SOUNDTRACK:
[READ: December 23, 2022] “Olive Oyl”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fifth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
Like we always do at this time: the Short Story Advent Calendar is back for 2022. We had such a great time last year working with our first-ever guest editor, the one and only Alberto Manguel. This year, however, we’re bringing things back to basics. No overarching theme or format, just 25 top-class short stories, selected in-house, by some of the best writers in North America and beyond. It’s December 23. Lucy Ellmann, author of Ducks, Newburyport, can count beads with the best of them.
I loved Ducks Newburyport, which was huge and hard to read and fun and funny. This story is short and easy to read and very peculiar.
It is a short story about Olive Oyl. Yes, the woman from the Popeye cartoons.
It is Christmas and Olive lives in a strange house amongst trees. A dilapidated roost surrounded by birds and bugs and breezes. Government types offered a proper house but she always refused.
She had many jobs as a young woman, when she aspired to know everyone (is this part of Olive’s backstory? I have no idea).
Olive had had a difficult birth and she was virtually unteachable. She also never ate a thing.
Then one day out in the woods she heard a noise “Who’s theya? she asked “Though West Coast in origin she sported a Bronx accent.”).
She met a man who looked like Harvey Weinstein but who called himself Bluto. While they were courting, another man came along–he possessed amazing forearms and wore a sailor suit. The men fought, called each other palooka and fought some more. It wasn’t until the sailor ate some spinach that he kicked Bluto’s ass.
The story ends with Olive on her own–Popeye died. He died!
And she recalls an episode where they went roller skating (an episode I feel certain I have seen–in Ellmann’s interview she says it is “A Date to Skate” (1938)). To have Ellmann recount this story in her excellent writing style is quite wonderful.
It’s been a while since I read Ducks and I had kind of forgotten about Ellman. It was great to read her again and I hope to read more from her soon.
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