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Post by booklady on Jul 3, 2007 7:23:23 GMT -5
As I mentioned in another thread, I recently saw the movie "Away From Her," the Julie Christie gets Alzheimer's movie. It's very good. It's based on a short story by Alice Munro called "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." I've always been interested in writing short stories and I've always stunk at it. Why? I want to know why! We've got poetry threads; this one is for short stories. What makes a short story good? What should I aim for as a short story writer wannabe? Incidentally, while in Lenox (Tanglewood), I bought a book of Alice Munro's short stories (which includes the one mentioned above), and I'll be studying them. But we have enough readers here that I was hoping you all might chime in with your thoughts. Since I'm sort-of off for the summer I can work on all my submissions to The New Yorker. ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png)
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Post by slb2 on Jul 3, 2007 21:10:10 GMT -5
books, have you ever submitted to the New Yorker? I'm sure you can guess that I have. I think I've only submitted a couple poems. ![:P](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/tongue.png) I have a couple short stories written. One if very dated and ugh, dare I say it? next to soft porn. anyone wanna see it? heh heh heh
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Post by liriodendron on Jul 3, 2007 21:11:55 GMT -5
I'm not sure the New Yorker publishes soft porn.
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Post by slb2 on Jul 3, 2007 21:16:46 GMT -5
but back to your question, often full length novels can be broken into shorts. Sometimes a short story will be published and on that basis the writer pitches to a house and lands a contract for a full-length book.
I think a short story needs to cover the who-what-where-when-why-how, but with finesse. Magazine writers should be good short story writers. The opening of any story should seduce the reader. And seriously, I'm not being coy, but I LOVE to write the lede/lead to a story. I love to create a scene that irresistibly draws in the reader.
A good short creates a need in the reader than then fulfills it.
It's all about seduction.
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Post by ptcaffey on Jul 4, 2007 2:07:34 GMT -5
//What makes a short story good? What should I aim for as a short story writer wannabe?// A "good story" is one which holds our interest, entertains us, dazzles us with its language, moves us with its beauty, drives us onward toward its "singularity of effect," then surprises us with its inevitable epiphany. Or some, or all of the above. We know it when we read it, don't we? Now, how this happens in practical terms is the real question. How does a "good story" achieve its intense effects? Crash Course: Part I - A Short History William Boyd's essay, "A Short History of the Short Story," is a good staring point for this investigation: www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7447
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Post by booklady on Jul 4, 2007 8:08:55 GMT -5
books, have you ever submitted to the New Yorker? I'm sure you can guess that I have. I think I've only submitted a couple poems. ![:P](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/tongue.png) I have a couple short stories written. One if very dated and ugh, dare I say it? next to soft porn. anyone wanna see it? heh heh heh Yes, a long time ago, about 25 years ago. Actually, my rejection slip is a prize possession, because at the bottom of the printed slip is the handwritten word "sorry." Although, after all these years, at this moment I am thinking the word referred to my prose and not the editor's feelings about rejecting it!
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Post by booklady on Jul 4, 2007 8:26:26 GMT -5
PT, that's a fine article, worth studying. Thank you. Chekhov saw and understood that life is godless, random and absurd, that all history is the history of unintended consequences. He knew, for instance, that being good will not spare you from awful suffering and injustice, that the slothful can flourish effortlessly and that mediocrity is the one great daemonic force. By abandoning the manipulated beginning-middle-and-end plot, by refusing to judge his characters, by not striving for a climax or seeking neat narrative resolution, Chekhov made his stories appear agonisingly, almost unbearably lifelike. Chekhov represents the end of the first phase of the modern short story. From his death onward, his influence is massive and ineluctable: the short story becomes thereafter in the 20th century almost exclusively Chekhovian. Joyce is Chekhovian, Katherine Mansfield almost plagiaristically so, Raymond Carver simply could not exist without him. Perhaps all short stories written after Chekhov are in one way or another in his debt. Only in the last 20 years or thereabouts have writers begun to emerge from his shadow, to middling effect.While I don't philosophically agree that "life is godless, random, and absurd," I can see how it appears that way. I need to get my Chekhov out of mothballs. I finished "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" and it doesn't clear up any of the questions I brought home from the movie. ![:-/](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/undecided.png) No neat narrative resolution (just like life!).
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Post by Jane on Jul 4, 2007 18:04:04 GMT -5
Welocme back, PT; it's been awhile. I printed off the article and will try and think of something cogent to say later.
I've just read three books of short stories--ALice Munro (but the one you read, Bk, wasn't in it), Lorrie Moore and Jim Harrison. I tend to want to know more when I've read a short story; I feel unfinished although the story may be complete.
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Post by ptcaffey on Jul 5, 2007 1:46:48 GMT -5
Hi, Booklady and Jane,
//What should I aim for as a short story writer wannabe?// Crash Course: Part II - Close Reading
Okay, we have that "history" part out of the way! The next step is "close reading" of a favorite short story. (For a basic examination of "close reading," I would look to Francine Prose's recent book, "Reading Like a Writer.")
//INTERVIEWER: This raises the question about “how” to read. There have been any number of people who have weighed in on this. Joyce Carol Oates, in her essay “To a Young Writer,” advises aspiring writers to read without design. Elizabeth Bishop, in one of her letters to a young writer, advised reading everything by a certain poet and then moving on – starting with the past and progressing to one’s contemporaries. What’s your advice on the “how”?
PROSE: I think the most important thing—and it’s what I say in the book over and over—is to focus on what’s directly in front of you on the page; to read especially for the language. Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language. I think there are writers who would be read more—and, conversely, writers who would never be read at all—if people actually looked at how well or how badly they wrote...
INTERVIEWER: How do your students respond to the close reading that you do? At one point in your book you mention that in some of your classes you’ve only gotten through two pages in a two-hour class because you’ve been going over it so closely.
PROSE: You’d think it would be the most tedious thing that ever happened. You would really imagine that this would be the most boring class you’ve ever taken in your entire life. But in fact, it’s surprisingly lively because students kind of “get it” right away. When you’re doing a John Cheever story and looking at the brilliance of each word choice and how much every sentence is telling you without telling you and—that dreadful word—“unpacking” a sentence for what it communicates, there’s something kind of exhilarating about it and energizing.//
Key points: Read especially for the language. How to tell without telling.
Now then: Somebody pick a short-short story, and we can take turns "unpacking" it. Lorrie Moore is good for this, but so are other writers. (I'll look for a story that's online so we can all share in it freely!)
Okay, I found one:
//STICKS by George Saunders
Originally published in Story, Winter 1995.
Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he'd built out of a metal pole in the yard. Super Bowl week the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod's helmet and Rod had to clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off. On the Fourth of July the pole was Uncle Sam, on Veterans Day a soldier, on Halloween a ghost. The pole was Dad's only concession to glee. We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us as we poured ketchup saying: good enough good enough good enough. Birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream. The first time I brought a date over she said: what's with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking.
We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dresssing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow. When an earthquake struck Chile he lay the pole on its side and spray painted a rift in the earth. Mom died and he dressed the pole as Death and hung from the crossbar photos of Mom as a baby. We'd stop by and find odd talismans from his youth arranged around the base: army medals, theater tickets, old sweatshirts, tubes of Mom's makeup. One autumn he painted the pole bright yellow. He covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth and provided offspring by hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards. He painted a sign saying LOVE and hung it from the pole and another that said FORGIVE? and then he died in the hall with the radio on and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day.//
Have at it!
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Post by booklady on Jul 5, 2007 23:20:08 GMT -5
PT, I have to pop in here and say I appreciate your post and the story. (It IS the start of a story, right? I'm confused.) I had a busy day (and went to the Red Sox game tonight) so I haven't had time to do my homework. Please don't think I asked for help and then went off and ignored you. ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/smiley.png)
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Post by slb2 on Jul 6, 2007 1:07:30 GMT -5
No, I think pt's offering is the short-short. It's marvelous, I just haven't taken time to dissect it. Or unpack it as the case may be.
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Post by ptcaffey on Jul 6, 2007 3:23:54 GMT -5
Slb is correct. That's the whole story.
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Post by gailkate on Jul 6, 2007 10:44:41 GMT -5
I'm concerned about our writers' vulnerabilities. Where is Roges??? I think he may have left when he didn't get feedback for a story he'd written. I'm worried that I might read slb's story and not like it - soft porn? I don't know. I've liked some steamy junk (Evanovich should be a guilty pleasure but I read her guilt-free ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) ) but what if slb shocks me and makes me wonder if I should race over and steal Carl from her clutches before she can instill unholy values? Should I call His Eminence, Dr. Dobson or Dodson or whatever? I'm interested in the short story article but it's too long. ![](http://www.pushupstairs.com/images/emoticon/animal/bookworm.gif)
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Post by slb2 on Jul 6, 2007 11:15:15 GMT -5
I'm concerned about our writers' vulnerabilities. Where is Roges??? I think he may have left when he didn't get feedback for a story he'd written. I'm worried that I might read slb's story and not like it - soft porn? I don't know. I've liked some steamy junk (Evanovich should be a guilty pleasure but I read her guilt-free ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) ) but what if slb shocks me and makes me wonder if I should race over and steal Carl from her clutches before she can instill unholy values? Should I call His Eminence, Dr. Dobson or Dodson or whatever? I'm interested in the short story article but it's too long. ![](http://www.pushupstairs.com/images/emoticon/animal/bookworm.gif) ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) pls, gk, run over and nab Carl anyway. He's driving me bimbo-bananas. ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) Probably I shouldn't characterize my lone short as soft porn, it's more a touch of graphic literature. Well, shoot. I'm giving it away. Anyway, I wrote it a huge long time ago and haven't gone back to re-write it. It's not much, but there's potential. Oh man, I'm listening to Louisiana Rhythms right now on KFAI radio and they're singing Bon soir Moreau. Yum. I'm drifting along, now. (It's not even Beau, either, so there ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) ) Back to topic, gk has a good point. Roges left, imo, because he didn't want to be associated with GK and what he perceived as fickleness on GK's part. It was that poetry contest that put Roges over the edge with disillusionment. In all due respect, if a person is going to write lucratively, imo, they've got to develop a tough skin or simply make a deal with themselves not to take anything personally. Rejection by others, editors, and SELF is big in this trade. Y'all are my biggest fans and probably because you dare not diss me. Shoot, I'm not all that anyway. I write for a couple of tiny newspapers plus pitch to regional mags and rags when I can. It's easy to be impressed with myself around here because there's so much support and cheering. ;D I should get to work. Maybe I'll drop in at my old haunt--Idle Chatter II--when I get serious about a story I have due on Monday. One more item, I'm very excited about something up and coming. I am really working on that essay I wrote over on the Sisters in Passion thread. Next week I'm going to David Folland's violin shop in Northfield to find out more about the innards of a fiddle. David was a guest on APHC several years ago. I didn't know that. I know the Follands from my hometown of Owatonna, Minnesota. David's brother, Dan, graduated with me in 1981 from high school. I think Dave was a classmate of my sister, Jaci.
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Post by booklady on Jul 6, 2007 14:42:24 GMT -5
I caved to the large sign pointings of necessity and put a new computer on the credit card. Now I just have to get my speed up on this #@^%@!! new keyboard that requires a major thumb jam to make a space between words, and I'll be back to working with the seat of my pants in the chair (as slb reminds us in her sig).
Still have to do my homework from PT, though I have read the thing a couple of times. Show Not Tell, indeed.
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Post by ptcaffey on Jul 6, 2007 19:09:21 GMT -5
Everyone is so shy these days. Okay, I'll start:
Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he'd built out of metal pole in the yard.
Remarks: "every year, Thanksgiving night": Immediately, there is a ritualistic, compulsive quality apparent. "we flocked out behind Dad": This phrasing implies that the children do not directly participate in Dad's ritual, but are spectators. "dragged the Santa suit": Note, he does not "carry" or "lift" the suit. He drags it, as if against Santa's will. "draped it over a kind of crucifix": A crucifix is a symbol of faith and sacrifice, but it's also the focal point of ritualized behavior. The uneasy image here is of Santa being crucified. "metal pole in the yard": There is something especially cold and forlorn about a "metal" pole in the yard. We can imagine that it once held aloft a laundry line or two and billowing sheets in the sun. But no more.
Super Bowl week the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod's helmet and Rod had to clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off.
Remarks: "Rod had to clear it with Dad": It's the boy's football helmet, but the general presumption is the display is more important than the boy's safety. "Rod": In this name we find disquieting echoes of that old chestnut, "Spare the rod, spoil the child."
On the Fourth of July the pole was Uncle Sam, on Veterans Day a soldier, on Halloween a ghost.
Remarks: "Uncle Sam... a soldier ... a ghost": Such ritualized depictions are clichés--"traditional" images in a very basic sense. There's no individualized imagination in evidence--yet. Dad invests his faith in such "traditions," seeming to put on equal footing Veterans Day and Super Bowl Week, the 4th of July and Halloween. Thus, he clings to the formal aspects of the traditions, but can no longer demonstrate any comprehension of their true relative value.
The pole was Dad's only concession to glee.
Remarks: "concession to glee": The word "glee" stands out because heretofore we haven't seen any evidence of glee. Dad erects his mannequins on a clockwork basis, with all the "glee" of a compulsive hand-washer. The use of "glee" highlights its utter absence.
