Nightblooming
Self-proclaimed short story month , post number 15. Here’s a short review on a jazzy short story—fitting for a busy Saturday. Today’s story was Kenneth Calhoun’s “Nightblooming,” published in The Paris Review . You can read it here . It was a fun story; not great, but fun and well crafted. It’s about a 22-year-old drummer who joins a band of old jazz musicians called the Nightblooming Jazzmen. Hence the story’s title. The young narrator gets to play with them once (to make him blend in, they even change his name—Tristan—to Stanley). They all go to a house party afterward, hosted by a group of old women who liked the show (“The women tell us how much they loved the music. / Ethel says her fingers are sore from snapping”). The generational gap weighs heavily between the drummer and the rest of the partygoers; his hors d’oeuvre manners, for one, are messily different from theirs. At the party, the band members get into a big fight over the future of the band. The band star...