Poll

I know there will not be another match as difficult as this for me. I think if I were ranking my all-time favorite short stories, this would be one and two, and until I had to decide for this match I had no idea which I'd vote for.

Here's my brief write-up of "The Piano Tuner's Wives":

"The Piano Tuner's Wives" showcases Trevor’s ability to layer time. When it begins, well, let’s let Trevor’s beginning show how it begins:

Violet married the piano tuner when he was a young man; Belle married him when he was old.

There was a little more to it than that, because in choosing Violet to be his wife the piano tuner had rejected Belle, which was something everyone remembered when the second wedding was announced. “Well, she got the ruins of him anyway,” a farmer of the neighborhood remarked, speaking without vindictiveness, stating a fact as he saw it. Others saw it similarly, though most of them would have put it differently.

This opening introduces the two time frames we’ll be dealing with. Owen Dromgould, the piano tuner, married his first wife Violet around forty years ago; now he’s marrying Belle, who, we’ll see, replays that first marriage day often. It doesn’t help that the weddings take place in the same place. As Trevor moves through this wedding, he moves back and forth, sometimes in the same sentence:

“I will,” he responded in the small Protestant church of St. Colman, standing almost exactly as he had stood on that other afternoon. And Belle, in her fifty-ninth year, repeated the words her onetime rival had spoken before this altar also. A decent interval had elapsed; no one in the church considered that the memory of Violet had not been honored, that her passing had not been distressfully mourned. “And with all my earthly goods I thee endow,” the piano tuner stated, while his new wife thought she would like to be standing beside him in white instead of suitable wine-red. She had not attended the first wedding, although she had been invited. She’d kept herself occupied that day, white-washing the chicken shed, but even so she’d wept. And tears or not, she was more beautiful — and younger by almost five years — than the bride who so vividly occupied her thoughts as she battled with her jealousy.

Yes, Belle is certain that she was the more beautiful, but her beauty did her no good due to one fact: the piano tuner was blind. And since he chose the plain Violet, it seemed to Belle “that the punishment of blindness was a punishment for her, too.” Jealous and bitter, Belle never married until this day late in life when she finally got Owen to herself. But time has changed things, even though the past has not gone away. For one, when she was nineteen, she thought her beauty could be a sacrifice: “[a]n act of grace it would have been, her beauty given to a man who did not know that it was there.” But at this late stage, does she have beauty to sacrifice?

The story continues to move back and forth in time but without ever losing its place, fully representing how Belle’s mind is working as she marries and begins her life as the piano tuner’s wife. She should be happy herself, now, but she is “haunted by happiness.” That wedding day forty years earlier continues to occupy her thoughts. The blind piano tuner cannot help but speak Violet’s words as he describes things he never has seen for himself. There is no consolation.

That Belle was the one who was alive, that she was offered all a man’s affection, that she plundered his other woman’s possessions and occupied her bedroom and drove her car, should have been enough. It should have been everything, but as time went on it seemed to Belle to be scarcely anything at all.

These beautiful sentences respect Belle — how truly difficult it must be — even as they show her quietly destroy her marriage. In just a few pages, we see the years layered on years, events from the past still touching the present in complex ways that baffle. After all, as bitter as Belle was, she didn’t marry the piano tuner to retroactively annihilate his first marriage, and she feels guilty when she sees the effects of her actions, but she cannot stop and we dare not judge her.

“The Piano Tuner’s Wives” is a masterpiece.

And here for "A Good Man Is Hard to Find":

One of my favorite short stories is Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (it’s right up there with almost anything else written by Flannery O’Connor). The story was first published in 1953 in the anthology Modern Writing I and in 1955 was included in the short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find. I have read it two or three times a year since the first time I read it around fifteen years ago. I have no inkling that this routine will cease. Not only is it a story that contains layers and layers and is always growing, it is also just a fun story to read, brilliant and painfully hilarious in its development and dark and powerful in its controversial conclusion.

When I first read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” it shocked me more than any other work of literature had to that point — of that I’m sure — and I’m struggling now to think of any work of literature since that has had the same sudden impact. It was the first thing I’d read by O’Connor, so I absolutely wasn’t expecting the violence and even four or five paragraphs before the ending I had no guess as to where it was going. When I finished it, I was drained and I loved it, but I certainly didn’t understand it. Now, a few dozen reads later and as familiar as I am with it down to its sentences, I’m still not sure I “understand” it, which is I’m sure why my relationship with it has been so fruitful and shows no signs of wearing out.