We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us as we poured ketchup saying: good enough good enough good enough. Birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream. The first time I brought a date over she said: what's with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking.
Remarks: "what's with... dad and that pole?": Dad's pole is "a kind of crucifix." He dresses it as he might a scarecrow, but to scare away what exactly? He arms it with defenses drawn from the secularized culture. It's a kind of bulwark against insignificance and meaninglessness. But does it work? Does Dad feel "safe"?
We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us.
Remarks: "the seeds of meanness blooming also within us": This phrase has a kind of King James biblical ring to it, as if the narrator is drawing a pedigree of human cruelty from Adam to the present evening.
Dad began dresssing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow. When an earthquake struck Chile he lay the pole on its side and spray painted a rift in the earth.
Remarks: "Some kind of fur" is a phrase that recalls to mind "some kind of crucifix." Dad's floodlight "ensure a shadow." According to tradition, this would mean the hypothetical groundhog would be frightened by its shadow and return to its hollow; winter would persist. Thus, darkness is foretold. "a rift in the earth": King James again.
Mom died and he dressed the pole as Death and hung from the crossbar photos of Mom as a baby.
Remarks: This marks the first mention of "Mom." Now Dad's pole is personalized as Death holding in its arms "Mom" and baby, in one. Thus, in a single image, the span of a human life is compressed, viewed from a position of cosmic irony, calling to mind Beckett's line in "Godot": "They give birth astride of a grave." The scarecrow on the pole, once dressed in cultural garb meant to distract from, or defend against, morbid obsessions, now gives itself wholly over to such obsessions: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
We'd stop by and find odd talismans from his youth arranged around the base: army medals, theater tickets, old sweatshirts, tubes of Mom's makeup.
Remarks: "talismans": objects magically charged to protect the bearer. This image marks a regression from the earlier traditions of modern life to more ancient forms and beliefs.
One autumn he painted the pole bright yellow. He covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth and provided offspring by hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards.
Remarks: "bright yellow": A warning. "covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth": Dad's logic has become, at last, utterly internal and impregnable. "and provided offspring by hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards": Thus far, the story has centered around "the pole," yet the story is entitled "Sticks." Finally, the sticks appear. The sticks support a vast and complex web of strings, from which hang the accumulation of Dad's years. He is a modern author now, and like most modern authors he goes completely unread. This is his "Finnegans Wake." Letters on the page lie there like clumps of damp sticks, which no fire shall ever ignite.
"six crossed sticks": Absent from Dad's displays are overtly religious demonstrations. What does this say? That crossed sticks, without their spiritual association, are merely that: crossed sticks. "six": Not a good omen either.
He painted a sign saying LOVE and hung it from the pole and another that said FORGIVE? and then he died in the hall with the radio on and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day.
Remarks: "LOVE" and "FORGIVE?" represent the highest expressions of Dad's imperfect human heart and mind, the final fulfillment of the "crucifix" image. But then he dies. "with the radio on": An effective image. He dies, but the radio, with everything it carries--a mishmash of pop songs, jingles, news, opinion, and other ephemera--goes on as if nothing as happened.
He paints a sign AND then he dies AND then we sold the house to people who throw it into the garbage. This is a breathless compound sentence that highlights the seeming arbitrariness of human events. One thing follows another without apparent rhyme or reason. (Shades of Chekovian absurdism.) And everything is soon forgotten. And that's basically how most life stories end. Or so it seems to George Saunders and writers like him.
Of course, as somebody once said, writers without any sense of hope don't write stories. In this case, Dad's last witness, his last grasp at significance, is found, dear reader, in you.
Now then: Let's pick another short-short story!
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Post by liriodendron on Jul 6, 2007 19:18:28 GMT -5
Damn. That is impressive!
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Post by ozski on Jul 6, 2007 19:31:02 GMT -5
Double damn, even.
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Post by SeattleDan on Jul 6, 2007 20:44:47 GMT -5
Great close reading, PT.
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Post by booklady on Jul 6, 2007 20:53:51 GMT -5
OK, I see that PT has dazzled everybody with something he has written about the story. I am just freakin' stubborn enough NOT to read it until I've had my own go at this story. So there. ![:P](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/tongue.png)
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Post by slb2 on Jul 7, 2007 2:41:00 GMT -5
I had no idea I'd need to be so academically rigorous. I'd pass on this one, save for a few comments.
One, does everything the writer writes need to be so analysed? I mean, the yellow paint on the pole could just be yellow, right? Does it have to be a warning?
Two, for me, the radio left on when dad died equaled a waste of energy, a sort of snubbing of the nose at dad. He hated to waste anything, yet he wasted energy by not turning off the radio when he died.
pt, I don't know you very well. Are you easily offended? I hope not because surely I will have done so by the end of our discourse on short stories if we keep at it.
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Post by ptcaffey on Jul 7, 2007 6:31:15 GMT -5
//One, does everything the writer writes need to be so analysed?//
Does it need to be? Absolutely not. This is an elective. I'm just suggesting that it's useful for an aspiring short story writer to systematically dismantle a few engines before he or she embarks upon building one of his or her own. Similarly, if you wish to be amazed by a card trick, you can sit back and luxuriate in the wonder of it; but if you wish to develop the capacity to perform the trick yourself, it's helps to look more closely at the cards, the fingers, the table's edge (especially the table's edge).
//I mean, the yellow paint on the pole could just be yellow, right? Does it have to be a warning?//
I take it at face value that the story is intended to be meaningful even if the author himself is not fully cognizant of all its buried meanings. In this instance, I don't believe that yellow is an arbitrary choice. The universe may be godless and random but short stories are not!
Still, you're right, a "warning" may be too obvious a gloss. Alternatively, yellow suggests sunrise which itself suggests a "kind of resurrection." Hmmm. A "kind of crucifix" meets a "kind of resurrection"? Easter yellow, the maypole...
//Two, for me, the radio left on when dad died equaled a waste of energy, a sort of snubbing of the nose at dad. He hated to waste anything, yet he wasted energy by not turning off the radio when he died.//
I like your idea, although by the end of the story, Dad seems like a somewhat different person than the compulsive and parsimonious patriarch we see at the outset. He seeks forgiveness, doesn't he? Your notion reminds me of another effective image--this time in a film. In "About Schmidt," Jack Nicholson's wife collapses while vacuuming and dies, and the camera slowly zooms in upon her roaring vacuum cleaner as everything she knows is sucked away. Ah, humanity!
