She'll reads at Susquehanna on March 18. I will be listening for her big Michigan accent, her love of drama, a sense of humor mixed with violence, and the fairy tale gone modern.
I will be listening to her vivid language and attention to detail. Each story was very descriptive and made me able to imagine the places and different kinds of people the characters are. I will be listening to be enchanted by her precise language. Each word and sentence is very organized and delicately picked. Campbell seems very careful with her language. She also uses very tradition sentence structures. Her dialogue also portrays character really well and reinforces character and development of the story. I found her stories very easy to read and understand. It was very relaxing to read through her stories. I really enjoyed the flow of her sentence structure and language and expect that to carry over into her visit on the 18th. Another thing I will be listening for is her closing of each story’s ending. For me, each of the endings didn’t really end, they just came to a soft close. Each story felt finished to me, but none of the endings completed the story. A lot of the endings left opening for their characters such as “The Inventor,” where the story ends with the hunter reminiscing about Ricky, a friend from his youth. The story doesn’t really say what will happen to Ricky, but his character is rounded out in the end. Another example is in “Burn,” at the end of the story a woman is coming to help Jim. At least that’s what the reader thinks. Is this help really going to change his life? Who knows? But, by the end I have a great picture of Jim and his struggle being disfigured and in need of constant help. And that’s how I felt with all her stories. The ending didn’t completely tie up all lose ties or was fully satisfying. There was no great moral to learn at the end. The great thing about the ending to Campbell’s stories is that I knew her characters by the end of the story. That last sentence finished a painting of the character and how they act in my mind. I get a glimpse into their life and come away feeling like that character is a real person. And that is what I’ll really be listening for the most, for Campbell to introduce me to her realistic characters and their seemingly unsolvable struggles. Because that is how life is sometimes. It’s a struggle and we never really know if what we do will help us in the struggle of just living.
I will definitely be listening to the way she tells the narrative. I am constantly impressed by how the narration always seems to shift and change like a character’s dialogue rather than being told like regular description. There are always little elements to it that made it sound more like a dialect or accent than normal storytelling language. While some of her characters are placed in similar sounding settings, they are all unique in their language and traits. I am very interested to hear just how she reads her characters. Also, her stories all have their own moments of tension, but some are more indirect about it than others. For example the first story, “The Trespasser”, is very passive in how it shows conflict and tension. On the other side, “Bringing Belle Home” keeps raising the tension more and more as it goes on and it rips characters apart. I think it would be helpful to hear from both kinds of stories. I too would like to hear where she gathered ideas from. These all, in a sense, sound like believable experiences and it’s a feat in itself to achieve that.
I will be listening for some grittiness in Campbell’s reading. These are not happy pieces. But, they are not necessarily unhappy, either. I think it’s important to put these stories in perspective. While it would be easy to say that Bonnie Jo Campbell is a depressing writer, this would actually be an inaccurate depiction. I know I mentioned this in my other post, but the genuine feel to these characters really strikes home for me. I do not know what it’s like to have a meth addiction, as Belle does in Bringing Belle Home and as Slocum does in King Cole’s American Salvage, or a more general drug problem, like Jonas in Falling. But, I do know what it’s like to have problems. This is by far Campbell’s greatest strength as a writer: her ability to translate less “common” problems into the real world. This is honestly why I feel something of a connection to the people in her stories. They are not just characters and so it is that much more difficult to judge them in terms of simple good versus bad. Is anyone truly good? Is anyone truly bad? I think these are the two most important questions that we deal with in American Salvage. We may not like Jonas as a person, but it is hard to hate him. Sure, he’s been an asshole. He’s used people, but he is not a simple man. I feel like he genuinely cares for the narrator in Falling. Similarly, Slocum genuinely cares for Johnny in King Cole’s American Salvage and Thomssen genuinely cares for Belle in Bringing Belle Home. The connecting thread between these three pieces (as well as most of the stories within this collection) is that people do stupid shit. Sometimes stupid shit is very serious. But, when it comes down to it desperation breeds idiocy in certain cases. Campbell’s stories are not simple. They are not clean. But, they are all beautiful, because they show how even the most unlikable characters really have some humanity within them. Sometimes, it’s just more difficult to find in certain people than it is in others. Essentially, Campbell knows people and she does an excellent job of writing about them. Her stories may be fiction, but her characters are far more three dimensional that most fictional characters are.
