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Fools: Stories
A dazzling new collection of interconnected stories by the National Book Award finalist.
When is it wise to be a fool for something? What makes people want to be better than they are? From New York to India to Paris, from the Catholic Worker movement to Occupy Wall Street, the characters in Joan Silber’s dazzling new story cycle tackle this question head-on.
Vera, the shy, anarchist daughter of missionary parents, leaves her family for love and activism in New York. A generation later, her own doubting daughter insists on the truth of being of two minds, even in marriage. The adulterous son of a Florida hotel owner steals money from his family and departs for Paris, where he takes up with a young woman and finds himself outsmarted in turn. Fools ponders the circle of winners and losers, dupers and duped, and the price we pay for our beliefs.
Fools is a luminous, intelligent, and rewarding work of fiction from the author for whom the Boston Globe said, "No other writer can make a few small decisions ripple across the globe, and across time, with more subtlety and power."
When is it wise to be a fool for something? What makes people want to be better than they are? From New York to India to Paris, from the Catholic Worker movement to Occupy Wall Street, the characters in Joan Silber’s dazzling new story cycle tackle this question head-on.
Vera, the shy, anarchist daughter of missionary parents, leaves her family for love and activism in New York. A generation later, her own doubting daughter insists on the truth of being of two minds, even in marriage. The adulterous son of a Florida hotel owner steals money from his family and departs for Paris, where he takes up with a young woman and finds himself outsmarted in turn. Fools ponders the circle of winners and losers, dupers and duped, and the price we pay for our beliefs.
Fools is a luminous, intelligent, and rewarding work of fiction from the author for whom the Boston Globe said, "No other writer can make a few small decisions ripple across the globe, and across time, with more subtlety and power."
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 13, 2013
85 people are currently reading
2920 people want to read
About the author
Joan Silber
25 books341 followersJoan Silber is the author of nine books of fiction. Her book Improvement was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was listed as one of the year's best books by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, The Seattle Times, and Kirkus Reviews. She lives in New York and teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program. Keep up with Joan at joansilber.net.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 176 reviews
July 13, 2022
This is the second short story collection that I have loved from Joan Silber, a remarkably astute and smart writer, with her understated prose and ability to throw a light on ordinary people and their everyday lives in a extraordinarily subtly nuanced and multilayered way. Whilst Ideas of Heaven were stories linked in the structure of a circle, here we have 6 stories that link together in the form of a web or network, through time, numerous locations, both national and global, and different generations of the same family. The theme here is almost intrinsic to humanity, the universality of foolishness, but being a fool can be ambiguous in nature as is illustrated in this anthology with its complex and contradictory characters, the circumstances they find themselves in, the decisions they make, and the search to be good.
People may be fools for whatever we choose to put our faith in, for example, for love, religion, drink, political ideology and freedom. In 1920s New York focuses on a group of idealist radical anarchists, some of whom live together, included amongst their number is Dorothy Day. Vera, born in India and is married to Joe, and their daughter, Louise goes on to wed her high school boyfriend only to find herself facing the most unexpected of futures when she is denied the right to join him in Japan, a separation that is to have an indelible effect on their marriage over time. The promiscuous and drinking Anthony brings his wife to live in his parents hotel in Florida, ending up stealing money from his parents and escaping to Paris where he faces a form of retribution. Marcus's relationship with Nico breaks up, he finds himself caught up in his memories and learning of Betsy and Norman, and Gerard's wife, gives birth and leaves him but their marriage stands, and Rudy really wants a charity contribution.
I have only recently become acquainted with Joan Silber's short stories, and am so delighted to have discovered her, I am so surprised that I have never come across her before. If you have a penchant for superior short stories, well written, so observant of human nature, people and all the possibilities of connections, then this outstanding anthology is for you. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
People may be fools for whatever we choose to put our faith in, for example, for love, religion, drink, political ideology and freedom. In 1920s New York focuses on a group of idealist radical anarchists, some of whom live together, included amongst their number is Dorothy Day. Vera, born in India and is married to Joe, and their daughter, Louise goes on to wed her high school boyfriend only to find herself facing the most unexpected of futures when she is denied the right to join him in Japan, a separation that is to have an indelible effect on their marriage over time. The promiscuous and drinking Anthony brings his wife to live in his parents hotel in Florida, ending up stealing money from his parents and escaping to Paris where he faces a form of retribution. Marcus's relationship with Nico breaks up, he finds himself caught up in his memories and learning of Betsy and Norman, and Gerard's wife, gives birth and leaves him but their marriage stands, and Rudy really wants a charity contribution.