//pt, I don't know you very well. Are you easily offended? I hope not because surely I will have done so by the end of our discourse on short stories if we keep at it.//
If you say my grandfather smelled of elderberries, then, yes, I may be offended. (He certainly did not!) But on matters relating to literature? No, I'm not. My point here (not an original one) is that a great deal of writing begins in reading (closely). On a word to word basis, how does a sentence in a story really work? We wouldn't expect the average reader to read this way, nor would the writer read every book so closely. But it's useful (for someone seeking guidance as to where to begin) to begin here. And in the beginning was the Word:
The Balloon
by Donald Barthelme (1981)
The balloon, beginning at a point on Fourteenth Street, the exact location of which I cannot reveal, expanded northward all one night, while people were sleeping, until it reached the Park. There, I stopped it; at dawn the northernmost edges lay over the Plaza; the free-hanging motion was frivolous and gentle. But experiencing a faint irritation at stopping, even to protect the trees, and seeing no reason the balloon should be allowed to expand upward, over the parts of the city it was already covering, into the "air space" to be found there, I asked the engineers to see to it. This expansion took place throughout the morning, soft imperceptible sighing of gas through the valves. The balloon then covered forty-five blocks north-south and an irregular area east-west, as many as six crosstown blocks on either side of the Avenue in some places. This was the situation, then.
But it is wrong to speak of "situations," implying sets of circumstances leading to some resolution, some escape of tension; there were no situations, simply the balloon hanging there -- muted heavy grays and browns for the most part, contrasting with the walnut and soft yellows. A deliberate lack of finish, enhanced by skillful installation, gave the surface a rough, forgotten quality; sliding weights on the inside, carefully adjusted, anchored the great, vari-shaped mass at a number of points. Now we have had a flood of original ideas in all media, works of singular beauty as well as significant milestones in the history of inflation, but at that moment, there was only this balloon, concrete particular, hanging there.
There were reactions. Some people found the balloon "interesting." As a response, this seemed inadequate to the immensity of the balloon, the suddenness of its appearance over the city; on the other hand, in the absence of hysteria or other societally-induced anxiety, it must be judged a calm, "mature" one. There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the "meaning" of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena. It was agreed that since the meaning of the balloon could never be known absolutely, extended discussion was pointless, or at least less purposeful than the activities of those who, for example, hung green and blue paper lanterns from the warm gray underside, in certain streets, or seized the occasion to write messages on the surface, announcing their availability for the performance of unnatural acts, or the availability of acquaintances.
Daring children jumped, especially at those points where the balloon hovered close to a building, so that the gap between balloon and building was a matter of a few inches, or points where the balloon actually made contact, exerting an ever-so-slight pressure against the side of a building, so that balloon and building seemed a unity. The upper surface was so structured that a "landscape" was presented, small valleys as well as slight knolls, or mounds; once atop the balloon, a stroll was possible, or even a trip, from one place to the another. There was pleasure in being able to run down an incline, then up the opposing slope, both gently graded, or in making a leap from one side to the other. Bouncing was possible because of the pneumaticity of the surface, or even falling, if that was your wish. That all these varied motions, as well as others, were within one's possibilities, in experiencing the "up" side of the balloon, was extremely exciting for children, accustomed to the city's flat, hard skin. But the purpose of the balloon was not to amuse children.
Too, the number of people, children and adults, who took advantage of the opportunities described was not so large as it might have been; a certain timidity, lack of trust in the balloon, was seen. There was, furthermore, some hostility. Because we had hidden the pumps, which fed helium to the interior, and because the surface was so vast that the authorities could not determine the point of entry -- that is, the point at which the gas was injected -- a degree of frustration was evidenced by those city officers into whose province such manifestations normally fell. The apparent purposelessness of the balloon was vexing (as was the fact that it was "there" at all). Had we painted, in great letters, "LABORATORY TESTS PROVE" or "18% MORE EFFECTIVE" on the sides of the balloon, this difficulty would have been circumvented. But I would not bear to do so. On the whole, these officers were remarkably tolerant, considering the dimensions of the anomaly, this tolerance being the result of, first, secret tests conducted by night that convinced them that little or nothing could be done in the way of removing or destroying the balloon, and, secondly, a public warmth that arose (not uncolored by touches of the aforementioned hostility) toward the balloon, from ordinary citizens.
As a single balloon must stand for a lifetime of thinking about balloons, so each citizen expressed, in the attitude he chose, a complex of attitudes. One man might consider that the balloon had to do with the notion sullied, as in the sentence, The big balloon sullied the otherwise clear and radiant Manhattan sky. That is, the balloon was, in each man's view, an imposture, something inferior to the sky that had formerly been there, something interposed between the people and their "sky." But in fact it was January, the sky was dark and ugly; it was not a sky you could look up into, lying on your back in the street, with pleasure, unless pleasure, for you, proceeded from having been threatened, from having been misused. And to the underside of the balloon was a pleasure to look up into, we had seen to that, muted grays and browns for the most part, contrasted with walnut and soft, forgotten yellows. And so, while this man was thinking sullied, still there was an admixture of pleasurable cognition in his thinking, struggling with the original perception.
Another man, on the other hand, might view the balloon as if it were part of a system of unanticipated rewards, as when one's employer walks in and says, "Here, Henry, take this package of money I have wrapped for you, because we have been doing so well in the business here, and I admire the way you bruise the tulips, without which bruising your department would not be a success, or at least not the success that it is." For this man the balloon might be a brilliantly heroic "muscle and pluck" experience, even if an experience poorly understood.
Another man might say, "Without the example of --, it is doubtful that --- would exist today in its present form," and find many to agree with him, or to argue with him. Ideas of "bloat" and "float" were introduced, as well as concepts of dream and responsibility. Others engaged in remarkably detailed fantasies having to do with a wish either to lose themselves in the balloon, or to engorge it. The private character of these wishes, of their origins, deeply buried and unknown, was such that they were not much spoken of; yet there is evidence that they were widespread. It was also argued that what was important was what you felt when you stood under the balloon; some people claimed that they felt sheltered, warmed, as never before, while enemies of the balloon felt, or reported feeling, constrained, a "heavy" feeling.
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Post by Jane on Jul 7, 2007 9:47:59 GMT -5
Ok, on first, quick (not close) reading (see how I'm protecting myself?), I would suppose that the "balloon" is a work of art.
It appears suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, yet there is an intricate mechanism behind it. While it seems sudden and effortless, it is actually complicated and put together with skill and attention to detail.
"A deliberate lack of finish" could indicate that the meaning of the art is not laid out clearly but can be left open to interpretation. The author or artist doesn't tell us but shows us--the balloon is simply there without explication.
Soon, the "media" will begin to explain it (and some of their explanations will be elegant) but for now it is simply there. "A poem should not mean but be..."
The public then decides to simply accept it, festoon it with lanterns perhaps, take it in as part of the environment without insisting on "meaning" which is out of favor at the moment anyway.
