As in her previous stories, Watkins continues to create stories that are both similar and different. The Nevada backdrop continues to be the setting of stories of loss, heartbreak, and a desire among the characters to understand or fit in somewhere. Watkins’s use of description and character development remains strong, and the messages at the heart of her stories reach out to us as readers in their own unique way. Sometimes we aren’t meant to fully understand why one character does this and another that, but when it comes down to it, in the end not always understanding makes her stories so interesting.
One story that I thought was interesting was “Virginia City.” In the story, the narrator Iris and two of her friends go to an old ghost town called Virginia City, which they are all more than familiar with. At the center of the story is Iris’s fear of becoming a third wheel and being left out as her friends Jules and David became closer. Also, this story focuses on the idea of three friends being themselves and doing their own thing. One line that stood out to me reading it was on pg. 253: “These are my friends. These are the funny, ironic things we do so we can be the kind of funny, ironic people who do them.” While Iris continues to feel like she may be pushed away, she takes relief and enjoyment in the stupid, random things that they do together without ever trying to come up with an excuse.
Right after reading “Wish You Were Here,” I heard Claire read her story this evening and it’s amazing how someone can bring a story to life just by the way that she reads it. Even though I really liked this story, hearing Claire read it gave me a deeper realization of Carter’s last question: “Where are you?” (119). I could feel the separation between him and Marin as they prepared to have a child, and then all of the words left unsaid after that child was born: how Carter wants Marin to be a “better” mother, how Marin is sick of Carter’s glances at her in shame. But what’s so neat is how it took Claire’s reading for me to really put the “Wish You Were Here” to Carter’s last question. These lines in particular stuck out to me: “Will he roll? he asks. How surprised Marin is to be asked this. How satisfying it feels that Carter does not have the answer” (113). These characters are constantly at odds throughout the story—a craft technique I want to remember—which leads me as a reader to keep searching for answers about their relationship and why they seem to have more hate between each other than love. Claire’s reading adds more voice to those of the characters in her stories, making me relate to them even more than the first time around.
So I think I'd like to use the first part of this to talk about the reading tonight. Watkins' reading of "Wish You Were Here," was great. It was the first time I've heard a reader get through an entire story, and it was really neat to hear it read the way she intended it. You wouldn't think there would be stuff to mess up when you're reading fiction, but I managed to do it. It happened mostly with the dialogue between Marin and others. There was dialogue that sounded one way in my head, but she read it with completely different inflection. It kind of changed the personality of Marin for me. I'm way to tired to consider the implications of that. I feel like some of the critics I've read in Aesthetics would blame the author for ambiguous writing, and plenty more would blame me for poor interpretation.
Another great piece of the reading was the student introduction. Totally don't remember her name, but I remember her quote, "These are my friends. These are the funny, ironic things we do so we can be the kind of funny, ironic people who do them." I think it really does capture the mood of many of Watkins characters. They all do things they probably shouldn't and have a startling amount of self-awareness about the entire situation.
It's pretty evident that a common theme found in the stories of “Battleborn” is the dark side of humanity. We see these characters that are clearly flawed and make decisions that we most likely would not. I don't know why, but I find the setting of the West to accommodate this theme very well. This could simply be from the way the West is portrayed in media with films like “No Country for Old Men.” I'm not making a generalization about the West (or at least trying not to) but the setting seems natural for these bleak stories. One story that particularly stands out to me is “Wish You Were Here.” This is a perfect example of showing two characters that can be seen as sympathetic and flawed. I don't think Watkins is intending for us to “root” for one character or the other, but rather to portray humanity in its most realistic form. It's easy to believe that two upcoming parents are not the perfect people to enter parenthood. And, even better, we see the distance between this couple and how that is defined by their baby. Watkins does not sugar coat these characters and allows us, the readers, to become frustrated with them because we see how relatable they truly are.
First off, a group of freshmen decided to surround me at the reading tonight. They were taking extremely diligent notes as if they were going to have a quiz on Watkins’ book, which they didn’t read. I kind of wanted to tell them to go back to their rooms and just read the book because it’s good, or at least tell them her name isn’t “Clara A. Watkins” as their notebooks claimed. Anyway, I thought the story Man-O-War was a really great piece. The character of Harris was a strong profile of an aging man who knew a lot about the land and minerals, like those in the fireworks he shoots off with Magda. I thought Harris’s relationship with Magda had a full development even though the two did not know each other all that long. The narration was a great side note to piece, as if acting as another character, sharing quirks and unfamiliar grammar that appeared to be from around the same area as Harris. And at the end of the first paragraph, I like the foreshadowing to Harris’s death, even though the story never ends with his death, we can only assume. Like others are saying, Watkins’ reading tonight was very helpful to me as well. I too read “Wish You Were Here” before tonight’s reading and seeing/hearing Watkins read this story out loud did change my perception a bit of a few of the characters, especially Marin.