In so many of her stories, if not all of them, Bonnie Jo Campbell creates characters that are deeply flawed with multiple weaknesses. They do meth (is it “do” meth? Snort? Shoot? You get what I mean, anyway), they rob people, they are stubborn. But at some point I always feel sorry for them, even if it’s just for a moment. It seems like they are innocent, and their wrongdoings are the consequence of their lack of money or desire to be more than they are. In “The Yard Man,” Jerry wants nothing more than to please his wife and to learn all he can about that orange snake. But he can’t have both, and favoring one leads to losing the other. It is lines like “I wish I’d’ve seen it.” Jerry thought maybe, if he’d been there, he could have helped his wife see [the ermine] in a new way—a way she could have liked it” (29), that I will be listening for at the reading. Lines that make me question what I’m hearing, and help me to think of things in a new way. Thomssen from “Bringing Belle Home” is a flawed character, too. He almost crushes Belle to death, and fills out his huge frame even more when he is drunk. Yet at one point I felt sorry for him, when he realizes that maybe his perspective of comforting Belle from her father was his own way of getting what he wanted (104). Likewise, Slocum’s character in “King Cole’s American Salvage” is far from actually being innocent, but he does have a moment where he questions what he is about to do: “Looking at him, Slocum realized that King Cole was an old man. Slocum wasn’t sure he could do this—he hoped the guy would piss him off and make it easier” (116). These are the kinds of characters I’ll be listening for during Campbell’s reading—ones that are weak, and lash out at those weaknesses, but also show glimpses of an inner strength that I am so often searching for within myself.
I will be listening for how she manages brings these characters that we have just met to a place where we feel like we have known them for years. Some of her stories are long, and some of her stories are short, yet especially in the shorter of the short stories I felt such a connection with these characters, like I had known them my whole life. I think my two favorite stories in this collection were “Solutions to Brian's Problem” and “The Inventor.” I loved how we were able to see many sides of a story in both stories. In Solutions to Brians Problem,” we see Brian going over all the different ways he could leave his meth addicted wife. Some include killing her, some include killing himself, some include leaving, and others include just staying and trying to do what he has been doing. You can really feel Brian’s anguish and violent behavior over his wife’s addiction. In “the Inventor,” we meet two people, one an old hunter and another a teenage girl. Both knew well their friend Ricky, and the reason that the hunter hit the girl with his car is that both were thinking about Ricky at the same time. It shows the amazing, sometimes horrible coincidences that can occur between people. If the hunter had never invented the scuba gear, then Ricky would never had drowned, and then many years later maybe the crash would never had happened. Another story that I enjoyed the “The Trespasser.” We have a girl, only sixteen, who has broken into a families house because she has none of her own. The way she wishes that this house and these possession, these memories were her own really connected me with this character, even though she was nameless.
Like Liz, I think I’ll be listening to the qualities that really bring her characters to life and make us feel as if we’re more familiar with them than we really are. Their multiple flaws and the way they handle ordinary (and not-so-ordinary) situations make them real and relatable and, overall, believable.
In “The Solution to Brian’s Problem”, we don’t ever really get to see the character or listen to him interact with others. We are, however, very much inside his head while he troubles through the awful situation he’s in and what to do about it. Even these short passages, each with a different scenario, are enough that we as readers can feel as if we understand Brian.
“Winter Life” was another story in which the characters came to life in a short amount of time. Though not as short as some of the other stories, with the amount of characters in this one, it really is quite brief. Despite this, we still get to know Harold, Trisha, Pauline, and Mary Beth. Each one of them spends some time in the spot light as we delve into some aspect of their character and how they relate to the other characters. This interconnectedness was really interesting to me, though confusing at times, especially toward the end.
Another interesting character dynamic was featured in “King Cole’s American Salvage”. Slocum is willing to kill someone just because his drug-addicted wife needs money. And not just anyone but his friend Johnny’s uncle. Even after Johnny discovers that it was Slocum who almost killed Cole, he isn’t able to fully cut the ties or even dislike him. He forgives and perhaps even understands Slocum, which was just odd and interesting to me. The relationship between those two characters was different, but believable all the same.