Just as art is ignored, many ignore the balloon, being too timid to express an opinion. After all, it isn't art used in the support of commerce for then it could be easily understood. But floating out there on its own? Better simply to ignore it than to interpret it wrongly.
Does art get in the way of reality, blocking out the light of the sky (what is really there)? Of course, but the sky is perhaps not that wonderful anyway, and obscuring it can be a gift.
Some people "lose themselves" in the balloon while others argue that it should be this way or that, that it means this or that.
In the end, it is simply there, bobbing above us. What do we do with it?
So, PT, how did I do? Maybe the balloon is actually mankind's dreams, the hovering threat of terrorism or a giant alien being come down to mess with us.
Or maybe it's a balloon.
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Post by slb2 on Jul 7, 2007 12:05:44 GMT -5
Nice responses to my rather tartish comments, pt. I was feeling rather irritated with my kid who woke up at midnight and couldn't get back to sleep. When one is seven, one can not, apparently, be awake and alone at two in the morning.
You are exacting, pt. I like that.
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Post by Jane on Jul 7, 2007 12:57:35 GMT -5
The story reminds me of the recent Christo installation of The Gates in Central Park.
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Post by ptcaffey on Jul 8, 2007 3:38:47 GMT -5
Jane: Yes! I thought of Christo, too. I admire your exegesis immensely! Barthelme seems to be trying to thwart an aesthetic critique of his work by including within it a parody of its own deconstruction. What a wily guy. (I saw him read once. Soft-spoken and funny fellow.) He had a background in the visual arts so I'm surmising that he found himself fed up with the loud pontifications in that field about "true meaning." It's not an accident (in my opinion) that the balloon he describes is an immense GAS BAG, a slang expression for the know-it-all critic!
I found this part quietly hilarious: "There were reactions. Some people found the balloon 'interesting.'" Ha!
Now, from the "reading like a writer" technical point of view (and for Booklady's benefit), what interests me is pinpointing the exact moment when we, as readers, realize that this story isn't about a balloon per se. It's clear that by the beginning of the second paragraph (i.e., "But it is wrong to speak of "situations"...), we see the story stepping back from the action at hand into commentary about itself. At this point, this fiction becomes wryly "metafictional." But is there some point earlier, within the first paragraph, at which we slip off into the twilight of unreality?
//The balloon, beginning at a point on Fourteenth Street, the exact location of which I cannot reveal, expanded northward all one night, while people were sleeping, until it reached the Park. There, I stopped it; at dawn the northernmost edges lay over the Plaza; the free-hanging motion was frivolous and gentle. But experiencing a faint irritation at stopping, even to protect the trees, and seeing no reason the balloon should not be allowed to expand upward, over the parts of the city it was already covering, into the "air space" to be found there, I asked the engineers to see to it. This expansion took place throughout the morning, soft imperceptible sighing of gas through the valves. The balloon then covered forty-five blocks north-south and an irregular area east-west, as many as six crosstown blocks on either side of the Avenue in some places. This was the situation, then.//
1) It strikes me that the initial giveaway is in the first line: "The balloon, beginning at a point on Fourteenth Street, the exact location of which I cannot reveal, expanded northward all one night, while people were sleeping, until it reached the Park." The phrase, "the exact location of which I cannot reveal," hints, in its cryptic way, at farce. What possible significance can there be to the "exact location" where the balloon "begins"? There's a giant balloon over the city! Who cares at what "exact" point it begins?
2) Next, the narrator declares: "There, I stopped it..." This simple construction seems to impart, in a faintly odd manner, a godlike power onto the narrator.
3) Finally, this: "This was the situation, then." Such understatement.
There's an interesting lesson in this example. If we remove or modify these three tonal anomalies from the first paragraph, we get an entirely different effect:
//The balloon, beginning at a point on Fourteenth Street, expanded northward all one night, while people were sleeping, until it reached the Park. There, it stopped; at dawn the northernmost edges lay over the Plaza; the free-hanging motion was frivolous and gentle. But experiencing a faint irritation at stopping, even to protect the trees, and seeing no reason the balloon should not be allowed to expand upward, over the parts of the city it was already covering, into the "air space" to be found there, I asked the engineers to see to it. This expansion took place throughout the morning, soft imperceptible sighing of gas through the valves. The balloon then covered forty-five blocks north-south and an irregular area east-west, as many as six crosstown blocks on either side of the Avenue in some places.//
Isn't that interesting? Now this could be the opening of some kind of science fiction tale about an actual balloon (perhaps a radio tale intoned by Orson Welles!), and this after omitting only about 9% of the original words. Here, then, we have the power of close reading laid bare.
Take your pick of metaphors: Hansel and Gretel or Johnny Appleseed. In stories, both crumbs and seeds are dropped by the wayside. Crumbs direct us back to the past, while seeds point to future developments. It pays to keep your eyes fixed to the path. This is the situation, then.
//The Juniper Tree by Lorrie Moore
The night Robin Ross was dying in the hospital, I was waiting for a man to come pick me up—a man she had once dated, months before I began to—and he was late and I was wondering whether his going to see her with me was even wise. Perhaps I should go alone. Our colleague ZJ had called that morning and said, “Things are bad. When she leaves the hospital, she’s not going home. “I’ll go see her tonight,” I said. I felt I was a person of my word, and by saying something I would make it so. It was less like integrity, perhaps, and more like magic. “That’s a good idea,” ZJ said. He was chairman of the theatre department and had taken charge, like a husband, since Robin had asked him to. His tearfulness about her fate had already diminished. In the eighties, he had lost a boyfriend to aids, and now all the legal and medical decision-making these last few months, he said, seemed numbly familiar. But then I found myself waiting, and soon it was seven-thirty and then eight and I imagined Robin was tired and sleeping in her metal hospital bed and would have more energy in the morning. When the man I was waiting for came, I said, “You know? It’s so late. Maybe I should visit Robin in the morning, when she’ll have more energy and be more awake. The tumor presses on the skull, poor girl, and makes her groggy.” “Whatever you think is best,” said the man. When I told him what ZJ had said, that when Robin left the hospital she wasn’t going home, the man looked puzzled. “Where is she going to go?” He hadn’t dated Robin very long, only a few weeks, and had never really understood her. “Her garage was a pig sty,” he once said. “I couldn’t believe all the crap that was in it.” And I had nodded agreeably, feeling I had won him; my own garage wasn’t that great, but whatever. I had triumphed over others by dint of some unknowable charm. Now I was coming to realize that a lot of people baffled this guy, and that I would be next to become incomprehensible and unattractive. That is how dating among straight middle-aged women seemed to go in this college town: one available man every year or so just made the rounds of us all. “I can share. I’m good at sharing,” Robin used to say, laughing. “Well, I’m not,” I said. “I’m not good at it in the least.” ‘‘It’s late,” I said again to the man, and I made two gin rickeys and lit candles. Every woman I knew here drank—nightly. In rejecting the lives of our mothers, we found ourselves looking for stray volts of mother-love in the very places they would never be found: gin, men, the college, our own mothers, and one another. I was the only one of my friends—all of us academic transplants, all soldiers of art stationed on a far-off base (or so we imagined it)—who hadn’t had something terrible happen to her yet.
