Under the Roof – Kate Wheeler

 

It happens, of course – After realizing, through reading hundreds of these stories over the past sixteen years, that not every story will deliver…something…anything. It took some time to realize this – but then again, how would I have known?

I sat with his story for some time and contemplated its message, just as the monk in the story considered his position in the space he occupied. It concerns me to some extent that perhaps there is part of me that would have quickly picked up on the message at one time, but now, after having my brain soaked in the digital waters, I have forgotten how to breathe oxygen. I struggled with the length of the selection, something that may not have been an issue a few years ago, but then again, Wheeler confesses that she too felt that “I’d come to believe that it was too slow, too long and serious.”

The time stamp on this post accurately reflects when I gave the story its most serious consideration, and even though I did first read it several months ago, I took the time to skim it over once again…giving it a mild second chance.

I approached my considerations from a few angles – as an expat, someone who has always found Buddhism interesting, the male/female relationship, and family relations (extending into step-family members).

I finally had to resign from a post stating that “Under the Roof,” and I couldn’t find common ground.

Forever Overhead - David Foster Wallace

 

I remember February 20, 2020, picking up the BASS 1992 anthology, flipping it over to read the list of authors collected, and seeing DFW's name listed. As I slowly worked my way through this collection, each story arriving before me through a very interesting period of my family's life (nothing scandalous…just a move and the growth of children), each story, of course, was colored by what I was going through at that moment. It's taken me 1610 days to reach the story and finally write about it.

I was excited to read it but intimidated to write about it. 

I mean, it's DFW – so much has been written about this guy, and he continues to draw love and hate from the lit world. My encounters with him have been mostly positive. I bring him up in conversations at least a couple of times a year, and his famous commencement speech/book has caused me to become more empathetic in traffic and grocery lines.

This story hit at the right time. Getting here has been a long slog, but it aligned perfectly, as far as I can tell. The story was enjoyable, and some passages hit home. It's a fast read that pulls you in.

I've mentioned before that I find the contributor's notes of this anthology so rewarding, and this is another that I feel delivers.

As the months drifted past between my first thoughts about this story and my thoughts about commenting on his Contributor’s notes, I decided to place them below and leave them – without spoiling them with my amateur musings.

His reflections are fun and very different from most BASS anthologies' notes. If they weren’t…I suppose I’d have more to say about it.

I was happy to have this insight into the story and again grateful that these little windows into the writers exist.  

 

 

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE is the author of a novel, The Broom of the System; a story collection, Girl with Curious Hair; and, with Mark Costello, a book-length essay on race and music called Signifying Rappers. He lives in Boston and is at this very moment restructuring his whole c.v. around inclusion in this anthology.

 

• This is a bit embarrassing, and I'd rather not discuss it, but will, since certain authorities have been polite but firm about these little post-story discussions being strongly encouraged, and I'd probably submit with cheer to way more embarrassing requirements if it meant getting the old snout into the B.A.S.S. trough.

 

The embarrassing issue here is I'm not all that crazy about this story. It's one of very few autobiographically implicated things I've ever tried. I did, like probably lots of kids, have a high-dive trauma. My real trauma was much more plain-old-sphincter-loosening-fear-based than the existential conundra this story's kid encounters. I basically got to the top, with a long line of jaded souls behind me, and changed my mind about going off. It was excruciatingly shaming, but in no way deeply or exceptionally shaming. I think it wasn't the memory of the shame so much as current shame that allowed so pedestrian a shame still to haunt my esteem-centers, prompting me to make the story so heavy, meditative, image-laden, swinging for the fence on just about every pitch. The thing seems to me a performative index of every weakness I have as a writer and as a person. And God knows why I let my desire for an Alienated Narrative Persona lead me to use the second-person point of view; now I'm scared people will read this and think I'm just a McInerney imitator in a black turtleneck, a copy of Kierkegaard under my arm.

The thing went through dozens of drafts, the first of which still sits in the pages of my undergraduate "Stories That'll Prove I'm a Genius" notebook. I went to grad school in Tucson, which is where I guess the thing picked up its setting: you can't spit in Tucson without hitting a pool, though darn few are public like this one is public.

I completely deny ever once kissing any part of my sister's feet at any time whatsoever.

