[ Friday, September 24, 2004 (7:09 PM) ] ( link )
Three "mainstream" short stories: Yesterday I wrote about three of my favorite science-fiction stories. I thought that today I'd also briefly list my three favorite "mainstream" short stories.
1. "Everything That Rises Must Converge," by Flannery O'Connor
When I first read this story in seventh grade, the conclusion made me feel as though something had just hit me in the stomach. "Everything That Rises" seems like a very simple story: it takes place almost entirely on a single bus ride, and most of the dialogue takes place between two characters, an old-fashioned and very racist old lady, and her bitter, resentful son.
For several years after I read this story, I actually tried to analyze exactly how O'Connor managed to escalate the relationship between mother and son so that its explosive conclusion seemed both natural and devastating. I still haven't quite figured it out. "Everything That Rises" is a really masterful example of how to gradually drop character details into a story, through dialogue and even some blatant exposition, until the final conflict--and its transformations of the two main characters--seems almost inevitable.
The story is also I think one of the best portrayals of a sympathetic racist who truly believes that she's just being nice.
2. "Cathedral," by Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver is, I think, the single greatest American short story writer ever. His stories are written with a disarming simplicity and are severely grounded in reality, yet he manages to capture in crystalline detail the most complicated, inexplicable emotional moments.
"Cathedral" is a case in point. The narrator is the husband of a woman who has befriended an older blind man; the woman has invited the blind man to dinner, and the husband is, shall we say, somewhat derisive. As with "Everything That Rises," the cast of characters is extremely small. But the relationships between the three characters are exquisitely rendered: the testiness between husband and wife, the genuine friendship between the wife and the blind man, and the watchful wariness between the husband and the blind man. Even moments that would be comical with any other writer--for instance, at one point the three of them pass around a joint--take on a deeper significance in Carver's hands.
What really makes "Cathedral" wonderful, however, is its ending, which gives the story its title. I have to admit that when I first read "Cathedral" at the start of freshman year in college, I thought it was pretty boring. But something changed between the beginning of freshman year and the end of first semester--when I read "Cathedral" again, I felt shivers running through me at the last few paragraphs of the story. I don't know what it was--whether I had suddenly realized what Carver was trying to convey, whether I had done some growing up, or whether I had simply slept more the night before, but from that point forward I have not been able to read "Cathedral" without thrilling at its simple but very moving conclusion.
3. "Sonny's Blues," by James Baldwin
Out of these three stories, "Sonny's Blues" took me the longest to appreciate. It's also the longest story here, which is probably related.
I first read "Sonny's Blues" in seventh grade (in fact, for the same class where I read "Everything That Rises"). It bored me to tears. And no wonder: the story begins with the narrator's younger brother coming back from prison, seemingly transformed; it ends with the same brother playing piano at a local club. Whoop-dee-do.
But when I read the story again in college, I found it to be the single best portrayal of brotherly love that I have ever read. The seeds of tension are scattered throughout the story, too subtle for a seventh grader to pick up, but obvious enough for a slightly older reader who had gone through his own ups and downs with his brother. The ending of the story marks the release of all of that tension, a flood of warm good will that makes the reader (and the narrator) realize, "Everything will be all right." It feels great.
Footnote on Epiphanies
It must be pretty evident that all three of these short stories feature some pretty significant epiphanies: in fact, it is the epiphanies that really make these stories special. Here's what Michael Chabon has to say about epiphanies in his introduction to McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, which I am still struggling through:
Imagine that, sometime about 1950, it had been decided, collectively, informally, a little at a time, but with finality, to proscribe every kind of novel from the canon of the future but the nurse romance. Not merely from the critical canon, but from the store racks and library shelves as well. Nobody could be paid, published, lionized, or cherished among the gods of literature for writing any kind of fiction other than nurse romances. Now, because of my faith and pride in the diverse and rigorous brilliance of American writers of the last half-century, I do believe that from this bizarre decision, in this theoretical America, a dozen or more authentic masterpieces would have emerged. Thomas Pynchon's Blitz Nurse, for example, and Cynthia Ozick's Ruth Puttermesser, R.N. One imagines, however, that this particular genre--that any genre, even one far less circumscribed in its elements and possibilities than the nurse romance--would have paled somewhat by the year 2002. Over the last year in that oddly diminished world, somebody, somewhere, would be laying down Michael Chabon's Dr. Kavalier and Nurse Clay with a weary sigh and crying out, "Surely, oh, surely there must be more to the novel than this!"