The next morning I dressed in cheery colors. Orange and gold. There was nothing useful to bring Robin, but I mad a bouquet of cut mums nonetheless and stuck them in a plastic cup with some wet paper towels holding them in. was headed toward the front door when the phone rang. It was ZJ. “I’m leaving now to see Robin,” I said “Don’t bother.” “Oh, no,” I said. My vision left me for a second. “She died late last night. About two in the morning.” I sank down into a chair, and my plastic cup of mums fell, breaking two stems. “Oh, my God,” I said. “I know,” he said. “I was going to go see her last night but it got late and I thought it would be better to go this morning when she was more rested.” I tried not to wail. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I feel terrible,” I cried, as if this were what mattered. “She was not doing well. It’s a blessing.” From diagnosis to decline had been precipitous, I knew. She had started the semester teaching, then suddenly the new chemo was not going well and she was lying outside the emergency room, on the concrete, afraid to lie down inside because of other people’s germs. Then she was placed in the actual hospital, which was full of other people’s germs. She’d been there almost a week and I hadn’t made it in to see her. “It’s all so unbelievable.” “I know.” “How are you?” I asked. “I can’t even go there,” he said. “Please phone me if there’s something I can do,” I said emptily. “Let me know when the service will be.” “Sure,” he said. I went upstairs and with all my cheery clothes on got back into bed. It still smelled a little of the man. I pulled the sheet over my head and lay there, every muscle of my body strung taut. I could not move. But I must have fallen asleep, and for some time, because when I heard the doorbell downstairs and pulled the sheet off my face it was already dark, though the sun set these days at four, so it was hard ever to know by just looking out the window what time it might possibly be. I flicked on the lights as I went—bedroom, hall, stairs—making my way down toward the ringing bell. I turned on the porch light and opened the door. There stood Isabel, her left coat sleeve dangling empty at her side, and Pat, whose deep eyes looked crazy and bright as a dog’s. “We’ve got the gin, we’ve got the rickey mix,” they said, holding up the bags. “Come on. We’re going to go see Robin.” “I thought Robin died,” I said. Pat made a face. “Yes, well,” she said. “That hospital was such a bad scene,” said Isabel. She was not wearing her prosthetic arm. Except in pieces choreographed by others, she almost never did anymore. “But she’s back home now and expecting us.” “How can that be?” “You know women and their houses,” said Pat. “It’s hard for them to part company.” Pat had had a massive stroke two years ago, which had wiped out her ebullient personality and her short-term memory, but periodically her wounded, recovering brain cast about desperately and landed on a switch and threw it, and she woke up in a beautiful manic frenzy, seeming like the old Pat, saying, “I feel like I’ve been asleep for years,” and she would stay like that for days on end, insomniac and babbling and reminiscing, painting her paintings, then she’d crash again, passive and mute. She was on disability leave and had a student living with her full time who took care of her. “Maybe we all drink too much gin,” I said. For a moment there was just silence. “Are you referring to the accident?” said Isabel accusingly. It was a car crash that had severed her arm. A surgeon and his team of residents had sewn it back on, but the arm had bled continually through the skin grafts and was painful—her first dance afterward, before an audience, a solo performed with much spinning and swinging from a rope, flung specks of blood to the stage floor—and after a year, and a small, ineffectual codeine habit, she went back to the same surgeon and asked him to remove it, the whole arm: she was done, she had tried. “No, no,” I said. “I’m not referring to anything.” “So, hey, come on, come on!” said Pat. The switch seemed to have been thrown in her. “Robin’s waiting.” “What do I bring?” “Bring?” Pat and Isabel burst out laughing. “You’re kidding, right?” “She’s kidding,” said Isabel. She felt the sleeve of my orange sweater, which I was still wearing. “Hey. This color looks nice on you. Where did you get this?” “I forget.” “Yeah, so do I,” said Pat, and she and Isabel burst into fits of hilarity again. I put on shoes, grabbed a jacket, and left with them.
Isabel drove, one-armed, to Robin’s. When we arrived, the house was completely dark, but the street lights showe once more the witchy strangeness of the place. Because she wrote plays based on fairy tales, Robin had planted in th yard, rather haphazardly, the trees and shrubs that figured most prominently in the tales: apple, juniper, hazelnut, an rose shrubs. Unfortunately, our latitude was not the best gardening zone for these. Even braced, chained, and trussed they had struggled, jagged and leggy; at this time of year, when they were leafless and bent, one couldn’t say for sur whether they were even alive. Spring would tell Why would a man focus on her garage when there was this crazed landscaping with which to judge her? Make this your case: no jury would convict. Why would a man focus on anything but her? We parked in the driveway, where Robin’s own car was still parked, her garage no doubt locked—even in the dark one could see the boxes stacked against the one small garage window that faced the street. “The key’s under the mat,” said Isabel, though I didn’t know this and wondered how she did. Pat found the key, unlocked the door, and we all went in. “Don’t turn on the lights,” Isabel added. “I know,” whispered Pat, though I didn’t know. “Why can’t we turn on the lights?” I asked, also in a whisper. The door closed behind us, and we stood there in the quiet, pitch-black house. “The police,” said Pat. “No, not the police,” said Isabel. “Then what?” “Never mind. Just give it a minute and our eyes will adjust.” We stood there listening to our own breathing. We didn’t move, so as not to trip over anything. And then, on the opposite side of the room, a small light flicked on from somewhere at the far end of the hallway; we could not see down it, but out stepped Robin, looking pretty much the same, though she had a white cotton scarf wrapped and knotted around her neck. Against the white, her teeth had a fluorescent ochre sheen, but otherwise she looked regal and appraising and she smiled at all of us, including me—though more tentatively, I thought, at me. Then she put her finger to her lips and shook her head, so we didn’t speak. “You came” were her first hushed words, directed my way. “I missed you a little at the hospital.” Her smile had become clearly tight and judging. “I am so sorry,” I said. “That’s O.K., they’ll tell you,” she said, indicating Is and Pat. “It was a little nuts.” “It was totally nuts,” said Pat. “It was standing around watching someone die,” Isabel whispered in my ear. “As a result?” said Robin, a bit hoarsely. She cleared her throat. “No hugs. Everything’s a little precarious, between the postmortem and the tubes in and out all week. This scarf’s the only thing holding my head on.” Though she was pale, her posture was perfect, her dark-red hair restored, her long thin arms folded across her chest. She was dressed as she was always dressed: in black jeans and a blue sweater. She simply, newly, had the imperial standoffishness that I realized only then I had always associated with the dead. We pulled up chairs and each of us sat. “Should we make some gin rickeys?” Isabel asked, motioning toward the bags of booze and lime-juice blend. “Oh, maybe not,” said Robin. “We wanted to come here and each present you with something,” said Pat. “We did?” I said. I’d brought nothing. I had asked them what to bring and they had laughed it off. Robin looked at me. “Always a little out of the loop, eh?” She smiled stiffly. Pat was digging around in a hemp tote bag I hadn’t noticed before. “Here’s a little painting I made for you,” she said, handing a small unframed canvas gingerly to Robin. I couldn’t see what the painting was of. Robin stared at it for a very long time and then looked back up and at Pat and said, “Thank you so much.” She momentarily laid the