When Campbell reads next week I will be listening for the passion and emotion in her voice, which is the same emotion she weaves through each one of these stories. I will be listening for tension, I will be listening for the fear that seeps through the voice of The Daughter who has seen far too much in "The Trespasser". We get to see the daughter as the swimmer, the honor student, and as the innocent child. I think this story really shows the heart of fear and the depths it goes through "The dream that scares her awake..her own body, waiting." In "The Yard Man", we hear the incompetence in the voice of Jerry. Jerry wants nothing more than to love his wife and do for her, yet when it comes to the house , to the snake and the honeybees, he fails. We hear the struggle in his decisions, in his actions. "He had not killed the snake for her, but he would have to sacrifice something. In order to save their marriage, he might have to poison the living bees(15)." But Jerry isn't flawed, he has this sense of reality to him like most of Campbell's characters. In "Storm Warning", we see another tensions relationship of Doug and Julie. Campbell uses language that emphasizes the different emotions and moods of men and women. We see the way Doug views women as something to devour, "All the beaches pressed together might form female landmasses, female continents, female planets and galaxies. No wonder men felt tense (132)." An although we see Doug and Julie fall apart we also see the love and the true feelings that really these two care about each other. I think Campbell also emphasizes weakness and strength in her characters. Like Doug and Julie, Brian and Connie, Belle and Thomssen, we get to witness the depth they go for one another. In "Bringing Belle Home", we see that Thomssen really care about Belle who is suffering from abusing drugs, much like Connie. Yet through the weaknesses, we see the characters try to solve their problems, we see strength, we see them trying. While listening to Campbell I hope to hear the passion and hope in her voice.
I will be listening to how she’ll add voice to her stories without a spoken voice and keep the listener interested. I’ve always found that stories without dialogue were hard to read and honestly a bit boring. But with in stories where the perspective shifts, without dialogue it can be hard for the reader to keep track. In stories where the narrator is omnipotent, dialogue acts like an anchor, holding the perspective down to that person. But in Campbell’s first story, “The Trespasser,” the perspective shifts from the family to the trespasser seamlessly, without a cue saying that hey, the focus is changing, buckle in. In “The Trespasser,” it just happens. Suddenly, the trespasser is the important part of the story. I’d like to hear how or if Campbell’s voice changes as the voice changes, if her voice will become more somber as the trespasser reflects on her life and the hardships. Another story with this shift of perspective is “The Inventor.” The story shifts between the hunter and the girl, between the present situation and a past event. These shifts happened so often that it confused me at first and I needed to read it again in order to fully grasp it. These switches would most likely be even harder to capture when spoken, the listener unable to rewind and catch themselves. Would Cambell’s voice capture these changes and illustrate the pain that each person is going through? I’m really interested to hear how her voice will portray the unspoken emotion.
Another story that I’d like to hear is “The Solution to Brian’s Problem.” This is another story without dialogue and though the perspective never tears itself from Brian, I would like to hear how her voice changes with each situation. The language in each solution never changes, but the meaning of it becomes violent in certain solutions where it ends in Connie’s death while the final solution is resigned. I’d like to hear her voice reflect these changes, to see if each solution will add a new voice.
I believe I will be listening for what it is that these stories are supposed to be saying to me. Why did Bonnie Jo Campbell write what she did? We always talk about how writers write what they know, what they’ve experienced, or what they’ve seen. Where did this come from? The story of “Bringing Belle Home” seems one that many people have seen or thought about before. Why is this man in love with this woman? Why is he letting her to what she is doing? Yes, we see that she has had a rough life, yet shouldn’t she be grateful to this man? All we see is the rough exteriors, and in the end, some actual interior emotion that we wouldn’t never thought existed. “The Solutions to Brian’s Problem”, along with many of the other stories, made me see just how blessed some people are. It’s a strange and screwed up world, and none of this story or any of the other ones didn’t seem unrealistic to me. What should I be listening for as I hear this story? I feel as though I should be listening for a hint of regret, a hint of rage, a hint of some type of emotion to let me know how I should feel about Brian’s drug-addicted and apparently insane wife, Connie and their poor baby. “Boar Taint” was a story that is saddening, like the others. All the while, it’s sad in a completely different and unexpected way. We meet Jill, a woman with a determination to be the occupier of a decent farm, who wants to buy a pig from an ad for only $25. When she meets up with the family, we see them in a house that seems dark and desolate. When we meet the pig, it is sad and swollen from an attempt to remove one of its testicles… WHAT?! I felt more sympathy for this pig than for the family that seems to be living in the dark ages. I never felt anything of this sort before as I sat and read these stories. I believe that is what I’ll be listening for.