Claire Vaye Watkins kept me so intrigued with her stories following the first few we read for Monday. I sat down and was easily swept back into these curious characters and moments that we could find intriguing or disturbing. “Wish You Were Here” was a story that instead of making me feel uncomfortable, made me feel extremely sad in a way. Watkins has a gift to make readers feel every type of emotion as they are reading through these stories. The story of Marin and Carter and their baby was something that I had some hope for considering the fact the family is so young. However, the some few lines of the story made my heartbreak, knowing that there isn’t really any hope for this very young couple. My example of this is when Carter states to his wife, “This is not how I pictured things.” The very ending leaves me sort of dazed, wondering whether or not this family can make it. Something that still stands out to me is the fact that Watkins’ details are so unique and intricately placed throughout the her pieces. Also, another technique that she used was not actually quoting the characters are they spoke to each other throughout this story. “Marin scoffs and Jake turns to her. He nods to the baby in its hat and says, Been a while?” It felt as though I was reading a thought of the character, which threw me off, yet I was able to get used to the way these characters communicated to each other throughout the story.
I really liked how Claire began "Wish You Were Here" with such a broad statement, yet by the end of the story, the reader learns who the man and woman are, not just in names, but personality, characteristics, and their relationship with one another. I thought it was interesting that Claire admitted in her Q&A that originally this opening sentence was meant as a way for her to keep writing, and she didn't expect for it to remain in the final version of the story. However, I liked the idea that it could be seen as "forming a tunnel" or having the lens become focused more throughout the story as the reader learns about the characters. I thought that it was a good of example of how the most important part of writing is just to write, no matter how horrible a first draft may seem. I find Claire’s writing to be unique, because she can use different techniques effectively. In the opening of Virginia City, she starts off by giving the names of the characters, the setting, and background information about Jules’s parents’ secret wedding- all in one sentence! It’s neat to see how both opening strategies can work for certain stories. I enjoyed the way that Claire portrayed characters in Virginia City- I got an intimate sense of them in lines like “Danny leaned back and got all quiet and smug the way he does when he knows he has something you want.” This type of characterization made me feel like I had known him for a long time, like the narrator had.
In class, we talked about how many of her character's are born into violence, and it is something that I saw repeating through the second half of her book. I think that my favorite has been "The Archivist." The thing that I like about Claire's stories are that the main narrators themselves are not explored as much as the character's around them, and that's why I can relate to the character's so much. Sure, I didn't know Nat's name until a good portion into the story. I don't really know what she looks like, or her hobbies. What I do see is her relationships to people (her sister, Ezra, her mother) and how those relationships affect her. Isn't this the way that we think every day? We don't look at ourselves and explain our characteristics, but we see how relationships change us and mold us and seep into our souls. I also love that she read "Wish You Were Here." This is another story where we see how the relationships she's had and the life she led, which is what made her into herself. Listening to Claire read it, I could see the easy flow of her words and sentences. I realized that her word selection isn't necessarily difficult or crazy, but she is still able to paint a picture, especially while explaining a character's actions. I really liked her writing, and I'm happy I had a chance to read her work.
It was so great to hear Claire Vaye Watkins talk at the Q and A and then hear her reading later that night. I love that we get the opportunity to read a writer’s stories in depth, discuss them as a class, and then discuss them with the visiting writer herself and discuss her techniques as a writer so that we can continue to learn how to do it ourselves. I wrote down a lot of what she said at the Q and A and one in particular was when she said “You shouldn’t have your hands tightly gripping the reins. It should be scary. If you have the questions figured out already for the story, it’ll be flat.” I think that advice is great, for me as a writer and for me as a reader interpreting her stories. She writes about risky, raw things, about unstable people and unstable situations, but she does so with so much persistence that as a reader I can’t help but trust where I’m being taken, even if she’s just discovering it herself as she goes along. I thought “Wish You Were Here” was a fantastic example of this. As Watkins said herself, people have told her that as they read the story they don’t know who to root for, because both Marin and Carter are flawed yet we want to connect with their story. She allows us into their lives through the honesty of their relationship, through Marin’s genuine uncertainty about being a good mother or being good enough in Carter’s eyes, and through Carter’s constant insistence and need for control over Marin and their baby which can be seen sometimes as controlling and sometimes as a sign that he truly just wants the best for all of them. This relationship here is an example of how Watkins successfully invites us as readers into the shaky existence and curiosities of her characters.