When the story begins, we meet a family I would consider it torture to be with for more than a few minutes. The head of the house is Bailey. He has three children, two loud-mouthed, selfish children who lack all discipline, and one baby, whom his wife quietly holds or feeds throughout the story. Bailey’s mother also lives with them. She’s a prideful old “lady” of the South, the type who will dress up for a road trip so that, if they get in a wreck, “anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” No one in the family likes her. The parents ignore her while the children openly mock her. Here’s how O’Connor introduces the story and its characters.

The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sport section of the Journal. “Now look here, Bailey,” she said, “see here, read this,” and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.”

Bailey, used to such manipulation, pays her no attention, doesn’t look up and doesn’t speak. Grandma looks around the room, still grasping for anything: the children have been to Florida, she says, but have never been to east Tennessee. Eight-year-old John Wesley shows just how much respect they offer this old woman: “If you don’t want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?” June Star, also without raising her head, responds, “She wouldn’t stay at home for a million bucks. [. . .] Afraid she’d miss something. She has to go everywhere we go.” Bailey keeps reading and the mother keeps feeding the baby apricots.

The next day, the grandma dressed nicely, the family piles into the car to drive to Florida. Bailey is driving, his wife is holding their baby in the front seat, and the two older children are sitting in the back on either side of the grandma. Grandma has also secretly packed her cat, since her cat, obviously, couldn’t bear to be without her for three days.

As they drive, we get a little portrait of the South through the grandmother’s misguided nostalgia:

“In my time,” said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. “Wouldn’t that make a picture, now?” she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved.

“He didn’t have any britches on,” June Star said.

“He probably didn’t have any,” the grandmother explained. “Little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do. If I could paint, I’d paint that picture,” she said.

O’Connor seems to be giving us a dose of misdirection here. For one thing, as much as we’ve heard the grandmother talk about the good old days, this story is only slightly critical of such wrong-headedness. This isn’t a story about the Old South and the unfortunate new world. The grandma is wrong-headed and selfish, presumably both because it’s in her nature and because it’s the only way she can bolster her pride in the midst of her disrespectful descendents, but she could have been wrong-headed and selfish about anything — the point is that she is wrong-headed and selfish, as is everyone else in this story. This is going to get them all in trouble, and it’s an open question at the end whether the grandmother has done anything to redeem herself or not.

And she has something very specific for which she needs some redemption. As they drive, she begins to dream about a beautiful plantation she remembers from her childhood. She’s certain it’s close by and, rather than ask directly if she can go and see it, she manipulates the children into forcing their parents to take them there. She tells them that there is a secret panel in the house where the family hid its silver, and Sherman, when he marched through, couldn’t find it. It in’t true, though, curiously, she wishes it were. The older children are too unruly, so Bailey relents and takes the rough dirt road to the old house. It’s not for a while, but eventually the grandmother realizes the house is in Tennessee, not Georgia. At that moment, her embarrassment and fear of reprisal create a physical reaction in her, causing her to kick her hidden cat, who jumps on Bailey, who wrecks the car. When they recover, they see approaching a “hearse-like automobile.”

O’Connor paces The Misfits arrival perfectly, though we never for a second (the car is “hearse-like,” after all) think that anything good is going to happen. The Misfit, along with his two companions, comes to the shaken family.

“Lady,” the man said to the children’s mother, “would you mind calling them children to sit down by you? Children make me nervous. I want all you to sit down right together there where you’re at.”

“What are you telling US what to do for?” June Star asked.

Behind them the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth. “Come here,” said their mother.

“Look here now,” Bailey began suddenly, “we’re in a predicament! We’re in . . .”

The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. “You’re The Misfit!” she said. “I recognized you at once!”

“Yes’m,” the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, “but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me.”

Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.

“Lady,” he said, “don’t you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don’t mean. I don’t reckon he meant to talk to you thataway.”

There have been many times when I’ve just sat down to read a bit of this story, to see how it develops to its ending, but each time I get to the arrival of The Misfit I just read it straight through and probably stop breathing, though I don’t know. It’s horrifying, even as the grandmother keeps trying to save her own life through shallow platitudes that The Misfit responds to “kindly.” The mother, who up till now has spoken only a word or two, is given one of the story’s most chilling lines: “Yes, thank you.” And there is the story’s last, strange line: “It’s no real pleasure in life.”

It’s a chilling story, fast-paced despite the carefully controlled philosophical underpinnings. O’Connor was a remarkable writer who should be read as frequently as any of the great masters of literature. If you haven’t already done so, this story is, I think, a great place to begin your own relationship with this brilliant woman.

Though I agree that A Good Man is Hard to Find is great, sometimes I cannot get over something that just couldn't happen. There's no way you could smuggle a cat in a car with no one knowing. Cats hate riding in cars and cry the whole time. Is there an exception to that? I don't think so. O'Connor probably didn't have any experience of cats, and it is a great story, especially a line I noted at the end: "She would be a good woman if a man .. to shoot her every minute" (I don't know what word(s) were left out of the sentence when I wrote it down).