I have only recently become acquainted with Joan Silber's short stories, and am so delighted to have discovered her, I am so surprised that I have never come across her before. If you have a penchant for superior short stories, well written, so observant of human nature, people and all the possibilities of connections, then this outstanding anthology is for you. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
January 3, 2014
Why does not everybody know and read Joan Silber? She is consistently fabulous-from hear early Household Words: A Novel to the incredible In My Other Life: Stories and the breathtaking The Size of the World: A Novel up to and including her most recent collection of linked stories, Fools: Stories.
Fools: Stories circles around a group of left wing/anarchists based in New York City. There is a story from the time of Sacco and Vanzetti and a wonderful take on Dorothy Day before she was St. Dorothy with glimpses of the famous Staten Island beach area where she lived. The stories spread out to Miami, contemporary New York and Paris. There are the rich, the poor and those caught between two poles-anti-capitalism is a motif more strongly pronounced than I have heard in years.
It is fascinating to make the connections between the stories but each story is also an independent jewel. Silber's writing is never less than beautiful and her people are real and poetic at the same time.
Am I fan? Of course. Really the question is why isn't everyone? Or, is it that everyone is and I just haven't heard?
But read her. For your sake, don't miss this gem.
Fools: Stories circles around a group of left wing/anarchists based in New York City. There is a story from the time of Sacco and Vanzetti and a wonderful take on Dorothy Day before she was St. Dorothy with glimpses of the famous Staten Island beach area where she lived. The stories spread out to Miami, contemporary New York and Paris. There are the rich, the poor and those caught between two poles-anti-capitalism is a motif more strongly pronounced than I have heard in years.
It is fascinating to make the connections between the stories but each story is also an independent jewel. Silber's writing is never less than beautiful and her people are real and poetic at the same time.
Am I fan? Of course. Really the question is why isn't everyone? Or, is it that everyone is and I just haven't heard?
But read her. For your sake, don't miss this gem.
March 22, 2022
What a perfect title.
Foolishness is one of humanity’s defining traits, and I wonder if Silber’s big overarching subject is how people contend with their follies and foolishness, unavoidable in life as they are – I’ll find out as I continue to read her. My last Silber read was Improvement and it could easily have been called Fools as well. And now the connection between the two titles strikes me, as I write this: Silber’s characters are all fools (we’re all fools for something) who try, or at least want to *improve* themselves and their lives, and as a reader I watch, rapt, as they stumble through the effort. This foolishness and stumbling *is* life. The titles are interchangeable.
Anyway Fools was just as fabulous and artful and moving as Improvement and I can tell you now though it’s only April that it’ll be in my top reads come December.
Silber’s style is cosmopolitan and sophisticated. The mood is one of bittersweetness – these stories are both heartwarming and bruising; witty and wistful. I love the characters. They’re good people who are capable of being idiots and assholes. Their mistakes are all our mistakes, and the truth of their thoughts and experiences, their relationships, principles, lack of principles, desire to be better than they are, resonated deeply.
Readers do yourselves a favour and discover Joan Silber. She’s won many awards and is revered by great writers whose names are known to wider audiences – hers deserves to be a household name too. She’s like Deborah Eisenberg and Lorrie Moore, very modern, fresh, stylish, but grounded and wise. And sad, very comically, hard-hittingly sad. Fools and Improvement both ask: How do we let love help us, make our lives better, without having it fuck us up and betray and damage us? Where do mistakes come from? What happens to our selves, whatever that is, over time, over the course of our relationships with other people? How do we deal with the messes we make? Just what the fuck are we doing?
Foolishness is one of humanity’s defining traits, and I wonder if Silber’s big overarching subject is how people contend with their follies and foolishness, unavoidable in life as they are – I’ll find out as I continue to read her. My last Silber read was Improvement and it could easily have been called Fools as well. And now the connection between the two titles strikes me, as I write this: Silber’s characters are all fools (we’re all fools for something) who try, or at least want to *improve* themselves and their lives, and as a reader I watch, rapt, as they stumble through the effort. This foolishness and stumbling *is* life. The titles are interchangeable.
Anyway Fools was just as fabulous and artful and moving as Improvement and I can tell you now though it’s only April that it’ll be in my top reads come December.
Silber’s style is cosmopolitan and sophisticated. The mood is one of bittersweetness – these stories are both heartwarming and bruising; witty and wistful. I love the characters. They’re good people who are capable of being idiots and assholes. Their mistakes are all our mistakes, and the truth of their thoughts and experiences, their relationships, principles, lack of principles, desire to be better than they are, resonated deeply.
Readers do yourselves a favour and discover Joan Silber. She’s won many awards and is revered by great writers whose names are known to wider audiences – hers deserves to be a household name too. She’s like Deborah Eisenberg and Lorrie Moore, very modern, fresh, stylish, but grounded and wise. And sad, very comically, hard-hittingly sad. Fools and Improvement both ask: How do we let love help us, make our lives better, without having it fuck us up and betray and damage us? Where do mistakes come from? What happens to our selves, whatever that is, over time, over the course of our relationships with other people? How do we deal with the messes we make? Just what the fuck are we doing?