As in her previous stories, Watkins continues to create stories that are both similar and different. The Nevada backdrop continues to be the setting of stories of loss, heartbreak, and a desire among the characters to understand or fit in somewhere. Watkins’s use of description and character development remains strong, and the messages at the heart of her stories reach out to us as readers in their own unique way. Sometimes we aren’t meant to fully understand why one character does this and another that, but when it comes down to it, in the end not always understanding makes her stories so interesting.
ReplyDeleteOne story that I thought was interesting was “Virginia City.” In the story, the narrator Iris and two of her friends go to an old ghost town called Virginia City, which they are all more than familiar with. At the center of the story is Iris’s fear of becoming a third wheel and being left out as her friends Jules and David became closer. Also, this story focuses on the idea of three friends being themselves and doing their own thing. One line that stood out to me reading it was on pg. 253: “These are my friends. These are the funny, ironic things we do so we can be the kind of funny, ironic people who do them.” While Iris continues to feel like she may be pushed away, she takes relief and enjoyment in the stupid, random things that they do together without ever trying to come up with an excuse.
Right after reading “Wish You Were Here,” I heard Claire read her story this evening and it’s amazing how someone can bring a story to life just by the way that she reads it. Even though I really liked this story, hearing Claire read it gave me a deeper realization of Carter’s last question: “Where are you?” (119). I could feel the separation between him and Marin as they prepared to have a child, and then all of the words left unsaid after that child was born: how Carter wants Marin to be a “better” mother, how Marin is sick of Carter’s glances at her in shame.
ReplyDeleteBut what’s so neat is how it took Claire’s reading for me to really put the “Wish You Were Here” to Carter’s last question. These lines in particular stuck out to me: “Will he roll? he asks. How surprised Marin is to be asked this. How satisfying it feels that Carter does not have the answer” (113). These characters are constantly at odds throughout the story—a craft technique I want to remember—which leads me as a reader to keep searching for answers about their relationship and why they seem to have more hate between each other than love. Claire’s reading adds more voice to those of the characters in her stories, making me relate to them even more than the first time around.
So I think I'd like to use the first part of this to talk about the reading tonight. Watkins' reading of "Wish You Were Here," was great. It was the first time I've heard a reader get through an entire story, and it was really neat to hear it read the way she intended it. You wouldn't think there would be stuff to mess up when you're reading fiction, but I managed to do it. It happened mostly with the dialogue between Marin and others. There was dialogue that sounded one way in my head, but she read it with completely different inflection. It kind of changed the personality of Marin for me. I'm way to tired to consider the implications of that. I feel like some of the critics I've read in Aesthetics would blame the author for ambiguous writing, and plenty more would blame me for poor interpretation.
ReplyDeleteAnother great piece of the reading was the student introduction. Totally don't remember her name, but I remember her quote, "These are my friends. These are the funny, ironic things we do so we can be the kind of funny, ironic people who do them." I think it really does capture the mood of many of Watkins characters. They all do things they probably shouldn't and have a startling amount of self-awareness about the entire situation.
It's pretty evident that a common theme found in the stories of “Battleborn” is the dark side of humanity. We see these characters that are clearly flawed and make decisions that we most likely would not. I don't know why, but I find the setting of the West to accommodate this theme very well. This could simply be from the way the West is portrayed in media with films like “No Country for Old Men.” I'm not making a generalization about the West (or at least trying not to) but the setting seems natural for these bleak stories.
ReplyDeleteOne story that particularly stands out to me is “Wish You Were Here.” This is a perfect example of showing two characters that can be seen as sympathetic and flawed. I don't think Watkins is intending for us to “root” for one character or the other, but rather to portray humanity in its most realistic form. It's easy to believe that two upcoming parents are not the perfect people to enter parenthood. And, even better, we see the distance between this couple and how that is defined by their baby. Watkins does not sugar coat these characters and allows us, the readers, to become frustrated with them because we see how relatable they truly are.
First off, a group of freshmen decided to surround me at the reading tonight. They were taking extremely diligent notes as if they were going to have a quiz on Watkins’ book, which they didn’t read. I kind of wanted to tell them to go back to their rooms and just read the book because it’s good, or at least tell them her name isn’t “Clara A. Watkins” as their notebooks claimed.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I thought the story Man-O-War was a really great piece. The character of Harris was a strong profile of an aging man who knew a lot about the land and minerals, like those in the fireworks he shoots off with Magda. I thought Harris’s relationship with Magda had a full development even though the two did not know each other all that long. The narration was a great side note to piece, as if acting as another character, sharing quirks and unfamiliar grammar that appeared to be from around the same area as Harris. And at the end of the first paragraph, I like the foreshadowing to Harris’s death, even though the story never ends with his death, we can only assume.
