Short Story Summer #3

This Week on LG Presents: Short Stories, Rachel Khong walks us through the uniquely human “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried.” Rachel in her own right is an incredible short story author (My Dear You is available now) and appreciator (you can see more of what we’re talking about on her Substack here), so we’re delighted she was game to share some of that love of story here.

I’m worried that the story I’ve chosen to share with Lit Girl is the story equivalent of saying, Hey, have you heard of these guys, The Beatles? It’s been heavily anthologized and taught widely; it might be really, really obvious. It’s honestly a little embarrassing, too: you’ll see just how affected I was by it, how its influence is smeared all over my first novel, Goodbye, Vitamin. I guess I’m okay with that, on the off chance you haven’t read “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel, first published in 1983. If you haven’t, I hope you read it and love it as much as I did, and still do. If you have, maybe you’ll read it again, and newly appreciate a beautiful turn of phrase you might have forgotten; maybe you’ll find the dimension of time has altered the way you read.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that this story changed my life. The first time I read it, I was left stunned: This was a short story?! These half-conversations, animal facts, musings, memories, leaps? This white space? The first time I read “In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried,” I was a young writer, and hadn’t yet spent much time in hospital rooms; I bawled, anyway. This story single-handedly gave me new priorities as a writer: precision, elegance, economy. It showed me that a story could contain life and death, humor and the deepest grief—that not only could stories contain these opposites, they had to, for the spark to exist, and for the fire to catch.

Lately, AI-outputted writing wearies me. I spot it in the Substacks I subscribe to—even on book jackets. It’s everywhere, and abides by certain rules it learned from us—don’t be repetitive, use similes and metaphors, vary sentence rhythms, utilize juxtaposition, whatever. AI could parody this story, but it could never create it. “In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” was hard won, and human—made by someone intimate with what it feels like to distract a beloved friend in a hospital bed, to have a mind that leaps from one emotion to its complete opposite, to be at a loss, to really, truly know that we don’t get to live forever.

***READ AMY HEMPEL’S “IN THE CEMETERY WHERE AL JOLSON IS BURIED” HERE***

Rachel Khong is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, won the 2017 California Book Award for First Fiction, and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for First Fiction. From 2011 to 2016, she was the managing editor then executive editor of Lucky Peach magazine. Her second novel, Real Americans, was published by Knopf in April 2024, and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Her story collection, My Dear You, is available now. She also writes the monthly newsletter, Short Story Short. Along with her friends Meng Jin, Susanna Kwan, and Shruti Swamy, Rachel also teaches writing workshops and retreats. Find us at The Dream Side.