The Breaking Heart Chooses The Story

In keeping with my recent musings on point of view, narrativity, and metafiction, here is Elizabeth Ellen's "Chosen" from Juked. (Thanks to Dan Wickett at EWN for pointing me to this story.) "Chosen" immediately brings to mind Russell Banks' "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story" and many of my comments on that story are relevant to Ellen's story as well. From a writing geek perspective I like stories that broach their metafictional concerns the way this story does because it focuses in on one of the reasons we write: to make sense of our experience. Regardless the form—essay, poem, story, memoir, blog, whatever—that's mostly what all the babbling is about: coming to terms with our time on this third stone from the sun (cue Jimi Hendrix). Prior to the metafictional reveal, the story is a straightforward first person narration describing adulterous liaisons, with the narrator both implicating her co-conspirator by using the collective "we" and addressing him directly with "you." (Note that "you" as Ellen uses it in this story is not a shift into 2nd-person point of view—it's not the narrator addressing herself through a narrative filter—it's an "I'm talking to you" usage, as in a letter or a lecture.) Here's how Ellen reveals the metafictional cards in the third paragraph:

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking I'm making you out to be the bad guy in all of this.  You're thinking I titled this story "Chosen" to alleviate myself of responsibility in the matter.  But I'm not alleviating myself of anything, Rick.  There are no innocents in this story.

With this first instance of meta, the narrator is putting the you on notice. The second time the meta concerns are raised, however, the narrator acknowledges that there is more than one side to the story:

Maybe you're right.  Maybe I do want you to be the bad guy in all of this.  Your version of the facts would certainly differ from mine.

And later, as the story winds up into the ending, the narrator admits the lie: "Of course the thing about this story, Rick, is, it's a lie. We both know that. I carefully left out all the parts that might humanize you and thus incriminate myself in the process." Ellen makes this concrete by having her narrator enumerate several examples, effectively taking back the lie. After further acknowledging that more of the preceding is not the way they were, "the truth, however, is, we didn't leave that night in silence," which is followed by a retelling—the truth now—of how they ended it, the narrator takes up the why we write question. Which brings us to the final paragraph, so if you haven't already read the story, you might want to do so now, because the narrator, still addressing Rick, reveals that the story is a failing cathartic act, less a letting go than a hanging on:

The truth is, I wrote this story for myself, Rick, to ease me through your absence; to trick myself into believing that this is the way it was, that this is the way you were.  It was a far easier story to tell, Rick, a far easier story to end.  And I'm at a loss now for how to end this.  It's a losing battle, I suppose: Putting a neat ending to something that was never properly begun in the first place, that had no distinct middle, that was deprived of an ending.  Perhaps my reluctance to end the story reflects my reluctance to end us.  Perhaps my fear is that when I'm finished with this story, I'm finished, as well, with you.  Perhaps I've convinced myself that as long as I procrastinate; as long as I play with the prose, rewrite the story (as I've done four times now), that there is still hope: for a different ending, for your dramatic return, for us. 

Here Ellen, through her narrator, makes the case that the distancing we gain in altering the truth—in creating a story— is not about forgetting, it is about how we choose to remember.

Leaving aside the metafictional elements of the story, I thought the progression showing Rick's detachment delivers on that heartbreaking quality necessary to produce the affective response in readers. The three-part progression I'm referring to begins with the narrator realizing that the loosening and brightening of Rick's face is due not to her but the beer:

I bought them for you, to watch the way your face changed, like aging in reverse, with each bottle emptied.  In the beginning I thought this was my effect on you: the loosening of your mouth, the brightening of your eyes.  Later I realized it had nothing to do with me.  You could have taken the six pack home, sat down in front of the T.V. with her and the effect would have been the same.

The next movement comes as the narrator tries to decipher one of Rick's comments:

Once you told me you'd seen a rather depressing film and that the actress in it had reminded you of me.  You failed to say, however, whether this was good or bad.  Whether you found her pretty or common or unnerving.  Whether it was her face or the way she smiled into the camera or wept without shedding tears, her strengths or weaknesses, her wit or lack thereof, that reminded you of me.  Instead you changed the subject and refused to bring it up again.  That week I studied the movie advertisements, scanning them for names I recognized, faces I could conjure; wanting some clue as to how you saw me, a window into what it was, if anything, you felt for me.  But the clues you gave were so few and vague, I never came to any solid conclusion.

