Category: Michael Caines

Michael Caines works at the Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2013) and the editor of a TLS bicentennial celebration of Jane Austen. He is writing a short book about literary prizes, and a slightly longer book about Brigid Brophy. He is founding editor of the Brixton Review of Books.

‘Blow’ by Susan Minot

“He called in the middle of the day to ask if he could come over.” The end, alas, is drawing near. Do I have many more tales of regret and loss and melancholy, and all the rest, to hand? Ah, well, for a slight (insultingly slight; forgive me) change of pace, here’s a (AHEM) sexy little number by Susan Minot (and from a hardback that, oh I admit, calamitous though it is, that I bought for the title and the sexy author photo! Well, what can I say? I was young(er) and foolish(er) then; and as for now . . .). In ‘Blow’, Bill drops by. The narrator notes what a mess he is: “He was like a hunted man”. He jitters around. It’s a fairly short short story. The gift, the sting, the killer blow is in the last line. Susan Minot: not just a pretty face, you dubious, desperate, positively stupid, semi-literate boy. I’m troubled by the place this story has in the world.

from Lust and other stories, William Heinemann

‘Scropton, Sudbury, Marchington, Uttoxeter’ by Jessie Greengrass

“My parents were grocers.” Ten down, two to go. So many wonderful writers, so many wonderful stories, I now realize, that are not going to make the cut. Such as it is. But consider this, and while we’re on the subject of regret: Jessie Greengrass’s last story in her first collection, about a woman (I think) recalling her parents, and paying their old haunt (singular) a visit. Am I going to cling to Jessie’s coattails, too, as well as M. John’s? Yes, I think I am. Ms Greengrass was once a member of a small outfit called the Brautigan Book Club, as was I. It was fun, you might say, hearing people enthuse about Richard Brautigan. But here we are, and Jesse is a superb short writer and I’m . . . OK. Never mind.

From An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It, JM Originals, 2015

‘The Dead’ by James Joyce

Let this personal anthology be taken as proof that there are far too many heart-horrifyingly good short story writers out there. In a dozen stories, you can, of course, only scrape the surface; dip a foot, as it were, amid a dozen specimens of the species. Lord knows, and now you know, too, that some extraordinary things have slipped by me. I would name all the wonders if I could: William Maxwell, Mavis Gallant, Flannery O’Connor, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Anne Enright, Helen Simpson’s ‘Up at a Villa’ and… all that rest. For now, though, the end must be the incontrovertible end to Dubliners by James Joyce. Not only because of the story, but because, a couple of years ago, I heard the actor Aidan Gillen read the story in the Sam Wanamaker Theatre, attached to Shakespeare’s Globe, and it was then that the wonder of thing struck me anew. Some stories are glimpses. ‘The Dead’ is not, of course. Mr Gillen made it mesmerising. The story and the performance combined perfectly. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.

From Dubliners. Available to read here