“101,” I read aloud the number of the docs in the folder.

 I double-checked it. 101.

I had finished the blogger’s stories, each and every one. Stuart M Perkins is one of two bloggers whose works I have exhausted, or in a pre-digital-age term, have read from cover to cover. The other is Lis, an English lady.

My Blogging Endeavour

My own blogging started on June 18, 2005, two years after I purchased my first Windows XP machine. In 2004, I got wired. Built in the Windows XP OS was its blogging service called Windows Live Spaces. An English teacher in China, I decided to up my English writing skills by blogging. Windows Live Spaces, which completely supported the English language, did not let me down. Microsoft even developed an app called Windows Live Writer to help users of their blogging service to compose, edit, lay out and publish a blog post. It was on this platform that I learned the basic ropes of DTP.

Out of the blue, Microsoft scrapped Windows Live Spaces in 2010. My blog, Shengliver’s Garden, was by default transferred to wordpress.com, a leading blogging site. The beginning was all right, but not long after the migration, wordpress.com could not be accessed normally from within China. It turned out that the government blocked it. It was a severe blow to my learning effort. For some time, I did not know how to circumvent the firewall. My new WordPress blog was simply drifting out of my control, yet I was helpless as if I were all alone in the wilderness. It was a dark period.

As my digital prowess increased, I finally regained full access to my blog hosted on wordpress.com and resumed my learning and research endeavour.

Encounter

Users of wordpress.com are recommended posts of relevant topics and interests from other members. In July 2022, I clicked a link in WordPress Reader, which directed me to https://storyshucker.wordpress.com/. The first story I tasted on the site was A Nugget of Kindness. It was about generosity found at a café. It was so good that I copied and pasted the text into a Microsoft Word document. Reading in MS Word, I was able to peruse its language by highlighting, emboldening and annotating.

This summer, after the class I taught graduated, I had a longer vacation lasting over two months. I decided to put Mr Perkins’s stories on my reading list. I usually covered one story a day. On some days I did two and never felt bored. It was thorough reading with my eye on the language because I teach English, and as a nonnative user of English, I still have a lot to absorb. Well aware that it took time for the nutrient to sink in and internalise, I did not rush lest I should miss something. A couple of days ago, I accomplished the goal. I felt it so worthwhile.

Topics, Settings, and Heroes

Mr Perkins’s stories all came from real life. They are not fiction. From the Chinese perspective, they fall into a genre named Homeland Literature. All the stories are set around his communities in the American state of Virginia, except two. In those two exceptions, he narrated his overseas interaction with a poverty-stricken yet dutiful Haitian worker at a resort and his observation of some pathetic stray dogs on the street of the country he was visiting.

The heroes and heroines in the stories were mostly Stu himself and the Perkins clan: grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts, sisters, cousins and his own two kids. He also featured his colleagues and complete strangers encountered on his daily commute. Among his carefully picked subjects was nature. The most prominent character was his gran, who appeared time and again in the edifying familial episodes offering wisdom, guidance and consolation to the growing kid.

One thing I found peculiar, though, was that his wife, Mrs Perkins, was never mentioned, let alone starred, in any one of the Stu sagas. She is conspicuous by her absence. It is still a big puzzle on my mind.

Inspirations

Great stories inspire. No one would care to read humdrum. Inspiring is what Mr Perkins is a connoisseur of. Every time I come to the end of a story, either I feel something deep in my heart shifted towards an outlook nobler, or I identify with what the Storyshucker was trying to convey. I am therefore compelled to examine my own existence. It dawns on me that between the lines lies Stu’s heart of gold. I have never met the writer in person, but I am convinced that this man is kind, sympathetic, generous, tolerant and optimistic, just like a next-door neighbour.

Language

For English study purposes I consume news and books. I also plan to be immersed in present-day English produced by common living British or American folk. Stuart is one of the two great bloggers I have chosen to this end.

The language I find in his posts is superb. His rich vocabulary never fails to satiate my appetite for words applied in a proper setting. Right precise words paint vivid mental images, those images more accurate and infectious than an actual picture. Mr Perkins rarely resorts to photos in his posts for the effect. His word power alone is more than enough. I have therefore enriched my own lingual reservoir.

