Austral, Carlos Fonseca

Austral, Carlos Fonseca, 2023. Translated from the Spanish (Costa Rica) by Megan McDowell.

Another fantastic novel by Fonseca: I found his Natural History to be excellent and I have ordered his first novel, Colonel Lágrimas. Very pleased to be spending time with his prose.

Austral, structurally similar to Natural History, includes a fascination with books, multiple texts within texts, an interest in land art, and a central focus on memory. It involves an academic’s quest to complete the final, unfinished novel of a recently deceased friend. He travels from the United States to Argentina and Guatemala to uncover the meaning of her text and along the way the reader is treated to intriguing characters and intense ruminations on the nature of memory, feeling the pain of others, and the development of culture.

Though I’ve finished the novel, I feel there are many more threads I need to untangle. Sometimes challenging, often requiring further research, but always engaging and thought provoking, Austral is a must read.

How Austral informs my writing.

I love this style of storytelling which uses embedded texts so successfully. Fonseca is so good at it and so is Lucy Ives, who I may read more of in the future. I am using it in my current writing and gave it a try in my short story Hypocrites Among Us, which has not yet found a publisher. In my story, I use song titles and lyrics, a university syllabus, and various fictional essays to tell the story of a young man learning about his father and the prevalence and common acceptance of hypocrisy in politics. I don’t know if I pulled it off well enough to earn an acceptance letter but it was fun utilizing this technique and I will continue to practice it.

I also found Fonseca’s prose about books and how children often respond to the world by seeking refuge within them beautifully written. I have a tendency in my writing to bluntly state a fact while Fonseca delicately plants suggestions and comments that unveil his thoughts about these issues. My new novel incorporates this very basic but difficult practice but I can always improve upon it by emulating the writing in Austral.

Thanks to Carlos Fonseca for writing such wonderful texts, and Megan McDowell for translating him!

Almost No Memory, Lydia Davis

Almost No Memory, Lydia Davis, 1997. Included in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, 2011.

Davis’ short stories have been labeled as miniatures, prose poems, and contemplations, among other descriptors as a way to understand what she is doing in her work. I do find myself questioning what each small offering is supposed to be but ultimately it really doesn’t matter. Davis explores the inner workings of the mind as it works to make sense of relationships and reality and her form is an excellent way to do so. While sometimes confused as to the message of a particular story I was intrigued with each piece. The Thirteenth Woman, where the first twelve women completely ignore the thirteenth, is simply delightful. In Foucault and Pencil, a woman strives to understand the meaning and cause of an argument with her partner. And my favorite, The Race of the Patient Motorcyclists, reads like a paean to slowness.

There is a scene I love in a Samuel Beckett story about a character holding three pebbles as he goes through the iterations in his mind of how he can put them in two pockets one at a time: an incredible scene. Many of the stories in Almost No Memory are like this: characters thinking through the possibilities of doing a particular task but being unable to reach a conclusion. Other stories are essentially lists but read like dynamic and meaning-filled short stories.

How Almost No Memory informs my writing.

As I read these stories, I did have some confusion of what the meaning was, especially in light of the title of the collection. Ultimately, my take away is that Davis is suggesting that in our present conflicts or disagreements we have no memory of how we got into that situation or into that particular relationship with the partner we are having a conflict with: we are totally consumed with thinking through the current problem. I realize this is a simplistic interpretation but with it I was better able to process each story. And I am not suggesting that I know what Davis meant with the individual stories or with the collection as a whole. But what I appreciate is that her art is not really about a particular meaning or take away. The stories stand on their own but they also work well as a unified whole. This is what I would like to accomplish with my newest short story collection I have been putting together. My stories are about the current US political situation and the effect many of their dictates have on everyday people. I am hopeful that the stories add up to a powerful message but one that I am not blatantly proclaiming. I would like it to be as subtle as Davis’.

My story Fragility comes closest to the method Davis uses, though I am in no way comparing my work to hers: hers is a genius I will most likely never attain. In my story a mother is tormented by her son’s behavior of talking to his dead grandfather and is put off by the ‘help’ his school offers. It is a mere 1700 words and I have been told that people love it or hate it; there doesn’t seem to be any in-between. But I mention it because I feel it is short on explanations and simply presents a situation that I hope the reader will analyze independently. Fragility was first published by the now defunct Slag Review but can be found in my collection Not So You’d Notice, available at Amazon.

