Word: buechler
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...Pepicelli" by James Buechler '55, a short story published in the May issue of the "Advocate" last year, has been awarded the second place in the O. Henry Prize Contest...
...last Advocate of the year has only three stories, but the editors have shrewdly attempted to hide this fact by laying them out as confusingly as possible. An astute reader can, however, find the ends of most of them. Amid the confusion, one discovers the inevitable Buechler story, which is typically Buechler, just as this Advocate is typically Advocate. As always Buechler concerns himself with a domestic problem which includes a shrewish mother; he narrates his story with a loose and distinctly Buechlerian style, which stumbles only occasionally. He provides a few charming touches with his description...
...contrast with Buechler, Mary Harnett's story of a plantation lady's spiritual decadence is well conceived, but not always well narrated. Although her medium (the pianist who is afraid to call back old memories by playing her piano) would seem hackneyed, it somehow comes out highly original. Originality, however, when carried too far, is only once removed from mere oddity, and Miss Harnett's descriptions sometimes step over the fine line that separates them. "An Empty Salon" is a fairly good portrayal of the struggle for courage to live, but I suspect it was given top billing more...
...Orwell would have laughed that he, the lover of the clean direct English language, could have inspired such writing as Buechler's! For example: "But time was when a grown man, maybe he was middle-aged already, and standing square on his own two feet in his overcoat and suit and vest, malory fedora, the best necktic he had left and a watch chain if he'd held on to it, was a grateful man to have it, and a college graduate." Orwell would have laughed and said, "Come off it, Buechler," and as usual he would have been right...
There's no doubt that Buechler has an eye for detail and a feeling for character, and thus it is a pity that he clouds what he has to say by a garbled narrative that is neither stream-of-consciousness nor adult conversation nor childhood recall. Although this style intrigued me to the point of distraction, I did gather that Buechler's story was an attempt to conjure up the spirit of the men who left their homes to join the Lincoln Brigade and fight Franco. I don't think the deep and unseeing idealism of these men quite comes...