When Bonnie Jo Campbell reads, I would like to hear how she handled the different voices of her characters, all of whom may have lived in similar locations geographically and economically, yet were worlds apart. “Winter Life,” for example, brought together the minds of the various parties of a convoluted merging of love triangles moving in the wrong direction. Trisha and Pauline are radically different in attitude, with Trisha highly emotional and Pauline more sullen and withdrawn, and both see their romantic rivals as nothing more than a villainous hypotenuse, yet Campbell is able to voice each of their perspectives in a way that makes both of them seem sympathetic and similar, and I believe that adding the perspective of Stuart’s wife would have added to the story by showing her human side as well, which I am certain Campbell could have pulled off. (As a side note, you have to love the touch of the rambling mother.) Jonas and the narrator of “Falling” face very different, yet also very similar, problems. They also face an inescapable dilemma and seek to avert loneliness, yet not in a romantic sense. Their lives (as well as that of the ailing Robert) feel as though they can do nothing but fall apart, and their suicidal thoughts along with the narrator’s motherly frustrations bring in very different voices and problems than the romantically-challenges characters of the previously mentioned story, yet we feel for them in the same way. However, the most incredible flip in perspectives comes from comparing “World of Gas” (which I discussed in my previous blog entry) to “Fuel for the Millennium.” The former gave us a narrator’s point of view from the side mocking Y2K, while the latter puts us in the head of Hal Little, who firmly believes in the potential catastrophe. Yes, it is clear to see that the poor fellow is misguided (in part due to the fact that it has been over a decade and still no apocalypse), but we are given a fair look at his side and his concerns. It is incredible to see a man that would have been called selfish in one story being portrayed as thoughtful and concerned in another story existing in the same anthology, written by the same author. How will she read these different, yet fairly portrayed characters? That is something I would like to hear.
Like Jennifer, I will be listening to the passion in her voice as she reads. So many of her pieces had such powerful voice, even if just a line or two that really stood out. I want to be able to hear that emotional power and really feel moved by it, more so than written words ever could.
In “The Trespasser” even though there is so little dialogue, it is a very powerful piece. The entire description of what the trespassing girl had to go through, the drugs, the sex, the stowing away in the closet, evokes such a strong emotional reaction despite how short it is. And even the line of dialogue we do get, the daughter crying “Mommy” is just so raw and powerful even though it is just one word. Just that one word brings up the emotion of feeling so vulnerable that one feels like a child again.
Even just the initial description of Jonas in “Falling” has so much power to it not because of how we learn he tried to commit suicide, but because of how the narrator talks about it in such a snarky way. When we do get voice from Campbell’s characters and narrative, it is very catching and real. This is what I hope to hear when she comes for the reading, this blunt but still vague language that seems to skirt around ideas but still manages to get the emotional impact across to the reader.
I will be liseaning to her use of voice and tone, because from her stories that we read she has a powerful voice. I wonder if she has the presence that some of her characters try and portray? Bonnie Jo Campbell's writing was very fluid and was easy to get caught up in. The story of "The Inventer 1972," and "Burn" were my favorite of the collection of stories that we read. I believe it was because of the way she made the characters appear in a different light then I would have thought they would be. In "The Inventer 1972" I just really enjoyed hearing ahout the hunters life and why he acted the way that he did even in a difficult situation like he was in. Then "Burn" show me how she could get the emotions really right where they should be I got really engaged in that story. The discription in "The Trespasser" was I think was my personal favorite use of language that I saw in her writing. I'm really looking forward to seeing her read and hearing how she uses her voice and how she uses the language. The way that Campbell uses voice in stories such as "Burn," which was one of my favorite stories because it should a wide range of emotions and the character was extremely vocal and gave a good idea about what he is like. When his leg got caught on fire in the truck and the cop wouldn't let him get out that, transaction was wonderfully done. When the main character went home and yelled at the Lesbians upstairs and regreted it that was powerful. Also in "The Inventor 1972" The hunter who hit the girl talked in such a way and the narator gave such a good description of why this man fekt the way he did. It was one of the more powerful scenes in the book. The part when he thought about Raping her was also very well written I didn't hate him like I thought I would merly pitied him. It was a very inspirational stories and in the flash back I almost cried when I got the part when he wanted to hug the Nick and beg him not to die. To hear the way that Campbell reads something like that would make it really stand out to me. In "Family reunion" the way that she showed how the family felt about Marylou. The powerful scene when she took vengence for herself and just the whole interaction with Strong and how shes confused about what happened with Uncle Cal. I thought that was very well written as well. I can't wait to see how she uses her voice to show what she has written on the page. Thats the best part of hearing someone speak watching characters come to life when you clsoe your eyes and lisean.
