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Mr. and Mrs. Baby and Other Stories
Book by Strand, Mark
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
111 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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102 people want to read
About the author
Mark Strand
181 books267 followersMark Strand was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, essayist, and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990. He was a professor of English at Columbia University and also taught at numerous other colleges and universities.
Strand also wrote children's books and art criticism, helped edit several poetry anthologies and translated Spanish poet Rafael Alberti.
He is survived by a son, a daughter and a sister.
Strand also wrote children's books and art criticism, helped edit several poetry anthologies and translated Spanish poet Rafael Alberti.
He is survived by a son, a daughter and a sister.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 23, 2020
I wasn't really aware that Strand had written short fiction as well as poetry. Apparently, he published short fiction in The New Yorker multiple times. I don't think his career as a fiction writer ever built up to the same sort of momentum that his poetry career had.
It's a slim collection. Some of these short stories were fantastic. Some were of middling quality. Here's a rundown of my takes on the individual pieces:
"More Life": A son half-believes his father is returning to him in reincarnated forms,both non-human and human. This is probably the son living vicariously his dead father's life and suffering a sort of guilt and longing, trying to reshape and appease a soul that might have been under-realized. His father "appears" as a horse, a fly and, ultimately, the protag's lover, Helen. I suppose the brief tale could be read as comic or as pathos that missed the mark and became bathos. But it didn't feel like either of those things to me. It struck me as a successful parable about how the human spirit is inevitably a host to vanished spirits. The protag's life is like a weird Eucharist monstrance. The tone is largely magic realism. I thought it was a good story with which to open the collection.
"True Loves" is a somewhat comic tale recounting a man's lifelong failure to ever catch up with his true love. It is a list of near misses. The prose thrives on the preposterous. It's not a bad tale but not a truly memorable one.
"The President's Resignation": Perhaps this is a satire on Nixon. But it takes place in an alternative universe. It's very short and not really all that memorable. It's mostly a satire on the rhetoric leaders use and the postcard pretty images they create for a gullible populace to consume. It feels a bit like filler in here with the stronger stories.
"Under Water": I think this was the strongest piece in the collection and was really wonderful. A man's entire life passes before his eyes as he is perhaps drowning. Strand manages to create a dream montage of images that melt into one another in a weirdly organic manner. It's not easy to paraphrase the multi-nodal narrative or to sum the images. They just weirdly, convincingly are.
"Dog Life": More magical realism as a man confesses in bed to his wife that he used to be a dog. He makes confessions of his behavior in this previous life, some of which bother his wife, but then they agree never to discuss the matter again. I suppose it's a brief satire on marital blinders. It comes off as effective but slight.
"Two Stories": These read as two parables. The first about a runaway horse feels a bit pointless. The second is a really great short piece about a young man encountering a woman on the roof of a tall building by accident and trying to talk her down from jumping. I had encountered that second part as a stand alone piece in an anthology of flash fiction. It's a real keeper, for sure. Spooky and memorable. He just hits all the right words in the right order in that one. Lean and no fat.
"The General": Another satire, this time about a general left to imagine a new identity for himself after all the wars have finished. He has his trusty adjutant who serves him almost as a wife. It's not a strong tale but not insufferable. I realize that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. Maybe I should think about subtracting a star off my review at this point?
"Mr. and Mrs. Baby": Hated it. Just words filling up the pages. Too bad he chose to make that the showpiece going by the title. There's no there there.
"Wooley": A somewhat preposterous man who has died prematurely is fleshed-out by one of his somewhat distant admirers. Very brief and not particularly memorable.
"Zadar": This one was successful. An erotic tension the protag feels for a stranger starts to have an almost supernatural feel to it. Set in Zagreb, the story ends on a weirdly cold note, in a scene of sensuality. It's crisp and strange in that memorable way.
"Cephalus": A retelling of the myth of Cephalus and Procris. It's pretty language and Strand updates the tale so it's about the mysteries of modern marital infidelities. It feels very much of its time and probably doesn't hold up well even though it's only been a few decades. This is true of the weaker stories in this collection, in general. Some of them feel too heavily influenced by the magazine culture of the years in which they were written. It's almost as if some of them were "written to order" for certain magazines.
