CALM SEA AND PROSPEROUS VOYAGE, collected stories of a neglected Chicago woman author

CALM SEA AND PROSPEROUS VOYAGE: The Selected Stories of Bette Howland
BETTE HOWLAND
A Public Space Books
$26.00 hardcover, available now

Rating:

The Publisher Says: A Booklist Best New Book
A Vogue.com Best Book
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2019 so far

"Loving, lacerating sketches." --Harper's

"This story collection reinstates a long-overlooked artist of live-wire incisiveness, shredding wit, and improbable beauty." —Kirkus, starred review

Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage restores to the literary canon an extraordinarily gifted writer, who was recognized as a major talent before all but disappearing from public view for decades, until nearly the end of her life. Bette Howland herself was an outsider―an intellectual from a working-class neighborhood in Chicago; a divorcée and single mother, to the disapproval of her family; an artist chipped away at by poverty and perfection. Each of these facets plays a central role in her work. Mining her deepest emotions for her art, she chronicles the tension of her generation. Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage introduces a new generation of readers to a wry, brilliant observer and a writer of great empathy and sly, joyous humor.

My Review:

As is my wont, I will use the time-honored and very efficient Bryce Method to view the stories as they come.

A Visit is about that one thing, "visit" having many levels of meaning here.

"Then the door swung open, the man stepped quickly down the planks, and I saw he wasn't as big as I had thought...he had the manner of a man with a badge on his chest. A lot of shirtfront, thrusting buttons."

Blue in Chicago

"The job was at Zenith Radio, where Sylvia herself used to work during the war years when my uncle Fred was in the service. ... {Cousin} Gary will have an executive position: fourteen thousand to start. A lot more than Fred makes as a printer."

A boatload of money in the 1960s! Now it's a middling monthly salary.

To the Country

Twenty-Sixth and California

Public Facilities

Golden Age

How We Got the Old Woman to Go

Aronesti

Power Failure

German Lessons

Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage