a thought...

 

Part of the painful beauty of creativity is going through a hell, and then learning to sit on its edges, objectively exploring it without falling in.

Today is TED Day - Dave Isay

On Fridays I will post a TED talk that I find supports my claims that the story is enough: enough to teach truth and create connection.

"Dave Isay: Everyone around you has a story the world needs to hear"

Dave Isay is the founder of StoryCorps.

I first found StoryCorps on NPR.  It is an oral history project - but it is one of the largest ever.  Recorded conversations - casual interviews - are preserved and shared.  Because "everyone around [us] had a story the world needs to hear".  Because talking and sharing our stories is how we learn about each other - that our lives are not meant to be lived in "quiet desperation".  

The story is enough to help us discover how similar we are.  We discern collective truths.  We find we are not very different when it comes to the heart.

"Major Maybe" by Ann Beattie

The story can be found here in The New Yorker.

First Line: "The red-haired homeless lady was arrested after she fell in the street and a taxi almost ran over her."

Last Line: "Indelible, the yellow pollen on the floor."

"Major Maybe" is a story of a memory - nostalgia.  It is about an image that pops up and takes the narrator back to a time that is rich with thoughts, choices, feelings.  A time when she was free to not choose and a time when she was able to observe and live without judgment. 

Remembering the red-haired woman's "mad dash into traffic" brought up recollections of a neighbor's dog, accused by the woman to be a devil.  The narrator's memories are further pressed into the building she lived in, the neighbors, her roommate, their affection that had its brief moment.  We dance along with Beattie in and around these images.  Up one tangent, and down another.  We follow her from an abrupt passionate moment with her roommate to her current state: married and remembering those days gone by.  All of this brought about by a picture she sees in a magazine of her old apartment.  

With my first reading, I felt like I was the tail-end in a game of Crack-the-Whip.  Beattie took me one direction, and then yet another.  The tone was both conversational and poetic. I was excited to follow where it would go.

But then it ended.  Sharply.  Beattie took a turn that left me stunned, fallen on the grass, gasping for fresh air.

Even so, I love the last line.  It echoes.  It lingers.  It made me ponder and made me go back into the story to find it's importance - to find why it hovered in my mind.

But it also made me question what a story is.  

At first, it seemed a poetic vignette - a lyric.  A snapshot-memory and then, life goes on.  How is this a shorty story?  What is the purpose in sharing this bit of nostalgia?

The purpose of the short story is to elicit a response from the reader.  Someone has insisted that they entertain. And Chekhov has said that writers are to ask the readers questions, not to answer them.  But each story must have a beginning, middle, and end.  That's what separates it from vignettes. 

I read again "Major Maybe" looking for the plot, the questions, looking for my answer to them.  And it was the ending line that kept haunting me.  "Indelible, the yellow pollen on the floor."

In an interview with The Paris Review, Ann Beattie said:

Certain things that I like about endings—endings that hint at the whole story, that let you know there is an arc, but that offer some related image or emotion, instead of decoding the initial image, or pattern, or symbol, endings that alter the tone and the mood just a bit. I realize that some people criticize me for being arbitrary with my endings. I think my stories are very determined. I can tell you the reverberation I have in mind for each element in the story. I can’t make you read it that way, but it’s been contrived, and then revised. What is there is intentional.

I can see it. There is an "intentional" arc in this story.  Both the plot and the characters shift from where they were in the beginning.  There is a beginning, middle, and end.  The narrator shifts.  And her life has shifted with her.  

I can see it, but I had to look really hard, with eyes squinted, to see it.

The thing that remains?  Something "indelible".  Memories.


My "response" to this story?  "And?  So?"

Did I find questions here to examine?  Yep: "What is the author trying to do here?"

Was I entertained?  For a bit. 

Do I still think this is really more like a photograph despite the beginning, middle, and end and the narrator's shift?  Does this feel like a vignette forced to dress-up like a short story?

Yes.

 

How I choose my next book...

There are so many to choose from - books. 

And they all have stories inside.

How do I decide which one I want to read next?

I was a Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) volunteer for a number of years.  I connected books with the children who would love them best.  I talked about the stories, I read them snippets, I gave advice on how to pick a book and then I let them loose to choose their free book.

I taught them to choose books the way I do - with my five senses.

SIGHT - Do I like the cover?  The font?  The size of the type?  The color of the pages?  Is there artwork within the story?  Do I want the big, thick, LONG book, or do I need a light, thin one?  Are there lots of words, chapters?  Am I okay with that today?

SOUND - Do I like the sound of the title in my ears?  What about when I fan through the pages?  Is it a nice sound?

SMELL - How does this book smell?  If I am going to curl up into a ball and read it, will the smell make me happy or give me a headache?  

TOUCH - How does this book fit in my hands?  Do I want a hardcover?  A mass-market paperback or a trade paperback?  Do I like the feel of a glossy cover or a matte cover?  Can I take off the book jacket if I want to while reading?  Can I turn the pages easily enough?  How much give is there in the binding?  Can I keep it open comfortably?

TASTE - I am not going to put this book in my mouth, but is it my style?  Do I like this genre, author, reading level, story?  Will I enjoy reading this tale?  Did someone else like it before me?

And I do choose a book this way - based on cover, title, how it feels in my hands, the smell of the ink and paper, reviews...

After all, all books have stories.

Which one do I want to read next?
 

"The Drop" starring Tom Hardy

 
I watch movies with a writer's eye.  I want the elements I adore in fiction to be just as powerful on film.  I want the characters to be believable - real.  I want the setting to make sense.  I want the plot to move and carry me along with it.  I want the conflict to be credible.  And I want the themes to linger - I want to walk away still thinking about what I just saw and experienced.