I voted for The Piano Tuner's Wives.

This one was difficult. The Good Man felt as if it was the more exciting story ( my ranking 10 out of 10) but on further thinking the the Piano Tuners (ranked 9.5) was a more solid, a more constructive story with characters that I could relate to.

Further, William Trevor is one of my faves.

It has been a very long time since I read "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", but I do recall it as a very strong, original, and affecting story. That I recall it as well as I do suggests to me some of the power of the story.

"The Piano Tuner's Wife" I read fairly recently, and while I think it is a very strong story, I actually like other William Trevor more. And that's saying something since I have only read five of his stories so far. I would have preferred "Teresa's Wedding" be in the competition or, if not that, then "An Idyll In Winter". But I like this one too.

I did vote, but this is a match where I will be happy no matter who wins.

"The Piano Tuner's Wives" articulates for me the impossibility of replacing, or--maybe more (or less) strongly-- negating, experiences.

I remember mourning the death of June Star in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." I remember the story being hilarious in a discomfiting way.

Voting for Trevor.

I had planned to vote for "The Piano Tuner's Wives," but seeing everyone has voted the other way, I feel I must be the contrarian and defend "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Trevor gives an excellent review of the story, so I'll just add a few, unrelated remarks of why I'm choosing this story.

First, the story is a classic for the classroom. The story teaches well. It is frequently anthologized. I doubt we read many authors from the U.S. that weren't exposed or influenced by it. If a story's function is to engage the reader, stimulate thought, and encourage discussion, "A Good Man..." shines. I believe the ironic humor of the first half, leading to the more sober thought inspiring second half motivates young adult readers toward appreciating literature.

Second, I think O'Connor uses the Joycean epiphany device in a clever way. The grandmother appears to have an epiphany at the end when She seems to recognize the Misfit as one of her children, but it simply might be another of her age induced delusions adding to the irony. Delusion or realization, it is of short duration since the Misfit shoots her. But O'Connor hints that the Misfit has had an aborted epiphany. O'Connor, does not give us a view of the Misfit's thoughts but his actions and last words where he refines "pleasure." suggest he too has had some realization.

3rd. Great title!

I had planned to vote for "The Piano Tuner's Wives," but seeing everyone has voted the other way, I feel I must be the contrarian and defend "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

That's a valid reason for voting in Mookes Madness, Sam -- thanks!

David, I also love the two stories you mention. I'm trying to think of a Mookse Madness 2019. William Trevor short stories? Maybe no one would want to participate, but I know I'd love it!

Trevor, a William Trevor only contest might not be a great idea, but how about this: 16 authors each get 4 stories in the contest and they compete as a team - an author vs author contest but with multiple stories representing each. I know for sure that William Trevor and Alice Munro would be on your list of 16 authors, but this could also be a chance to bring back authors with many great works who might get bounced early here. It would be interesting to choose the 4 stories for each author from a range of their years of publication or styles. (Imagine Team Faulkner with both "A Rose For Emily" and "The Bear"!)

Anyway, that's the future. We have enough madness on our hands for now.

Hmmm, I like it. I like it a lot. To be revisited once this year is all said and done!

Crazy match up! Mad, in fact! I'd probably take Trevor's collected stories onto the hypothetical desert island but then Everything That Rises...may be the finest single volume of stories period...a real heavyweight falls early.

I’ve read A Good Man many times, but find its meaning elusive. It was a first time reading a The Piano Tuner’s Wives and loved the way the story unfolded. It will get my vote! (Thanks for the wonderful summary Trevor)

O'Connor's gift of vividly painting a character, an ethos, mores, an era, or a setting in one line of dialogue precludes me from voting for Trevor.

Isn't the daft but manipulative grandmother thinking of The Littlest Rebel when she recalls a mansion with a secret door? The things she watches or read become part of her world, her actual experience.

Ang, as a cat lover, I laughed with your cat comment. That cat would be howling and clawing, and so that made me itchy, too, but maybe the cat is figurative of the grandmother, the mama kitty always keeping her claws in Bailey, holding him by the scruff while he dangles helplessly like a kitten.

Trevor wrote: "And here for "A Good Man Is Hard to Find":

One of my favorite short stories is Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (it’s right up there with almost anything else written by Flannery O..."

Also my favorite Flannery O' Connor's short story :)

I'm still very sad that O'Connor is out so soon, but I am thrilled Trevor is moving forward. In the next round he might be up against another of my favorites from a long time back, Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."