Windfall and Other Stories by Winifred M. Sanford

Abstract

Reviews 177 horn C ow ,” the story of a ninety-year-old m an whose nurse falls down dead w hile she’s in the process of bathing him. T he long night he spends trapped in a bathtub in full view of her body occasions recollections and philosophical musings that are insightful, sometimes painful, often humorous, while he con­ tem plates the irony that his life has become. Indeed, irony is a consistent them e throughout all of H ickey’s stories; and its often comic, usually painful revela­ tion makes up m uch of the pleasure this collection offers. O f equal though different power is “Three Days in a South Texas Spring,” a story that dwells on the city adventures of a cowboy gone to town on a ritualistic visit to mid-sixties San Antonio. And, to round out the best of the volum e, “A W inter’s T ale” is a poignant rendering of a Christmas episode involving college boys, preachers, and Keats. Perhaps weaker in structure more than tone or style, “T he Passion of Saint D arrell” and “An Essay on Style” left me more confused than content. Both of these dwell on a collegiate past that is som ehow less interesting than the author’s other topic choices. Part of the problem w ith these pieces— and to a certain extent w ith “Garland M arlinberg and the City of G od” as w ell— is H ickey’s device of revealing character developm ent through the eyes of other characters. In “Saint Darrell” the result is a confusing array of frat rats being frat rats, and it’s difficult to care very m uch about them. Conversely, when he uses this technique on a more intim ate level—as in “T he A uthentic Life and D eath of Smiley Logan,” for exam ple— the result is a tour de force of telling more than showing w hat happened and to whom and w ith w hat result. It’s a violation of creative writing instruction, perhaps, but “Sm iley Logan” uses this approach so w ell that it possibly is the strongest exam ple of the w ell-m ade short story in the entire volume. T he collection concludes w ith “Proof Through the N ight: A n Essay on M orals,” which is truly nothing more than an autobiographical afterword to H ickey’s book and, perhaps, a com m ent on his entire career. From the thirdperson point of view Hickey outlines his attitudes about writing, teaching litera­ ture, reading literature, and even the evolution of the stories in the volum e. T o a large degree, this final piece is self-serving, but it remains interesting to anyone who has found H ickey’s prose pleasurable to read. I did, and I admire this outstanding talent in this difficult and often overburdened genre. C LA Y R E Y N O L D S T he University of N orth Texas Windfall and O ther Stories. By W inifred M . Sanford. (D allas: Southern M ethodist University Press, 1988. 179 pages, $17.95/$8.95.) O pinions about his recently published D iary notwithstanding, H . L. M encken knew good stories when he read them. As editor of T h e American M ercury M encken published narratives by, am ong others, Sinclair Lewis, V achel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg— and W inifred Sanford. “A good story is a 178 Western American Literature good story,” Mencken wrote Sanford to encourage her, and nine of her short stories appeared in T he American M ercury between 1925 and 1931. Sanford published four more, all thirteen now being available from SMU Press in its Southwest Life and Letters series. Born in 1890 in Duluth, Minnesota, Sanford moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1920 with her attorney husband near the booming oil fields. While four of her stories are set in Minnesota, most are located in the Southwest, especially Texas, with four keenly incisive narratives about human responses— of farm wives, of wildcat promoters, of poor blacks, for instance—to oil booms and busts. References to muddy Fords and sleek...