anderson

Sherwood Anderson's Winesberg, Ohio is rather strange in that it is comprised of such brief short stories but is really a loosely structured novel. We see something close to this with Hemingway's "Nick Adams" stories or Joyce's Dubliners, but Hemingway and Joyce are altogether different from Anderson, especially concerning prose style.

"The Book of the Grotesque" and "Paper Pills" both read something like an odd mixture of Poe and HP Lovecraft, where everyone in the world (or at least in the community at hand) is somehow evil or bad or crippled (physically or mentally) or "grotesque" in some way. Winesberg sounds more like hell than a midwestern community, although Ohio has always been closer to hell than the midwest. Notably, we don't get real or fully developed characters at all, only small clips. Even in the "Nick Adams" stories we actually know Nick Adams a little better after each story, but not in Anderson's case.

The stories are being told to us, almost like campfire stories (one can imagine a sinister voice and a flash-light for facial illumination). Also notable is the running style narrative voice, the theatrical yet "spontaneous" performance / account of the story: "He was like a pregnant woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby but a youth. No, it wasn't a youth, it was a woman, young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart." This is a rather odd passage, something we may expect from a demented Twilight Zone episode or a Robert Browning poem. Further down, we get a whole rant on truth and truths and their large variety and how people stick to one truth against all other truths, etc. These truths make people grotesque, or rather, these truths make them particular to Sherwood Anderson. But what are these truths (also mentioned in "Paper Pills")? We don't really know, they're only some vague concept Anderson has thrown at us, akin to a symbol in French Symbolist poetry or some weird moral from a Poe tale. Indeed, we probably finish one of these stories with far more questions than answers, at least I have. What happens to these people? Why? Does the story length change throughout the book? Do the characters keep coming back? Unfortunately, as is the case with a short selection, we can't find out, although based on the selections given, I'm not sure I'll be investigation Anderson any further.

Faulkner - Dry September

Perhaps the most obvious, yet most successfully executed aspect of Faulkner's short story is the perspective, or more accurately, the shifting or fluid perspective. The problem with a static perspective is that the reader only sees one side of the story (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but certain situations are more complex and multi-dimensional than can be conveyed through only one character or perspective, etc. Faulkner, a preternaturally strong writer, is able to exploit this "problem" of perspective and gives us instead an array of views, much like in his novel "As I Lay Dying", especially the early sequence of scenes with sound of the saw being heard by various characters at various physical locations, each perceiving their environment in crucially different ways. In this we may also recognize Melville's "Moby Dick", with Ishmael as the main perspective for much of the story, later fading into anonymity and giving way to the voices of most other members of the Pequod.

Faulkner's story is dealing with the largest social burden of the American South, which is to say, black and white relations. A story like this could only be told through various perspectives, so the reader sees how the situation effects different groups of people in various levels of society, and perhaps more importantly, so the reader isn't able to come to any real conclusions. The only two people in the story who really know what happened are Will Mayes and Aunt Minnie, and by the end of the story, one will be dead, thus silencing that half of the truth forever. But Faulkner wouldn't let us have the truth anyway, even if Mayes wasn't killed. The two most significant roles (Mayes, Minnie) are also the most silent; we never get to hear what they have to say. Faulkner is getting at something big here, which is that people don't have to know the facts in order to come to drastic conclusions. A man dies for something he may or may have not done, which is Faulkner's grim portrayal of mob-justice, and we would do well to look ourselves in the mirror.

What seems to me the most interesting aspect of the story, however, is the barber character. In the barber we have the prototype for Atticus Finch, the white southerner who is generally righteous in his intentions but all the same a victim of the racist, white, conservative socio-political structure. The barber and Atticus Finch are certainly to be admired in at least some regard, if for nothing else than for standing up to their racist compatriots. Doubtless the south is a different place now, and probably always had well-meaning whites with no real disdain for blacks and no accusatory sentiments, but this is one of the sad points of both Faulkner's and Lee's stories; the individual, no matter how right or well-meaning, generally doesn't stand a chance against a group with hate and not truth or reason at its core. Ultimately, it is the mob's perspective that proves overpowering not only for poor Mayes but also for the hapless barber.

Stylistically speaking, we have a stereotypical narrative voice, or what I would call a "story teller". For instance, if one looks at the beginning of every section in the story, the scene is always being set before any character action takes place, e. g. "The barber went swiftly...", "As she dressed...", etc. Faulkner's word choice, much like some of his earlier novels, seems to come from the desire to make the reader physically uncomfortable, almost as if they were in a dusty, hot, heavy southern environment. We have "...bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days...", "The air was flat and dead. It had a metallic taste at the base of the tongue," etc. Anybody who has spent time in the south at this time of year knows precisely what this metallic taste in the mouth is and how the air has a weight to it, but a dead weight. There is almost a natural violence that can be felt in the air, and by making us literally feel this sensation, Faulkner all the more effectively orients the reader in his story. We cannot know what happened between Minnie and Will, but we know what it felt like whenever it happened, whatever happened, if anything happened at all.

Joan Didion

First of all, who is Joan Didion? Is this Candice Bushnell's depressed alter-ego? There isn't much in Didion's style that strikes me as particularly skillful or unique, nothing that makes me think, "I haven't read anything quite like this before." In fact, thats the problem. Didion's writing is so immensely overshadowed by other writers of greater talent that her writing fades into mere suggestions of other writers, for example, "the wastes of Queens..." as an obvious reference to the Ashlands in "The Great Gatsby", or Xanadu tothe Coleridge poem. Its not the direct allusions that bother me, its that they lead to nowhere of any value. My only response is that I'd rather be reading the real Fitzgerald or Coleridge, but instead I am continuously reminded that I am not in fact reading them but Didion.

Again, the problem is that Didion's writing fails to stand on its own and apart from other writing. It is fitting that the Didion piece comes right after the Plath piece, so great is Didion's debt to Plath or other "confessional" writers (of talent). The story seems to be generalized away, sanded down into stock TV/trash-lit cliche. One could imagine Didion's narrator in a happier setting, only her name would have to be Carrie Bradshaw. The typical "move to New York, coming of age" convention is very much present here, as is the almost pedantic conversational tone of the narrator. We may feel as though we are being "talked at" rather than "spoken to" (despite the subdued/gentle tone). We know nothing of any real importance about our narrator (the marriage explanation is lacking, to say the least), everything seems superficial (externally) and overwrought (internally/psychologically). After reading this, I feel like I now know what "chick lit" is, and I am all the worse off for it.