After which this desire to know what she meant to him is dealt a heartbreaking blow when she finds out on their last night together that he doesn't know her anywhere near as well as she knows him:

You asked me questions you'd never thought to ask before.  "What are these?" you said, running a finger over the two perfect white circles, each the size of a dime, on the inside of my left calf.  "Scars," I answered.  "From what?  From whom?"  "I don't know.  I can't remember," I said, losing patience with your sudden quest for knowledge.  I already knew every mar on your body.  I'd studied them while you drank.  Taken notes.  Already realizing the vagrant nature of your heart.

This progression adds extra weight to the metafictional concerns; it's that lack within the relationship which creates the hunger for a different story to tell. If the memoirist attemtps to tell the story of how things were, then the fictioneer must—as Ellen shows us—resort to lies to produce the better or worse alternative stories the heart desires.

Gone But Not Forgotten

Colleen Mondor's story "Our Missing Aviator" from the current issue of failbetter also uses 2nd-person, this time embedded within a 3rd-person narrative, and that usage is worthy of discussion. Furthermore, the story delivers on one of my favorite forms: the slice-of-life. When I say delivers, I mean it successfully takes a narrow incident and artfully suggests how that incident ripples throughout the focal character's life. Before I take up the 2nd within 3rd POV and the slice-of-life techniques, let me first address the story's frame.

The frame consists of excerpts from newspaper articles. There are actually four excerpts in the story and the excerpts break linearity and are from two sources, the effects of which would also be interesting to discuss, but I will limit my comments here to their framing usage. The frame in this case is open and closed: A pilot has gone missing in the opening excerpt; and with the closing excerpt he still hasn't been found and his wife and children are leaving Alaska for Oregon. Along with the other two excerpts we have a mini-story. The frame is also meant to resonate with and indicate what might have happened, but didn't, to Sam, the focal character squeezed between the frame. Although the frame adds another dimension, I actually like this piece without the frame; edgier that way. (I'm curious if just this piece uses the excerpts, or whether the whole novel is structured like this.)

The use of 2nd-person in this story is riveting. It too is enclosed within a frame, this time it's a frame of 3rd-person narration. The 3rd-person narration is close-in on Sam, immediate, and the first time through I hardly noticed the shift into 2nd, which is used to describe the Barrow flight, the near miss that precipitates Sam's trembling hands and his trip home. This usage is a bit more traditional, more conversational, with the narrator drawing you into the story by asking you to imagine yourself in Sam's place. 2nd-person used in this way is a direct appeal by the narrator: If you had been there this is what you would have experienced. It stays focused on the core incident and then the narration returns to 3rd-person and the slice of Sam's life Mondor is presenting as the most meaningful: The relief he feels at being home when so many others don't make it back from that journey.

What makes this such an effective slice-of-life piece is that swaths of Sam's life are suggested without having to use exposition to provide backstory. And we also don't need a bunch of scenes to portray these other relevant events. What takes us there is his emotional reaction to being in the backyard again:

It is 1973 tonight, Sam thinks, and I am five years old, running around out there on the grass, staying up late because everyone is having too much fun to notice me. And he looks because he can’t help it; he looks for himself with no idea what he would say to that little boy if he found him.

He thinks about his father's question and imagines other times he was scared:

Has he ever been scared? There was the occasional fight in junior high and the time he nearly crashed his first car. He remembers his first kiss, his first touch, his first time. When has he not been scared? Scared of falling, of failing, of finding himself to be lacking. He has always been scared.

Here Mondor shifts from the particular to the universal; laying a trap for reader empathy, which also allows the slice to expand in each reader's mind as they connect with their own fears. Mondor also uses details in a clever context to reveal more about Sam:

So many things go missing in the Arctic, Sam knew. He lost weight when he was up there, he lost hair. He could not find his camera, his favorite baseball cap, the pen that wrote at twenty below. He lost a Notre Dame sweatshirt, a copy of The Martian Chronicles, and the names of a dozen old friends. In Alaska the emptiness collected things, it took them while you weren’t looking; it stole them when you turned your back. It was relentless. Close your eyes for just a second, forget who you are or where you belonged, and it was easy to disappear forever. It was easy to lose everything.

