Also note: "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" is a story that breaks my "rule" about first paragraphs. How does Hempel get away with it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
These stories are going to test your synapses.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Amy Hempel: "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" and "Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep"
Another "minimalist," T. C. Boyle calls Hempel, but I don't agree. Her stories are spare, perhaps, but such richly associative work, banking on so metaphors, doesn't seem stripped to the essentials. Unless indirection = minimalism. See what you think.
Also note: "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" is a story that breaks my "rule" about first paragraphs. How does Hempel get away with it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Also note: "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" is a story that breaks my "rule" about first paragraphs. How does Hempel get away with it? I'd love to hear your thoughts. 
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If Amy Hempel is going to be in my literary family, she'd probably be that scatterbrained aunt who collects newspapers in her garage and wears too much blue eyeshadow. These stories are so hard to follow, and on the surface it seems like there isn't much continuity from one thought to the next. She's like some odd mix of Ernest Hemingway and Lydia Davis, in that she's clearly going for his "iceberg story," while like her, disregarding short story convention.
ReplyDeleteThe first few lines of "In the Cemetery" say it all. Like Dr. Dent said, there is no dense summary or who/what/where/when/why like in some of the other stories we've read. Actually, they're almost the complete opposite-- they're full of meaningless, irrelevant facts. They have no grounding, no permanence, no apparent purpose. However, I think that might be exactly the point. These lines may show the purpose of the story. Like the narrator's friend, these paragraphs are frail and disconnected, and while they may not have that linear structure we're looking for, the bits and pieces that make them up are wonderful. Each line, like each memory the narrator recollects, is self-standing and enough reason to appreciate the story as a whole.
I'll second Alex Guarco's comment regarding the difficulty of Amy Hempel's literary pieces. To me, these stories were twisted and were paced too quickly. I question whether these pieces, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” and “Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep,” were written in a style that views the world from a drug addict’s perspective, or perhaps one of a mentally disabled individual. Although, having recently read an interview of Hemingway for another class, these stories do have various elements of the “iceberg story” theory. Stories that satisfy this theory are generally limited on background information pertaining to characters, their history, thoughts, etc.
ReplyDeleteBoth stories, as I’ve said before, lack details that can be generally helpful to the readers. Facts that are given in these stories are, as Alex said, pointless. For that, I want my thirty minutes back! And given these pointless details, such as the brief mentioning of Bing Crosby owning a tape recorder prior to all American citizens, it creates a story that’s difficult to navigate – in such a way that compares to, say, a crew aboard a boat/ship attempting to navigate the narrowest and shallowest of water passages. In short, I find it impossible to get a grasp on the meanings of these stories.
In considering my literary family tree, I’m afraid Amy Hempel doesn’t fit on it, although, looking back at my individual workshop story, I can see very slight similarities in our writing. I believe, and have believed for years, that my style of writing does generate confusion, especially when considering the emotions of characters. And in terms of Amy Hempel’s stories, I sense confusion in providing detailed settings; I cannot picture most, if any, of the scenes. I am so confused that I compare these pieces, oddly enough, to the wild, wacky works of Dr. Seuss. I feel that if scenes were to be realistic, and most certainly believable, pin-point details are an absolute must.
I think I love Amy Hempel so much because I love poetry so much. While the associations were complex, I didn't find them difficult, perhaps because I'm also taking a poetry class and in that state of mind. I don't do this spare, associative thing well in my own fiction, but I love to read it. It sort of brings me back to "The Bath" and why I liked that one so much. It makes the reader work, but sometimes that can be so powerful and wonderful! Maybe Amy Hempel can go on one of my poetic family tree limbs as well?
ReplyDeleteThere are so many IDEAS in these stories, and even though I found myself connected more to "In the Cemetery..." I am so drawn to the image of learning to knit to fix something. That's why I learned to knit, but I'd never thought of it in that way before, and it serves as the perfect backdrop for "Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep." That's what I want to steal from her- creating a perfect backdrop or metaphor for what's happening. Again, I'm so jealous.
I completely disagree that the settings are un-picturable. In "In the Cemetery..." she writes, "A stop in Malibu for sangria. The music in the place would be sexy and loud. They'd serve papaya and shrimp and watermelon ice. After dinner I would shimmer with lust, buzz with heat, vibrate with life, and stay up all night." That is not a straight up description of the place she is in, but I can picture it clearly based on the details she gives. And in this case, I don't want any more details. The ones she gives us are flat-out beautiful.
These are definitely the hardest stories to get through this year. In reading In the Cemetery Where Al Johnson Is Buried, I had a hard time assessing what the story was aiming for. Riddled with bogus facts, the character's dialogue gives little to help this problem. But the main idea of the story is a simple one and it's not hard to grasp it. We watch a friend watch a friend die; however, we're not sure why. We're not sure how they feel about it. And we're not sure how we should feel about it. An interesting detail on page 377 that talks about how the sick friend was not afraid to fly on a trip they took together, while the "Best Friend" was going crazy with anxiety. This made me wonder who this soon-to-come death was harder on. Is the Best Friend telling the facts for her friend's mind to be occupied or is it to distract herself?