I will be listening to her vivid language and attention to detail. Each story was very descriptive and made me able to imagine the places and different kinds of people the characters are. I will be listening to be enchanted by her precise language. Each word and sentence is very organized and delicately picked. Campbell seems very careful with her language. She also uses very tradition sentence structures. Her dialogue also portrays character really well and reinforces character and development of the story. I found her stories very easy to read and understand. It was very relaxing to read through her stories. I really enjoyed the flow of her sentence structure and language and expect that to carry over into her visit on the 18th.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I will be listening for is her closing of each story’s ending. For me, each of the endings didn’t really end, they just came to a soft close. Each story felt finished to me, but none of the endings completed the story. A lot of the endings left opening for their characters such as “The Inventor,” where the story ends with the hunter reminiscing about Ricky, a friend from his youth. The story doesn’t really say what will happen to Ricky, but his character is rounded out in the end. Another example is in “Burn,” at the end of the story a woman is coming to help Jim. At least that’s what the reader thinks. Is this help really going to change his life? Who knows? But, by the end I have a great picture of Jim and his struggle being disfigured and in need of constant help. And that’s how I felt with all her stories. The ending didn’t completely tie up all lose ties or was fully satisfying. There was no great moral to learn at the end. The great thing about the ending to Campbell’s stories is that I knew her characters by the end of the story. That last sentence finished a painting of the character and how they act in my mind. I get a glimpse into their life and come away feeling like that character is a real person. And that is what I’ll really be listening for the most, for Campbell to introduce me to her realistic characters and their seemingly unsolvable struggles. Because that is how life is sometimes. It’s a struggle and we never really know if what we do will help us in the struggle of just living.
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ReplyDeleteI will definitely be listening to the way she tells the narrative. I am constantly impressed by how the narration always seems to shift and change like a character’s dialogue rather than being told like regular description. There are always little elements to it that made it sound more like a dialect or accent than normal storytelling language. While some of her characters are placed in similar sounding settings, they are all unique in their language and traits. I am very interested to hear just how she reads her characters. Also, her stories all have their own moments of tension, but some are more indirect about it than others. For example the first story, “The Trespasser”, is very passive in how it shows conflict and tension. On the other side, “Bringing Belle Home” keeps raising the tension more and more as it goes on and it rips characters apart. I think it would be helpful to hear from both kinds of stories. I too would like to hear where she gathered ideas from. These all, in a sense, sound like believable experiences and it’s a feat in itself to achieve that.
ReplyDeleteI will be listening for some grittiness in Campbell’s reading. These are not happy pieces. But, they are not necessarily unhappy, either. I think it’s important to put these stories in perspective. While it would be easy to say that Bonnie Jo Campbell is a depressing writer, this would actually be an inaccurate depiction. I know I mentioned this in my other post, but the genuine feel to these characters really strikes home for me. I do not know what it’s like to have a meth addiction, as Belle does in Bringing Belle Home and as Slocum does in King Cole’s American Salvage, or a more general drug problem, like Jonas in Falling. But, I do know what it’s like to have problems. This is by far Campbell’s greatest strength as a writer: her ability to translate less “common” problems into the real world. This is honestly why I feel something of a connection to the people in her stories. They are not just characters and so it is that much more difficult to judge them in terms of simple good versus bad. Is anyone truly good? Is anyone truly bad? I think these are the two most important questions that we deal with in American Salvage. We may not like Jonas as a person, but it is hard to hate him. Sure, he’s been an asshole. He’s used people, but he is not a simple man. I feel like he genuinely cares for the narrator in Falling. Similarly, Slocum genuinely cares for Johnny in King Cole’s American Salvage and Thomssen genuinely cares for Belle in Bringing Belle Home. The connecting thread between these three pieces (as well as most of the stories within this collection) is that people do stupid shit. Sometimes stupid shit is very serious. But, when it comes down to it desperation breeds idiocy in certain cases. Campbell’s stories are not simple. They are not clean. But, they are all beautiful, because they show how even the most unlikable characters really have some humanity within them. Sometimes, it’s just more difficult to find in certain people than it is in others. Essentially, Campbell knows people and she does an excellent job of writing about them. Her stories may be fiction, but her characters are far more three dimensional that most fictional characters are.
ReplyDeleteIn so many of her stories, if not all of them, Bonnie Jo Campbell creates characters that are deeply flawed with multiple weaknesses. They do meth (is it “do” meth? Snort? Shoot? You get what I mean, anyway), they rob people, they are stubborn. But at some point I always feel sorry for them, even if it’s just for a moment. It seems like they are innocent, and their wrongdoings are the consequence of their lack of money or desire to be more than they are. In “The Yard Man,” Jerry wants nothing more than to please his wife and to learn all he can about that orange snake. But he can’t have both, and favoring one leads to losing the other. It is lines like “I wish I’d’ve seen it.” Jerry thought maybe, if he’d been there, he could have helped his wife see [the ermine] in a new way—a way she could have liked it” (29), that I will be listening for at the reading. Lines that make me question what I’m hearing, and help me to think of things in a new way.