Instead of "the novel" and "the nurse romance," try this little Gedankenexperiment with "jazz" and "the bossa nova," or with "cinema" and "fish-out-of-water comedies." Now, go ahead and try it with "short fiction" and "the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment -of-truth revelatory story."
Suddenly you find yourself sitting right back in your very own universe.
That's a pretty harsh (if amusing) indictment of the epiphanic short story. But while I agree with Chabon that the pure plot story could use a revival (although I'd say that the McSweeney's collection is not quite it, with one or two exceptions therein), I don't think it's a coincidence that the stories I've felt have been most meaningful to me have all been epiphanic ones. Sure, plot stories have amused me, but they have rarely been as moving as, say, the three stories above.
[ Thursday, September 23, 2004 (10:03 PM) ] ( link )
Three science-fiction short stories: I'm a big science fiction fan. Here are three science-fiction short stories that, for one reason have another, have embedded themselves into my memory.
1. "A Dry, Quiet War," by Tony Daniel
What I love about "A Dry, Quiet War" is its atmosphere. The war referenced in the title is wonderfully understated--you know that it is a galaxy-shattering, time-busting conflict, but the narrator drops only a few tantalizing hints about it (for instance, the second sentence: "I had been away twelve billion years"). What Daniel most effectively conveys is the narrator's utter weariness with the war, his deep-seated desire to return to normality, even though both his mind and his body have been irrevocably warped.
But "A Dry, Quiet War" is also a little revenge story, and in that respect it is also pretty thrilling. Not only does the narrator turn out to be an utter badass when the circumstances call for it, but he utters one of the best badass lines of all time:
"You have something on me," I said. "I cannot abide that."
If I one day gain the power to unleash hell on my enemies, that is what I will say to them before laying bare their souls.
2. "Bounty," by George Saunders
I encountered "Bounty" through a rather curious path. When I was in middle school, my parents, obsessed with the idea of churning out literate, high-minded children, subscribed to a bunch of magazines far too sophisticated for my tastes, including The New Yorker and, most relevant here, Harper's Magazine. As I said these magazines were simply too highbrow for me, and I spent most of time searching out the really scandalous articles or stories (sex, violence, or videogames, please) rather than the boring cultural stuff. (I also liked the weird shorts Harper's had in the front, but that's irrelevant here.)
One day I was very surprised to open Harper's Magazine to discover that their feature article was a novella--and not just any novella, but a science-fiction novella entitled "Bounty." The story was very, very weird, but not because of its subject matter--its discussion of mutated human beings being the subject of discrimination and often violence might seem novel to some people but is utterly blase for even the most casual science-fiction (or comics) fan. It's true that the world of "Bounty" was much darker and grittier than most stories I had read thus far, but even that was not enough to make me think the story weird. Rather, what was so strange about "Bounty" was the author's almost flippant style. Take, for instance, this bit of dialogue from early in the story:
"Another incident of this ilk and you may well find yourself wandering the wide world sans income my friend," Oberlin says. "And no joke. Bear in mind that in your case we're talking about a young man who was practically frigging born here, and who has apparently forgotten the considerable deprivations and pains in the asses of existing without a potable water source, not to mention security from rampaging gangs that mean him harm."
"Wow," Albert says.
I hope that gives you a taste of the author's style. As a result of these little flourishes, the story is almost surreal, hopping from place to place in a dystopian future America where genetic purity is the key to survival. I think it is fair to say that this story blew my mind when I first read it. I had of course read stylistically strange stuff before, but none of it had wheedled itself into my brain quite like "Bounty." (In hindsight, it's not so strange; but I was young and impressionable.)
A coincidental aside: Years later, when I was in college, I happened to work at the New America Foundation for a summer. One of New America's fellows is Michael Lind. It turns out that Lind was an editor at Harper's Magazine when they published "Bounty," and he described to me how a bunch of Harper's editors were sitting around a table one day, discussing this story, when they all decided "What the hell, let's screw with the critics," and published a science-fiction story as a Harper's centerpiece. I let him know how much I liked the piece. He seemed amused.