My story collection!

In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan

In a Human Voice, Carol Gilligan, 2023.

In a Human Voice is a follow-up to Gilligan’s 1982 book In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, after she challenged her own use of the word ‘different’ to explain the “feminine” voice she heard when considering moral development. Here, she redefines the different voice as a human voice, or an ethic of care. After reviewing her original studies for In a Different Voice, discussing how boys and girls are initiated into patriarchy, Gilligan goes on to suggest that “relational capacities such as empathy and emotional intelligence…are recognized for what they are: human strengths” in care ethics. This is an incredible read and a powerful antidote to the dominant view circulating about how strength is the ability to use force and take whatever you want from whoever you want. Gilligan’s writing is clear and well supported, incredibly descriptive concerning child development, and most importantly, hopeful in the quest for a more decent society.

How In a Human Voice informs my writing.

Voice is central to Gilligan’s text and of special interest to me is how voices are silenced. I have explored silence in much of my writing. I have an unpublished short story called Let There Be Silence where the protagonist spends years attempting to leave his/her abuser and desires above all to be free from the oppression of another’s harmful words. In another, Bluebird, a school bus driver bullied throughout her childhood escapes into silence to escape her memories and her own hated voice. Bluebird is available online at the journal Twelve Winters who first published it and in my short story collection Not So You’d Notice available at Amazon.

Resistance is another important element in this text, primarily in children’s potential resistance to the masculine and feminine roles dictated by a patriarchal society. Gilligan suggests that most human beings do not resist these roles, hence its ongoing repetition, but that it is possible and necessary in order to realize our human capacity for care. I address this resistance in The Arc of His Sword, available in the same story collection. In this story, a young girl’s father attempts to break the generational abusive childrearing he grew up with by building a more nurturing and understanding parent-child relationship with his daughter. I developed the character in order to explore the possibility of challenging traditional roles and Gilligan’s text would have been perfect to better understand this process.

I will use In a Human Voice a great deal as I further develop my characters in my ongoing novel project. The idea of a silenced voice and possible resistance are central to the novel. I envision my main character resisting with the help of others who have been resisting and the information I have gleamed from Gilligan’s book will be invaluable.

Reading List June 2026: Part 2

For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Childrearing, Alice Miller, translated by Hildegarde & Hunter Hannum, 1983. Though published in the early eighties and based on German studies and data, Millers discussion and theories seem incredibly relevant to current violence and childrearing in the United States. She argues that the centuries old “poisonous pedagogies,” which is any ideology which proports the correct way to raise children, and which includes mental, verbal and physical abuse, should be confronted and abolished. Basically, she suggests that there is a great deal of cruelty in parent and child relationships with the child always being the one to suffer the greatest as they are so less powerful than the parent. She explains through the concept of “unconscious repetition compulsion” that parents simply repeat the parenting they received and because they most likely suffered a cruel childhood, they continue the legacy of cruelty. The first half on the book includes a presentation of her data and her theories and the second half includes three lengthy case studies which illustrate how violence, toward oneself or others, can be understood by looking at the perpetrator’s childhood.

One aspect of her argument I appreciate is her discussion of evil and what we generally refer to as “inhuman” behavior, or as popular in the US, a problem of “mental illness.” Miller suggests that we would be better to recognize “that human being and beast do not exclude each other.” This is striking to me because we often write things off we cannot understand, vicious violence or cruelty, as evil and therefore out of our control. Only by accepting that humans are capable of incredible cruelty are we prepared to do something constructive about the problem.

How For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Childrearing informs my writing.

I chose this work of nonfiction in conjunction with the research I am conducting for the novel I am writing. Specifically, I was considering the hatred and anger, and the concomitant cruelty, that individuals in the current administration and many of their supporters exhibit on a daily basis. I wondered what experiences they may have suffered to leave them with such anger. I ran across this book and thought it might help me answer this question. Miller addresses the issue directly and the information is helpful in creating my character studies, not just for my cruel characters but also for the characters of a more gentle nature.