ReplyDeleteThomssen from “Bringing Belle Home” is a flawed character, too. He almost crushes Belle to death, and fills out his huge frame even more when he is drunk. Yet at one point I felt sorry for him, when he realizes that maybe his perspective of comforting Belle from her father was his own way of getting what he wanted (104). Likewise, Slocum’s character in “King Cole’s American Salvage” is far from actually being innocent, but he does have a moment where he questions what he is about to do: “Looking at him, Slocum realized that King Cole was an old man. Slocum wasn’t sure he could do this—he hoped the guy would piss him off and make it easier” (116). These are the kinds of characters I’ll be listening for during Campbell’s reading—ones that are weak, and lash out at those weaknesses, but also show glimpses of an inner strength that I am so often searching for within myself.
I will be listening for how she manages brings these characters that we have just met to a place where we feel like we have known them for years. Some of her stories are long, and some of her stories are short, yet especially in the shorter of the short stories I felt such a connection with these characters, like I had known them my whole life.
ReplyDeleteI think my two favorite stories in this collection were “Solutions to Brian's Problem” and “The Inventor.” I loved how we were able to see many sides of a story in both stories. In Solutions to Brians Problem,” we see Brian going over all the different ways he could leave his meth addicted wife. Some include killing her, some include killing himself, some include leaving, and others include just staying and trying to do what he has been doing. You can really feel Brian’s anguish and violent behavior over his wife’s addiction.
In “the Inventor,” we meet two people, one an old hunter and another a teenage girl. Both knew well their friend Ricky, and the reason that the hunter hit the girl with his car is that both were thinking about Ricky at the same time. It shows the amazing, sometimes horrible coincidences that can occur between people. If the hunter had never invented the scuba gear, then Ricky would never had drowned, and then many years later maybe the crash would never had happened.
Another story that I enjoyed the “The Trespasser.” We have a girl, only sixteen, who has broken into a families house because she has none of her own. The way she wishes that this house and these possession, these memories were her own really connected me with this character, even though she was nameless.
Like Liz, I think I’ll be listening to the qualities that really bring her characters to life and make us feel as if we’re more familiar with them than we really are. Their multiple flaws and the way they handle ordinary (and not-so-ordinary) situations make them real and relatable and, overall, believable.
ReplyDeleteIn “The Solution to Brian’s Problem”, we don’t ever really get to see the character or listen to him interact with others. We are, however, very much inside his head while he troubles through the awful situation he’s in and what to do about it. Even these short passages, each with a different scenario, are enough that we as readers can feel as if we understand Brian.
“Winter Life” was another story in which the characters came to life in a short amount of time. Though not as short as some of the other stories, with the amount of characters in this one, it really is quite brief. Despite this, we still get to know Harold, Trisha, Pauline, and Mary Beth. Each one of them spends some time in the spot light as we delve into some aspect of their character and how they relate to the other characters. This interconnectedness was really interesting to me, though confusing at times, especially toward the end.
Another interesting character dynamic was featured in “King Cole’s American Salvage”. Slocum is willing to kill someone just because his drug-addicted wife needs money. And not just anyone but his friend Johnny’s uncle. Even after Johnny discovers that it was Slocum who almost killed Cole, he isn’t able to fully cut the ties or even dislike him. He forgives and perhaps even understands Slocum, which was just odd and interesting to me. The relationship between those two characters was different, but believable all the same.
When Campbell reads next week I will be listening for the passion and emotion in her voice, which is the same emotion she weaves through each one of these stories. I will be listening for tension, I will be listening for the fear that seeps through the voice of The Daughter who has seen far too much in "The Trespasser". We get to see the daughter as the swimmer, the honor student, and as the innocent child. I think this story really shows the heart of fear and the depths it goes through "The dream that scares her awake..her own body, waiting." In "The Yard Man", we hear the incompetence in the voice of Jerry. Jerry wants nothing more than to love his wife and do for her, yet when it comes to the house , to the snake and the honeybees, he fails. We hear the struggle in his decisions, in his actions. "He had not killed the snake for her, but he would have to sacrifice something. In order to save their marriage, he might have to poison the living bees(15)." But Jerry isn't flawed, he has this sense of reality to him like most of Campbell's characters. In "Storm Warning", we see another tensions relationship of Doug and Julie. Campbell uses language that emphasizes the different emotions and moods of men and women. We see the way Doug views women as something to devour, "All the beaches pressed together might form female landmasses, female continents, female planets and galaxies. No wonder men felt tense (132)." An although we see Doug and Julie fall apart we also see the love and the true feelings that really these two care about each other. I think Campbell also emphasizes weakness and strength in her characters. Like Doug and Julie, Brian and Connie, Belle and Thomssen, we get to witness the depth they go for one another. In "Bringing Belle Home", we see that Thomssen really care about Belle who is suffering from abusing drugs, much like Connie. Yet through the weaknesses, we see the characters try to solve their problems, we see strength, we see them trying. While listening to Campbell I hope to hear the passion and hope in her voice.