"Drogo": A man has an imaginary friend in the way a child might. Or at least that's how I read the character of Drogo. He could be a real being but it seems a bit preposterous given the account of his existence that is related. He seems to resent his embodiment, his having been bodied forth. Later, he is replaced by a seductive woman who also seems to be an imagined figure. It's a weird little sketch more than a tale.
"The Killer Poet": One of the longer stories in a collection of mostly very short fiction, this one is pure magical realism. I know very little of Strand's biography but do know `that he grew up in parts of South America, which is the setting here. The protag has returned to the South American country of his youth to do the bidding of a literary panel and execute his former childhood friend. This friend happens to have killed his own parents. The tale feels somewhat portentous and is probably an exaggeration of some shifting literary alliance Strand felt guilt over. It's not exactly a great story or one that's going to help the collection end on a strong note.
I would still recommend this collection, despite all my quibbles and arguments with various pieces. Strand has a unique voice and even the weaker tales often have beautiful sentences to send your imagination in search of its own quarry. It might sound odd to say but I think the collection has a summer vibe and I'm glad I read it in that season.
It's a slim collection. Some of these short stories were fantastic. Some were of middling quality. Here's a rundown of my takes on the individual pieces:
"More Life": A son half-believes his father is returning to him in reincarnated forms,both non-human and human. This is probably the son living vicariously his dead father's life and suffering a sort of guilt and longing, trying to reshape and appease a soul that might have been under-realized. His father "appears" as a horse, a fly and, ultimately, the protag's lover, Helen. I suppose the brief tale could be read as comic or as pathos that missed the mark and became bathos. But it didn't feel like either of those things to me. It struck me as a successful parable about how the human spirit is inevitably a host to vanished spirits. The protag's life is like a weird Eucharist monstrance. The tone is largely magic realism. I thought it was a good story with which to open the collection.
"True Loves" is a somewhat comic tale recounting a man's lifelong failure to ever catch up with his true love. It is a list of near misses. The prose thrives on the preposterous. It's not a bad tale but not a truly memorable one.
"The President's Resignation": Perhaps this is a satire on Nixon. But it takes place in an alternative universe. It's very short and not really all that memorable. It's mostly a satire on the rhetoric leaders use and the postcard pretty images they create for a gullible populace to consume. It feels a bit like filler in here with the stronger stories.
"Under Water": I think this was the strongest piece in the collection and was really wonderful. A man's entire life passes before his eyes as he is perhaps drowning. Strand manages to create a dream montage of images that melt into one another in a weirdly organic manner. It's not easy to paraphrase the multi-nodal narrative or to sum the images. They just weirdly, convincingly are.
"Dog Life": More magical realism as a man confesses in bed to his wife that he used to be a dog. He makes confessions of his behavior in this previous life, some of which bother his wife, but then they agree never to discuss the matter again. I suppose it's a brief satire on marital blinders. It comes off as effective but slight.
"Two Stories": These read as two parables. The first about a runaway horse feels a bit pointless. The second is a really great short piece about a young man encountering a woman on the roof of a tall building by accident and trying to talk her down from jumping. I had encountered that second part as a stand alone piece in an anthology of flash fiction. It's a real keeper, for sure. Spooky and memorable. He just hits all the right words in the right order in that one. Lean and no fat.
"The General": Another satire, this time about a general left to imagine a new identity for himself after all the wars have finished. He has his trusty adjutant who serves him almost as a wife. It's not a strong tale but not insufferable. I realize that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. Maybe I should think about subtracting a star off my review at this point?
"Mr. and Mrs. Baby": Hated it. Just words filling up the pages. Too bad he chose to make that the showpiece going by the title. There's no there there.
"Wooley": A somewhat preposterous man who has died prematurely is fleshed-out by one of his somewhat distant admirers. Very brief and not particularly memorable.
"Zadar": This one was successful. An erotic tension the protag feels for a stranger starts to have an almost supernatural feel to it. Set in Zagreb, the story ends on a weirdly cold note, in a scene of sensuality. It's crisp and strange in that memorable way.