Upon concluding this book I took a look back on some of my published short stories and realized I had previously dealt with the same issues, though perhaps not as directly as I could have. Specifically in my story Owning Scars, first published by The Write Launch and available at their website, but also in my collection, Not So You’d Notice available at Amazon. Unknowingly, I used the concept of repetition compulsion to present a man coming to understand and regret his cruel behavior towards his siblings, a behavior he learned from his parents and his peers. Likewise, my story Idle Hillpresents a misunderstood young man whose father utilized poisonous pedagogies (without my knowing it at the time) and finds the only solution to his unhappiness is through self-destruction. Idle Hill was first published by Synkroniciti and is available in the same story collection.

Overall, For Your Own Good stands as a great information source for creating backstory for fictional characters to help them be more believable and to explain their seemingly cruel behaviors. Beyond fiction though, it stands as a wonderful resource as I explore and tell my own story, attempt to understand why I do some of the things that I do, and come to terms with the cruelty I endured in childhood.

Reading List June 2026: Part 1

The Wind Whistling in the Cranes, Lidia Jorge, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Annie McDermott. This is a Portuguese novel that takes place in Valmares, a fictional town along the Algarve coastline. It portrays two rival families: the owners of the town’s previous canning factory (the Leandro family) and working class immigrants from Cape Verde (the Matas family) who now reside in the abandoned factory. The main character Milene is a Leandro and her suitor, Antonino, is a Matas. It is a slow moving novel but still quite good. I became impatient with Milene’s slow decision making but the behavior fit her character well and as the novel developed I enjoyed her introspective tendencies and freewheeling spirit. While a lot of the story centers around the developing romance between these two characters, Jorge also explores postcolonial memory and consequences, racial antagonism, economic divisions, and the nature of evil. The novel also includes a strong sense of place, from the placement of the factory near the coast, to Milene’s inherited isolated home, from the Matas matriarch longing for Cape Verde to the Leandro’s desire to develop the property. Overall, an enjoyable read.

How The Wind Whistling in the Cranes informs my writing.

The novel’s sense of place is outstanding, something I often neglect in my stories. While setting is important in my writing, such as in my short stories Bluebird (a school bus) and Sorting Through Clams (a clamming boat), they could have been stronger had I been clearer about the importance of those places in the development of my characters. Jorge does that really well.

Jorge explores the nature of evil (something I am studying now) in her novel and I appreciate how she wove it into daily conversations and internal thoughts, rather than a blatant exposition about evil. It is masterfully done and nicely parceled out throughout the novel. It is what I am attempting with the novel I am currently writing and I will revisit Jorge’s success in implementing this skill.

Check out my stories in my collection Not So You’d Notice available at Amazon. Let me know how sense of place is used in Bluebird and Sorting Through Clams.

Reading List May 2026

·      The Extinction of Irene Rey, Jennifer Croft. Fun novel centered on a cult-like group of translators representing different languages gathered together to translate their beloved author’s newest manuscript. Explores various extinction events from the smallest animals to large societies, including the extinction of particular human behaviors and preferences. As the translators struggle to understand their separate relationships with their author a mystery unfolds and drives the plot of the novel. Really nice exploration of identity and group personalities and our tendency to overlook flaws in people we admire.

·      Break It Down: Stories, Lydia Davis. The copy I read is part of Davis’ giant The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis: I plan on reading each collection separately between some other works. These are quite short stories, there are 34 here, exploring the inner workings of their characters. I especially like the theme of ‘breaking it down’ where the characters analyze a situation to find meaning. Great narrative style and overall enjoyable reading.

·      A Sunny Place for Shady People, Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell. The latest short story collection from Enriquez (Argentina) with her usual focus on horror. These stories are well-written and address interesting themes, such as responses to trauma and our relationship to the dead, and are populated with ghosts and hauntings. I appreciate the art of her storytelling but in the end the style does not appeal to me.

·      James, Percival Everett. A great retelling of James’ story, from Huckleberry Finn, from his point of view. Completely engrossing tale as James discovers his own identity after being oppressed as a slave and a black man. Essential reading when considering race relations in the United States and elsewhere.

