Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories

I have been trying to fathom what it is about Edith Pearlman's marvelous Binocular Vision (Lookout Books, January 2011) that makes this story collection such a treasure. That is why it was almost a relief to stumble upon the "cautious words" quote attributed to her and referenced in the title of this review. In truth, there doesn't seem to be a single recklessly placed word in the 34 stories--13 of them previously unpublished--of this, her most recent collection.How then, I kept wondering in making my way through one astonishingly understated tale after another, could it be that I'd never heard of Pearlman before my partner's enthusiastic recommendation?Happily, I've since discovered, I can take comfort in the fact that Binocular Vision and its author seem to have taken even much of the mainstream literary establishment by surprise. This is strange given that Pearlman is the author of over 250 works of short fiction and non-fiction, as well as three previous story collections; it is doubly strange when one considers that Binocular Vision is the only book ever to be nominated for the National Book Award, the Story Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the same year. That distinction will, in short order, prove justifiable to anyone fortunate enough to undertake Pearlman's short fiction.This reader, for one, would be hard pressed to recall stories so alive with intelligent, thoughtful, highly principled characters--men, women, and children confronting a variety of human predicaments odd and frightening, heartbreaking and humorous. I can honestly say there isn't a story among the 34 that I didn't like and there are at least five or six that I count among the best I've read.That Pearlman's protagonists face their individual dilemmas while maintaining an eerie sense of calm detachment seems in keeping with the author's "cautious" approach to story telling. Indeed, Pearlman's prose is so deceptively simple and coolheaded, so composed, that the reader sometimes barely notices the thermostat being turned up a few emotional degrees until suddenly, they are in the flush of a breathtakingly revelatory moment.In the story, "Inbound," a precocious seven-year old girl accidentally separated from her parents during a Boston day trip undergoes an intellectual/psychic transformation and returns to her parents in the first blush of a dawning adult sensibility."She foresaw...that as she became strong her parents would dare to weaken. They too might tug at her clothing, not meaning to annoy...She felt her cheek tingle, as if it had been licked by the sad, dry tongue of a cat...She had to return to her family now; she had to complete the excursion."In the beautifully moving "Tess," a mother looks in lovingly on her bedridden daughter, afflicted from birth with permanent physiological and neurological damage, and then calmly surpasses--in a single compassionate act--all the well-intentioned humanity of an entire hospital's professional staff."I put the blanket back on. I watched her ear for a while. All those windings and curves. My little girl's little ear.I got the toy she liked best from the windowsill. The red floppy dog. They always forgot it. I put it in a corner of the crib. Then I unscrewed the end of the heart tube from the aqua clothespin and I slipped it under the blanket so the blood would pool quiet and invisible like a monthly until there would be no more left."In another gem, "On Junius Bridge," a scrupulously reserved innkeeper--whose establishment provides safe-haven to an ever-changing gaggle of introverts and misfits--foils the kidnapping of a wealthy guest's autistic son and is shocked to find herself offering a well rehearsed sanctuary."Lars is not particularly precocious, doesn't read anything except entomology, doesn't even read very well," [the boy's father said.]She favored him with her expressionless gaze."My brother in New york... he too is...narrow." She spoke at last, as loudly as she could. "It is possible that in a century or two the interpersonal will cease to be of value.""Practiced by a few eccentric devotees," he agreed. "Like swordplay.""I could keep the boy," she heard herself cry."No," he said, perhaps sparing her, perhaps turning the remainder of her life to ash."The collection's final piece, the stunning "Self-Reliance," presents a retired physician in her 70s who, confronted with resurgent cancer, decides to navigate the ultimate life challenge with typical independence."Cornelia pushed off vigorously, then used a sweep stroke to turn the canoe and look at the slate roof and stone walls of her house...Then, as if she were her own passenger, she opened a backrest and settled herself against it and slid the paddle under the seat. She drank her concoction slowly, forestalling nausea.Sipping, not thinking, she drifted on a cobalt disk under an aquamarine dome. Birches bent to honor her, tall pines guarded the birches. She looked down the length of her body. She had not worn rubber boat shoes, only sandals, and her ten toenails winked flamingo."These are stories that steer clear of facile epiphany, that (as in real life) rarely achieve resolution, but that relish--always with an understated modesty--the sudden disclosure of a simple, sometimes unexpectedly fundamental, verity.Perhaps it really is, then, that brilliantly executed modesty, that `cautious' artistry, that renders Pearlman's stories so beautifully and completely...convincing.Jack A. Urquhart is the author of several works of fiction, including the story, "They say you can stop yourself breathing" and the story collection, "So They Say."

Some stories better than others but they were all very well done.

Highly recommend this book. I dont usually like to read collections of short stories, I prefer novel length. However, this book is an exception and exceptional. She is great writer, keen eye, engaging, and moving.Her stories all contain some aspect of Jewish life, but the nonjewish reader should have no trouble with that.Her artistry transcends her cultural and religious identity,

I get where Pearlman gets the name from this collection, but I'll get to that in a minute.The short story as an art form is more wide open than most readers - and writers ¬- realize. Short fiction can depict characters at a depth that makes some novels look amateurish. And the form can tell the most audacious of tales, or portray culture in ways that inform as much as does history. All this in 300 words or in 20,000. When an author and an editor compile a collection such as this one, you can expect connecting threads - tenuous ones, or threads so thick and interwoven they all but approach a novel. Or, in Pearlman's case here, the stories are a montage, the connections cultural, and stylistic.A good many of these stories are of Jewish culture, with the Holocaust and Jewish diaspora looming like thunderclouds. Pearlman's approach is to people her stories in impeccably taut, almost masculine prose - the sort that would make Hemingway sit back and take note.The collection's name? Clearly, she bores into singular moments of her characters' lives, using nondescript things as metaphors for aspects of these lives. In doing so, Pearlman must leave hazy the grander context of her characters' lives: place, many degrees of family nuance, history. In this sort of story, the reader must follow the author into an almost microscopic view of her characters' lives, their moments of story. The down side for readers of this most artful type of fiction is that he/she must grasp for context, must survey the blurred corona surrounding this microscopic vision in order not to feel lost is space.I understand this sort of approach, but it isn't easy from the reader's standpoint - in fact, when, in the case of this collection, the structure and approach to characterization are so similar from story to story, it's hard to want to finish them. I kept turning pages, wanting something to change, to make me breathe refreshed at story's end and look forward to the next, unexpected literary adventure. Sadly, I didn't find that here.

