Aldo Leopold, "Natural History, the Forgotten Science" (1938) from Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation:
Aldo Leopold was a nature writer who seems to be loved by nature writers and unknown by others, at least according to the headnote here. I can agree at least with half of that: I didn't know him before this. But this piece, which was a lecture given in 1938, is an amazing call for informed and engaged fieldwork in ecology.
To me, though this was written in the 30s, it reads like part of the environmental movement of the 60s and 70s, urging people not to think about the land as something to exploit, but to realize also how our exploitation of the land can lead to the ruin of that land (and its exploitability). This is certainly an excellent introduction to the idea of a long-term conservationist movement.
But Leopold's audience here isn't just Joe and Jane Nature-enjoyer. (I say "Joe" to hide my own identification as a person who enjoys nature.) Given the subject of this lecture and the fact that it was given at the University of Missouri, I think it fair to say that this is one of those "you're teaching the wrong thing, professor" essays that we get from time to time in all fields. The difference here being that Leopold makes some sense.
I wasn't studying nature in the 1930s, so I can't say if Leopold sets up a strawman when he describes the natural sciences as studying the bumps of a cat's skeleton. However, the rest of the lecture is impassioned, example-rich, and cutting: nature writing has too often been given over to bad poetry and dead facts on the other; but some interested amateurs have brought quantitative science out into the field and made great discoveries (on passenger pigeons and their passing through archival research and song sparrows through observing and banding the birds in one's own backyard); and that, ultimately, our failure to understand natural history means that we can't solve, let alone ask, questions like "Why does this soil erode now but not then?"
Now, from an aesthetic POV, I could complain that this lecture seems to swerve a little here and there and that it could be cleaned up to more directly make the point. But even so, it's hard to imagine someone missing the point or not being moved by this. Then again, since this was given in 1938, I guess we probably did miss the point.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 42: William Maxwell, The Lily-White Boys (#156)
William Maxwell, "The Lily-White Boys" (1986) from William Maxwell: Later Novels & Stories:
Oh, wow. I approached this story a little tentatively, since Maxwell was fiction editor for the New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. Which may make it seem like Maxwell has an unfair advantage getting his work published, which, OK, sure: there's unfortunately no fair game in literary merit, and if Maxwell had a leg up from knowing people from his position, that's the edge he had.
And after reading his "The Lily-White Boys," I'm rather glad that he had that edge. Here's a story in six pages from an omniscient POV that swings through four stages (meaning both "periods" and "settings" because that's how I roll):
On top of that final, interesting move (and whether it's totally successful, we can all agree that the move is interesting if not totally original--see Their Eyes Were Watching God, where some vultures start to hold a colloquy in the middle of a realist book), there's the depth of emotion hinted at here: the brittle happiness of the Follansbee party, the social niceties of leave-taking (not so socially nice for the doorman), the husband and wife facing disaster together, and his seeing her again putting on all the old dresses. Tiny, identifiable emotional moments like that help to carry a story in six pages and help Maxwell avoid the error of stretching it out.
Oh, wow. I approached this story a little tentatively, since Maxwell was fiction editor for the New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. Which may make it seem like Maxwell has an unfair advantage getting his work published, which, OK, sure: there's unfortunately no fair game in literary merit, and if Maxwell had a leg up from knowing people from his position, that's the edge he had.
And after reading his "The Lily-White Boys," I'm rather glad that he had that edge. Here's a story in six pages from an omniscient POV that swings through four stages (meaning both "periods" and "settings" because that's how I roll):
- The Follansbee Christmas party, which is the type of party where they light candles on their tree and to hell with the city fire code, the kind of party where "with her eyebrows [the hostess] signaled to the maid that the plate of watercress sandwiches needed reļ¬lling";
- the Colemans walk home to discover they've been burgled, which is the majority of this story and includes: mystery over the break-in, resignation over the stolen jewels, the police not promising anything but being understanding, and Mrs. Coleman trying on all her old dresses that have been brought out by the criminals;
- a paragraph on the criminals, telling us almost exactly nothing about them other than where they were--like when they come to a toll, "the sandy-haired recidivist, slouched down in the right-hand front seat, opened his eyes" and we never hear anything more, like why or what he saw or...;
- the dialogue of the furniture that witnessed the robbery, discussing how they feel about this intrusion and how they may recover from it, and how the Colemans will recover, probably turning this story into a dinner party anecdote for the Follansbees.
On top of that final, interesting move (and whether it's totally successful, we can all agree that the move is interesting if not totally original--see Their Eyes Were Watching God, where some vultures start to hold a colloquy in the middle of a realist book), there's the depth of emotion hinted at here: the brittle happiness of the Follansbee party, the social niceties of leave-taking (not so socially nice for the doorman), the husband and wife facing disaster together, and his seeing her again putting on all the old dresses. Tiny, identifiable emotional moments like that help to carry a story in six pages and help Maxwell avoid the error of stretching it out.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 41: Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Brooch (#35)
Isaac Bashevis Singer, "The Brooch" (c. 1904–1991) from Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to The Letter Writer:
This story is no longer available from the LoA Story-of-The-Week website, but I found a copy at Jstor, in the Chicago Review. I hope it's the same translation, because with Singer, you never can tell. The headnote at the LoA page does a nice job explaining that: Singer wrote in Yiddish, but his translations into English were often done by him and sometimes resulted in very different versions. For instance, "Gimpel the Fool" includes a scene where a wife claims a virgin birth and in the Yiddish, Singer has a lot of irony for that idea as it relates to either Gimpel's wife or the Virgin Mary; but for the English version, Singer toned down the Virgin Mary digs.
So, though it's knowable, I don't right now know how this story in English compares to the story in Yiddish. Along those lines, although Singer writes with a semi-omniscient voice--able to swoop into Wolf Ber's or his wife's mind to tell us what they're thinking--I want to stress that "semi": there's a lot in the story that remains mysterious. Wolf Ber starts as a thief with very bourgeois values, as in the first lines:
Given the omniscient(y) POV, Singer can rewind and tell us how Wolf Ber is such a straight arrow: he robs away from home and everyone knows he's a thief, but he always pays his bills when he comes home and everything is good there. Then, as in Henry James's "Paste," this happiness is disrupted by a brooch that proves that his wife is a thief. When they argue, it comes out that this perfect home-life is actually not so perfect: everyone knows he's a thief, which exposes his wife and kids to all sorts of teases and insults.
As in James, there's a great little POV trick here: what we took as omniscient(y) in the description of Wolf Ber's life turns out to be his limited view of that life. When he's exposed to the flipside, suddenly his certainty crumbles, going so far as to even doubt the paternity of his kids (shades of "Gimpel"). But while we've been getting this limited omniscient view from Wolf Ber's perspective, we also need to note that the end is somewhat mysterious to him even though it centers on his feelings and thoughts: a family can't have two thieves, so he'll go take up the job he hated as a tanner. Why? As in James, Singer doesn't say more than the characters.
This story is no longer available from the LoA Story-of-The-Week website, but I found a copy at Jstor, in the Chicago Review. I hope it's the same translation, because with Singer, you never can tell. The headnote at the LoA page does a nice job explaining that: Singer wrote in Yiddish, but his translations into English were often done by him and sometimes resulted in very different versions. For instance, "Gimpel the Fool" includes a scene where a wife claims a virgin birth and in the Yiddish, Singer has a lot of irony for that idea as it relates to either Gimpel's wife or the Virgin Mary; but for the English version, Singer toned down the Virgin Mary digs.
So, though it's knowable, I don't right now know how this story in English compares to the story in Yiddish. Along those lines, although Singer writes with a semi-omniscient voice--able to swoop into Wolf Ber's or his wife's mind to tell us what they're thinking--I want to stress that "semi": there's a lot in the story that remains mysterious. Wolf Ber starts as a thief with very bourgeois values, as in the first lines:
When Wolf Ber returned from the road, he always bought gifts for Celia and the girls. This time Wolf Ber had been in luck. He had broken into a safe and stolen 740 rubles.The bald declarations and switch get me every time; I think it helps that Singer breaks up this idea (the good man-thief) into three lines, to give this idea time to settle in the reader's mind. Too often, many writers like to hook with a first line that contains the base and the switch, but it feels too rushed.
Given the omniscient(y) POV, Singer can rewind and tell us how Wolf Ber is such a straight arrow: he robs away from home and everyone knows he's a thief, but he always pays his bills when he comes home and everything is good there. Then, as in Henry James's "Paste," this happiness is disrupted by a brooch that proves that his wife is a thief. When they argue, it comes out that this perfect home-life is actually not so perfect: everyone knows he's a thief, which exposes his wife and kids to all sorts of teases and insults.
As in James, there's a great little POV trick here: what we took as omniscient(y) in the description of Wolf Ber's life turns out to be his limited view of that life. When he's exposed to the flipside, suddenly his certainty crumbles, going so far as to even doubt the paternity of his kids (shades of "Gimpel"). But while we've been getting this limited omniscient view from Wolf Ber's perspective, we also need to note that the end is somewhat mysterious to him even though it centers on his feelings and thoughts: a family can't have two thieves, so he'll go take up the job he hated as a tanner. Why? As in James, Singer doesn't say more than the characters.
Cabin in the Woods rewatch: the structural angle
What do I mean by "structure"? I mean the story beats and the relation between them. Now, there's lots of structural issues that first-time viewers will not consciously note and that might not be all that important. For instance, our first scene with the white collar puppeteers (hereafter Admin) and they are talking about the future: both far future plans (Hadley is planning to have kids) and near future (Hadley invites Sitterson for a drink later). So these people who will later be revealed as dangerous monsters are also associated with the future. After all, they're doing this ritual to insure the future happens. This might not make a big impression at first, but will come back as text when the Admins explain they are insuring the future.
Meanwhile, when we meet the kids who are being set up for the ritual, listen to their double-meaning dialogue, especially from Dana. She says things like "I knew what I was getting into" (when she's talking about her relationship with her professor--yet another way that adults fuck-over youth in this movie); and she says to Jules about the double-date nature of this trip that she's not going to have any fun "if you treat this like a set-up" (which is right but for the wrong reason). We may not notice the irony at first, but it's there.
As I said, those little echoes and ironies may not even be noticed at first; and while they may help the viewer subconsciously follow the story, we need stronger beats to keep the story moving. You know the Garth Marenghi joke: some writers use subtext, but they're pussies. We need some beats that viewers will notice and transitions that they'll be able to follow.
Naturally, since this is a movie in part about the voyeuristic pleasures of horror, many of those transitions are from the viewed subjects (the kids) to the viewers (the Admin) and back again. So we see the kids do something and the Admin respond and the kids react. This is a great lesson in screenwriting scenes: connect them not with "and then" but with "because." Many of the transitions occur by going through the camera, a technique that we've seen plenty of times, so much so that it's become transparent to us. But! Bonus: the fact that we see two separate story-lines play out that are separated by the camera/viewscreen means that we get a big surprise when the two story-lines combine into one seen--when we follow Sitterson on his last-minute dash through the tunnel and then he gets stabbed by Dana, viewers jump because we see worlds colliding. Also, how's that for a narrative hand-off: instead of Sitterson being the main character with the last chance to save the world, now we follow Dana.
We should note that "Sitterson runs to fix the problem" is something we've seen before, when he ran to blow up the tunnel (right after Amy Acker's character gives a Leia-esque "you guys are humanity's last hope!"). So the final Sitterson scene replays his triumphant heroism, but short-circuits it. Or if you want the motto form: set-up anticipation, deliver pay-off, frustrate / tweak anticipation.
(Also, is it just me or is there a motif of hands/arms running through this film: Curt says Holden has good hands; Patience Buckner talks about her good arm being hacked off; the giant arm at the end of the movie. What does that mean?)
And for another example of repetition and frustration, note that Dana and Holden have the same interaction with the one-way mirror in their rooms and the scary picture covering it up, which then leads to the frustration / tweak: the Admin isn't watching through the walls, but through a camera on the other side of the room. Or check out the Harbinger's two interactions: acting hick-scary with the kids and acting the same way with the Admin--only the other Admins treat him as a joke. Or (just one last one) the repeated "Let's get this party started" said by both the kids (really drinking and dancing) and the Admin (getting down to work and dancing poorly).
(There's another lesson here about letting your characters be competent in the way that Sitterson at the party understands something is wrong the moment before the phone rings; and another lesson in building anticipation in Hadley's long walk to the ringing phone.)
Now, from a three-act structure angle, we should note that the story is fairly straightforward for Dana: she has a turning point from Act I set-up to Act II danger in going down to the cellar where she chooses the diary; and then there's the Act II low-point when she realizes that Marty was right about there being puppeteers before seeing Holden murdered and being almost killed by a zombie herself.
But here's a question: can we say that the Admin storyline also has a protagonist?
Meanwhile, when we meet the kids who are being set up for the ritual, listen to their double-meaning dialogue, especially from Dana. She says things like "I knew what I was getting into" (when she's talking about her relationship with her professor--yet another way that adults fuck-over youth in this movie); and she says to Jules about the double-date nature of this trip that she's not going to have any fun "if you treat this like a set-up" (which is right but for the wrong reason). We may not notice the irony at first, but it's there.
As I said, those little echoes and ironies may not even be noticed at first; and while they may help the viewer subconsciously follow the story, we need stronger beats to keep the story moving. You know the Garth Marenghi joke: some writers use subtext, but they're pussies. We need some beats that viewers will notice and transitions that they'll be able to follow.
Naturally, since this is a movie in part about the voyeuristic pleasures of horror, many of those transitions are from the viewed subjects (the kids) to the viewers (the Admin) and back again. So we see the kids do something and the Admin respond and the kids react. This is a great lesson in screenwriting scenes: connect them not with "and then" but with "because." Many of the transitions occur by going through the camera, a technique that we've seen plenty of times, so much so that it's become transparent to us. But! Bonus: the fact that we see two separate story-lines play out that are separated by the camera/viewscreen means that we get a big surprise when the two story-lines combine into one seen--when we follow Sitterson on his last-minute dash through the tunnel and then he gets stabbed by Dana, viewers jump because we see worlds colliding. Also, how's that for a narrative hand-off: instead of Sitterson being the main character with the last chance to save the world, now we follow Dana.
We should note that "Sitterson runs to fix the problem" is something we've seen before, when he ran to blow up the tunnel (right after Amy Acker's character gives a Leia-esque "you guys are humanity's last hope!"). So the final Sitterson scene replays his triumphant heroism, but short-circuits it. Or if you want the motto form: set-up anticipation, deliver pay-off, frustrate / tweak anticipation.
(Also, is it just me or is there a motif of hands/arms running through this film: Curt says Holden has good hands; Patience Buckner talks about her good arm being hacked off; the giant arm at the end of the movie. What does that mean?)
And for another example of repetition and frustration, note that Dana and Holden have the same interaction with the one-way mirror in their rooms and the scary picture covering it up, which then leads to the frustration / tweak: the Admin isn't watching through the walls, but through a camera on the other side of the room. Or check out the Harbinger's two interactions: acting hick-scary with the kids and acting the same way with the Admin--only the other Admins treat him as a joke. Or (just one last one) the repeated "Let's get this party started" said by both the kids (really drinking and dancing) and the Admin (getting down to work and dancing poorly).
(There's another lesson here about letting your characters be competent in the way that Sitterson at the party understands something is wrong the moment before the phone rings; and another lesson in building anticipation in Hadley's long walk to the ringing phone.)
Now, from a three-act structure angle, we should note that the story is fairly straightforward for Dana: she has a turning point from Act I set-up to Act II danger in going down to the cellar where she chooses the diary; and then there's the Act II low-point when she realizes that Marty was right about there being puppeteers before seeing Holden murdered and being almost killed by a zombie herself.
But here's a question: can we say that the Admin storyline also has a protagonist?
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 40: George Jean Nathan, Baiting the Umpire (#14)
George Jean Nathan, "Baiting the Umpire" (1910) from Baseball: A Literary Anthology:
George Jean Nathan was a colleague of H.L. Mencken, which is all you really need to know to understand this six-page joke about how Americans' favorite sport is umpire killing. He starts off by comparing it to a circus (baseball is the side-show, the real show is threatening the ump), segues in one sentence to comparing it to Spanish bullfighting (the bleachers are the real matadores), and winds up, after six pages, by implying a comparison to cannibalism: on the Sandwich Islands, baseball will take off, but the cry there will be "Eat the ump" instead of just "Kill the ump."
It's the kind of joke that can survive in six pages, but I wouldn't call it thriving. For instance, here's a step-by-step note about a fatal mistake an umpire made:
George Jean Nathan was a colleague of H.L. Mencken, which is all you really need to know to understand this six-page joke about how Americans' favorite sport is umpire killing. He starts off by comparing it to a circus (baseball is the side-show, the real show is threatening the ump), segues in one sentence to comparing it to Spanish bullfighting (the bleachers are the real matadores), and winds up, after six pages, by implying a comparison to cannibalism: on the Sandwich Islands, baseball will take off, but the cry there will be "Eat the ump" instead of just "Kill the ump."
It's the kind of joke that can survive in six pages, but I wouldn't call it thriving. For instance, here's a step-by-step note about a fatal mistake an umpire made:
Had he not robbed the home team of a game by calling a player out for not having touched a base? To be sure, the player should have touched the base according to the rules, and, to be sure, he failed to do so; but was that any reason for the umpire’s decision? It most certainly was not. Any umpire who does not know enough to give favorable decisions to the home team in a case like this ought to be killed.It's a fine joke at six pages; it would be even better today as a tweet. Certain Jeremiahs may bemoan short attention spans and inattention to reading these days, but I'd prefer not to read six content-less pages with one joke and its variations. This is the sort of throat-clearing free-writing that should result in one brilliant aphorism, a la Bierce.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 39: Elizabeth Bishop, Was It in His Hand? (#58)
Elizabeth Bishop, "Was It in His Hand?" (1990) from Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters:
I'm not a big poetry reader, so I unfortunately can't make any smart comments about how this story reads like Bishop's poetry. I will say that this story reminds me of the Carver-ish literary genre: the narrator comes upon a weird / unexplainable character or event, explores the story, but still can't really make heads-or-tails of it. In his Damnation Game, Clive Barker has a character reflect on the unfinished nature of her own story: "Just a twentieth-century conclusion--all ambiguities." Which seems like a pretty fair description--or dig?--on a sort of story that yearns for realism by avoiding narrative closure.
Which I think is a pretty good way of opening discussion on this Bishop story since (a) it was not published in her lifetime; and (b) the editor who published this story found the beginning a long time before he found the end of the story. So why didn't Bishop finish the story right after she wrote the beginning? Why didn't she store the end with the beginning? Why didn't she publish the story when she was alive? Which is all a way of asking: was this story finished? This Elizabeth Bishop newsletter notes that the story is more Faulknerian that Bishopesque--but she wrote it in her teens, so we shouldn't be too surprised.
The story is about an unnamed narrator and her friend Louise traveling in winter and stopping to get their hands read by a black woman who lives with a white child. Mystery! And yet, for all her probing, the narrator leaves the house without any real solution to the mystery. It's finely told if somewhat formulaic; and those searching for a paper topic might well look at this story--it opens with people reading signs and the faces of buildings, and then includes more examples of reading and writing, like the little white boy Bob with his toy typewriter (endlessly spelling his name), and the black palm reader who looks at how deeply engraved people's lines are. So, yeah, plenty to work with here if you wanted to write a paper about reading/writing/known/unknowability.
But for all that it's finely done, it feels like many other stories of its type. As a plus side, I have a new example now to show people who don't understand the idea that "literary realism is a genre, with its own tropes and formula."
I'm not a big poetry reader, so I unfortunately can't make any smart comments about how this story reads like Bishop's poetry. I will say that this story reminds me of the Carver-ish literary genre: the narrator comes upon a weird / unexplainable character or event, explores the story, but still can't really make heads-or-tails of it. In his Damnation Game, Clive Barker has a character reflect on the unfinished nature of her own story: "Just a twentieth-century conclusion--all ambiguities." Which seems like a pretty fair description--or dig?--on a sort of story that yearns for realism by avoiding narrative closure.
Which I think is a pretty good way of opening discussion on this Bishop story since (a) it was not published in her lifetime; and (b) the editor who published this story found the beginning a long time before he found the end of the story. So why didn't Bishop finish the story right after she wrote the beginning? Why didn't she store the end with the beginning? Why didn't she publish the story when she was alive? Which is all a way of asking: was this story finished? This Elizabeth Bishop newsletter notes that the story is more Faulknerian that Bishopesque--but she wrote it in her teens, so we shouldn't be too surprised.
The story is about an unnamed narrator and her friend Louise traveling in winter and stopping to get their hands read by a black woman who lives with a white child. Mystery! And yet, for all her probing, the narrator leaves the house without any real solution to the mystery. It's finely told if somewhat formulaic; and those searching for a paper topic might well look at this story--it opens with people reading signs and the faces of buildings, and then includes more examples of reading and writing, like the little white boy Bob with his toy typewriter (endlessly spelling his name), and the black palm reader who looks at how deeply engraved people's lines are. So, yeah, plenty to work with here if you wanted to write a paper about reading/writing/known/unknowability.
But for all that it's finely done, it feels like many other stories of its type. As a plus side, I have a new example now to show people who don't understand the idea that "literary realism is a genre, with its own tropes and formula."
Friday, May 31, 2013
Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 38: Alice Brown, Golden Baby (#114)
Alice Brown, "Golden Baby" (1910) from American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps:
The Library of America says that Alice Brown was one of the trio of women regionalists of New England, along with Mary Wilkins Freeman and Sarah Orne Jewett. (Or rather, they quote Russian-American critic Elias Lieberman, which seems to be their standard operation procedure: quote some guy who sounds authoritative. Who is Lieberman? Why did he get chosen?)
But even though she's presented as a regionalist, the LoA gives us as atypical Alice Brown story: a man on a boat with a bunch of other people tells a story about another boat trip he took. That story involves the passengers all hating each other; the boat being supernaturally stopped; and a "coolie" woman with a little saintly baby who helps make everyone love each other and gets off at Haiti to join the revolution.
There's a lot to enjoy about this story, starting from the amusing depiction of the characters on the first boat: the blotto scion of an old family who contributes nothing but remarks on how old his family is; the man going around on the world on his own fortune to find a bug to kill other bugs, who is explaining himself (and boring) a merchant of seersucker; and the guy who narrates the story, who has a William Morris look to him--a reference to a man with at least one foot in utopian dreams. (The note on the LoA website connects Morris to the arts-and-crafts movement, which is accurate but almost beside the point: this in-story narrator keeps talking about how to make the world better, which clearly makes the connection with William Morris as utopian writer.)
Then there's the enjoyment of this William Morris-esque narrator's story, with its descriptions of that original trip and all the different classes of people: mothers kitting out their daughters so as to sell them on the marriage market, "copper kings," idle scions of old families, etc. There's a certain eerieness to the ship stopping and some fun interchange between the narrator and the wireless operator of the stopped ship. There's the promising weirdness of this saintly golden baby, which seems to prefigure Du Bois's strange and neglected 1928 Dark Princess, with its golden baby and pan-colored conference. (Does Alice Brown mean Chinese/Asian when the character describes the mother/nurse as a "coolie"? If so, then we have a pan-color collaboration, with Asian woman and golden child coming to help black Haitians.)
There's even, if you're bent this way, a pleasure to be had from how the story doesn't quite make sense: what was this golden baby doing in New York when the ship started? Why did the baby stay on board the ship the first time they passed Haiti? What does this baby have to do with class struggle since everything else about it is marked as racial? Why doesn't the baby's magical love powers work from the very beginning? And then, at the end, why does the story end with a return to the frame story and remarks by a "minor poet" that this story is the same as the "Ancient Mariner" when it really isn't? Why does it end there?
So if you're looking for a clear tale, this story-within-a-story is not it. But looking back on it now, it seems like a bridge between an older style of weird tale and the dreaminess of Kelly Link.
The Library of America says that Alice Brown was one of the trio of women regionalists of New England, along with Mary Wilkins Freeman and Sarah Orne Jewett. (Or rather, they quote Russian-American critic Elias Lieberman, which seems to be their standard operation procedure: quote some guy who sounds authoritative. Who is Lieberman? Why did he get chosen?)
But even though she's presented as a regionalist, the LoA gives us as atypical Alice Brown story: a man on a boat with a bunch of other people tells a story about another boat trip he took. That story involves the passengers all hating each other; the boat being supernaturally stopped; and a "coolie" woman with a little saintly baby who helps make everyone love each other and gets off at Haiti to join the revolution.
There's a lot to enjoy about this story, starting from the amusing depiction of the characters on the first boat: the blotto scion of an old family who contributes nothing but remarks on how old his family is; the man going around on the world on his own fortune to find a bug to kill other bugs, who is explaining himself (and boring) a merchant of seersucker; and the guy who narrates the story, who has a William Morris look to him--a reference to a man with at least one foot in utopian dreams. (The note on the LoA website connects Morris to the arts-and-crafts movement, which is accurate but almost beside the point: this in-story narrator keeps talking about how to make the world better, which clearly makes the connection with William Morris as utopian writer.)
Then there's the enjoyment of this William Morris-esque narrator's story, with its descriptions of that original trip and all the different classes of people: mothers kitting out their daughters so as to sell them on the marriage market, "copper kings," idle scions of old families, etc. There's a certain eerieness to the ship stopping and some fun interchange between the narrator and the wireless operator of the stopped ship. There's the promising weirdness of this saintly golden baby, which seems to prefigure Du Bois's strange and neglected 1928 Dark Princess, with its golden baby and pan-colored conference. (Does Alice Brown mean Chinese/Asian when the character describes the mother/nurse as a "coolie"? If so, then we have a pan-color collaboration, with Asian woman and golden child coming to help black Haitians.)
There's even, if you're bent this way, a pleasure to be had from how the story doesn't quite make sense: what was this golden baby doing in New York when the ship started? Why did the baby stay on board the ship the first time they passed Haiti? What does this baby have to do with class struggle since everything else about it is marked as racial? Why doesn't the baby's magical love powers work from the very beginning? And then, at the end, why does the story end with a return to the frame story and remarks by a "minor poet" that this story is the same as the "Ancient Mariner" when it really isn't? Why does it end there?
So if you're looking for a clear tale, this story-within-a-story is not it. But looking back on it now, it seems like a bridge between an older style of weird tale and the dreaminess of Kelly Link.
Short story read aloud, week 12
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Michael Haynes, "The Barber and the Count": A fine little problem story / character view: when the count kills the barber's daughter, does he take revenge? And if so, how does he take revenge so as to avoid being killed himself. I heard this on Podcastle, and while I like it fine on the sentence level, it doesn't move me much: if you live in a world of magic, and you use magic to kill someone, why don't the forces that be take revenge on you? Sure, they may not figure our your method, but your motive is clear. That said, this story does a nice job of keeping the audience in some uncertainty about whether the barber wants revenge at all.
Clarkesworld
Sarah Monette, "White Charles": Starting out as a quasi-M. R. James story--an archivist realizes an old box of books came with a monster (the ghost of a hand of glory)--the story turns into something that reminds me of Elizabeth Bear's "Shoggoths in Bloom": the archivist has to confront the idea that the monster is really just a sort of person that has only known slavery and servitude. It's a little simple in some ways since the monster turns out to want to be destroyed just as the main character wants to do. But the language here is nice--evocative of a different time period without being campy.
Cat Rambo, "The Mermaids Singing Each to Each": A thematically rich story about a sex-less boat pilot (she took the neuter operation after her uncle raped her and has a tense relationship with the AI on the boat that used to be the uncle's), the greedy killer, and the man who lost his father (when the father underwent the surgery to turn him into a merman), as the three of them go to salvage a strange accumulation of material. The plot is simple--salvage, greedy guy double-crosses them--which allows the themes room to grow, but it's still a little disappointing in the abrupt end of the plot.
Escape Artists (Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod)
L. Sprague de Camp, "A Gun for Dinosaur": One of those older stories about time traveling hunters going to bag dinosaurs. Yeah, it's an old story that might be done differently today, but it's an enjoyable romp with clear contrasts in its characters--the over-excitable rich hunter and the less active/bloodthirsty hunter; the angry judgmental guide and the good-natured guide--without those characters becoming absolutely simple.
Brendan Detzner, "Charlie Harmer's Day Off": A ghost gets involved in a scheme to take over bodies, feels bad about, but still gets his music-loving friend's body and goes nuts with it for a while (even throwing up feels good when you've been a ghost long enough). There's some interesting characters here, particularly in Darius, the music-loving friend whose other great passion is hating the friend who is marrying the woman he loves. Even though it's short, the story is broken up into several sections, which I rather like as it gives definite pauses between scenes.
Elisabeth R. Adams, "Subversion": A very talky tale of a man who comes in to try to rectify his split persons, which he split in order to fulfill all of his many responsibilities--work, girlfriend, cats. Well done in that it avoids informational lumps, but a little light on the story side of things. It would work very well as the premise of a stage play if there were only a little more drama.
Lightspeed and Nightmare
Carrie Vaughn, "A Princess of Spain": Catherine of Aragorn and teenage Henry VIII-to-be fight a vampire! This isn't actually all that pulpy/silly, despite my use of an exclamation point; it's actually mostly about the young Catherine's uncertainty as a young wife to a sickly prince, who is haunted by a vampire. In that, Vaughn does a nice job of bringing us into the anxious and hopeful mind of Catherine, which makes it more immediate and personable. The vampire hunt aspect is less interesting, though I think Vaughn plays nicely in the historical fantasy realm, playing on our knowledge of how Catherine and Henry VIII end up.
Ken Liu, "The Perfect Match": Judging from two data points (this story and "Real Artists"), Ken Liu has a sideline in near-future thought experiments. Here, a man who loves his Google-like computer assistant first is confronted by an anti-algorithm faction with how much that assistant/algorithm manipulates his life; from there, he's convinced to turn against the algorithm, which of course catches him, which nets him a job offer from the boss of the company, Christian Rinn (i.e., Sergei Brin, of Google). A lot of this story is discussion--Jenny teaching Sai about the danger of algorithm-life, Christian making the case that Centillion is the best version of an inevitable cyborg life. As a story, I'm not sure how successful this is, but as a thought experiment presenting many different sides of the argument, I rather like it.
J. T. Petty, "Family Teeth (Part 5): American Jackal": A man on the margins of society meets a woman on the margins, whose family happens to have some coyote (or were-coyote) curse; so while they try to get away, coyotes hunt them when she gets pregnant. The characters here may not seem very identifiable: the protagonist male remembers leaving a cousin of his stranded somewhere for only a little money and lies cheerfully about everything; the love interest woman has a little anger problem. But because the two of them get along, the reader may be tricked in to identifying or caring about them.
Cast of Wonders (Protecting Project Pulp, Tales to Terrify, Starship Sofa)
Stephen R. Donaldson, "Mythological Beast": In some future where people have medical devices implanted and everything is safe, a man discovers that he's transforming into... a unicorn. What? There's a lot of repetition here to make sure we know what's safe vs. what's unsafe. But the sort of generic top-down utopia (run by computers, with everyone listening) is really turned on its head by the transformation, which is very interesting and unexpected. Lesson: Don't be afraid of some curveballs.
John Kessel, "Buffalo": Kessel tells the story of his father's time on the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression alongside the story of H. G. Wells's visit. Kessel (dad, character) is a science fiction fan, Wells is a man who sees disaster coming. There's very little speculation here, but it's of interest to sf readers since it's about fans and authors. As a story, the gentle omniscience leads us along with these two guys and their disappointments; as a son's story about his father, it's a very touching but not overly sentimentalizes story.
Michael Haynes, "The Barber and the Count": A fine little problem story / character view: when the count kills the barber's daughter, does he take revenge? And if so, how does he take revenge so as to avoid being killed himself. I heard this on Podcastle, and while I like it fine on the sentence level, it doesn't move me much: if you live in a world of magic, and you use magic to kill someone, why don't the forces that be take revenge on you? Sure, they may not figure our your method, but your motive is clear. That said, this story does a nice job of keeping the audience in some uncertainty about whether the barber wants revenge at all.
Clarkesworld
Sarah Monette, "White Charles": Starting out as a quasi-M. R. James story--an archivist realizes an old box of books came with a monster (the ghost of a hand of glory)--the story turns into something that reminds me of Elizabeth Bear's "Shoggoths in Bloom": the archivist has to confront the idea that the monster is really just a sort of person that has only known slavery and servitude. It's a little simple in some ways since the monster turns out to want to be destroyed just as the main character wants to do. But the language here is nice--evocative of a different time period without being campy.
Cat Rambo, "The Mermaids Singing Each to Each": A thematically rich story about a sex-less boat pilot (she took the neuter operation after her uncle raped her and has a tense relationship with the AI on the boat that used to be the uncle's), the greedy killer, and the man who lost his father (when the father underwent the surgery to turn him into a merman), as the three of them go to salvage a strange accumulation of material. The plot is simple--salvage, greedy guy double-crosses them--which allows the themes room to grow, but it's still a little disappointing in the abrupt end of the plot.
Escape Artists (Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod)
L. Sprague de Camp, "A Gun for Dinosaur": One of those older stories about time traveling hunters going to bag dinosaurs. Yeah, it's an old story that might be done differently today, but it's an enjoyable romp with clear contrasts in its characters--the over-excitable rich hunter and the less active/bloodthirsty hunter; the angry judgmental guide and the good-natured guide--without those characters becoming absolutely simple.
Brendan Detzner, "Charlie Harmer's Day Off": A ghost gets involved in a scheme to take over bodies, feels bad about, but still gets his music-loving friend's body and goes nuts with it for a while (even throwing up feels good when you've been a ghost long enough). There's some interesting characters here, particularly in Darius, the music-loving friend whose other great passion is hating the friend who is marrying the woman he loves. Even though it's short, the story is broken up into several sections, which I rather like as it gives definite pauses between scenes.