painting in her lap and I could see it was nothing but a plain white blank. I looked longingly at the paper sack of gin. “And I have a new dance for you!” whispered Isabel excitedly. “You do?” I said. Robin turned to me again. “Always the last to know, huh,” she said, and then winced, as if speaking hurt. She clutched Pat’s painting to her stomach. Isabel stood and moved her chair out of the way. “This piece is dedicated to Robin Ross,” she announced. And then, after a moment’s stillness, she began to move, saying lines of poetry as she did. “Heap not on this mound / Roses that she loved so well; / Why bewilder her with roses, / That she cannot see or smell?” There was more, and as, reciting, she flew and turned and balanced on one leg, her single arm aloft, I thought, What the hell kind of poem is this? It seemed rude to speak of death to the dead, and I kept checking Robin’s face, to see how she was taking it, but Robin remained impassive. At the end, she placed the painting back in her lap and clapped. I was about to clap as well, when car headlights from the driveway suddenly arced across the room. “It’s the cops! Get down!” said Isabel, and we all hit the floor. “I think they’re patrolling the house,” whispered Robin, lying on her back on the rug. She was hugging Pat’s painting to her chest. “I guess there was a call from a neighbor or something. Just lie here for a minute and they’ll leave.” The police car idled in the driveway for a minute, perhaps taking down the license number of Isabel’s car, and then pulled away. “It’s O.K. We can get up now,” said Robin. “Whew. That was close,” said Pat. We all got back into our chairs, Robin with some difficulty, and there was then a long silence, like a Quaker wedding, which I came to understand was being directed at me. “Well, I guess it’s my turn,” I said. “It’s been a terrible month. First the election, and now this. You.” I indicated Robin, and she nodded just slightly, then grabbed at her scarf and retied the knot. “And I don’t have my violin or my piano here,” I said. Isabel and Pat were staring at me hopelessly. “So—I guess I’ll just sing.” I stood up and cleared my throat. I knew that if you took “The Star-Spangled Banner” very slowly and mournfully it altered not just the attitude of the song but the actual punctuation, turning it into a protest and a question. I sang it slowly, not without a little twang. “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” Then I sat down. The three of them applauded, Isabel clapping her thigh. “Very nice,” said Robin. “You never sing enough,” she added. Her smile to me was effortful and pinched. “Now I have to go,” she said, and she stood, leaving Pat’s painting behind on the chair, and walked into the lit hallway, after which we heard the light switch flick off, and the whole house was plunged into darkness again.
"Well, I’m glad we did that,” I said on the way back home. I was sitting alone in the back, sneaking some of t e gin—why bother ever again with the rickey mix?—and I’d been staring out the window. Now I look d forward and noticed that Pat was driving. Pat hadn’t driven in years. A pickup truck with the bumper sticker “No Hillary No Way” roared past us, and we stared at its message as if we were staring at a swastika. Where were we livin “Redneck,” Isabel muttered at the driver. “It’s a trap, isn’t it,” I said. “What is?” asked Pat. “This place!” exclaimed Isabel. “Our work! Our houses! The college!” “It’s all a trap!” I repeated. But we did not entirely believe it. Somewhere inside us we were joyful orphans: our lives were right, we were zooming along doing what we wanted, we were sometimes doing what we loved. But we were inadequate as a pit crew, for ourselves or for anyone else. “It was good to see Robin,” I continued from the back. “It was really good to see her.” “That’s true,” said Isabel. Pat said nothing. She was coming off her manic high and driving took all she had. “All in all, it was a good night,” I said. “A really good night,” agreed Isabel.
"Good night,” Robin had said the last time I’d seen her well, standing in her own doorway. She had invited e over and we were hanging out, eating her summery stir-fry, things both lonely and warm between us, when s e asked about the man I was seeing, the one she had dated briefl “Well, I don’t know,” I said, a little sad. At that point I was still sitting at her table and I found myself rubbing the grain of it with one finger. “He seems now also to be seeing this other person—Daphne Kern? Do you know her? She’s one of those beautician-slashart dealers?” All the restaurants, coffee shops, and hair salons in town seemed to have suddenly gotten into hanging, showing, and selling art. This dignified, or artified, the business of serving. Did I feel I was better, more interesting, with my piano and my violin and my singing? “I know Daphne. I took a yoga class once from her, when she was doing that.’’ “You did?’’ I could not control myself. “So what’s so compelling about her?” My voice was not successfully shy of a whine. “Is she nice?” “She’s pretty, she’s nice, she’s intuitive,” Robin said, casually ticking off the qualities. “She’s actually a talented yoga instructor. She’s very physical. Even when she speaks she uses her body a lot. You know, frankly? She’s probably just really good in bed.” At this my heart sickened and plummeted down my left side and into my shoe. My appetite, too, shrank to a small pebble and sat in stony reserve in the place my heart had been and to which my heart would at some point return, but not in time for dessert. “I’ve made a lemon meringue pie,” said Robin, getting up and clearing the dishes. She was always making pies. She would have written more plays if she had made fewer pies. “More meringue than lemon, I’m afraid.” “Oh, thank you. I’m just full,” I said, looking down at my unfinished food. “I’m sorry,” Robin said, a hint of worry in her voice. “Should I not have said that thing about Daphne?” “Oh, no,” I said. “That’s fine. It’s nothing.” But soon I felt it was time for me to go, and after a single cup of tea I stood, clearing only a few of the dishes with her. I found my purse and headed for the door. She stood in the doorway, holding the uneaten meringue pie. “That skirt, by the way, is great,” she said in the June night. “Orange is a good color on you. Orange and gold.” “Thanks,” I said. Then, without warning, she suddenly lifted up the pie and pushed it into her own face. When she pulled off the tin, meringue clung to her skin like blown snow. The foam of it covered her lashes and brows and, with her red hair, for a minute she looked like a demented Queen Elizabeth. “What the fuck?” I said, shaking my head. I needed new friends. I would go to more conferences and meet more people. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” said Robin. The mask of meringue on her face looked eerie, not clownish at all, and her mouth speaking through the white foam seemed to be a separate creature entirely, a puppet or a fish. “I’ve always wanted to do that, and now I have.” “Hey,” I said. “There’s no business like show business.” I was digging in my purse for my car keys. Long hair flying over her head, bits of meringue dropping on the porch, she took a dramatic bow. “Everything,” she added, from behind her mask, “everything, everything, well, almost everything about it”—she gulped a little pie that had fallen in from one corner of her mouth—“is appealing.” “Brava,” I said, smiling. I had found my keys. “Now I’m out of here.” “Of course,” she said, gesturing with her one pie-free hand. “Onward.” //
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Post by ptcaffey on Jul 8, 2007 4:00:54 GMT -5
//Nice responses to my rather tartish comments, pt. I was feeling rather irritated with my kid who woke up at midnight and couldn't get back to sleep. When one is seven, one can not, apparently, be awake and alone at two in the morning.//
Why, Slb2, you could always tell him a story! ;-)
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Post by booklady on Jul 8, 2007 11:54:19 GMT -5
//...looking at the brilliance of each word choice and how much every sentence is telling you without telling you and—that dreadful word—“unpacking” a sentence for what it communicates...//
Key points: Read especially for the language. How to tell without telling.