ReplyDeleteI will be listening to how she’ll add voice to her stories without a spoken voice and keep the listener interested. I’ve always found that stories without dialogue were hard to read and honestly a bit boring. But with in stories where the perspective shifts, without dialogue it can be hard for the reader to keep track. In stories where the narrator is omnipotent, dialogue acts like an anchor, holding the perspective down to that person. But in Campbell’s first story, “The Trespasser,” the perspective shifts from the family to the trespasser seamlessly, without a cue saying that hey, the focus is changing, buckle in. In “The Trespasser,” it just happens. Suddenly, the trespasser is the important part of the story. I’d like to hear how or if Campbell’s voice changes as the voice changes, if her voice will become more somber as the trespasser reflects on her life and the hardships. Another story with this shift of perspective is “The Inventor.” The story shifts between the hunter and the girl, between the present situation and a past event. These shifts happened so often that it confused me at first and I needed to read it again in order to fully grasp it. These switches would most likely be even harder to capture when spoken, the listener unable to rewind and catch themselves. Would Cambell’s voice capture these changes and illustrate the pain that each person is going through? I’m really interested to hear how her voice will portray the unspoken emotion.
ReplyDeleteAnother story that I’d like to hear is “The Solution to Brian’s Problem.” This is another story without dialogue and though the perspective never tears itself from Brian, I would like to hear how her voice changes with each situation. The language in each solution never changes, but the meaning of it becomes violent in certain solutions where it ends in Connie’s death while the final solution is resigned. I’d like to hear her voice reflect these changes, to see if each solution will add a new voice.
I believe I will be listening for what it is that these stories are supposed to be saying to me. Why did Bonnie Jo Campbell write what she did? We always talk about how writers write what they know, what they’ve experienced, or what they’ve seen. Where did this come from?
ReplyDeleteThe story of “Bringing Belle Home” seems one that many people have seen or thought about before. Why is this man in love with this woman? Why is he letting her to what she is doing? Yes, we see that she has had a rough life, yet shouldn’t she be grateful to this man? All we see is the rough exteriors, and in the end, some actual interior emotion that we wouldn’t never thought existed.
“The Solutions to Brian’s Problem”, along with many of the other stories, made me see just how blessed some people are. It’s a strange and screwed up world, and none of this story or any of the other ones didn’t seem unrealistic to me. What should I be listening for as I hear this story? I feel as though I should be listening for a hint of regret, a hint of rage, a hint of some type of emotion to let me know how I should feel about Brian’s drug-addicted and apparently insane wife, Connie and their poor baby.
“Boar Taint” was a story that is saddening, like the others. All the while, it’s sad in a completely different and unexpected way. We meet Jill, a woman with a determination to be the occupier of a decent farm, who wants to buy a pig from an ad for only $25. When she meets up with the family, we see them in a house that seems dark and desolate. When we meet the pig, it is sad and swollen from an attempt to remove one of its testicles… WHAT?! I felt more sympathy for this pig than for the family that seems to be living in the dark ages.
I never felt anything of this sort before as I sat and read these stories. I believe that is what I’ll be listening for.