January 2, 2018
In the Light of Day
She sneaks upon you unawares. The title story, which begins "A lot of people thought anarchists were fools," opens with a group of politically-engaged young people living in a Village apartment in the nineteen-twenties. One of them has a friend called Dorothy. A few pages later, we hear that this Dorothy has a beach cottage on Staten Island. Wait a minute, I thought, isn't this Dorothy Day? A few years ago I had made sketches for an opera about the founder of the Catholic Worker movement and her trajectory from bohemian anarchist to (in many people's eyes) candidate for Catholic sainthood, so I recognized the reference. Actually, Silber's story is not about Day herself but one of the peripheral young women in the group. Yet Dorothy's presence and principles illuminate the entire story like a backlit screen.
All six longish stories explore the paradoxes inherent in the lives of people who—often despite themselves—find a faith or some way of doing good. They tend to be full-life stories, spanning decades, from impulsive youth to something like mature wisdom; almost all these characters pursue a twisted path to where they ultimately end up. As stories, they tend to be oblique and apparently without focus. The subject of the first story, for instance, is less interesting than Day, who remains in the background. The protagonist of the second, a young American who becomes a panhandler in Paris, is a liar and a thief, and his story is painful to read; the changes he makes in his later life are recounted almost as a postscript, yet they are the point. These are stories populated with palpably real people (though Day, I think, is the only historical figure), yet few of them move strongly to the kind of conclusion that make you say "Wow, that's some story!" The only possible exception is the last, about a young American fundraiser for a charity to help Indian lepers and an older Frenchwoman he is cultivating as a prospect. This does have a punchline of a sort, but it is an ambiguously ironic one, and deliciously thought-provoking.
Stars? That's difficult. At no time while reading did I think these were five-star stories; yet I came increasingly to wonder whether it might not be a five-star book. This a definitely a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Dorothy Day, for example, appears in only one story as a major character, but she is mentioned in two others, and her spirit hovers over all of them. In her wonderful collection, Ideas of Heaven Silber linked one story to the next through some small detail, and joined the last back to the first in a ring. Here, each story is linked to several others, mostly in small ways. But if the links in the first collection might be seen as the couplings between railroad cars, here they are a whole rail network, whose tracks cross and cross again. Silber's subject is not so much individual people as an entire world. A moral world, although she is never moralistic. Her field of view spans a century and contains not only Christians, but also Jews and Muslims, and characters who would not call themselves religious at all. It is an undemonstrative book with a refreshing avoidance of the heroic paradigm. So what if most of the characters live in undramatic obscurity? Yes, it may keep the collection off the best-seller list. But it is heartening to see people as ordinary and confused as the rest of us getting along as best they can, and somehow coming to their various understandings of what is truly important. And that is priceless.
She sneaks upon you unawares. The title story, which begins "A lot of people thought anarchists were fools," opens with a group of politically-engaged young people living in a Village apartment in the nineteen-twenties. One of them has a friend called Dorothy. A few pages later, we hear that this Dorothy has a beach cottage on Staten Island. Wait a minute, I thought, isn't this Dorothy Day? A few years ago I had made sketches for an opera about the founder of the Catholic Worker movement and her trajectory from bohemian anarchist to (in many people's eyes) candidate for Catholic sainthood, so I recognized the reference. Actually, Silber's story is not about Day herself but one of the peripheral young women in the group. Yet Dorothy's presence and principles illuminate the entire story like a backlit screen.
All six longish stories explore the paradoxes inherent in the lives of people who—often despite themselves—find a faith or some way of doing good. They tend to be full-life stories, spanning decades, from impulsive youth to something like mature wisdom; almost all these characters pursue a twisted path to where they ultimately end up. As stories, they tend to be oblique and apparently without focus. The subject of the first story, for instance, is less interesting than Day, who remains in the background. The protagonist of the second, a young American who becomes a panhandler in Paris, is a liar and a thief, and his story is painful to read; the changes he makes in his later life are recounted almost as a postscript, yet they are the point. These are stories populated with palpably real people (though Day, I think, is the only historical figure), yet few of them move strongly to the kind of conclusion that make you say "Wow, that's some story!" The only possible exception is the last, about a young American fundraiser for a charity to help Indian lepers and an older Frenchwoman he is cultivating as a prospect. This does have a punchline of a sort, but it is an ambiguously ironic one, and deliciously thought-provoking.
Stars? That's difficult. At no time while reading did I think these were five-star stories; yet I came increasingly to wonder whether it might not be a five-star book. This a definitely a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Dorothy Day, for example, appears in only one story as a major character, but she is mentioned in two others, and her spirit hovers over all of them. In her wonderful collection, Ideas of Heaven Silber linked one story to the next through some small detail, and joined the last back to the first in a ring. Here, each story is linked to several others, mostly in small ways. But if the links in the first collection might be seen as the couplings between railroad cars, here they are a whole rail network, whose tracks cross and cross again. Silber's subject is not so much individual people as an entire world. A moral world, although she is never moralistic. Her field of view spans a century and contains not only Christians, but also Jews and Muslims, and characters who would not call themselves religious at all. It is an undemonstrative book with a refreshing avoidance of the heroic paradigm. So what if most of the characters live in undramatic obscurity? Yes, it may keep the collection off the best-seller list. But it is heartening to see people as ordinary and confused as the rest of us getting along as best they can, and somehow coming to their various understandings of what is truly important. And that is priceless.
February 4, 2018
I am so glad I stumbled upon Joan Silber. She writes crisply, peeling away the outer layers of her characters with one unvarnished sentence after another. The people in this collection are "fools" for love, for politics, for religion...all of them relatable. I enjoyed getting to know each of them.
September 16, 2022
⭐⭐⭐⭐+ Thank you Paromjit! I loved this book.
Reader beware, if you are looking for sunshine you won't find it here.
The reason I never have time to finish my reviews is because whenever I start writing one I find myself off somewhere on a tangent reading a million other things that popped into my head while reading the book....This book left me sneezing and covered in dust as I foraged through shelves of books that haven't been touched in over 40 years! Post WWI Anarchists and Post WWII Beat Poets...so much fun and so much nostalgia (I was never an anarchist like the cool kids in my class but I was a closet rebel in HS and Uni). This book of interwoven stories spans both periods and three or four generations. Anarchists with an amorphous view on marriage - sometimes do and sometimes don't believe in it, Anarchists who preferred to sit in jail rather than serve in the army (not exactly conscientious objection associated with the Viet Nam war), religious anarchists (is that an oxymoron?) - apparently belief in god and belief in government are polar. One feared and one resented?... ashrams, reactionary later generations converting to Islam....religion seems to be beyond the scope of anarchistic manifesto.
Fools, by Joan Silber, is totally immersive, and follows the thoughts and actions of normal, imperfect people who share a quixotic moral compass. In a perfect world we could all be anarchists but in our imperfect universe, where even legal boundaries cannot prevent potentially harmful trespass on our personal space, anarchy = chaos (plain language and not physics) .... My own views, of course!
Reader beware, if you are looking for sunshine you won't find it here.
The reason I never have time to finish my reviews is because whenever I start writing one I find myself off somewhere on a tangent reading a million other things that popped into my head while reading the book....This book left me sneezing and covered in dust as I foraged through shelves of books that haven't been touched in over 40 years! Post WWI Anarchists and Post WWII Beat Poets...so much fun and so much nostalgia (I was never an anarchist like the cool kids in my class but I was a closet rebel in HS and Uni). This book of interwoven stories spans both periods and three or four generations. Anarchists with an amorphous view on marriage - sometimes do and sometimes don't believe in it, Anarchists who preferred to sit in jail rather than serve in the army (not exactly conscientious objection associated with the Viet Nam war), religious anarchists (is that an oxymoron?) - apparently belief in god and belief in government are polar. One feared and one resented?... ashrams, reactionary later generations converting to Islam....religion seems to be beyond the scope of anarchistic manifesto.
Fools, by Joan Silber, is totally immersive, and follows the thoughts and actions of normal, imperfect people who share a quixotic moral compass. In a perfect world we could all be anarchists but in our imperfect universe, where even legal boundaries cannot prevent potentially harmful trespass on our personal space, anarchy = chaos (plain language and not physics) .... My own views, of course!
January 16, 2013
I've yet to be disappointed in Silber's work. Generous, tender, and masterfully crafted, her books are deserving of a much larger audience and she belongs to be mentioned in the same conversations as Jennifer Egan, Ann Patchett, or Colum McCann. It's easy to comment on the sheer readability of Silber's writing, but in Fools it is accompanied by a melancholy and emotional intelligence that generates a warmth that's often missing from contemporary fiction.
June 1, 2013
This is a short, albeit structurally tight, interlocking group of stories. It starts in the early 1920.s, with a young woman who joins the bohemian and anarchist movements, protesting the imprisonment and ultimate conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti. It is a story of what we choose to believe in and what we choose to fight for. The characters and their decision are a very real portrayal of young people trying to discover themselves, often doing so but years too late. My favorite story was the title story, "Fools" but I loved the prose and the storytelling ability by this author, Also enjoyed the appearance of the real and noted, Dorothy Day."