I've always loved short stories, ranging from horror, science fiction,to classics like de Maupassant and O'Henry. A great short storygives you an entire world and entire people in twenty pages orless. While these stories vary in many ways, from settings in EasternEurope, Central America, to suburban Boston, with central charactersranging from children, teenagers, young men and women, to the old anddying, the author's confident, almost-gentle prose gives them asimilarity of tone that makes reading them all at once a bitdifficult. I needed to read them all in just a few days because it'sa selection for my book club. This made them blend together, which Ithink was unfortunate. Most of the stories have Jewishcultural references, where family history and assimilation orsecularization are issues. The strengths and weaknesses of theconnections between people are also a recurring theme. The prose isbeautifully crafted yet rarely calls attention to itself.I recommend these stories, but suggest not reading them all at once,as I did, but savoring them one at a time, to bring out their distinctflavors.

My opinion about this volume is divided. I can't quite decide if I really liked it. Some stories worked for me, while I felt let down by others. Perhaps the collection felt checkered because the stories spanned about four decades. There is no doubt, however that Ms Pearlman is a good short story writer. She is able to get under the skin of a character in a matter of a few lines, which is an important skill for writers of the short form.Most of her stories are set in Boston, specifically in the fictional suburban Godolphin, and many of her characters are Jewish Americans. However, Pearlman rather adroitly inhabits the soul of any one character, whether it be the simultaneous guileless and confident seven-year old girl who becomes separated from her parents in "Inbound", or a 67-year old man who mentors a 17-year old Russian immigrant on American History and much more, in "Girl in Blue with Brown Bag", among many others.One of the more absorbing stories is "Days of Awe", where a retiree Robert pays a visit to his gay son, Lex, in Central America to see his newly-adopted grandson for the first time, and his touching attempts to bond with the boy, as he deals with his contradictory feelings. He reflects, in one instance, when Lex refuses his money for a trip: "A disappointing fellow. May you, too, have a son like mine, Robert thought - the old curse, the old blessing."Her prose is glowing, and she mixes the familiar with such an interesting detail that it startles you and forces you to revisit the phrase again, for example in "Vallies", a woman with a mysterious past who somewhat reluctantly becomes a housekeeper for a series of families. At the playground, she observes: "The mommies - there were some of those, too, unmannerly - ignored her entirely: they were too busy boasting about their children as if someday they meant to sell them."

These stories are about everyday people in everyday situations; but they are quite remarkable in the way in which they summon up time and place (and they vary greatly in time and place) in a very concrete way, and focus on moments of decision and the reality of the lives the characters lead. So, in the earliest story in the book, a couple refrain from consummating an adulterous affair - after all they both still love their spouses. In another much later story a couple do spend a night together but then their paths just cross about once every 10 years - and they dedicate themselves to another in a future life. And in one of the 'new stories', an old solitary woman running a hotel finds a kindred spirit in a visiting child - but will not be able to take forward the relationship - he is after all just visiting the hotel and will continue to live with his parents (who love him, but aren't really kindred spirits).All in all, I would strongly recommend this.

Such beautiful short stories...I was a bit put out by the introduction which told me how much I'd love this book, and felt that it had to prove it. Well, I did. It's not at all the sort of thing that I usually read - it's about relationships, and loss, and decay, and all the things I try not to read about or even think about. But the stories are so perfect, each one like a little jewel box...amazing the way that a character can be conveyed through a few tiny details.There are indeed lots of settings and time periods, and it's remarkable how well she conveys these too, but it's the human detail that really makes the stories special. Lots of humour and sadness, across the whole spectrum of human life, but with an emphasis on the poignant later stages, and yet not solely melancholy or maudlin. Just great.

It appears from the endorsements in the front of this collection that, as in my case, hardly anyone had heard of this wonderful writer until BINOCULAR VISION came out in 2011. Anne Patchett says in her enthusiastic introduction to the collection that 'what you have in your now is a treasure, a book you could take to a desert island knowing that every time you got to the end you could simply turn to the front cover and start all over again'. I didn't quite do that but I certainly re-read several straight away. The stories are varied - funny, poignant, robust, never sentimental. Every one is precise, perceptive, engaging and somehow sparkles. She is particularly good when she's writing about the young and the old. My favourite stories at the moment - but I'm sure that will change, and change again, as I return to this WONDERFUL collection - are 'Inbound' and 'Self Reliance'. Anyone who reads/writes short stories should get hold of a copy right away.

I had never read anything by Edith Pearlman until a review flagged her up as "possibly the best writer you have never heard of."I think that may be no exaggeration. Each story creates a whole world with economy, involving the reader in that world and in the lives of the central characters. Often I was reluctant to leave them behind as the story ended.Some of her characters may have unusual choices to make, yet it is always possible to identify with them and their dilemmas. Her prose is unfussy, precise, on occasions magical.I intend to reread - one day.