"Cephalus": A retelling of the myth of Cephalus and Procris. It's pretty language and Strand updates the tale so it's about the mysteries of modern marital infidelities. It feels very much of its time and probably doesn't hold up well even though it's only been a few decades. This is true of the weaker stories in this collection, in general. Some of them feel too heavily influenced by the magazine culture of the years in which they were written. It's almost as if some of them were "written to order" for certain magazines.
"Drogo": A man has an imaginary friend in the way a child might. Or at least that's how I read the character of Drogo. He could be a real being but it seems a bit preposterous given the account of his existence that is related. He seems to resent his embodiment, his having been bodied forth. Later, he is replaced by a seductive woman who also seems to be an imagined figure. It's a weird little sketch more than a tale.
"The Killer Poet": One of the longer stories in a collection of mostly very short fiction, this one is pure magical realism. I know very little of Strand's biography but do know `that he grew up in parts of South America, which is the setting here. The protag has returned to the South American country of his youth to do the bidding of a literary panel and execute his former childhood friend. This friend happens to have killed his own parents. The tale feels somewhat portentous and is probably an exaggeration of some shifting literary alliance Strand felt guilt over. It's not exactly a great story or one that's going to help the collection end on a strong note.
I would still recommend this collection, despite all my quibbles and arguments with various pieces. Strand has a unique voice and even the weaker tales often have beautiful sentences to send your imagination in search of its own quarry. It might sound odd to say but I think the collection has a summer vibe and I'm glad I read it in that season.
May 25, 2010
I would give some of the stories five stars. A lot of them were masterpieces but just as many were the opposite. To me, the writing was either very weak or very strong. For whatever reason, the terrible stories became charming to me by the end of the book. It might've been his recurrent themes of babies, legs, and buttocks...
"The Killer Poet" made me want to read the whole thing over again.
"The Killer Poet" made me want to read the whole thing over again.
December 13, 2022
I was not overly impressed with these stories, not sure why some were published in the New Yorker (eg, Mr. and Mrs. Baby) other than the fact that Mark Strand wrote them, as they were not very engaging for the most part. There were a couple that I enjoyed, others that I said to myself "What was that?"--e.g., the aforementioned "Mr. and Mrs. Baby" and especially "The Tiny Baby" -- (also published in the New Yorker (really?) -- Sorry, I don't get it, what was the point of that.
But, that's just me; you may enjoy some of these quirky and all well-written, at least, stories.
But, that's just me; you may enjoy some of these quirky and all well-written, at least, stories.
July 1, 2020
Lovely little collection -- Strand, obviously, has a poet's ear but it makes for quaint reading. I don't know if I'll necessarily ~remember~ these tales as anything much, but I enjoyed the hell out of reading them and can imagine that, in years to come when I've forgotten about the collection and pull it off the shelf again, they may do the same thing over again.
February 2, 2021
I liked the style of prose. There were a few stories within that I particularly liked. Would read again in a few years. Would consider owning.
June 21, 2021
I like absurdist literature but most of this is just words on pages. "The General" was the best story. Comparable to Catch-22.
Read
April 21, 2023lighter than his poems
Read
November 10, 2023I picked this up on a whim in a secondhand bookstore in Oslo, partly because it was one of the few English books in the store and partly because I knew that Mark Strand had died in November. I think he is better known as a poet, but these stories are definitely worth reading. They are very strange! I will read this again some day.
Although this was not my favorite story in the book, my favorite opening was: "Early this evening the President announced his resignation. Though his rise to power was meteoric, he was not a popular leader. He made no promises before taking office but speculated endlessly about the kind of weather we would have during his term, sometimes even making a modest prediction."
Although this was not my favorite story in the book, my favorite opening was: "Early this evening the President announced his resignation. Though his rise to power was meteoric, he was not a popular leader. He made no promises before taking office but speculated endlessly about the kind of weather we would have during his term, sometimes even making a modest prediction."
ongoing
December 2, 2014I took a taste of this story collection in memory of the poet-author, who died this week. Some of the stories are interestingly odd and oddly satirical (1, 5, 6, & 8). Some of the others did nothing for me. Halfway through.
July 31, 2017
Literary short stories with cozy depictions of autumn days in Connecticut and Maine.
May 30, 2018
I just couldn’t get into it but it’s definitely the book i need to re-read in the future.
September 20, 2009
Too many throwaway pieces in this one.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews