I'm going to try and get back into reviewing stories, and this'n here will be a baby step. I feel like I'm getting rusty -- all I read are novels now. Anyway, this'n here is a baby step because this this'n here isn't much of a story. Nothing happens in the action -- literally nothing. What we get are the thoughts of Lane A. Dean, Jr., a student at a junior college, as he sits with his girlfriend on a park bench. She is pregnant and they have scheduled an abortion. They are devout Christians. They are torn. He has an imaginary conversation with her in his head. He doesn't love her -- or does he?
A certain member of our class was once told dismissively in workshop by Frank Conroy: "That's not a story -- that's a dilemma." Ding ding ding ding ding! This particular dilemma, of course, was covered many years ago in "Hills Like White Elephants." One difference is: Hemingway made it into a story. One thing that helped make that a story was that the woman got to say stuff -- out loud. Her character got to be developed in the action, producing dramatized conflict. Still, the writing here is excellent, as you would expect. DFW gets way, way into his character's head, and the piece can be sucked profitably for that kind of juice, but that's the sole reason this doesn't get a red light.
Is this very short piece an excerpt from a forthcoming novel? Would it be published if the author's name were Delbert Fawcett Walcott? These are questions that sprang to this rusty story-reader's mind.
6 comments:
I think it's awesome, shadow-boxa, that you got so much from this li'l 3-pager. I could not share your enthusiasm regarding the attempt, intention, or follow-through of this particular piece, but I sure have felt the unexpected excitement you convey -- though about other stories, and not recently. I hope you do go on to read and enjoy DFW. I haven't, and was looking forward to this story as a kind of long-delayed introduction. SOunds like you read this more closely than I did -- as I said, I was taking a baby step. Maybe more than that should be required for writing even a short review. I'm going to read it again and see if any of what you say seems stronger second time around. (Though another thing Frank once said was "You can't count on a second read from the reader.")
It's actually short enough to read online, for those who don't subscribe.
Now I'm really curious what others think.
Green light, easy. I agree very much with shadow-boxa, though I did take exception with 1 or 2 of his 17,000 parentheticals.
This story did something which I, as barely a journeyman writer, find exceedingly difficult or even impossible to do, which is to effortlessly carry out a clear and full-figured emotional arc. Let alone in 3 pages, let alone in one static scene.
There is so much genuine and earnest confusion in this story--nothing is clear, and things seem both right and wrong, depending on where you're looking from. Hypocrite or Just Human? Sin or integrity? He hasn't loved her, even though he might liked to've. Does this mean he's lied? But he doesn't feel like a liar..but is he?
At the end he wants to do the right thing so badly that we see the gathering of a very dangerous self-deception--he's going to try to convince himself he loves her...and maybe succeed long enough to really screw things up. Watch out!
This story has all the complexity and all the simplicity you could ask for, and I agree with shadow-boxa that no one else could've written it. DFW is an inimitable stylist, and when his subject matter is worthy--which is by no means always--he is nonpareil.
Check out "Good Old Neon" if you want more good fiction by him. That story is absolutely peerless. In fact, it inspired the great work of literature from which I derive my name.
I agree with the yellow light. Solid writing, but I didn't really like or dislike it. Although it brought to mind "Hills," it reminded me more of Roddy Doyle's "The Joke," which was also in the NYer about two years ago.
I think - as do many - that Hemingway's talent was more evident in his short stories than his novels. But I'm somewhat confused by Grendel's assertion that "Hills" is a story and not simply a dilemma because "the woman got to say stuff -- out loud. Her character got to be developed in the action, producing dramatized conflict."
While "Good People" is as deliberately internal as "Hills" is external, I don't think Hemingway's story is necessarily any better because it has dialogue. Both stories leave
the reader hanging. Both stories
are tight, surreal excerpts set in
ordinary places -- a train station, a public park -- that involve unsure characters struggling with an enormous moral decision. Perhaps the drama of "Hills" is more appealing than the kind in "Good People" because the man in "Hills" had already made up his mind (before the story began), and thus tries to exert his will upon his companion, who calmly resists him. Even though she lets on that she wants to keep the baby she never manages to convince herself -- or the reader -- that that is what she wants do.
"Good People" has that same of ambiguity, but it's more attenuated, too attenuated for my sensibilities in fact; I found the story more tedious than delicate.
One recent NYer story I did like a lot was Lorrie Moore's "Paper Losses." It was very short too, and, like DFW, I hadn't read her work either. Still, I'll take "Good People" over "The Year of Spaghetti" any day.
It's a little unfair to say of his name wasn't so-and-so would it mbe in the New Yorker. Couldn't that be said about much of what is published? I tend to think of DFW as a solid essayist and I enjoy his attempts at unfootnoted works too.
Agreed, Dexter. People used to frequently say the inverse about stories that had received poor workshops: "If this story had been in the New Yorker, would it have gotten so ripped apart?"
My answer was always, "Yes, but it would never have been in the New Yorker."
(Anyway, as if being in the New Yorker even means a story is good -- who believes that anymore??)
Present company obviously excluded.
--Foot in Mouth Sufferer
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