Elisabeth R. Adams, "Subversion": A very talky tale of a man who comes in to try to rectify his split persons, which he split in order to fulfill all of his many responsibilities--work, girlfriend, cats. Well done in that it avoids informational lumps, but a little light on the story side of things. It would work very well as the premise of a stage play if there were only a little more drama.
Lightspeed and Nightmare
Carrie Vaughn, "A Princess of Spain": Catherine of Aragorn and teenage Henry VIII-to-be fight a vampire! This isn't actually all that pulpy/silly, despite my use of an exclamation point; it's actually mostly about the young Catherine's uncertainty as a young wife to a sickly prince, who is haunted by a vampire. In that, Vaughn does a nice job of bringing us into the anxious and hopeful mind of Catherine, which makes it more immediate and personable. The vampire hunt aspect is less interesting, though I think Vaughn plays nicely in the historical fantasy realm, playing on our knowledge of how Catherine and Henry VIII end up.
Ken Liu, "The Perfect Match": Judging from two data points (this story and "Real Artists"), Ken Liu has a sideline in near-future thought experiments. Here, a man who loves his Google-like computer assistant first is confronted by an anti-algorithm faction with how much that assistant/algorithm manipulates his life; from there, he's convinced to turn against the algorithm, which of course catches him, which nets him a job offer from the boss of the company, Christian Rinn (i.e., Sergei Brin, of Google). A lot of this story is discussion--Jenny teaching Sai about the danger of algorithm-life, Christian making the case that Centillion is the best version of an inevitable cyborg life. As a story, I'm not sure how successful this is, but as a thought experiment presenting many different sides of the argument, I rather like it.
J. T. Petty, "Family Teeth (Part 5): American Jackal": A man on the margins of society meets a woman on the margins, whose family happens to have some coyote (or were-coyote) curse; so while they try to get away, coyotes hunt them when she gets pregnant. The characters here may not seem very identifiable: the protagonist male remembers leaving a cousin of his stranded somewhere for only a little money and lies cheerfully about everything; the love interest woman has a little anger problem. But because the two of them get along, the reader may be tricked in to identifying or caring about them.
Cast of Wonders (Protecting Project Pulp, Tales to Terrify, Starship Sofa)
Stephen R. Donaldson, "Mythological Beast": In some future where people have medical devices implanted and everything is safe, a man discovers that he's transforming into... a unicorn. What? There's a lot of repetition here to make sure we know what's safe vs. what's unsafe. But the sort of generic top-down utopia (run by computers, with everyone listening) is really turned on its head by the transformation, which is very interesting and unexpected. Lesson: Don't be afraid of some curveballs.
John Kessel, "Buffalo": Kessel tells the story of his father's time on the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression alongside the story of H. G. Wells's visit. Kessel (dad, character) is a science fiction fan, Wells is a man who sees disaster coming. There's very little speculation here, but it's of interest to sf readers since it's about fans and authors. As a story, the gentle omniscience leads us along with these two guys and their disappointments; as a son's story about his father, it's a very touching but not overly sentimentalizes story.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 37: John Kenneth Galbraith, In Goldman, Sachs We Trust (#43)
John Kenneth Galbraith, "In Goldman, Sachs We Trust" (1954) from John Kenneth Galbraith: The Affluent Society and Other Writings 1952–1967:
When I was studying Nathanael West and the breakdowns of the 1930, I remember one scholarly book argued that jigsaw puzzles saw a big rise in popularity in the 1930s because it was very difficult to put together a view of what was really going on in the world. That is, the jigsaw puzzle took what everyone was experiencing (confusion over how the world fit together now, especially the financial world) and allowed people the pleasure of solving the picture. This professor connected the financial jigsaw puzzle to the first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath, with the soon-to-be dispossessed farmer wondering who he should shoot to solve his problem and the sympathetic bulldozer operator noting that you can't really shoot anyone to solve this problem because no one person is in control of the system.
That's the feeling I get reading Galbraith's "In Goldman, Sachs We Trust," part of a chapter from his book on the stock market crash of 1929. Galbraith draws the lines--with many numbers--of how Goldman, Sachs came to dominate the market with its investment trust.
But, although the headnote says this piece is very clear and although we could be said to have lived through a very similar crash recently (with overleveraged investment firm), I still found this version of the story a little hard to follow. Maybe when we're dealing with these many numbers, I want some of those Ezra Klein-style charts and graphs. Or maybe this is one of those situations where people seem to be doing something so cockamamie that it's hard to grasp after the fact. Or maybe I just didn't read it carefully enough while I was at the gym today (busted!).
Galbraith does make his explanation a little easier to follow--but maybe a little harder to prosecute--by personifying Goldman, Sachs: Goldman, Sachs comes to understand something, and Goldman, Sachs uses some new financial tool, and Goldman, Sachs buys and sells. Who does this? Are there people behind these bad decisions? In Galbraith's account, not really. So who do we shoot to change the system?
When I was studying Nathanael West and the breakdowns of the 1930, I remember one scholarly book argued that jigsaw puzzles saw a big rise in popularity in the 1930s because it was very difficult to put together a view of what was really going on in the world. That is, the jigsaw puzzle took what everyone was experiencing (confusion over how the world fit together now, especially the financial world) and allowed people the pleasure of solving the picture. This professor connected the financial jigsaw puzzle to the first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath, with the soon-to-be dispossessed farmer wondering who he should shoot to solve his problem and the sympathetic bulldozer operator noting that you can't really shoot anyone to solve this problem because no one person is in control of the system.
That's the feeling I get reading Galbraith's "In Goldman, Sachs We Trust," part of a chapter from his book on the stock market crash of 1929. Galbraith draws the lines--with many numbers--of how Goldman, Sachs came to dominate the market with its investment trust.
But, although the headnote says this piece is very clear and although we could be said to have lived through a very similar crash recently (with overleveraged investment firm), I still found this version of the story a little hard to follow. Maybe when we're dealing with these many numbers, I want some of those Ezra Klein-style charts and graphs. Or maybe this is one of those situations where people seem to be doing something so cockamamie that it's hard to grasp after the fact. Or maybe I just didn't read it carefully enough while I was at the gym today (busted!).
Galbraith does make his explanation a little easier to follow--but maybe a little harder to prosecute--by personifying Goldman, Sachs: Goldman, Sachs comes to understand something, and Goldman, Sachs uses some new financial tool, and Goldman, Sachs buys and sells. Who does this? Are there people behind these bad decisions? In Galbraith's account, not really. So who do we shoot to change the system?
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 36: Mark Twain, The Christmas Fireside (for Good Little Boys and Girls) (#51)
Mark Twain, "The Christmas Fireside (for Good Little Boys and Girls)" (1865) from Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1852–1890:
This is earlyish for Twain, a sketch for the Californian that tells the story of naughty boy Jim, who never gets caught or learns a lesson. It's three pages of pure parody about the sanctimonious moral literature of the time plus one final page of pure righteous indignation at America for holding up Jim as a model for success.
