How Little it Takes to Make A Thing All Wrong

March 10, 2023 8:51 AM

In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried is a short story by Amy Hempel. It is about friendship and its sad, exhilarating limits.

"Tell me things I won't mind forgetting," she said. "Make it useless
stuff or skip it."
I began. I told her insects fly through rain, missing every drop,
never getting wet. I told her no one in America owned a tape
recorder before Bing Crosby did. I told her the shape of the moon is
like a banana—you see it looking full, you're seeing it end-on.

posted by storybored (8 comments total)

Fell in love with Amy Hempel through this exact story in Freshman English at Virginia Tech using Ann Charters's The Story and Its Writer. Blacksburg had 3 used bookstores then, and 2 record stores, and lurking in one of the former I found a gently used copy of Hempel's Reasons to Live which still sits on my shelf today. It seems like such a luxury, today, to be able to sit with a piece of short fiction and just lose myself. Thank you for posting.
posted by AbelMelveny at 9:07 AM on March 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

One of my favorite short stories. Makes me cry every time.
posted by missinformation at 10:19 AM on March 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

This story is one of the most devastating pieces of short fiction I've ever read. It's been stuck in my mind for years.
posted by Token Meme at 11:56 AM on March 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Same, I came to this story as a student and it made a place in my head forever and ever. I’ve read and loved a lot of Hempel’s other work in the years since, but this one is a bit special to me.
posted by jameaterblues at 12:18 PM on March 10, 2023

Hempel is a brilliant writer, and this one guts me, every time. Here's Laura Hurwitz reading it aloud.
posted by exlotuseater at 12:36 PM on March 10, 2023

This story was part of what my master's thesis was about. I'm glad you posted it. Thanks.
posted by tangerine at 3:30 PM on March 11, 2023

An instructor used this story as an example of setting something up -- "lighting the fuse" -- at the beginning, letting the reader forget about it, and delivering an explosive last line. This perfect ending wrecks me.
posted by booth at 9:18 AM on March 12, 2023

Thanks for all your thoughts, folks. It is such a great story.
Here's a chaser, another one of hers. Just a few paragraphs but packs a punch: San Francisco.
posted by storybored at 9:16 PM on March 12, 2023