The slice has expanded as we wonder if he was one of those who went to Alaska to go missing. As many do. Like Kenny, a guy I grew up with. A bush-pilot like Mondor's Sam. At 18 he was in a head-on car crash. He survived, his girl friend didn't. A year later he had his pilot's license and had gone north. Heard he was flying fishermen into isolated lakes. Heard something abut poaching. Then nothing. He didn't do a Sam. Didn't ever come back. He did a Russell. Went missing. I think of Kenny every time I hear or read about Alaskan bush-pilots. That's the other way slice-of-life stories enlarge: They find a home within us.

Earning a Gold Star

"Strike Anywhere" by Antonya Nelson, which first appeared in failbetter issue 9 and is included in her new collection Some Fun, is the kind of story that always gets me thinking just what is a story anyway? And besides being called one, what makes "Strike Anywhere" a story? Not a question you'll find an answer to here, just something to think about. What we have with "Strike Anywhere" is a stretch of time and a description of what happens during that time from a couple of different perspectives. We have enough back story to imagine the implications that might—but who knows— strew forth from what is described. We have a lit fuse burning slowing but surely towards the powder keg inside the bar, to which we do not return, once we go back outside to rejoin Ivan in the truck. Could also call this a slice-of-life, because it is, and one with a beginning but no ending. Look at the vistas this one opens out onto. I suggest you study the beginning and ending carefully, but don't think about them in terms of how they open and close the story, because if this is one, those first and last sentences don't function the way such sentences typically do. They do, however, brilliantly serve their function of beginning and ending the reading experience. The first sentence says get going and the last sentence says take that. The last sentence strikes me (hah) as a ruse because it is so ripe with its own finality—like a song ending on the root chord of the progression—that to go further would seem a violation. But wouldn't this make a good first chapter of a novel? Doesn't it have that kind of feel? You know, a scab that has been picked off to reveal all the festering beneath? Would that go beyond the ending Ivan's father suggests for himself? A gold star on the mirror behind the bar.

Although the title has a reference point back into the story—the matches—I'd argue it reflects the story's aesthetic as well: Pick a life, or lives, and strike anywhere; what is revealed is why we write.

Leaving aside all the ponders about narrativity, I do love how Nelson owns her language in this story; it is its own excuse for whatever narrative results. I'm actually rereading her collection Female Trouble right now. As with Debra Monroe, and one of my other absolute favorite writers—Edna O'Brien— I just enjoy what Antonya Nelson does with words.

1980's Redux?

Peggy Duffy's story "What It Is to Say Good-bye" over at Eclectica is another example—like Benjamin Percy's "Getting the Most Out of Your Weekend"—of a good use of 2nd-person. And again, I'll point out how the supposed claustrophobic 2nd-person actually creates the necessary distance to keep this narrative from being self-pitying. Which is important because this is a narrative of loss and regret, of guilt turned inward:

You will wish you'd been nicer to him, more sympathetic, less annoyed, that you hadn't let doubts about his manhood creep in because he succumbed to the pain. You'd endured eighteen hours of hard labor with more fortitude.

Again, this is a narrator who feels that they were behaving badly, or at least isn't proud of their thoughts and actions:

You worry about the $2500 deductible on your husband's lousy health insurance policy, then feel guilty that he's about to have surgery and you are thinking this means no beach house this summer.

I'm beginning to wonder if American literature is going to start cycling as fashion does. I've noticed a lot of 2nd person recently. And present tense—which had been hated by editors for years (even to the point of being listed in guidelines as a forbidden form)—has been making an appearance in The New Yorker of all places. I think there was one 6-7 week stretch earlier this year when all of TNY's stories were in present tense. 2nd-person? Present-tense? What's next? Minimalism? Who'd have thunk the 80's would be making a comeback.