Although Twain is winking at us throughout, there's so much annoyance-to-anger here that I think he reaches his limit at four pages--any more and the feeling would sour. At this short length we can laugh at how Twain sets up what we expect and then undercuts it: when Jim frames good boy George for a stolen penknife, we hear a lot about the justice of the peace who could out the guilty party--if this were some sort of Sunday-school book. He'll go to great lengths to make sure we understand the trope that he's avoiding, telling us what didn't happen:
This is earlyish for Twain, a sketch for the Californian that tells the story of naughty boy Jim, who never gets caught or learns a lesson. It's three pages of pure parody about the sanctimonious moral literature of the time plus one final page of pure righteous indignation at America for holding up Jim as a model for success.
Although Twain is winking at us throughout, there's so much annoyance-to-anger here that I think he reaches his limit at four pages--any more and the feeling would sour. At this short length we can laugh at how Twain sets up what we expect and then undercuts it: when Jim frames good boy George for a stolen penknife, we hear a lot about the justice of the peace who could out the guilty party--if this were some sort of Sunday-school book. He'll go to great lengths to make sure we understand the trope that he's avoiding, telling us what didn't happen:
And then Jim didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice didn't read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and say such a boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him to come and make his home with him, and sweep out the office...And what becomes of genre-busting Jim? He gets off scot-free and becomes wealthy and respected even though he's immoral and possibly homicidal. Twain tosses off the rest of this boy's life in a penultimate paragraph that is almost surrealistic in its concentration and juxtaposition:
And he grew up, and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an axe one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the Legislature.There's comedy in there, sure, but it's pretty dark comedy.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 35: Henry James, Paste (#97)
Henry James, "Paste" (1899) from Henry James: Complete Stories 1898–1910:
My grad school friend Lubna nailed the experience of reading Henry James for me: "I'm waiting for something to happen; I'm waiting for something to happen; oh my god, it happened!; wait what happened?" In the big fight between James and H. G. Wells (once good friends, then bitter enemies), I often find myself more on the Wells side, arguing that literature should be for something. As Wells put it in his satire Boon:
Take "Paste," for instance. At first it seems like a pretty simple inversion of Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace"; in that story, a woman borrows and loses a pearl necklace and then replaces it after much exhausting work, only to learn at the end that the original was a cheap fake. So in James's story, a death in the family reveals a heap of costume jewelry from the dead woman's time as an actress, but wait--are these pearls real even though they're mixed in with fakes? And if they're real does that mean that dear old dead (step-)mom was involved in some hanky-panky as an actress?
(For another version of this story, check out Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind," where the detective goes to hunt down a necklace of real pearls given by a woman's pre-marriage sweetheart; the pearls turn out to be fakes and the lost love turns out to be just another four-flusher, but to protect his memory and the old woman's happiness, the detective returns fakes and says that the original (also fakes) must've been sold.)
But "Paste" isn't just an inversion of de Maupassant, it's also James through and through. By which I mean that almost no sentence gets told straight through, but instead is subject to emendation and qualification at the same time. Reading James is often like reading a gloss on the material that you're reading at the same time. So:
James is one of those POV masters who tends to filter the story through a particular character's mind, much like Austen would use a character to filter the story. Austen tends to use that for irony, whereas (I think) James uses it more for uncertainty. What feeling does Arthur Prime have about the death of his dad and step-mom? "Something or other." How clear is that feeling on his face? Our POV character would call it the intention rather than the expression. Which leads us to our big question: Who is she? What does she really know about this story?
And that's what this story is really about, the ability to know and tell a story. Our main character--a poor cousin working as a governess--turns over the story of her step-aunt's time as an actress; she looks to the material history to tell a story: "There was something in the old gewgaws that spoke to her, and she continued to turn them over." (Pearls and stories are like rocks: you turn them over to see the truth underneath.)
And she's not the only one who assigns to material objects the ability to tell a story. The governess shows the pearls to her employer's visitor for use in a tableaux vivant because "Our jewels, for historic scenes, don't tell--the real thing falls short" (my emphasis). And when this woman--Mrs. Guy (de Maupassant is understood)--sees the pearls, she wants them: "There's a special charm in them--I don't know what it is: they tell so their history" (my emphasis).
So we have all this telling, but at the end, we don't really learn the story. Our POV character ends up wondering if the pearls were really real; what that would say about her step-aunt; whether her cousin screwed her over by not admitting the pearls were real AND also selling them; whether Mrs. Guy is lying to her about buying them from a shop; etc. The story begins in confusion as unknown characters talk to each other about something we don't really know; and it ends in confusion as we know all the characters' surfaces, but not what's underneath.
Or let's look at a simple line of James's as a sign of the uncertainty here:
My grad school friend Lubna nailed the experience of reading Henry James for me: "I'm waiting for something to happen; I'm waiting for something to happen; oh my god, it happened!; wait what happened?" In the big fight between James and H. G. Wells (once good friends, then bitter enemies), I often find myself more on the Wells side, arguing that literature should be for something. As Wells put it in his satire Boon:
[A James novel] is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string. . . .At the same time, I can understand why Henry James has become so beloved of literary critics and professors, many of whom I respect. He has a Jesuitical eye for casuistry, which is a fancy way of saying that he puts his character into interesting moral situations. For those who have a puzzly-mind, there's something fun about unpacking his sentences. And for some, there's the supreme pleasure of ambiguity, which is the final position where many--though not all--of his stories end: with a situation where the unknowable greatly outweighs the knowable.
Take "Paste," for instance. At first it seems like a pretty simple inversion of Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace"; in that story, a woman borrows and loses a pearl necklace and then replaces it after much exhausting work, only to learn at the end that the original was a cheap fake. So in James's story, a death in the family reveals a heap of costume jewelry from the dead woman's time as an actress, but wait--are these pearls real even though they're mixed in with fakes? And if they're real does that mean that dear old dead (step-)mom was involved in some hanky-panky as an actress?
(For another version of this story, check out Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind," where the detective goes to hunt down a necklace of real pearls given by a woman's pre-marriage sweetheart; the pearls turn out to be fakes and the lost love turns out to be just another four-flusher, but to protect his memory and the old woman's happiness, the detective returns fakes and says that the original (also fakes) must've been sold.)
But "Paste" isn't just an inversion of de Maupassant, it's also James through and through. By which I mean that almost no sentence gets told straight through, but instead is subject to emendation and qualification at the same time. Reading James is often like reading a gloss on the material that you're reading at the same time. So:
The pair of mourners, sufficiently stricken, were in the garden of the vicarage together, before luncheon, waiting to be summoned to that meal, and Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other.Once you read that once or twice, the meaning becomes clear and you could almost direct this scene in a movie: "Okay, you mourners, you stand here and remember that you're sad and you're also waiting for lunch; you Arthur Prime, give me a restrained bit of some feeling." Once you read it three or four times, you start to get some of the nuance: what does it mean for mourners to be "sufficiently stricken" and also waiting for lunch?