·      The Place of Shells, Mai Ishizawa, translated by Polly Barton. A novel investigating memory and the role of the past in our daily lives. I especially enjoyed Ishizawa’s discussion of masks and layers of multiple masks we wear, as well as the idea that memories and places wear masks too. The novel unfolds as a sort of stripping off of each character’s masks.

·      Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. It was certainly worth my time and energy to read this novel a second time. Dead bodies, human and animal, frequently appear and the protagonist Janina, a beautifully developed character, gets involved in solving who is doing the murdering. A wonderful exploration of our relationship to the natural world, the origin of gentleness and cruelty, and the role of anger in addressing the wrongs of the world. Incredible read from an outstanding Polish author.

·      The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead. This is a completely enjoyable and intriguing novel. Centered in the black boy’s section of a reform home Whitehead explores brutality, hatred, and the exerted effort by many to thwart the progress of well-meaning individuals. One of my favorite lines, applicable to the perpetrators in the novel as well as those in our current administration is: ‘There was no higher system guiding Nickel’s brutality, merely an indiscriminate spite, one that had nothing to do with people.’ The ending of the novel was superb and brilliantly written.

Reading List April 2026

·       United, Cory Booker. A memoir covering Booker’s early social and political development with a cast of inspirational activists. His focus in on responsibility towards and connection with others. While the concept of empathy is taking a bruising these days, Booker applauds it and encourages it as a mainframe of ethical living. He acknowledges the privileges and opportunities he was granted simply by being born in the right place and the right time and suggests the concept of paying it forward as a means of paying the debts accrued from receiving these gifts. While I remain a cynic as far as how effective kindness can be in today’s toxic relational climate, I support living a life based on kindness in opposition to cruelty and self-centeredness, which is a main theme throughout this book.

·      A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley. This novel was recommended to me by a friend and it sat on my shelf for years before I finally got around to reading it this month. It fits well alongside books by Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski. The main character, soured by life and alcoholism at an early age, splits his time between mental hospital stays and making a mess of his life and relations. Fairly routine situations albeit with a host of keen observations, my favorite being the following where the narrator is discussing the aggressors in World War II: ‘…my brother would in no time at all be in a rather ludicrous uniform of his own, with a few million other Americans called upon to pay the heavy toll for having failed to recognize insanity for the pernicious evil it is.’

·      Natural History, Carlos Fonseca, translated by Megan McDowell. Natural History is a novel with a wide cast of characters and narrative points of view. The story encompasses art and science, politics and religion and explores the theme of identity, specifically repetition, camouflage, anonymity, and the masks we wear. Three related story lines, and perhaps a few minor ones, intersect in this wonderfully complex and engaging novel.

·      White Nights, Urszula Honek, translated by Kate Webster. A short story collection out of Poland that deals with a cast of characters surrounded by and enmeshed in death. I found the subject matter and the harsh living conditions described engaging, as well as the plight of the characters as they searched for a reason to go on living and a way out of their dismal environment. The best story in the collection is Hanna where the main character, in explaining the behavior of those around her, states “they’re not consumed by sorrow in a single moment, but throughout their lives…” Through somber and bleak prose these stories speak to the difficulty in rising above stark surroundings and fighting against ever-present brutality.

·      Surrender, Brian O’Hare. A collection of short stories with the Marines and soldiers at war as the backdrop for O’Hare’s exploration of what defines a man in America. A nice addition to my research into gentleness, the recurring cast of characters in these stories struggle with generational definitions of masculinity as they forge their own paths and make similar, sometimes unique mistakes of their own. Well worth reading while Trump and Hegseth push an aggressive war in Iran along with their ‘macho’ posing.

·      The Power of Words, Simone Weil, translated by Richard Rees and Arthur Wills. A powerful set of philosophical essays addressing the emptiness of words in social and political discourse. She suggests ways around this problem presenting what she finds are the ethics which should be guiding our lives. Incredibly topical arguments considering how the current administration hurls empty words and phrases at us (except for the inherent cruelty which lies behind those words and phrases).