August 20, 2018
Gorgeous. If you aren't reading Joan Silber, you should. The question of why hers isn't a household name risks driving one crazy. Sartre said that we must imagine Sisyphus as happy, and this is how I picture Silber, at her typewriter (except that she is probably one of those geniuses who writes longhand), over and over doing the hard work that fiction is supposed to do, somehow managing to find joy in the toil despite not receiving the acclaim she deserves. Silber reminds me of Alice Munro in these stories, every bit as masterful and in control, giving us so much to think about and chew on. "Hanging Fruit" is the one that will stay with me, I think.
July 27, 2020
Good Interweaving of characters between the stories. Also a character who acts selfish in one is portrayed as liberal in another. Good linking of characters. But somehow, it was not gripping as I expected.
March 27, 2024
Feels like it was not my style of book/story. I’m sure there is a message to be had after reading this, but it just made me feel like romantic relationships aren’t that worth it in the end lol.
A collection of short stories told over a long time frame and kind told in a slice of life kind of way. The title of the book is very fitting to a lot of the characters for sure. Mad me feel that we are all fools after all.
A collection of short stories told over a long time frame and kind told in a slice of life kind of way. The title of the book is very fitting to a lot of the characters for sure. Mad me feel that we are all fools after all.
May 31, 2014
Fools is one of those collections of loosely inter-related stories, one not even pretending to be a novel. The title story is about a married woman who is part of a group of young anarchist radicals in the New York of the 1920s. They're idealists, talkers, not bomb-makers, and one of their friends turns out to be Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement. The book progresses through time and across the country and the world as the connections between the characters and the original group become, in some cases, mere matters of meaningful coincidence -- or perhaps a matter of the way anarchy, as an idea, keeps threading its way through our national consciousness. The title sounds like an indictment, but the book's tone is gossipy and intimate, its prose unadorned. These characters are definitely fools for one thing or another -- freedom, love, money, alcohol -- but Silver's take on them is entirely without judgment. And only one of the stories, about a young man named Marcus who loses the lover he met in India, feels a bit slack. Perhaps the most striking thing about the collection is its insightfulness. Silber makes complex and sometimes even reprehensible characters so real and so round that you may catch yourself thinking you actually knew these people.
October 5, 2013
Silber sums up this collection in a line from the title story - Fools - by stating; " All this laughing, I came to think, ignored the number of things a person could be a fool for in this life-". It's not that her characters were fools, but more, they were fooled in to believing, accepting or needing something from others and life. The author does an amazing job in connecting these stories. She skillfully manipulates time and place. Although these were separate stories, I felt the the structure she created for the overall work, prevented them from being truly stand alone pieces. In the beginning, I kept feeling as if there was something missing from each story, but as I continued to read, I realized that the sum was, indeed, greater than the parts.
April 13, 2018
Reading this book by Joan Silber was like opening a velvet box and finding a jaw-dropping, beautifully faceted emerald inside--truly a treasure. Before now I'd only read her stories in journals and in Best American Short Stories but have already rushed out to pick up a copy of IMPROVEMENT to read next.
There's such a deceptive lightness in her style and point of view characters' voices, but then you find you've been gently sliced down to the bone by the end of each of these stories.
Why isn't she more celebrated by readers who aren't also writers? I do think she's been given the complicated compliment of being a "writer's writer." She should be feted high and low, with the likes of Lauren Groff and Anthony Doerr.
There's such a deceptive lightness in her style and point of view characters' voices, but then you find you've been gently sliced down to the bone by the end of each of these stories.
Why isn't she more celebrated by readers who aren't also writers? I do think she's been given the complicated compliment of being a "writer's writer." She should be feted high and low, with the likes of Lauren Groff and Anthony Doerr.
June 22, 2014
I love story cycles, and I especially love Silber's. She writes about big ideas, but she does it in a way that feels specific and compelling. These interconnected stories weave together some of the most interesting and important themes of the last century, not in an academic way but in a meaningful and personal way. Her characters speak in their own voices, giving us a chance to look at things from more than one perspective. I read these stories twice in a row and will probably read them again, to appreciate the connections and to keep thinking about the ideas.
March 13, 2021
This collection of connected stories begins in the 1920s with a group of anarchist friends and radiates from there to the 2010s. It's written with tender humor and each story features one character who tells a story. In typical Silber style, the characters are revealed as sympathetic and ready to change.
January 10, 2014
Why has it taken me so long to discover Joan Silber? This is a terrific story cycle starting with a group of anarchists in New York, including Dorothy Day (before she converted to Catholicism). The stories expand to show the offspring and characters connected to the original group.
January 4, 2014
Review to follow.
Read
July 22, 2013Smart, intricate, beautifully crafted. My NYTBR review: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/boo...
October 21, 2013
Awesome. In every story there were sentences and paragraphs that were perfect! These realistic stories are so close to perfection; Silber is a master.
June 15, 2014
Boy, what a book. Grown-up, thoughtful, subtle, lovely, full. I'm a big fan.