When Bonnie Jo Campbell reads, I would like to hear how she handled the different voices of her characters, all of whom may have lived in similar locations geographically and economically, yet were worlds apart. “Winter Life,” for example, brought together the minds of the various parties of a convoluted merging of love triangles moving in the wrong direction. Trisha and Pauline are radically different in attitude, with Trisha highly emotional and Pauline more sullen and withdrawn, and both see their romantic rivals as nothing more than a villainous hypotenuse, yet Campbell is able to voice each of their perspectives in a way that makes both of them seem sympathetic and similar, and I believe that adding the perspective of Stuart’s wife would have added to the story by showing her human side as well, which I am certain Campbell could have pulled off. (As a side note, you have to love the touch of the rambling mother.) Jonas and the narrator of “Falling” face very different, yet also very similar, problems. They also face an inescapable dilemma and seek to avert loneliness, yet not in a romantic sense. Their lives (as well as that of the ailing Robert) feel as though they can do nothing but fall apart, and their suicidal thoughts along with the narrator’s motherly frustrations bring in very different voices and problems than the romantically-challenges characters of the previously mentioned story, yet we feel for them in the same way. However, the most incredible flip in perspectives comes from comparing “World of Gas” (which I discussed in my previous blog entry) to “Fuel for the Millennium.” The former gave us a narrator’s point of view from the side mocking Y2K, while the latter puts us in the head of Hal Little, who firmly believes in the potential catastrophe. Yes, it is clear to see that the poor fellow is misguided (in part due to the fact that it has been over a decade and still no apocalypse), but we are given a fair look at his side and his concerns. It is incredible to see a man that would have been called selfish in one story being portrayed as thoughtful and concerned in another story existing in the same anthology, written by the same author. How will she read these different, yet fairly portrayed characters? That is something I would like to hear.
ReplyDeleteLike Jennifer, I will be listening to the passion in her voice as she reads. So many of her pieces had such powerful voice, even if just a line or two that really stood out. I want to be able to hear that emotional power and really feel moved by it, more so than written words ever could.
ReplyDeleteIn “The Trespasser” even though there is so little dialogue, it is a very powerful piece. The entire description of what the trespassing girl had to go through, the drugs, the sex, the stowing away in the closet, evokes such a strong emotional reaction despite how short it is. And even the line of dialogue we do get, the daughter crying “Mommy” is just so raw and powerful even though it is just one word. Just that one word brings up the emotion of feeling so vulnerable that one feels like a child again.
In “The Inventor” we hear more of this raw, powerful voice through both characters. Sometimes Campbell is vague in what she writes on the page, but what the words imply are so deep and strong that it is best that she didn’t spell everything out for us. The girl and the hunter’s thoughts on Ricky dying, the fact that they were both thinking of the same person, and the impossible coincidence that they both had a connection to this one man is just phenomenal. In some situations a set up like that could end up seeming cliché or over the top, but Campbell is able to pull it off somehow.
Even just the initial description of Jonas in “Falling” has so much power to it not because of how we learn he tried to commit suicide, but because of how the narrator talks about it in such a snarky way. When we do get voice from Campbell’s characters and narrative, it is very catching and real. This is what I hope to hear when she comes for the reading, this blunt but still vague language that seems to skirt around ideas but still manages to get the emotional impact across to the reader.
I will be liseaning to her use of voice and tone, because from her stories that we read she has a powerful voice. I wonder if she has the presence that some of her characters try and portray? Bonnie Jo Campbell's writing was very fluid and was easy to get caught up in.
ReplyDeleteThe story of "The Inventer 1972," and "Burn" were my favorite of the collection of stories that we read. I believe it was because of the way she made the characters appear in a different light then I would have thought they would be. In "The Inventer 1972" I just really enjoyed hearing ahout the hunters life and why he acted the way that he did even in a difficult situation like he was in. Then "Burn" show me how she could get the emotions really right where they should be I got really engaged in that story. The discription in "The Trespasser" was I think was my personal favorite use of language that I saw in her writing.
I'm really looking forward to seeing her read and hearing how she uses her voice and how she uses the language.
The way that Campbell uses voice in stories such as "Burn," which was one of my favorite stories because it should a wide range of emotions and the character was extremely vocal and gave a good idea about what he is like. When his leg got caught on fire in the truck and the cop wouldn't let him get out that, transaction was wonderfully done. When the main character went home and yelled at the Lesbians upstairs and regreted it that was powerful.
Also in "The Inventor 1972" The hunter who hit the girl talked in such a way and the narator gave such a good description of why this man fekt the way he did. It was one of the more powerful scenes in the book. The part when he thought about Raping her was also very well written I didn't hate him like I thought I would merly pitied him. It was a very inspirational stories and in the flash back I almost cried when I got the part when he wanted to hug the Nick and beg him not to die. To hear the way that Campbell reads something like that would make it really stand out to me. In "Family reunion" the way that she showed how the family felt about Marylou. The powerful scene when she took vengence for herself and just the whole interaction with Strong and how shes confused about what happened with Uncle Cal. I thought that was very well written as well. I can't wait to see how she uses her voice to show what she has written on the page. Thats the best part of hearing someone speak watching characters come to life when you clsoe your eyes and lisean.