Most nonnative users of English do not have the same facility for expressing an idea as native practitioners of the language. This is where I find Stu’s English coming in handy. On many occasions, I came across in his post a new way of phrasing an idea, which I had been struggling to pin down in dictionaries. A short expression “scant shade” is a case in point. I had been at a loss as to how to describe tree shade that does not shelter well because of thin foliage. There is a vivid Chinese phrase for it, but the English equivalent was simply beyond me. Then there it was, in a tale titled “It’s What We Do”. A lot of such Aha moments I have experienced.

In one post, Mr Perkins reacted rationally to a fellow blogger, who whined about low-quality English found in blog posts. Stu’s English, in my opinion, is organic and authentic, offering a perfect sample for me to observe and study. No language user can be 100% grammatically correct and correctness is a relative concept. Chinese is my mother tongue. I do believe some critical eye or ear would detect some so-called deviations from grammar rules both in my Chinese speech and in my writing. And my Mandarin (standard spoken Chinese), which has never broken free of my native dialect, often sounds tinged and comically offkey. I don’t think I, as a Chinese citizen, would stop speaking or writing just because of occasional slips. As a Chinese proverb goes, an idiot would stop eating for the risk of choking.

Behind each grand title which makes the top ten list on any media are a circus of professionals – managing editors, copy editors, proofreaders, art designers and more. In such a “fabricated” book, readers would find everything fine-tuned to near perfection. But that is not what I lack. What I need is fresh first-hand writing, Stu’s of this very nature.

AI-generated stuff is error-free, and it tastes “great” initially. However, it cloys pretty soon, and a sophisticated reader would in time be disgusted by the artificial sterile feel.

Literary Devices

The blogger employed a couple of literary devices, which enhanced the impact of his stories. All came so naturally that I never felt that I was being preached to.

The first literary device Mr Perkins employed is the tagline. In most stories, there is a phrase which accentuates the core message. It recurs a couple of times through the narration, sometimes with the same meaning, other times taking on a new nuance as the context or scene switches.

The second device I find most effective is the punchline. Of course, the punchline does not turn up until you have come to the very tail of a story. Stu’s punchlines are delivered just at the right place that they never fail to punch my laughing switch on. On many occasions I heard myself chuckling in my study. My wife, alarmed, came over to inspect what was going on. Was Shengliver chatting again with a blonde American lady online?

The blogger’s last literary sword in his arsenal is his deadpan humour. When a story is unfolding, you will think aloud, “Oh, that is nothing special. It’s so mundane.” As the story is progressing, suspense builds up. Mr Perkins packages the climax so expertly that not until the last minute will you roar with mirth.

Impact

I cannot help but marvel at Stu’s ability to “shuck” meaning out of the mundane. The blog title, “Storyshucker”, originates from the family maize harvesting at his gran’s.

To live and survive, an individual, be he white or black, Chinese or American, has to find his right place in the environment, social and natural. So many guys the world over are taking their own lives at this very moment. For the most part, they are deficient in Mr Perkins’s power to glean meaning out of their ‘mundane’ being. Hence, they are disorientated and hopeless. They could borrow a bit of Storyshucker’s insight. Mr Perkins, in contrast, lives as creatively and keenly as a first-class artist, who has an eye for beauty hidden in otherwise dreary situations. To rise and shine, we have to be as artistic as Stu is.

Looking back on Stu’s stories, I have come to see that human values are universal despite political differences or colours of skin. Stu’s Nannie and Shengliver’s Gran did share a lot of traits even though they were in different countries and their lifestyles worlds apart. Empathy, kindness, generosity, fear and courage, among others, are the same at every corner of the globe where humans dwell.

Gratitude

Mr Perkins hasn’t been shucking thought-provoking dramas on his website as often as before, but the 101 poignant stories will be nourishing Shengliver’s language and feeding his soul. All the posts have been preserved in MS docs as part of Shengliver’s digital library, to be read and reread in the years to come.

Thank you, Mr Stuart M Perkins.