A New and Glorious Life by Michelle Herman
1998 by Carnegie Mellon University Press
A New and Glorious Life contains three novellas - two of which are fairly straightforward stories, and the last one is more of a meta-fictional effort. Herman is an engaging writer, giving her readers well-developed characters and interesting situations to read about.
The first novella, "Auslander," is about a translator of poetry who is fluent in many languages. She is contacted via phone from a male who has read an essay she wrote and while she is initially a little put off and possibly even frightened by the call, she agrees to a quick meeting with him to look at some Romanian poetry. It turns out that she was wrong, and the caller was not the author of the poetry. She was also pleasantly surprised that the poetry was actually quite good.
Within the story, Auslander thinks about love, about art, and the relationship between the two. She is also forced to view her own romantic relationships from a distance. Her actions and reactions to the others in the story - the Romanian, his wife the poet, and Auslander's former lover, the poet Farrell.
The title novella is a fantastic look at Grants and Artist Colonies. Reading this and getting Herman's probable views of the cattiness between artists during their stays via her characters, I kept thinking that this was what TC Boyle was trying (and I stress, trying) to do in East is East. I don't know how one could read this novella and attend such a colony or conference without constantly thinking of Herman's writings.
The final entry, "Hope Among Men," is a story that quickly announces itself as such. The author, Herman, immediately tells you the ending of the story, allowing the reader the knowledge that Hope, the woman in the story, will not end up with either of her suitors within the story, Misery and Heartache. It has always been my understanding that a work of meta-fiction has reasons for being such and not being written without the authorial intrusions. I believe that Herman was trying to show that if a story is written in a compelling enough manner, even knowledge of the ending could be forgotten. I caught myself rooting for one of the two relationships to develop in my reading of the novella. I'm still not sure this final entry belonged in a collection with the other two, but all three show Herman to be a wonderful technician, who can create interesting characters and things for them to do. She writes with wit and intelligence and should be searched out.
4 stars
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