I haven't read how the rest of you analyzed this, but I did see that PT appeared to take it sentence by sentence. Hoping that I don't look like an idiot, here is what I see:
Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he'd built out of a metal pole in the yard.
The first thing I notice is the assortment of holidays -- Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Christmas is thrust out there before Thanksgiving dinner is even digested. Santa's suit on the cross signals something/someone seriously disturbed!
I tend to pay close attention to verbs. I noticed the word "flocked" right away. It reminded me of both birds and that stuff that people used to spray on their Christmas trees. To me there is the sense of the kids/family sort of standing around behind or near the dad in an aimless group (like a flock of birds, and certainly not thankful or excited), a sort of embellishment to his activity or life. That he "dragged" and "draped" a Santa suit over "a kind of crucifix" is pretty startling language, I think, and reveals how he sees his fatherly role -- the jolly giver of gifts is an empty suit that gets hung on a cross made out of a cold, hard metal pole. And Dad himself is the one doing the hanging.
Super Bowl week the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod's helmet and Rod had to clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off.
We now see the first of a series of Dad's verbs in the passive voice, and yet he still insists on total control over the kids and their stuff. It always seems significant to me when an author chooses to use the passive voice. He's definitely saying something. To me it seems like a kind of impotence even though he is controlling.
On the Fourth of July the pole was Uncle Sam, on Veterans Day a soldier, on Halloween a ghost.
We know it's Dad dressing up the pole, but now he's disappeared completely and we just see the costumes appearing on the pole.
The pole was Dad's only concession to glee.
Ironic. There is no glee in that pole. But it does seem to be Dad's way of dressing up his life.
We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time.
More of the passive voice, yet again it's expressing control.
One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice.
Now we get a strong verb. Why?
I love how Saunders simply uses the names, Kimmie and Rod, without falling to the temptation to explain who they are. He doesn't need to, but for myself, I often think that I do. Wasted words!
"An apple slice" -- interesting choice. Why did he choose "apple" over other possibilities? And another example of how Saunders simply lets us figure something out on our own. How did she waste it. Did she just throw it away? Let it drop on the floor and the dog licked it? What did she do?
He hovered over us as we poured ketchup saying: good enough good enough good enough.
What an image! Kids often do waste ketchup, pouring out way more than they need. It's a perfect choice to show the dad trying to control his kids -- good verb, good image, terrific lack of punctuation in the dad's voice. Makes it seem ongoing and also sort of out of control as he tries (futilely?) to exercise control.
Birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream.
Bare minimums, in terms of fatherly provisions. Where is the mom?
The first time I brought a date over she said: what's with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking.
This is an attention-getting sentence. After moving away from the pole with very specific details about the dad's controlling yet sort of impotent behavior, Saunders brings us back to the pole and its connection to Dad.
"I sat there blinking." Does the narrator realize something about Dad at that moment?
Second paragraph: We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us.
Odd sentence, because nothing that follows gives us any details about their lives and those blooms of meanness. That he continues with details about Dad and the pole suggest maybe that one way the kids were stingy and mean was toward Dad, and his acting out with it reflects how he sees his relationship with them.
Dad began dresssing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic.
Dad's beginning to need to communicate deeper concerns and troubles. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow.
When an earthquake struck Chile he lay the pole on its side and spray painted a rift in the earth.
Mom died and he dressed the pole as Death and hung from the crossbar photos of Mom as a baby.
All these pole dressing verbs are active now, where they were passive in the first paragraph.
We'd stop by and find odd talismans from his youth arranged around the base: army medals, theater tickets, old sweatshirts, tubes of Mom's makeup.
This is who I am and what I've experienced! Not an empty Santa suit or Halloween ghost! Know me!
One autumn he painted the pole bright yellow.
To get attention, like bright yellow leaves in autumn grab our attention, or to signal a warning or caution?
He covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth and provided offspring by hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard.
Cold and lonely Dad.
He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards.
Seeking connection, forgiveness, and redemption from his children.
He painted a sign saying LOVE and hung it from the pole and another that said FORGIVE? and then he died in the hall with the radio on and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day.
Wow. "He died in the hall with the radio on" -- mean kids (who of course got the "seeds of meanness" from him) left him with just a radio for company, and they also left it for the couple who bought the house to take care of the pole and the sticks.
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Post by booklady on Jul 8, 2007 12:06:03 GMT -5
Well..... ![::)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/eyesroll.png) That's why I teach fifth grade and not college! ;D
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Post by slb2 on Jul 8, 2007 17:19:27 GMT -5
//Nice responses to my rather tartish comments, pt. I was feeling rather irritated with my kid who woke up at midnight and couldn't get back to sleep. When one is seven, one can not, apparently, be awake and alone at two in the morning.// Why, Slb2, you could always tell him a story! ;-) At two o'clock in the morning, the stories I am apt to tell are inappropriate for a seven year old. Besides, he's a kid who is incredibly ridgid in his routine thus I tell him a story every single night while scratching first!, then rubbing his back. Ya know, I've been telling stories to my kids for seventeen years. Mostly original, too. If GK ever wants a starter for a story, he could ask us! ![8-)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/cool.png)
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