April 5, 2023
I really enjoyed reading Fools. It is written in a story cycle format where each chapter is an independent short story, but all the stories interconnect to create a larger narrative. I loved all the characters and I enjoyed seeing how they all relate to each other. They each feel like such real people even with such a small glimpse into their lives. Read for Christianity and Contemporary Fiction class.
January 1, 2022
This was an excellent book containing short stories interconnected in an incredibly intelligent way! Spanning years, generations and weaving together people, families and events all over the world. I really enjoyed Silber’s writing - poignant and concise. I looked forward to making connections between stories and characters.
February 24, 2019
I’ve gotten pretty tired of short stories, but I liked all of these.
March 29, 2019
I LOVED this book!
September 30, 2025
A collection of short stories. I didn’t really care for this author’s style of writing.
September 25, 2013
I've been trying to read more collections of short stories but have not encountered many that I have really enjoyed. This collection is one of the few that captivated me.
The six stories here are loosely connected. Certain themes run through these stories, including religion, politics, love, money, and marriage. The country of India is a recurring presence. The characters are particularly well-developed in these stories. Situations arise and decisions are made, and some decisions have quite unforseen consequences.
The first and third -- Fools and Two Opinions -- are the most connected. Vera, narrator of Fools, is the mother of Louise, the narrator of Two Opinions. Fools ends with a scene where Louise is seven. In Two Opinions, we learn what a lot about what happened to Vera and Joe after the end of Fools.
In Fools, Joe and Vera are the primary characters. Vera was born in India, where her father was a missionary. When he became disillusioned, the family returned to the US. Joe was a third cousin. Joe and Vera decide the are anarchists and see no reason to marry but, because of family pressure, they do. They move to NY and live with Betsy and Norman and Richard, also anarchists. All in the group are friends with Dorothy Day and Forster.
The second story - The Hanging Fruit - is told by Anthony, daughter of Betsy and her second husband, who Betsy left Norman to marry. Betsy and her husband have built a successful hotel in Florida. After college, Anthony brings his bride to live at the hotel but he is soon drinking and carousing and divorced, after his wife finds out about his affair with Debbie. He continues to drink and sleep with hotel patrons until he steps over the line. His parents ask him to leave and straighten himself out. He steals from his parents and goes to Paris, where his money is stolen by a young French girl Liliane. He ends up a drunk, playing his clarinet in the metro for coins but somehow is rescued by Norman.
The third story is narrated by Vera's daughter Louise, who marries her high school boyfriend but then lives separately from him for most of the time, as, because of her background as an anarchist's daughter, she is unable to accompany him to Japan where he is hired to teach the children of American servicemen.
The fourth story - Better - is narrated by Marcus, who has just been jilted by Nico. Marcus is spending some time in a house in upstate New York that has been in the family of his college roommate Casey for generations. He finds Norman's memoir on the shelf and reads about how Betsy blindsided Norman. Marcus also remembers his trip to India, where he met Nico.
The fifth story - Going Too Far - is told by Gerard, son of the bookkeeper almost fired by Betsy because of the money that Anthony in the second story had stolen. Gerard marries Adinah, daughter of orthidox Jewish parents who becomes a Muslim. Adinah leaves Gerard a couple of years after the birth of their daughter but they never divorce and remain to have a connection.
The final story - Buying and Selling - is told through the eyes of Rudy who is a fundraiser for a struggling non-profit that provided assistance to the victims of Hansen's disease (leprosy) in India. A rich board member brings a French woman to a fundraising event. The woman is Liliane, who has managed to become somewhat rich since she stole from Anthony. Rudy determines to see if he can obtain a contribution from Liliane. He encounters Liliane later in the evening at a jazz bar she is visiting with Barbara. He insists that she join him for a tour of the non-touristy parts of the city. After she agrees, she renigs because she has been invited to Barbara's upstate NY country house.
The six stories here are loosely connected. Certain themes run through these stories, including religion, politics, love, money, and marriage. The country of India is a recurring presence. The characters are particularly well-developed in these stories. Situations arise and decisions are made, and some decisions have quite unforseen consequences.
The first and third -- Fools and Two Opinions -- are the most connected. Vera, narrator of Fools, is the mother of Louise, the narrator of Two Opinions. Fools ends with a scene where Louise is seven. In Two Opinions, we learn what a lot about what happened to Vera and Joe after the end of Fools.
In Fools, Joe and Vera are the primary characters. Vera was born in India, where her father was a missionary. When he became disillusioned, the family returned to the US. Joe was a third cousin. Joe and Vera decide the are anarchists and see no reason to marry but, because of family pressure, they do. They move to NY and live with Betsy and Norman and Richard, also anarchists. All in the group are friends with Dorothy Day and Forster.
