Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

I was re-reading this thread and a story of my own popped into my head. It's about the time I learned that once your darlings are out there in the world, you have no control over how they are read and interpreted, and the best way to deal with it is to simply be gracious...

I was lucky enough to have an encouraging, wonderful poetry professor in college, who helped me get up the nerve to send some of my stuff out to journals. There was one poem in particular I wrote that was not all that bad, was even printed in one or two places of no consequence. It's probably the one thing I wish I had saved from all of my writing -- which I sacrificially burned on the grill (a la Pump up the Volume) when I was 24, officially "quitting" writing to take up the task of making a living.

Anyhoo, the poem was a pantoum called Cancun. It was one of those gift poems I wrote in about an hour that my professor liked a lot. It got great feedback in class. On the surface the subject was abortion but really, it was about how a person gets themselves through a painful or traumatic event - how we use repetition, telling ourselves it will be all right, focusing on something external (in this case, a poster of Cancun) to move beyond the pain we are currently experiencing even as it invades our every thought.

My professor told me that I had to get used to reading my work, if I had any hope of becoming a professional writer. Start small, she said, so I signed up for some Womyn's Coffee House thing in the only women's dorm on campus at my school (DC has odd laws about brothels. There are rules about how many women can live together, the number of bathrooms, etc.).

I get to the coffee house. My friends are there, my professor is there. I sit on a stool in front of braless women living a razor- and hairbrush-free existence -- mind you, in 1993. I read that poem and another horrifically gruesome one I wrote about a woman so obsessed with being thin that in a fit of ecstasy she slices pieces of herself off with a meat cleaver in front of a mirror. Worthy of Palahniuk, it even mentioned Oprah.

After an hour spent listening to some unbelievably bad stuff, mixed in with one or two good pieces, with a tilted head and a courteous expression on my face -- after all, they listened to me and we are supposed to be a supportive community of writers -- I was choking down some bad university food and worse coffee with my professor. A woman came up to me and took my hand in hers. She looked into my eyes and with a solemn expression said, "That was the best pro-life poem I've ever heard."

"Thank you," I said. "Thanks for listening."

My professor said, "You handled that well. For a minute there I thought you were going to let her have it."

So, I want to talk about when the poor aunt comes off. Here is what we read when it is happening:

It was almost evening now. Dull yellow light filtered down from the train ceiling like dust from the wings of a doleful moth. It hovered there to be silently inhaled through the passengers' mouths and noses. I closed my book. Resting my hands on my knees, I stared at my upturned palms for a long time. When had I last studied my hands like this? In the smoky light, they seemed grimy, even dirty--not like my hands at all. The sight of them filled me with sadness: these were hands that would never make anyone happy, that would never save anyone. I wanted to place a reassuring hand on the shoulder of the little girl sobbing next to me, to tell her that she had been right, that she had done a great job, taking the hat that way. But of course I didn't touch her or speak to her. It would only have confused and frightened her more. And, besides, those hands of mine were so dirty.

First, we're taken back to the narrator's keen observation of his surroundings. Then, he studies his hands that start out looking grimy in the light but at the end of the paragraph, we are told they are "so dirty."

Why does the poor aunt go away when he realises: "these were hands that would never make anyone happy, that would never save anyone." This doesn't seem to be life affirming epiphany.

But then, I go all the way back to the very beginning, when the poor aunt "comes to him" -- "If only for a hundredth of a second, she had been inside me. And when she moved on she left a strange, human-shaped emptiness behind."

Then he says "I said nothing for a time, just ran my finger along the edge of that human-shaped emptiness inside me."

And the vinegar bottles in the sun, and the poet laureate part, I don't really get at all. Why vinegar bottles? What makes people in them beautiful from above?

I'm just trying to understand. So far we have time, memory, death, cruelty, reality, pity, love, maybe a little alienation tossed in like salad dressing for good measure. Or maybe the danger of projecting one's own view of the world onto others... like the dog with cancer or the scarred teacher.