ReplyDeleteI feel like I could put Amy Hempel in my literary family though. I think everyone has a somewhat crazy-talking relative. The one that everyone writes off as mad and no one listens to; however, when you do listen to them—they have something beautiful to say hidden in their ramblings. In reading her stories, I felt lost, but I also felt moved. I loved the ending of In the Cemetery Where Al Johnson Is Buried. It felt strangely stirring and made me want to reread the story, looking for things I may have missed. If you could make someone want to reread a story they felt like they didn't like much throughout reading it, you're doing something great.
I am unsure if I could retell her stories if someone asked me to. Maybe I could somehow patch together a little bit of Beg, Sl,Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep because it had more continuity to it but In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried I have no clue what is happening. It felt like she was showing a lot but not really telling anything. She uses dreams and anecdotal stories to do most of the showing in her stories and we are often left to interpret them as we wish.
ReplyDeleteIt also seemed like Amy Hempel may have been adding a little autobiography in her stories as there are some certain common themes in both stories. The mothers feeling of loss over a child was in both stories as was bad dreams. It made me wonder if perhaps Hempel herself was trying to deal with some of these issues. I think she really is in control of these stories and if she wanted could talk for a very long time about the world they are in and about who they are. I really wish I could know how she did this, if she wrote the whole story then edited pieces out to create what she has or did she write it close to what she has and then keep dialing it in?
These stories definitely the hardest to digest both emotionally and cognitively. (is that the word I'm looking for?)
When I was reading these stories, I felt like I was reading a really long and really confusing poem. I think what threw me the most when I was trying to read these two stories was how poetic they sounded and how easily they could have been poetry. I also had a really hard time trying to follow them, to be honest, I probably couldn't talk about what happened in either of them even though I just read them.
ReplyDeleteI think that what I struggled with most when reading these stories was that I could feel that beneath all of the complicated words and images in her stories was something really beautiful underneath. What bothered me most was that I had a really hard time finding it. I actually don't think I found much of it at all, all I found was a confusing piece of prose which could have easily been a really beautiful poem. When thinking about Hempel as a part of my literary family, I'm not sure if she fits in, but what I think I could take from her would be her ability to create such beautiful and deep language, even if I don't really understand what it is she's trying to say.
It was very hard for me to get into Amy Lempel’s stories because I didn’t see any connection between the little scenes. At first in “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” I thought the she was just a nurse and the narrator was a new nurse. I had no idea that the narrator’s friend was dying. I guess in a way this is like Raymond Carver’s “The Bath” in that it is minimal to the point where it could mean anything. After I got through the beginning, I then really liked her stories for the way she handled grief and extreme subjects. Though I wished that she would explain a little more in the first paragraph so that I can get whom the main characters are and what the situation is. These stories are definitely not the kind that should be read when you are very tired for there is so much going on in very few significant details that is it easy to overlook them.
ReplyDeleteEven though it was hard to get into Amy Hempel’s stories, I think she is definitely a part of family tree not one of the immediate family members but there to help me out in the structuring a story. I really like the structure of these stories for I feel like it somehow similar to my own writing. The only difference is that Hempel managed to connect all the little scenes together to form a complete story. She would help me by showing me how to connect and transit from one scene to another. I like the idea of minimalism in that a story could work without a lot of using a lot significant detail. I also liked the poetic quality to it in that it felt like prose poetry by the sentence structure and how each section could be seen as stanzas. I would like to take her technique of writing a piece with a poetic feel and yet still be able to tell a story.
I did enjoy reading these storys. As I was reading them I felt at home, like I was reading something I was used to, which is unusual, because the writing style was a bit different from what most people are used to. I can't make sence of what I liked about these stories. It could have been the unusualness that made me like them. All of the useless facts that are mentioned in 'cemetary' were very interesting, and the way the were presented was also interesting. I realized that in this class whenever we read an author that is more left field I tend to like it more than the rest of my classmates. I feel as if I am going to be doing more left field writing, and this author did nothing but emphasize that.
ReplyDeleteAmy Hempel is certainly a poet. I find the label of "minimalist" interesting, since it seems that the stories are stuffed with detail that doesn't really need to be there in order to make them work (but that still adds to the stories nonetheless). The individual scenes are sometimes difficult to string together, but I felt as I was reading that they are close enough in theme to connect by the end. This interesting form can be problematic if not used well, but I think Hempel avoids that issue by using it masterfully.
