Short Story (not) Friday: In the Cemetary Where Al Jolson is Buried

Amy Hempel might be a little bit of a acquired taste.  A bit like coffee.  A writer that I didn't love at a young age, but a writer I crave as an adult.  Sure, maybe I tried to read her at sixteen or seventeen, but did I really?  Is coffee blended cold and mixed with sugar and caramel, then topped with whip cream really coffee?

I read "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried" last year.  Not for the first time, but it felt as though it was.  Hempel writes in small brisk sentences that are clumped together in short paragraphs, set off with white space.  It's best to take those kinds of stories slow.  Breathe in the spaces and read (really read, don't rush by) each sentence.  And the story accumulated around me like snow, or a caffeine buzz.

I don't know how to talk about this story to someone whose never read it.  So I am going to go ahead and assume you have, or that you're ok with little spoilers.  Deal?  (This is a blog, after all, not a real book review.)  Because here is the thing.  There is a single exclamation point in this whole story and now, every time I read it, this exclamation point will kick me in the chest.  I don't know how Hempel does this, how she pulls me along, the sadness and morbid humor pulling me in different directions and thinking in the back of my mind of my own best friend and I'm reading between the lines, trying to fill in the blank spaces she hints around and then- bam!  One sentence, one exclamation point and ok, I'm done, this story has done me in.

I think I sort of love this story for that single piece of puncuation.  Is that crazy?

That, and the last line.  I want to share the last line with you because it's the only last line of a story that I have memorized, that I chant softly in the back of my mind when I start reading.  But I won't, because if you haven't read it, I want you to read it for the first time in the story.  Instead, of course, here is the beginning.

""Tell me things I won't mind forgetting," she said. "Make it useless stuff or skip it."

I began. I told her insects fly through rain, missing every drop, never getting wet. I told her no one in America owned a tape recorder before Bing Crosby did. I told her the shape of the moon is like a banana—you see it looking full, you're seeing it end-on.

The camera made me self-conscious and I stopped. It was trained on us from a ceiling mount—the kind of camera banks use to photograph robbers. It played us to the nurses down the hall in Intensive Care.

"Go on, girl," she said. "You get used to it."

I had my audience. I went on. Did she know that Tammy Wynette had changed her tune? Really. That now she sings "Stand by Your Friends"? That Paul Anka did it too, I said. Does "You're Having Our Baby." That he got sick of all that feminist bitching.

"What else?" she said. "Have you got something else?"

Oh, yes.

For her I would always have something else."

(Also, how great is it that it is now up at Fictionaut?  Pretty great.)

Comments

[Deonne]

I'm a nonfiction writer, but Hempel is one of my primary literary influences. I saw her read at AWP a couple years ago, and I had to restrain myself from rushing the stage and gushing all over her.

I teach this story in my intro to creative writing class, and the students love it - they really respond to Hempel's craft, tone, and humor. And I know what you mean about that exclamation point! A "kick in the chest" is exactly right.