When I first finished the story I thought it was a story about how to tell a story - Patty's point about action as opposed to words. Maybe it's that, too. Or, maybe I'm thinking too hard... there's probably room for everything here.

Finally!

I just uploaded the March 9 New Yorker article that includes an excerpt of his upcoming posthumous novel. I almost split them up, but they kinda go together. Worth the time spent reading. The document is in the David_F_Wallace_Articles folder, called New Yorker_March 2009.pdf. Enjoy...

June will be here before we know it (at least, I hope it will, because that means... tomatoes!). I'm ok with waiting.

If people want to get started right away I could give it a shot but I am not a philosophy lover. I mean, I like philosophy, I like to think about it and talk about it, I could go on about hermeneutics all day...I even read it when it's well-written...but since almost none of it is...

I think our narrator falls short of that whole Meaning thing on purpose. I suppose you could look at this narrator through the lens of an archetypal figure, or that what we've read is a fable. I guess I could make it fit but I'm not sure it would be a good fit, more of a squarish peg into a roundish hole kind of thing.

I don't know about you guys, but when I'm writing something I don't think I necessarily have a better grip on the Meaning of Life than anyone else does. I am simply presenting a picture that might include a viable option for a tiny slice of the answer, or even just the posing of a question.

I think I'm getting closer to a coherent thought, though. I think that the role of petty cruelties is actually really important in the creation of poor aunts, and that our narrator has a visible manifestation of how people do and do not see, can and cannot observe the world around them.

So, I don't think I could write a coherent paper on this story, but here is what it made me think of. So while it may not be an interpretation per se... maybe it will spur discussion.

Creating one's own reality - there is a dreamlike quality to the whole story, which verges on nightmare when the narrator is on the tv show. Even the realism at the beginning, that lets you know our narrator is trustworthy, has a dreamlike quality to it. It made me think of What the Bleep Do We Know - you are what you imagine yourself to be. Your life is as you make it, literally.

Memory and time - how people are forgotten - the great sea of people consigned to not be remembered, particularly the poor aunt. All names fade away, of course. There are those whose names fade the minute they die. There are those who go out like an old television set, leaving snow flickering across the screen, until suddenly one day it burns out completely. And then there are those whose names fade even before they die -- the poor aunts.

Is this about a fear of mortality or an acceptance of it? The inevitability of time pitted against memory? The nature of life - fleeting?

This friend - has she had the same thing, or did she really have a poor aunt? She seems to have a hidden knowledge.

Commonplace cruelty - there is a lot of a sort of daily cruelty of people to other people here - from the aunt having no spoon to eat her dessert to the mother who is too tired and distracted to really see what's happening, so unfairly punishes the older child. Much of the cruelty described seems to be committed by people not paying attention to what's really going on. The narrator seems to have a piercingly observant way of knowing the world, and so much empathy for that little girl.

While I'm still trying to figure out who here knows just how freckly I am, I want to put forth an idea, an interpretation, of the story.

But I feel ill-equipped. I think that there is a lot to this writer, and since this is the only work of his I've ever read... I don't know. Maybe I'm just being chicken shit and I should just out with it already.

Yeah, the opening of the story is amazing. I thought it was there to show us the grip the narrator has on reality, and yet even the language used to describe the pollen seems magical. But I'm always thinking of purpose. It is beautiful, just as it is.

Damn, wrong name. Ah well, that's just me and my ignorance, strolling down the avenue.

So. I want to talk about what this poor aunt is.

Does she fill the human-shaped emptiness?

Does she represent things or people we have loved that have caused us pain... the dog, the teacher...?

What is this corpse sealed inside a glacier stuff?

Why does he lose all sense of direction when she is gone? Is he referring back to those moments when you forget who you are, just for a few seconds?

So, where to begin. The prose is spare and direct, but there is so much to it - lots of Big Ideas floating about in here.