ReplyDeleteI like "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" a small bit more than the second one. I find it easier to make out the connecting thread between the snippets in this story, despite the fact that (unlike "Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep") the scenes are not in chronological order. While this can be confusing, I consider it to be refreshing instead. The theme of desperation in the face of death and fear shines through regardless of the timeline. When I was reading it the first time around, I noticed also how Hempel uses dialogue in strange ways. There are very few quotes in the beginning of the story, and all of them come from the dying friend; the main character, as well as any others, only get direct quotes later, as if Hempel was trying for a form in which only the friend actually speaks, only to decide to abandon her attempt later.
"Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep" is more confusing to me, as far as theme is concerned. It took me a great deal of time to even come up with a guess as to what the idea stringing the snippets together actually is; I have to assume it is grief over the main character's abortion, and her use of knitting as an attempt to "mend" the damage. Like "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried," the unifying theme shines through the individual scenes (for the most part), but not nearly as clearly in my opinion. Also, while the first story seems to use some comic relief in the banter between the characters to offset its depressing ideas, the second story apparently depends on the healing process undertaken by the main character to soothe the reader instead. This makes for a rather startling contrast between the two stories: In the first one, the main character, despite her general humor, is still frightened and ashamed, while in the second story, the main character finally begins to heal at the end despite not finding any humor in her situation at all up to that point.
Overall, I enjoyed reading these two stories. Not only was the form of connected snippets somewhat new to me, but the language itself was a joy to read. While I cannot say that I have learned anything from Amy Hempel (I cannot try to reconcile her style with mine without a serious revision of my basic writing process), I would be very interested in reading workshops from others who might be able to utilize this form in their pieces.
One may argue that Hempel's writing is experimental or disjointed. She certainly is an associative writer; in some ways, the associations and transitions in Hempel's stories are more realistic than those of other traditional narratives. One would be hard-pressed to mimic this writing style while retelling nonfiction because, though the style mimics a natural thought process, most people cannot record their fleeting thoughts. No one could record their unfiltered thoughts so quickly. Instead, we over-process our thoughts, rooting out the junk that we're thinking about, because 9 times out of 10, our thoughts are unrelated to our actions. But just because our thoughts and actions aren't directly related, doesn't mean that we aren't thinking associatively. Hempel's narrators trust their thoughts, allowing associations to form organically, giving her writing the flow and feel of a natural conversation.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Amy Hempel shouldn't be labeled as a minimalistic writer, but I could understand how critics could be tempted to push her into that category. As readers, we're so used to formula writing. We want a traditional plot structure with fleshed-out characters who show us scenes and settings, learning lessons at the end. Though many real events in our lives could be reformulated as "great stories", in narrating, we tend to focus on actions that move us in the direction of a specific climax or ending. However, Hempel does not seem concerned with arriving at a specific scene or locale, which makes me think that her stories are loosely outlined prior to being written. When observing the beginning of her story, "In the Cemetery where Al Johnson is Buried", readers are not offered any grounding, but instead, they are propelled into the context by use of seemingly irrelevant factoids that provoke curiosity and the desire to read more. I am so pleased to have read Hempel, and I'd definitely like her in my family, but perhaps as my girlfriend. I am so intrigued by her mind and the minutia that collectively forms the significant events in her life. The thoughts of most men couldn't be recorded so candidly, as they'd likely be thinking about sex all day. Did I mention that Amy Hempel should be my girlfriend?
I thought these stories were really good, because the of the language, and as Sarah said, the metaphors in the story, but I did have a hard time reading them, especially "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson in Buried," because it was so disjointed. This is because, as other people have been commenting, Hempel goes for the "Iceberg" method, leaving the writing to make their own assumptions. I really appreciate this approach to writing, but at the same time, I feel like "In the Cemetery..." was almost too random. There are such good details, and in the end I really do feel sad, with the baby dying and the death of the friend, and I think that's what this story is trying to get at, but for the most of it I am just reading random facts. Though to be honest, I think I did like "In the Cemetery..." better than the other. I think because of it's randomness and the assumptions that I had to make as a reader, because "Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep" was a little easier to understand.
ReplyDeleteI really want to experiment with this style, and I can also see Amy Hempel as being that crazy aunt in my family. The one where I see her every once in a while, and she gives me crazy ideas that I try once and never do again. She has such a good idea for this story, and even though there isn't much of a plot or narrative, she knows exactly what's going on. I would love to learn how to write a story using the "iceberg" method.
Amy Hemple will not be in my literary family. I found her stories tough to get through, simply because neither was able to keep my attention. Especially in Beg, SI Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep. I found this story to be very disjointed, and pretty much all over the place. For being a short story, there were way too many line breaks, not really allowing me to focus on what was really happening within the story. Hemple skipped around quite a bit, and I honestly did not see the point to the story.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I did not particularly enjoy these stories, I can appreciate Hemple's strong details, especially when she was describing her sewing, and the supplies she was purchasing or examining. "The chalky brown of the Moorit, the blackish brown of the black sheep, fawn, grey, and pinky beige..." These details are very specific, and I think that is something I can take from this writing, to enhance my future writing.