I'm noticing that, with respect to any piece of fiction, my dissatisfaction with the final draft is directly proportional to the excitement that precedes the first draft. I remember doing the tortured artist thing back in school, all ego and caffeine, and thinking I had a genuine Big Idea for this story here, and seeing it finished, Big, published, lauded as Important by bearded titans. This was before I even bothered to start to try writing the thing. I preconceived it as deeply moving and imposingly cerebral at the same time, at once tender-psyche'd and tough-minded, just the sort of thing Eminences would pluck out of the glabrous herd by choosing for a prestigious anthology. By the second draft, my head was more or less permanently attached to the wall I'd been pounding it on. In black-lit contrast to the timelessly Big thing I'd preconceived, the actual ink-on-paper story seemed pretentious and trendy and jejune and any number of bad things: it seemed like the product of a young writer who was ashamed of a personal trauma and who was straining with every fast-twitch fiber to make that trauma sound way deeper and prettier and Big than anything true could ever really be. And here I mean "true" both artistically and historically.

I don't know why I kept putting the thing through drafts. I kept getting late-night twinges of that original preconceptual excitement. I kept seeing the thing as maybe just one image or two epiphanies away from blossoming, from honoring its entelechy of Bigness. Six years and many other completed projects later, I sent this story out in the old brown envelope. I sent it out for the same reason most young writers I know send stuff out: to have an excuse to quit thinking about it. My surprise when Fiction International took the thing was nothing compared to my feelings about the august endorsement that occasions this wordy little confession. Do not get me wrong: qualms about the story's failure to be anything more than a lumpy ghost of what I remain convinced was its initial promise of Bigness have not inhibited me from calling pretty much everybody I know and casually working in the B.A.S.S.-selection news. I'm extremely and yet of course also humbly grateful and moved and etc. I'm just coming to realize that I have very little personal clue about whether the stuff I do is good or bad or successful or not successful* which like most bits of self-knowledge is both mortifying and kind of a relief. It makes me glad I have opinionated critical friends and politely firm editors, not necessarily in that order.

 *Is "successful" the same as "good," here? Does inclusion in B.A.S.S. render a story de facto "good" the way a human reverend's pronouncement effects a legally binding union?

 

The Way People Run – Christopher Tilghman

 

When I was reading and writing here more frequently, I remember the feeling when the story delivered a surprise. I’m not talking about something within the story…but usually some odd connection that comes through something in the story or, in the case of this story, information about the author.

Pulling up his Wikipedia page, I learned that Christopher Tilghman served three years in the Navy. The page also provides a link to a story that appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review in the Spring of 1986. The story titled Norfolk, 1969, describes Norfolk in such a way that he had to have spent some time in my old city. What a pleasant surprise to read about neighborhoods, streets, and places I knew so well. Pulled a little at my heartstrings. We’ve been out of Norfolk for more than a couple of years, and this time has allowed memories to reappear – good and bad. Of course, the digital world brings images and friends from Norfolk to me daily, but I’ve found that more personal feelings and emotions are being stirred. I miss Norfolk – not enough to return permanently, but the city where I spent most of my life is still part of me.   

 

The Way People Run was first published in the New Yorker on September 9, 1991. In September 1991, I was just beginning my sophomore year at Norwich. I think the strongest memory from that time was hearing Nirvana for the first time on our college radio station and blasting the Pearl Jam CD from my roommate's stereo system. My sophomore year was a huge difference from my freshman year, and we had a great time.

I’ve always felt that stories published in The New Yorker had a certain “feel” to them, and this, too, has that “feel.”

My introduction to BASS 1981 where Hortense Calisher describes the typical New Yorker story – and I believe, that 10 years later, in 1991, her assessment holds up.

“Perhaps this is a good place to talk about the “typical” New Yorker short story, since the proportion of my inclusions from that magazine will give pain to some. There is no typical one, really, but I can describe what people think it is: a story of suburbia or other middle-class to “upper” milieu, which exists to record the delicate observation of the small fauna, terrors, and fatuities of a domestic existence, sometimes leveled in with a larger terror—a death, say, or a mortal disease—so that we may respond to the seamlessness of life, and of the recorder’s style. To move on casually from these stories, as we often do, is a guilt, since they are as often, if subduedly, about the guilt of moving on. Muted response is the virtue. Never break out.”

