The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund | Reading at Charis Bookstore

The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund

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I have since come to understand that this – the need to imagine our pain worthy of another’s anguish, our circumstances capable of invoking sacrifice or even despair in another human being – is a basic human need, one felt even more deeply as we confront our own shortcomings in meeting this need for others. ~ And Down We Went

Several weeks ago I received an email from an old friend, Lori Ostlund. Her collection of short stories, The Bigness of the World, won the 2009 Flannery O’Conner award for short fiction. The Flannery O'Connor Award is an annual prize awarded by the University of Georgia Press named in honor of the American short story writer and novelist Flannery O'Connor.

Of course I immediately asked for a copy. Having received my shiny new hardbound version over a week ago, I have been savoring one story each night. It is my treat before bedtime.

I love short stories. I recognize that publishers no longer appreciate this literary format, because we live in a culture obsessed with reality programming and memoirs, but a well crafted short story is the perfect way to end your day. I have never been capable of reading a book over an extended period of time. I consume books, regardless of length, in one to two sittings. Perhaps it is due to my desire to experience stories from beginning to end without the mundane world interrupting my journey. As a child, I would plow through the library shelves every summer, reading one to two novels per day. When I found novels that I loved, I would read them multiple times, committing paragraphs and pieces to memory. As an adult, life rarely affords the opportunity to feast on a novel in one sitting, because the obligations associated with work and domestic details tend to require a few hours of sleep. As a result, I don’t read as much as I used to, which is unfortunate because I find it more relaxing and rewarding than television.

I throughly enjoyed each tale.  Each story mixes humor with keen insight.  She draws considerably on her Minnesota background, allowing the influence to infuse her characters with normalcy, which becomes eccentricity as normal is defined differently around the world. In Idyllic Little Bali a group of disparate American tourists find comfort in one another's company, as they unknowingly wile away the final moment's of one man's life.  In And Down We Went the connections between people, and the impact of our relationships, is explored through a triad of misadventures with defecating fowl.  In All Boy a child realizes that his parent's have fired the babysitter for wearing his father's socks rather than for confining him in a closet.

Lori’s characters are simultaneously ordinary and quirky, providing insight and perspective that is both relatable and, yet, unique. They are normal in background and bearing, but unusual in eccentricity, idiosyncrasy and observation. The characters find elements of themselves, and epiphanies about life, in unexpected places and situations. Each story is interwoven with humor and a stoic resignation that allows the reader to view the world through the eyes of characters, many of whom wander far from their origins only to find the world encountered more complicated than the one left behind.

It is strange to read stories written by your friends. Whereas I enjoyed travelling through the experience of each character, the influence of the author’s global wandering peered through the pages. I recognize Lori’s passport in the settings chosen, her voice in the wry observations about relationships and human interaction and her eccentricities in the preoccupation with grammar possessed by so many of her characters. 

After I read the first two stories, I emailed Lori to thank her for the book and to let her know that I had completely forgotten about her grammar obsession, though the synapses were immediately restored when it was mentioned. She was surprised, because she considers it one of her most memorable features.

From an interview with Bill Coles, Story in Literary Fiction: A lot of my writing is about grammar, teachers, people who are really caught up with the correctness of things, how people say good when it should be well. But it becomes—and this is one of my themes—it becomes this block so they can’t really communicate with the world. They’re hyper-focused on these correct forms of communication with the ironic result that they’re not doing any real communication at all.

The accolades for her work continue to accumulate. She received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. She won the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award in September, 2009, which will allow her to take time off from teaching to finish her first novel, tentatively entitled After the Parade.

Lori will be doing a reading at Charis bookstore in Little Five Points, Atlanta, Georgia, at 8 pm on October 23rd. All Atlanta locals interested in hearing the work of this talented author should attend. Though I have an admitted bias, I am certain that you will find her work interesting, charming, compelling and thought provoking.