The Book I've Read Five Times

I noticed that The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, a new movie directed by and starring Ben Stiller, opened for general release on Christmas Day.  I am very interested in seeing this film because Mitty is my favorite short story of all time.  Most studios hold their most promising films in abeyance until the last week of the calendar year, so I have my hopes up.

I've written before that I taught eighth grade for eight years (1972-80), following three as a sixth grade teacher.  Although the eighth grade subjects I taught varied a little bit over the eight year span, one of several constants was that I taught literature throughout the entire duration.  For the first five of those eight years, our main literature text was Explorations In Literature, an anthology of thirty-three short stories, plus assorted poems, published by Houghton Mifflin -- not to be confused with Dunder Mifflin -- in 1972.  Even when our curriculum switched to a different lit book in 1977, I still had my students read many of the short stories found in Explorations, including, of course, Mitty.  I have described Explorations as "the best book I've ever read," because of the wealth and variety of the short stories included therein.

The Explorations list of authors is quite impressive.  Any one of a number of Edgar Allan Poe stories would certainly have been acceptable.  Explorations begins with The Tellale Heart, a Poe offering which contains one of the greatest opening paragraphs ever written.  Ray Bradbury, a famous science fiction writer who passed away a year ago, is the only author with the distinction of having two stories (Dark They Were And Golden Eyed and The Pedestrian) included in the anthology.  Roald Dahl, the British author of the popular children's story, James And The Giant Peach, has his readers on the edge of their seats with Poison. Bernard Malamud, known to baseball fans as the author of The Natural, writes a thought-provoking story, A Summer's Reading, about a high school dropout. And Isaac Asimov, a prolific writer and biochemistry professor, contributes Someday, a futuristic story about the role computers might play in the social world of youth.  It seems only O. Henry, maybe the most famous short story writer of all, and humorous Mark Twain are missing from the Who's Who List of short story scribes put together by the Explorations publisher.

At the end of each school year I would ask my students to rank their five favorite Explorations stories, and their bottom three.  After they voted I would give them the aggregate results, along with the ratings from their predecessors.  This will come as a shock to Momma Cuandito, who believes I've saved every scrap of paper pertaining to my teaching career, but I'll be dag nabbed if I can find those ballots!  Therefore, for purposes of drafting this post, I am left with little choice but to divulge my own personal ranking of my top five Explorations short stories, with the exhortation that you place most, if not all, of them on your 2014 reading lists.

5. The Answer by Philip Wylie. At twenty-two double-columned pages, this is by far the longest of Explorations' thirty-three short stories.  A two-star US general aboard an aircraft carrier is in charge of conducting the testing of an H-bomb which explodes over a volcanic island in the western Pacific Ocean. On nearby Tempest Island a nine year old boy, the son of an erratically behaving missionary, discovers a mysterious "casualty" which has fallen from the sky moments after the detonation.  Months later, an eerily similar incident occurs on the frozen tundra of Siberia during a Soviet weapons test.  Secrets are kept, evidence vanishes, and the leaders of the two cold war superpowers have decisions to make.

4. Different Cultural Levels Eat Here by Peter DeVries.  The scene is an urban bar where the regulars constitute almost all of the clientele.  Two couples, obviously non-regulars, sit at the bar and order hamburgers.  The cook/counterman, as is his custom, asks each of the foursome, "Mit or mitout?"  The reference is obvious: onions.  One of the women comments under her breath about the peculiarity of such phrasing, but the counterman is not deaf.  This sets in motion an uneasy dialogue, and a fascinating study of human behavior.

3. The Survivors by Elsie Singer.  Fosterville is a border town which sent all of its young men, except one, to fight for the Union in the Civil War.  That one exception is the recalcitrant Adam, who chose to join the Confederacy.  Now the war is over, and the town annually celebrates its thirty-five returning war veterans with a Memorial Day parade.   The Union leader is Adam's cousin, Henry.  As the years go by, the former soldiers pass away. Adam remains a loner, a self-imposed outcast, while Henry is the most admired man in Fosterville.

2. The Lie by Kurt Vonnegut.  Fourteen year old Eli Remenzel is riding with his parents in their chauffeur-driven limousine to the posh Massachusetts boys' prep school, Whitehill.  Three former US presidents were alums, and Eli's physician father was the fifth generation of Remenzels to attend.  Dr. Remenzel has to remind his wife constantly that neither she nor Eli should expect any favors from the school, even though half the buildings on campus were funded by the Remenzels. So, what's the problem?  Life is good, right?  Not exactly.  Eli has never told his parents that, two weeks ago, he tore up the letter of rejection from the school's admissions office before his parents could read it.

1.The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty by James Thurber.  Walter Mitty is a hen-pecked husband who does not need physical separation from his wife (or for that matter, anyone else) to escape from reality.  His vehicle for these pleasurable respites is daydreaming, but not just your run-of-the-mill daydreams.  For instance, he is the surgeon to whom world famous specialists defer when the patient is at death's door.  He is the expert marksman who can hit his target with any of an assortment of different firearms.  He is the pilot who can get his plane through storm clouds which would keep other mortals grounded.  Sometimes his private thoughts are betrayed by a tendency to speak aloud unconsciously while in a state of mind far removed from his actual whereabouts.  "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to himself!" exclaimed a nearby woman to her companion.