James is one of those POV masters who tends to filter the story through a particular character's mind, much like Austen would use a character to filter the story. Austen tends to use that for irony, whereas (I think) James uses it more for uncertainty. What feeling does Arthur Prime have about the death of his dad and step-mom? "Something or other." How clear is that feeling on his face? Our POV character would call it the intention rather than the expression. Which leads us to our big question: Who is she? What does she really know about this story?
And that's what this story is really about, the ability to know and tell a story. Our main character--a poor cousin working as a governess--turns over the story of her step-aunt's time as an actress; she looks to the material history to tell a story: "There was something in the old gewgaws that spoke to her, and she continued to turn them over." (Pearls and stories are like rocks: you turn them over to see the truth underneath.)
And she's not the only one who assigns to material objects the ability to tell a story. The governess shows the pearls to her employer's visitor for use in a tableaux vivant because "Our jewels, for historic scenes, don't tell--the real thing falls short" (my emphasis). And when this woman--Mrs. Guy (de Maupassant is understood)--sees the pearls, she wants them: "There's a special charm in them--I don't know what it is: they tell so their history" (my emphasis).
So we have all this telling, but at the end, we don't really learn the story. Our POV character ends up wondering if the pearls were really real; what that would say about her step-aunt; whether her cousin screwed her over by not admitting the pearls were real AND also selling them; whether Mrs. Guy is lying to her about buying them from a shop; etc. The story begins in confusion as unknown characters talk to each other about something we don't really know; and it ends in confusion as we know all the characters' surfaces, but not what's underneath.
Or let's look at a simple line of James's as a sign of the uncertainty here:
It was the sharp selfish pressure of this that really, on the spot, determined the girl...Wait, determined her to do what? James could easily tell us some of what goes in these characters' interiors, but like the pearls, the characters remain somewhat opaque.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 34: Helen Lawrenson, “Damn the Torpedoes!” (#126)
Helen Lawrenson, “Damn the Torpedoes!” (1942) from Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938–1946:
One of the great aspects of analog searching--that is, browsing the selves--is the serendipitous find, which is much harder to replicate digitally. One of the pleasures of this Library of America Story of the Week project of mine is that I find pieces to read things that I might otherwise have skipped, which is close enough to serendipity for government work.
Speaking of government work, today's entry is an article from 1942, originally in Harper's, all about the Merchant Marine, which is private work facing public dangers. That is, as Helen Lawrenson notes, all of this seamen who daily face death at the hands of uboats could just up and quit whenever they want to. They don't get money; they don't get the honor of military service; and they face all the dangers of the military. So what keeps them at their job?
I think Lawrenson's idea here is that its patriotism and honor that keep our supply ships running. She starts off with a section of authentic sailor talk on shore, which features complaints and horror stories, but ends on a little speech about how these sailors are keeping the swastika, the rising sun, and the "bundle of wheat" away from the White House, mom, and apple pie.
While it is useful to remember the non-combatants who helped America get through the war (including all the rationing and work-force-joining women), Lawrenson's piece strikes me as a particular form of war-time propaganda, an equal parts mix of "rah-rah boys" and "we can do better": the Merchant Marine don't have to face death, but they do because rah rah; and the least we can do is arm their ships and do more to patrol our ocean. It's very interesting to see that structure applied to a private industry, but it's a very familiar thematic structure.
That said, like many of the pieces I've read, this is a very interesting view of how people talked (or how their talk was recorded--no one curses or talks about sex) and possibly worth mining if you're writing something based in the 1940s.
One of the great aspects of analog searching--that is, browsing the selves--is the serendipitous find, which is much harder to replicate digitally. One of the pleasures of this Library of America Story of the Week project of mine is that I find pieces to read things that I might otherwise have skipped, which is close enough to serendipity for government work.
Speaking of government work, today's entry is an article from 1942, originally in Harper's, all about the Merchant Marine, which is private work facing public dangers. That is, as Helen Lawrenson notes, all of this seamen who daily face death at the hands of uboats could just up and quit whenever they want to. They don't get money; they don't get the honor of military service; and they face all the dangers of the military. So what keeps them at their job?
I think Lawrenson's idea here is that its patriotism and honor that keep our supply ships running. She starts off with a section of authentic sailor talk on shore, which features complaints and horror stories, but ends on a little speech about how these sailors are keeping the swastika, the rising sun, and the "bundle of wheat" away from the White House, mom, and apple pie.
While it is useful to remember the non-combatants who helped America get through the war (including all the rationing and work-force-joining women), Lawrenson's piece strikes me as a particular form of war-time propaganda, an equal parts mix of "rah-rah boys" and "we can do better": the Merchant Marine don't have to face death, but they do because rah rah; and the least we can do is arm their ships and do more to patrol our ocean. It's very interesting to see that structure applied to a private industry, but it's a very familiar thematic structure.
That said, like many of the pieces I've read, this is a very interesting view of how people talked (or how their talk was recorded--no one curses or talks about sex) and possibly worth mining if you're writing something based in the 1940s.
Cabin in the Woods rewatch: the genre angle
What makes Cabin in the Woods so successful? Part of it is the genre-knowingness: we see zombies and semi-torture porn areas and cenobite-knock-offs and everything else we've come to recognize as horror movies (minus maybe the non- or semi-supernatural slasher). The film also explains lots of things that have become genre standard: for instance, the group splits up because the white collar puppeteers expose them to some dumbness gas; and Dana drops the weapon she was just using because the handle gives her a little shock. Those are two things that happen all the time, the kind of thing that audience members yell at the screen about; so here we get the trope but we also get a cute explanation of the trope.
I've also seen some argument that the film plays with character. So a typical horror film might include pretty flat stereotypes--jock, slut, egghead, virgin. But these characters start out more complex: Curt is a big guy, but he's funny and smart--only later does his personality get flattened to "have sex, do violence" and that semi-ridiculous speech before he attempts to jump the gap. Also at the beginning we learn that Dana, far from being a virgin, has actually just been broken up with by her lover, who was also her teacher. So we could say that Cabin plays with its genre even here, giving us what we expect (the flat characters) but also explaining that flatness or showing how the characters aren't flat.
But I think we have to look at the structure still. I think I need a new blogpost for that.
I've also seen some argument that the film plays with character. So a typical horror film might include pretty flat stereotypes--jock, slut, egghead, virgin. But these characters start out more complex: Curt is a big guy, but he's funny and smart--only later does his personality get flattened to "have sex, do violence" and that semi-ridiculous speech before he attempts to jump the gap. Also at the beginning we learn that Dana, far from being a virgin, has actually just been broken up with by her lover, who was also her teacher. So we could say that Cabin plays with its genre even here, giving us what we expect (the flat characters) but also explaining that flatness or showing how the characters aren't flat.
But I think we have to look at the structure still. I think I need a new blogpost for that.
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