I’m excited though to see how her assessment holds up in 2001, 2011 and 2021!

Down a little side path here – I haven’t read New Yorker fiction in quite some time…I also feel that there has been a shift in the New Yorker where what they publish isn’t of interest to me anymore. I think I’m still part of their targeted readership?!

Back in the main path – in the Contributor’s Notes at the back of the volume, Tilghman states that he “composed “The Way People Run” as a collage of visual images I have collected on the northern Plains.”

I immediately felt this composition when first reading this story, before turning to the back of the book and him laying it out in his notes.

I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate these anthologies' Contributor’s Notes section. They provide such insight into the author, and like their short stories, I feel that they work hard to really provide a rich, detailed look into the author’s mind around the time of inclusion in the anthology and perhaps a reflection of where they were (in their heads) when they wrote the story,

I found this last passage of his notes interesting.

“About a year later I was driving through the boarded-up towns of rural Virginia (it could have been anywhere in the U.S.A., of course), and my character Barry came back to me as a simple image of economic decline and moral exhaustion. I realized my story was not about the West, where it is set, but about the coasts, from which Barry has run. The fact of decay seemed to offer its own sufficient reason, so I polished up the first draft and sent it off. I don't like describing things that are falling apart — it's the shape of the story that bothers me more than the pessimism - but I'm afraid we'd all better get used to it.”

 

“…but I'm afraid we'd all better get used to it.” And here we are over 30 years later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Annick Smith - It's Come to This

In most of my reflections on these stories, I write about how they provide an outlet for discovery – mostly self-discovery. This story did just that during the reading and thinking about it, but it was in the research of Annick Smith that there was additional discovery. Nothing earth-shattering…just kinda cool.

In the “Contributor’s Notes” at the end of the anthology, it’s casually mentioned that Annick is a writer and filmmaker who lives in western Montana. Additionally, “She was the executive producer of Heartland, a feature film about a woman homesteader’s life on the Great Plans, and helped to develop Robert Redford’s forthcoming film, A River Runs Through It, based on the novella by Norman Maclean.”…”this is her first published short story.”

Okaaaayyyy…

Smith writes: “The heart of “It’s Come to This” is true to my life; the rest is fiction.”

It’s worth your time to read this story. I struggled through it but was rewarded at its conclusion.

Honestly, I’ve found it very difficult to get through these stories, and this one really threw up a huge speed bump in my path. I had such high hopes for the stories of the early '90s
…but I think the problem is not with them but with me.

I have lost my way.

As I mentioned above, one of the purposes of reading these stories and the writing that I place here following the readings has been mostly about self-discovery. Looking back to the introduction of this volume, I see that I uploaded it to this site on Feb. 20, 2020. Since beginning this volume, I’ve only read and written about 15 stories. I’ve found it hard to focus and concentrate on reading fiction over these past three years and nine months. I haven’t stopped reading, but I noticed that most of my reading has to do with work or current events. I’ve paid close attention to make sure that this reading hasn’t impacted my mental health. I believe that I have been able to pull away from the news when I need to, and there are times when I can go a couple of days without reading it (weekends) and not miss it.

Now, I do feel that there has been a huge impact on my attention span and the ability to focus on reading at length – both fiction and non-fiction. I have started to adopt some behaviors that I hope will allow me to regain my focus. One of those behaviors is an attempt at picking this writing back up on a more regular reading and writing schedule.

I need to get back on the path. 

The Fare to the Moon – Reynolds Price

 

Spanning pages 230-269 in the anthology, and with my battle to regain my attention span, I found this story to be a mountain to climb. In preparation for writing about the story and researching Price, I think this is one of those entries on this blog that will be short, revealing more of my discovery of the author and the publication that ran the story. Having lived in the south my whole life and knowing that Price was just a few hours away in the next state over – both now and before we moved, I always feel a special connection to these southern writers. This story first appeared in The Southern Review – a perfect host. I once had a nice collection of this particular literary journal and found that it featured stories worthy of its reputation. The story was written in the early 90s, with its genesis springing from an encounter Price had at a grocery store, witnessing the interactions between an interracial couple during his adolescence (1940s?). The story shines a light on race relations, an issue that remained and evolved from the 40s to the 90s and remains today in the 20s. It always amazes me where authors can find inspiration. According to my spreadsheet, Price made four appearances in BASS, but only one will be reviewed in this project.