Like others are saying, Watkins’ reading tonight was very helpful to me as well. I too read “Wish You Were Here” before tonight’s reading and seeing/hearing Watkins read this story out loud did change my perception a bit of a few of the characters, especially Marin.
Claire Vaye Watkins kept me so intrigued with her stories following the first few we read for Monday. I sat down and was easily swept back into these curious characters and moments that we could find intriguing or disturbing. “Wish You Were Here” was a story that instead of making me feel uncomfortable, made me feel extremely sad in a way. Watkins has a gift to make readers feel every type of emotion as they are reading through these stories. The story of Marin and Carter and their baby was something that I had some hope for considering the fact the family is so young. However, the some few lines of the story made my heartbreak, knowing that there isn’t really any hope for this very young couple. My example of this is when Carter states to his wife, “This is not how I pictured things.” The very ending leaves me sort of dazed, wondering whether or not this family can make it.
ReplyDeleteSomething that still stands out to me is the fact that Watkins’ details are so unique and intricately placed throughout the her pieces. Also, another technique that she used was not actually quoting the characters are they spoke to each other throughout this story. “Marin scoffs and Jake turns to her. He nods to the baby in its hat and says, Been a while?” It felt as though I was reading a thought of the character, which threw me off, yet I was able to get used to the way these characters communicated to each other throughout the story.
I really liked how Claire began "Wish You Were Here" with such a broad statement, yet by the end of the story, the reader learns who the man and woman are, not just in names, but personality, characteristics, and their relationship with one another. I thought it was interesting that Claire admitted in her Q&A that originally this opening sentence was meant as a way for her to keep writing, and she didn't expect for it to remain in the final version of the story. However, I liked the idea that it could be seen as "forming a tunnel" or having the lens become focused more throughout the story as the reader learns about the characters. I thought that it was a good of example of how the most important part of writing is just to write, no matter how horrible a first draft may seem.
ReplyDeleteI find Claire’s writing to be unique, because she can use different techniques effectively. In the opening of Virginia City, she starts off by giving the names of the characters, the setting, and background information about Jules’s parents’ secret wedding- all in one sentence! It’s neat to see how both opening strategies can work for certain stories. I enjoyed the way that Claire portrayed characters in Virginia City- I got an intimate sense of them in lines like “Danny leaned back and got all quiet and smug the way he does when he knows he has something you want.” This type of characterization made me feel like I had known him for a long time, like the narrator had.
In class, we talked about how many of her character's are born into violence, and it is something that I saw repeating through the second half of her book. I think that my favorite has been "The Archivist." The thing that I like about Claire's stories are that the main narrators themselves are not explored as much as the character's around them, and that's why I can relate to the character's so much. Sure, I didn't know Nat's name until a good portion into the story. I don't really know what she looks like, or her hobbies. What I do see is her relationships to people (her sister, Ezra, her mother) and how those relationships affect her. Isn't this the way that we think every day? We don't look at ourselves and explain our characteristics, but we see how relationships change us and mold us and seep into our souls.
ReplyDeleteI also love that she read "Wish You Were Here." This is another story where we see how the relationships she's had and the life she led, which is what made her into herself. Listening to Claire read it, I could see the easy flow of her words and sentences. I realized that her word selection isn't necessarily difficult or crazy, but she is still able to paint a picture, especially while explaining a character's actions. I really liked her writing, and I'm happy I had a chance to read her work.
It was so great to hear Claire Vaye Watkins talk at the Q and A and then hear her reading later that night. I love that we get the opportunity to read a writer’s stories in depth, discuss them as a class, and then discuss them with the visiting writer herself and discuss her techniques as a writer so that we can continue to learn how to do it ourselves. I wrote down a lot of what she said at the Q and A and one in particular was when she said “You shouldn’t have your hands tightly gripping the reins. It should be scary. If you have the questions figured out already for the story, it’ll be flat.” I think that advice is great, for me as a writer and for me as a reader interpreting her stories. She writes about risky, raw things, about unstable people and unstable situations, but she does so with so much persistence that as a reader I can’t help but trust where I’m being taken, even if she’s just discovering it herself as she goes along.
ReplyDeleteI thought “Wish You Were Here” was a fantastic example of this. As Watkins said herself, people have told her that as they read the story they don’t know who to root for, because both Marin and Carter are flawed yet we want to connect with their story. She allows us into their lives through the honesty of their relationship, through Marin’s genuine uncertainty about being a good mother or being good enough in Carter’s eyes, and through Carter’s constant insistence and need for control over Marin and their baby which can be seen sometimes as controlling and sometimes as a sign that he truly just wants the best for all of them. This relationship here is an example of how Watkins successfully invites us as readers into the shaky existence and curiosities of her characters.