That is what happened to me when I watched "The Drop" starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, and James Gandolfini.  Bob, the main character, was easy to connect to and I wanted to find out his story - the one he was in, and the one he was from.  And it takes place in a city neighborhood, residents bonded together by making a living and keeping head above water.  All relatable and quite interesting.

But the conflict?  Fantastic! An inept young man, living his parents old house, works at his cousin's bar, now a drop location for criminal money.  He finds a wounded dog and with the help of the lovely, but secretive young woman, nurses the dog back to health.  Weaving throughout this story is, of course, "the drop", a man from the woman's past, and Bob's mysterious secrets. It is constantly moving forward at an exciting pace.  The tense and active scenes are well-balanced with scenes that develop the characters and the plot.

And I could not stop thinking about this film.  

So I decided to read the short story on which the screenplay was based: "Animal Rescue".  Both were written by Dennis Lehane, who also write "Mystic River".  His latest novel is World Gone By.

And I must say, I preferred the film to the short story.  I rarely do, but this time, what I loved about the movie was not in the story.  The film's suspense, curiosity, and thrills were nowhere  found in the short story.  It explained the plot and detailed the conflict, but in the film, things were not linear and they were not so obvious.  What we know about Bob in the short story's beginning becomes the twist that seals the deal in the film. 

I was disappointed by the short story.

I was very impressed with the film.

I walked away thinking about love, trust, honor.  I had a lot of "what would I do if it were me?" moments.  And I am still considering.  Do I agree with choices made?  Disagree?  Understand?  Did I really just cheer for that?

I highly recommend this film.  Check it out on IMDb first. There is violence and language and a few references to sexuality.



 
 

"Apollo" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This story can be found here in The New Yorker.

First Line: "Twice a month, like a dutiful son, I visited my parents in Enugu, in their small overfurnished flat that grew dark in the afternoon."

Last Line: "I could have taken back my lie and left my parents merely to wonder."

"Apollo" is the story of a Okenwa, "a dutiful son", visiting his parents, now retired.  They have changed in his eyes and seem to move from their educated thoughts of his childhood years to accomodate the mythical beliefs, the stories they scorned just fifteen years earlier. 

Okenwa, now 27, is also changed.  He is prompted to return to a moment when he was twelve years old, by a conversation he has with his aged parents about increased crime in their area.  One of the ring leaders is purported to be a one-time houseboy of theirs, Raphael.  His mother shrugs it off, saying that her son would not remember this houseboy - there had been many and her own son had been so young, so unaware.

The narrator turns to the reader, "Of course I remembered Raphael."

The story takes us back to when Okenwa creates a friendship with Raphael. Together they watch Bruce Lee films, master nunchucks, and hide their socialibility from his harsh and unyielding parents.  "It was after school, with Raphael, that my real life began." 

And then this comraderie is taken to the next level when Raphael becomes ill with "Apollo", conjunctivitis.  (The landing of the Apollo 11 on the moon coincided with a pandemic of conjunctivitis that swept through many countries in Africa. The disease was subsequently nicknamed "Apollo".)

The parents banish the houseboy to his quarters, and while they provide him with the medicines he needs, Raphael is not learned in how to put in the eye drops.  Okenwa, with fondness, decides to assist without his parents' knowledge or permission.  Shortly thereafter, Okenwa is stricken with Apollo. The tale then comes to its precipice.

I found this story to be neat and tidy.  It was sparse, but with perfection, containing all the elements of a short story: character, plot, theme, conflict, and setting.  It was classic in its presentation and a great piece to read.

"I am drawn to brave endings that stun you and make you reconsider the beginning," says author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Did her story do that here?  Was Okenwa a dutiful son?

I found myself reconsidering the beginning.  The more I think about this story, the more I find to consider and ponder.

UPDATE - April 14, 2014 - please listen to Chimamanda's Ngozi Adichie's powerful TED talk - The Danger of a Single Story.

"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien

 

The Things They Carried.  Tim O’Brien.  New York: Broadway Books, 1998.  246 pp

I’m always buying books.  Thrift stores, yard sales, estates.  At a recent auction, I was excited to find a box holding many titles familiar to me but not yet read.  I won the bidding on the box and that evening pulled out the books, touching them, enjoying covers and blurbs, placing them where they belonged on my shelf.

I mis-shelved The Things They Carried.  I thought it was non-fiction.  It wasn’t until I pulled it down a few weeks later that I realized my mistake.

Fiction it is.  But it is fiction intertwined with truth.  O’Brien used his own experiences in Vietnam to give validity and depth to the tales told here.  This book is an exploration of the platoon soldier’s experience enhanced by the author’s specific and detailed memories.  The conversational tone and authentic voice encourages readers to listen and comprehend.

This story follows a path much like concentric circles.  Incidents are touched on, and revisited later in the story with much more depth, honesty, and vulnerability.  Like an onion, the first chapter is gorgeous and golden.  But it is a papery husk covering the crisp layers opening to the sulfur-rich center. With each chapter, story, we are invited deeper and deeper into the trenches, into the war, into the hearts of each man.  There we find tender feelings covered by bravado, silence, or ill-humor.

The title story was my favorite.  I read it twice before reading the rest of the book.  How creative to share characters by detailing what they carried!  How compassionate, and yet naïve, of us, the reader, to think we know the kind of man who carries M&Ms or scriptures or love letters!

Included in my copy was a slip of paper with a professor’s name and email.  The pages of the book were dog-eared.  I do not doubt that this copy was read and discussed as literature in a college somewhere.  I am sure it also elicited conversations of human nature, friendship, war, and death, for those that may never have to face a draft. 

The book didn’t focus on the enemy or “good versus evil” or even “right or wrong”.  Here are the stories of boys who become men - the stories of discovering the truth of what they really carried.