The Names and Faces of Heroes – 1964

Night And Day at Panacea – 1975

Broad Day – 1976

The Fare to The Moon - 1992  

It has also been said that Price did not receive a great deal of scholarly attention …less than other members of his generation, such as John Updike, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, John Barth, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, Don DeLillo, and Cynthia Ozick. Admittedly, this is the first time I’ve heard of him.

Of course, if I had made my way through my reading at a regular pace, I might have encountered his story before his death.

Price died at the age of 77 on January 20, 2011.

Joyce Carol Oates – Is Laughter Contagious?

 

What a feeling it is. Gently resting on my lap, the opening a book, the paper cover and inner pages under my dry fingers. I rub the pages feeling and listening to the noise they make. A sort of groaning. A swooshing sound as I flatten the pages with my hand to look closer at the ink on the pages. Real ink. Real paper. I move the sticky note that I’m using a bookmark to reveal the title of the story that I read so many months ago and that I’m finally getting around to writing about. I take comfort in reading that it’s by Oates – perhaps she can propel me back into this project as I’ve been corrupted by digital devices. Phones, laptops, tablets, TV. Giving my brain what it unconsciously calls out for—inflicting damage that will only surface over time. 

I’m sad that I have fallen so deeply into the pit of digital distraction – and isn’t it funny how I find myself typing out these characters to be posted on precisely the medium that I concern myself with. Perhaps I can find a happy point of coexistence. Discipline myself enough to exist in the real world and enter into this digital world to conduct this bit of record-keeping.

That’s what this exercise is about. It does serve a greater purpose. Someday, my children will find it…and in doing so, they’ll find a little bit more about me.

It’s now the second week of 2023, and I’ve found the mental space to begin writing here again.

How I love to encounter an Oates story in anthologies from the late 80s and early 90s. She does such an excellent job transporting the reader.

The world I encountered through this particular story was one that I found very familiar.

Back in my early 20s, I encountered middle-aged women, mothers, wives, that fit the description of Mrs. D, a wife and mother in the 90s - perfectly.

I saw them mid-day with their children at a country club pool – passing those last few hours of the day before their husbands came home. Swimsuit covers flowing, hats shade faces, and sunglasses shield puffy eyes. Gliding through the hot, hazy summer days of south Jersey. Bestseller in hand, flipping pages on the lounger, scolding kids between chapters.

I wondered if they were happy. I could sense that there was some effort to mask the strain of their lives.

I was only in my early 20s…what did I know of their lives?

I had it all figured out.

Not- really though.

Written in the 90s, read by me in the 2020s, I can easily see the strain (through their contagious laughter) burdening suburban homemakers today traveling across time from beside a pool in south Jersey.

The passage of time

 

This past weekend marks the passage of another year of this exercise. I named the blog (exercise) and made my first post on this platform on May 29^th, 2008. 

I remember holding the 1978 volume in my hands as I spoke to my father on the phone from a vehicle service shop in Norfolk, making plans for our trip to the island. Fourteen years have passed, and I have recorded some of the changes in our lives (M and I), having our lives transformed from us to them and us when children arrived. I have faced many challenges in this exercise. Writer's block, having my attention sucked away by distractions online, my inability to focus, my lack of sleep, and I can go on and on. 

I suppose that the passage of time also contributes to this exercise as it allows me to encounter the stories at points in my life where perhaps they would hit me differently if I had discovered them earlier. I suppose I wouldn't know unless I reread one or two that had the most impact. I do know that the anthology made me love the authors of the late 70s and early 80s. I would have never discovered them without this exercise – and perhaps I wouldn't have appreciated them now as I did then – wouldn't have come to love them. The foundation was laid, and now new loves are arriving on scene as I move into the early 90s and reflect on a significant developmental period. 

These stories will act as a match to ignite old memories, and fortunately, I still have many of those memories kicking around in my head. 

Let's put this little entry aside now and get back to our regularly scheduled lack of reading and writing as we move into the 15^th year of this exercise.