I am attempting to understand the poor aunt (the signifier)'s relation to the narrator's self, as well as the people around him, who all see something different - usually someone/something that holds some level of emotional conflict. I'm not sure I'm quite there yet.

I think that where I want to begin are the paragraphs on which the story seems to turn.

====================================

"I didn't know why. For some reason, the things that grabbed me were always things I didn't understand. I said nothing for a time, just ran my finger along the edge of that human-shaped emptiness inside me."

====================================

Right before the poor aunt appears:

"Where do the lost names go? The probability of their surviving in this maze of a city must be extremely low. Still, there may be some that do survive and find their way to the town of lost names, where they build a quiet little community. A tiny town, with a sign at the entrance that reads "No Admittance Except on Business." Those who dare to enter without business receive an appropriately tiny punishment. "

====================================

"A word is like an electrode connected to the mind. If you keep sending the same stimulus through it, there is bound to be some kind of response, some effect. Each individual's response will be different, of course, and in my case the response is something like a sense of independent existence. What I have stuck to my back, really, is the phrase 'poor aunt'¡ªthose words, without meaning, without form. If I had to give it a label, I'd call it a conceptual sign or something like that."

====================================

Time, of course, topples everyone, but the thrashing that most of us receive is frightfully gentle. Few of us even realize that we are being beaten. In a poor aunt, however, we can actually witness the tyranny of time. It has squeezed the poor aunt like an orange, until there's not a single drop of juice left. What draws me to the poor aunt is that completeness of hers, that utter perfection.

She is like a corpse sealed inside a glacier¡ªa magnificent glacier with ice like steel. Only ten thousand years of sunshine could melt such a glacier. But no poor aunt can live for ten thousand years, and so she will have to live with her perfection, die with her perfection, and be buried with her perfection.

====================================

But what was my original self? I couldn't be sure anymore. I couldn't help feeling that this was another me, another self that strongly resembled my original self. So now what was I to do? I had lost all sense of direction. I shoved my hand in my pocket and fed every piece of change I found there into a pay phone. Eight rings. Nine. And then she answered.

Jeeeeez. There is a lot to this story.

I am a slow processor. Still thinking.

Oh, whoops. Here is the URL. For convenience:

http://magna.cs.ucla.edu/~hxwang/newy...

Just startin' off the thread... Anyone (Brian) have anything to say about Murakami before we begin?

Look at all these contemporary psychological terms we keep coming up with to describe these characters from the 19th century!

No, I mean really! It's totally fascinating to me.

It makes me think about how Freud used literary characters in his analysis all the time, and speaks to the power of characters and stories that echo all the way into our lives as they are lived today.

Yeah, my son Jackson - he's 7. Not quite so little any more...

Christ, I can't believe I forgot what day it is.

Mea culpa - my son's birthday is in 4 days.

And Thank You and everyone else for participating. I have been wanting to do this kind of thread for a while and I'm glad so many people have joined in.

I have a ton to learn about storytelling... particularly dialogue. So this short story thing is teaching me a lot.

That's ok. We'll hold down the fort for ya. Good luck on the job hunt; my fingers are crossed for you.

My announcement for the day is that people have no idea what to do with me when I'm all sunshine and light, and no pensive intellectual inquiry.

I got some great compliments on my writing recently, too. Gives me the warm fuzzies just to think about someone taking the time to read it and comment.

In the moments when I am doubting myself I just pop open those emails and I'm able to get it going again.

I think that for an unpublished writer, encouragement is so critical - not in an ego-stroking sense, but in a basic confidence in what you're doing sense.

I like this poem by Marge Piercy:

For the young who want to

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms


is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

(Or maybe not. This is not the story of Gurov's wife, who is clearly aware of his activities. Or Anna's husband, who does and does not believe her. Maybe they would like it if Anna and Gurov took off together.)

Seriously, that's a real book?

Not some Photoshop joke?

Who puts the words knocked up in a romance novel's title?