Reading List March 2026

·      The Natural Order of Things, Antonio Lobo Antunes, translated by Richard Zenith. Another great stream of consciousness novel from Antunes, this time about two families falling apart in a crumbling Portugal. I love the labyrinth Antunes builds with his prose, how the confused relation between the characters slowly unfolds, and how we rapidly jump between the thoughts of different characters. Always a challenge but always rewarding.

·      Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times, Stephen Batchelor. An interesting nonfiction book that explores the similarities and differences in the teachings of Buddha and Socrates. Well thought out explanations and investigations addressing how the teachings of the two men could aid us in living an ethical life. Considering how radically uncertain things are today I’m not sure I left with any immediate steps I could take in that direction, but still, good to be reacquainted with their line of thinking.

·      The Sanity Inspectors, Friedrich Deich, translated by Robert Kee. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel published by Boiler House Press. Sinclair McKay asks in his introduction ‘When an entire society is in the grip of a murderous set of beliefs, how might individuals retain their own moral foundations?’ He was setting up the background for The Sanity Inspectors but it is a question I ask myself on a regular basis about current affairs. And it is the question the protagonist Robert Vossmenge, a German air force psychiatrist in the 30’s and 40’s, struggles with throughout the story. Along the way Vossmenge debates the line between sanity and insanity, the need for compassion to understand others, and the role one should take in opposing oppressive and violent regimes. Truly an illuminating discussion.

·      The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire, translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. The first time I read this book was while getting my undergraduate degree, the second during my years of my master’s degree, and the third this month. A good book to return to often to understand oppression and the role of education in freeing oppressed people. Pertinent today as much as when it was written in the 60’s, it’s like Freire is directly addressing the growing American Oligarchy and the oppressive administration. Great reading!

·      A Philosophy of Walking, Frédéric Gros, translated by John Howe. I took this book with me on my week-long walk on Germany’s Rennstieg and read it when I was not walking the trail. It is a great accompaniment to a week of slow hiking on a fantastic trail. Because my wife and I were not feeling well we dramatically slowed down our hiking pace and walked some distance apart. I felt exactly what Gros was talking about in his book: feeling embraced by the environment, escaping my identity, clearing my mind, and having nothing to do but put one foot in front of the other. Gros discusses prominent philosophers who incorporated walking into their daily routines along with accompanying thoughts about his own wanderings and a general history of walking. This is a very interesting read with plenty of insightful comments about the idea of walking and what it means to slow down and rebel against speed.

·      On Kindness, Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor. Through historical, philosophical and psychoanalytic investigations Phillips and Taylor offer answers to the question why kindness seems so dangerous. They support the view that contemporary society drives out the natural kindness of children and that kindness is now seen as a weakness. A good primer on kindness

·      Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit. This was a nice companion read alongside Gros’ book while walking the Rennsteig. Unlike Gros’ focus on long distance walking, Solnit’s is an exhaustive history of walking, from walking in gardens and cities, to pilgrimages and marches. The guiding message of these essays is that walking ‘is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned.’ But Solnit also gives fair amount of time to the increasing lack of walking in today’s society due in large part to ‘automobilization and suburbanization.’ Not quite as intriguing as Gros’ book but still worth the read.

Reading List February 2026

Like January, a mere five books read this month, however the Weiss and the de Beauvoir both took a lot of time and effort. Very impressed with the Weiss and have the second and third volumes on my ‘to read’ shelf.

·      The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Bernard Frechtman.

·      The Secret of Evil, Roberto Bolaño, translated by Chris Andrews and Natasha Wimmer.

·      The Will to Change, bell hooks.

·      Forensic Songs, Mike McCormack.

·      The Aesthetics of Resistance: Volume I, Peter Weiss, translated by Joachim Neugroschel.

Reading List January 2026

I’m not sure why I only read five books in January but there it is. Like December, I put off writing brief reviews a bit too long so here I provide simply a list of my January books.

·      Plain Pleasures, Jane Bowles.

·      Tremor, Teju Cole.

·      Mrs. S, K. Patrick, 4th Estate, 2023.

·      Kokoro, Natsume Soseki, translated by Edwin McClellan.

·      All That Man Is, David Szalay.