The second story - The Hanging Fruit - is told by Anthony, daughter of Betsy and her second husband, who Betsy left Norman to marry. Betsy and her husband have built a successful hotel in Florida. After college, Anthony brings his bride to live at the hotel but he is soon drinking and carousing and divorced, after his wife finds out about his affair with Debbie. He continues to drink and sleep with hotel patrons until he steps over the line. His parents ask him to leave and straighten himself out. He steals from his parents and goes to Paris, where his money is stolen by a young French girl Liliane. He ends up a drunk, playing his clarinet in the metro for coins but somehow is rescued by Norman.
The third story is narrated by Vera's daughter Louise, who marries her high school boyfriend but then lives separately from him for most of the time, as, because of her background as an anarchist's daughter, she is unable to accompany him to Japan where he is hired to teach the children of American servicemen.
The fourth story - Better - is narrated by Marcus, who has just been jilted by Nico. Marcus is spending some time in a house in upstate New York that has been in the family of his college roommate Casey for generations. He finds Norman's memoir on the shelf and reads about how Betsy blindsided Norman. Marcus also remembers his trip to India, where he met Nico.
The fifth story - Going Too Far - is told by Gerard, son of the bookkeeper almost fired by Betsy because of the money that Anthony in the second story had stolen. Gerard marries Adinah, daughter of orthidox Jewish parents who becomes a Muslim. Adinah leaves Gerard a couple of years after the birth of their daughter but they never divorce and remain to have a connection.
The final story - Buying and Selling - is told through the eyes of Rudy who is a fundraiser for a struggling non-profit that provided assistance to the victims of Hansen's disease (leprosy) in India. A rich board member brings a French woman to a fundraising event. The woman is Liliane, who has managed to become somewhat rich since she stole from Anthony. Rudy determines to see if he can obtain a contribution from Liliane. He encounters Liliane later in the evening at a jazz bar she is visiting with Barbara. He insists that she join him for a tour of the non-touristy parts of the city. After she agrees, she renigs because she has been invited to Barbara's upstate NY country house.
October 27, 2014
An epigraph to Joan Silber's collection of six stories comes from William Blake: "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise."
Silber is among my favorite writers of all time. She pulls me into her fiction so thoroughly that I read her books several times in succession without interruption. Her short stories and novels become my world for a while. And that, for me as a fiction writer too, is the ultimate, mysterious achievement.
Among various literary challenges preoccupying me in recent years has been the idea of a story with numerous characters, each of which is both real and critical to whatever happens. Silber's opening story, also called "Fools," features a group of six anarchists, each fully developed, living in New York City in the mid-1920s. From this story spring five others, set in the subsequent eras from WWII into the second decade of the 21st century.
Vera and her husband share an apartment in Manhattan's Greenwich Village with like-minded Norman and Betsy, and Richard with his dog, Bakunin. Separately, but belonging to the group, are Forster and Dorothy Day (before she becomes famous.)
Anthony of Hanging Fruit is Betsy's son by her second husband. When his romantic misadventures become increasingly harmful, he runs away to Paris where alcoholism soon renders him destitute. Norman, his mother's first husband, plays a part in leading him to sobriety. Cured, he says, "...I had lost whatever taste for luxury I had. Living on the streets had done that to me, which is the reverse of what people think will happen."
In Better, Norman's memoir of the anarchists (called 'Village Days and Nights') gives solace to the narrator, Marcus, whose lover has left him heartbroken and hopeless.
In Going Too Far, Gerard is the son of the bookkeeper at the Palm Beach hotel owned by Betsy and her second husband.
An instrumental character from Hanging Fruit, Liliane, appears again in the last story, Buying and Selling. Unlike Silber's other stories here and elsewhere, instead of using the first person, this story engages a third person narrator to show the different points of view between Rudy, a young fundraiser for India's lepers, and Liliane, now in her seventies and apparently wealthy.
When reviewing fiction, I always feel I'm treading on shaky ground. So I only review books I love so much I feel compelled to say so.
Silber is among my favorite writers of all time. She pulls me into her fiction so thoroughly that I read her books several times in succession without interruption. Her short stories and novels become my world for a while. And that, for me as a fiction writer too, is the ultimate, mysterious achievement.
Among various literary challenges preoccupying me in recent years has been the idea of a story with numerous characters, each of which is both real and critical to whatever happens. Silber's opening story, also called "Fools," features a group of six anarchists, each fully developed, living in New York City in the mid-1920s. From this story spring five others, set in the subsequent eras from WWII into the second decade of the 21st century.
Vera and her husband share an apartment in Manhattan's Greenwich Village with like-minded Norman and Betsy, and Richard with his dog, Bakunin. Separately, but belonging to the group, are Forster and Dorothy Day (before she becomes famous.)