3. "Nightmare Brother," by Alan Nourse
I read this story as part of an anthology that also included "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury and "And He Built a Crooked House" by Robert A. Heinlein. Nourse's story is actually pretty straightforward. (Warning: the rest of the paragraph contains spoilers.) Basically, the narrator is experiencing a series of increasingly horrific nightmares, which Nourse graphically describes. But it turns out that the nightmares are really just a simulation, to prepare the man to become a space pilot. The reason they're giving him nightmares on purpose is that space flight turned out to be a lot more mentally taxing than they had imagined: somehow, when you got beyond the range of the solar system (or galaxy, or whatever), things happened that made normal people go mad.
(Actually, I'm pretty sure spoilers continue here so if you really care you probably don't want to read on.) Two things struck me about this story. The first was Nourse's excellent descriptions of the nightmares, particularly the one at the end, which, if I recall correctly, starts off on a tall pillar of rock and ends up on a sandy beach. I actually had dreams (both nightmares and not-nightmares) about this particular setting for years afterward. (I had actually forgotten the source of this dream until I had it particularly vividly one day in college, of all places, and got up to figure out a non-Freudian reason that I was dreaming of falling off a rocky tower.)
The second reason is Nourse's decidedly non-romantic view of space flight. Now, I had already encountered H.P. Lovecraft, so I was used to the idea of things that would drive people mad because they were just so wacky. But Lovecraft's maddening things were all hideous monsters, so their tendency to drive people insane was totally understandable. On the other hand, I had always thought of space flight as just a mechanical action, no more mentally destabilizing than, say, driving a car (other than in New York City). Nourse's story was the first one I had encountered that presented the possibility that deep space flight--really deep space flight--was something that our limited mammalian minds were simply incapable of actually going through without being reduced to gibbering lumps of flesh. That idea seems to have increased in popularity since Nourse--see, e.g., 2001: A Space Odyssey, Warren Ellis's graphic novel Orbiter, the trashy but somehow fun horror movie Event Horizon--but it was novel to me back then, and perhaps even to Nourse when he wrote the story in 1953.
The deep impression that these stories left on me can be explained in large part by the fact that I read them when I was very young. But, at least in my opinion, they do not suffer particularly much as one ages. If you have a few minutes, I'd still recommend reading them.
[ Tuesday, September 21, 2004 (10:48 PM) ] ( link )
Clerkship conclusions: On Sunday night, after eating dinner in Washington D.C.'s Chinatown, I got a fortune cookie fortune that read, "Something wonderful is about to happen to you."
On Monday, three wonderful things happened: (1) I got a free caramel frappuccino from Starbucks when nobody claimed it and I was the last person in line; (2) my number while waiting in Burger King was 626, which is the area code of my hometown; and (3) I accepted an offer to clerk in the chambers of Judge Diana Motz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Baltimore, MD. (She's liberal; the Fourth Circuit is decidedly not.)
The story of how I even got an interview with Judge Motz is pretty weird. But the reason the offer was made (and accepted) is simple: I had a great interview with her clerks, and a fabulous conversation with the judge. That conversation helped persuade her to make me an offer even though I was probably too young and life-inexperienced to warrant a spot; and it persuaded me to accept even though I had already bought a ticket home to California for more interviews.
(Which isn't to say I didn't take the trip home. I'm there now, and hoping to take a short break after all of this clerkship madness.)
I am a little surprised that I ended up in Baltimore, and especially that I ended up in the Fourth Circuit. (I was actually pretty certain I would end up in California, where I grew up.) I guess this just goes to show how idiosyncratic the entire clerkship-hiring process has been: law students act off of incredibly imperfect information in applying for judges; judges act off of inchoate hunches in picking which of many nearly identical students to interview; and every once in a while those two essentially random choices end up with matches that just click. From talking to (a few) people today, it seems to me that surprise has been the order of the day--people come into this process with certain expectations, but, as in my case, those expectations are often (pleasantly) broken.
At any rate, I'm happy with and deeply honored by the opportunity I have next year. If my meeting with the judge and her clerks is any indication, I'm going to have a blast next year. Best of luck to everybody still going through the process.