetry books. It wouldn’t be a big deal if a catastrophic flu and blood disease had not already devastated the planet.

Here’s the story from author Peter Heller.

“I have a book of poems by William Stafford. It’s the only thing I went back for: my poetry collections. Landing at night on no power, no lights, in the old King Sooper’s parking lot, one row a thousand easy feet between low cars, the wings went over and no light poles. Just over a mile from there to the house. Fires burning west and south, some punctuating gun shots. Waiting in the plane with the AR-15 between my legs waiting to see if anyone was left to bother the Beast for the half hour I’d be gone.”

. . .

“When I got back to the parking lot I circled in from the outside rows and there were two figures leaning into the open doors of the plane, one about to climb in. I cursed myself and checked the safety, heart hammering, and stood and yelled to get the fuck away, and when they grabbed hunting rifle and shot gun I shot them at twenty yards the first ones. For poems. I gave their guns to Bangley, refused to answer when he asked.”

“The Stafford book is called Stories That Could Be True. One poem is called ‘The Farm on the Great Plains’ and it begins:

A telephone line goes cold;

birds tread it wherever it goes.

A farm back of a great plain

tugs an end of the line.

I call that farm every year,

ringing it, listening still

He calls his father. He called his mother. They are gone for years only a hum now on the line but still he calls.”

 The Dog Stars is our First Editions Club pick for August. Signing/Reading Tuesday, August 21 at 5:00/5:30.

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