Anthony of Hanging Fruit is Betsy's son by her second husband. When his romantic misadventures become increasingly harmful, he runs away to Paris where alcoholism soon renders him destitute. Norman, his mother's first husband, plays a part in leading him to sobriety. Cured, he says, "...I had lost whatever taste for luxury I had. Living on the streets had done that to me, which is the reverse of what people think will happen."
In Better, Norman's memoir of the anarchists (called 'Village Days and Nights') gives solace to the narrator, Marcus, whose lover has left him heartbroken and hopeless.
In Going Too Far, Gerard is the son of the bookkeeper at the Palm Beach hotel owned by Betsy and her second husband.
An instrumental character from Hanging Fruit, Liliane, appears again in the last story, Buying and Selling. Unlike Silber's other stories here and elsewhere, instead of using the first person, this story engages a third person narrator to show the different points of view between Rudy, a young fundraiser for India's lepers, and Liliane, now in her seventies and apparently wealthy.
When reviewing fiction, I always feel I'm treading on shaky ground. So I only review books I love so much I feel compelled to say so.
August 24, 2022
This was a book that I originally picked up simply because of its cover art. It was upon a further search into Goodreads that I saw it had an average rating of five stars. I couldn't believe what it was that I had saw and as a result I made the immediate decision to read it one day. I eventually did end up buying the book and my excitement to read it had reached a fever pitch by the time it came time to open the front cover.
Fools is a collection of short stories that all ask the same question, when and for what is it wise to be a fool for something? From the streets of Paris to New York and from charities to anarchists, fools tells the simple stories of everyday people.
The best part about this anthology of stories, at least for me, was not the actual question of foolishness, but rather their interconnected nature. All of the stories are actually linked in some way and this gives an incredible picture of the interconnectedness of life. The other reason that these stories really stood out to me was the fact that the simplest decisions within some of the stories was what led to the largest consequences, just like in real life.
The book was also extremely well written, and its style is put forth in a way that makes you feel as though your simply listening to the protagonist telling a story. These stories were also ones that seemed as though they could really happen and probably have happened at some point in time. This novel should be read by anyone that enjoys life and its little subtle nuances that make up a complex web of interconnected people.
There is a human realization that is referred to as sonder, and is defined this way: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
This is a book that fully takes that idea and puts it forth in a huge way, and when it all comes together and the reader can find all of the subtle complexities within its pages, its only then that the novel's power becomes fully realized.
Fools is a collection of short stories that all ask the same question, when and for what is it wise to be a fool for something? From the streets of Paris to New York and from charities to anarchists, fools tells the simple stories of everyday people.
The best part about this anthology of stories, at least for me, was not the actual question of foolishness, but rather their interconnected nature. All of the stories are actually linked in some way and this gives an incredible picture of the interconnectedness of life. The other reason that these stories really stood out to me was the fact that the simplest decisions within some of the stories was what led to the largest consequences, just like in real life.
The book was also extremely well written, and its style is put forth in a way that makes you feel as though your simply listening to the protagonist telling a story. These stories were also ones that seemed as though they could really happen and probably have happened at some point in time. This novel should be read by anyone that enjoys life and its little subtle nuances that make up a complex web of interconnected people.
There is a human realization that is referred to as sonder, and is defined this way: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
This is a book that fully takes that idea and puts it forth in a huge way, and when it all comes together and the reader can find all of the subtle complexities within its pages, its only then that the novel's power becomes fully realized.
September 14, 2013
Is it weakness or wisdom that makes one a fool? Joan Silber’s sly, graceful new collection of stories takes up this question but doesn’t answer it outright. There were “a number of things a person could be a fool for in this life—a fool for love, a fool for Christ, a fool for admiration,” muses Vera, the narrator of the book’s title story. Her own foolish passion is anarchism, but her devotion to it creates the framework for a steady life, with a lasting marriage and children to raise. Her brand of anarchy in fact seems to have a stabilizing effect on other more volatile attractions in her life. But anarchy takes on a different meaning in a subsequent story about Vera’s grown daughter, Louise. In “Two Opinions,” Louise remembers visiting her anarchist father in prison. “Hey, muffins,” he calls to his children, with a “wince of mortification” at the whole scene. Louise and her sister Barbara are delighted with their mother’s post-visit reward of ham sandwiches with relish, and celery with cream cheese. The teasing at school is another matter. “None of this got easier as time went on,” Louise observes. She marries her high-school boyfriend, but when he gets a job teaching English at a school on a military base in Okinawa, she’s denied security clearance and must stay back in the U.S. while he moves to Japan. The separation slowly unravels their marriage without ever destroying it outright. It also frees Louise to lead an unconventional life—entirely unlike what she thought she wanted all along. Many years down the road, she thinks, “You don’t know what you’re going to be faithful to in this world, do you?” You don’t know what will make a fool out of you, either.
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