Danielle Evans will give a reading in Isaacs Auditoriuim, Susquehanna University, on November 7, 2011 at 7:30pm. What do you think she might have read before and during the process of writing stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self? How does she chart new ground in the collection? As she is the youngest writer we'll read this semester, I'm asking you to put yourself in her shoes and ponder the encounters with literature and literary voices that might have influenced her and her craft. Be creative and far-reaching in your answer.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Danielle Evans: BEFORE YOU SUFFOCATE YOUR OWN FOOL SELF
Danielle Evans will give a reading in Isaacs Auditoriuim, Susquehanna University, on November 7, 2011 at 7:30pm. What do you think she might have read before and during the process of writing stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self? How does she chart new ground in the collection? As she is the youngest writer we'll read this semester, I'm asking you to put yourself in her shoes and ponder the encounters with literature and literary voices that might have influenced her and her craft. Be creative and far-reaching in your answer.
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In the interview Catherine posted above, Danielle Evans says that she admires "tremendously how succinctly [Eudora Welty] is able to develop character, and how she is able to incorporate humor into works of serious fiction." I don't find this surprising at all, as these are two things Evans does extremely well in her own writing. I would argue that character and humor are the two of the strongest cornerstones to her work.
ReplyDeleteJust about every one of her characters comes to life, which may be obvious for all fiction, but is especially so with Evans. They seem so simple, but they're really pretty complex-- like Chrissie in "Wherever You Go, There You Are." Evans drops these little characterizing lines like how she's "the wrong kind of pretty, the kind that's soft but not fragile, the kind that inspires the impulse to touch" (177). That's such a unique way to put it, and it sums up Chrissie's physicality flawlessly.
The humor is everywhere, too. It's what makes Evans's stories so easy to read--they seem real because of how light they are on the surface. In that same story, Evans says things like "Chrissie smirks beside me, and starts humming the underpants song under her breath again" (183). Not only did I laugh out loud to that line, it further characterizes Chrissie as the childish, immature, stick-her-tongue-out-at-the-narrator kid she is.
One other thing Evans does is slip in these apt realizations about reality-- the universal things that are particular to a given character. In WYGTYA, she says "they've learned all the theatrical parts of sex so they walk around pouting and posing like little baby porn stars...but not the basic mechanical processes of actual pleasure, which everyone assumes someone else has covered" (179). Hits the nail on the head, doesn't it? Evans is so casual, so sneaky with these brilliant lines. She nestles them within the humor and character so that we don't even realize how intense these pieces really are.
I'm claiming Evans as my literary sister -- the kind you're close with forever. I'm familiar with Before You Suffocate and rereading it has actually been a great experience.
ReplyDeleteI am particularly drawn to "Wherever You Go, There You Are," which I'll now refer to as WYGTWYA (thanks Alex). I find myself thinking about all the possibilities for meaning in the story, and that's how I know it's a story that's really connected with me.
Evans has a sort of goal, I think, to separate her characters. She often presents us with studies of confused, in limbo characters who realize they've come to a turning point in their lives -- WYGTYA is no exception.
Carla is disillusioned by a lot of things -- her lackluster relationship with her father and her apparent inability to construct and maintain a successful romantic relationship.
The house which Carla lives in can be viewed as a testament to the issues she has with the perceptions of her relationships. She's living in her father's house, but he is an antique dealer who often travels. She admits that “I can hardly blame him for leaving so often; I am learning the hard way that it's not a good place to get over anything” (172).
(continued)
(part 2 -- blogspot wouldn't let me leave a comment so long)
ReplyDeleteHowever, the point is clearly made that Carla does indeed take steps to get over something, and at first, readers are under the impression that it is her most recent ex-boyfriend:“...Jay, who I came here to get away from (173)”. She seems nonchalant when she announces their break up in the story, like it was not emotionally jarring for her whatsoever. “Jay, who still lives in the apartment with my name on the lease and is probably fucking another girl on my sofa right now” (173). In fact, she makes it evident that she remains pretty unattached from everyone and everything, even her own mother: “I live here right now because I have no place else to be. The house I’m staying in is my father’s, and was my grandfather’s before that. It was either come here and be alone for a while, or move in with my mother, which would have felt like an admission of failure on both our parts” (171).
She describes, with breathtaking attention to detail, and to often inexplicable human emotion, the slow retreat from any relationship with her mother or father. In one memory, Carla talks about a fight she and her mother had about one of her mother’s boyfriends, the fight ending in Carla’s mother pulling the car over, slapping her daughter, and walking out into a thunderstorm to escape the situation. Carla uses the act of her mother leaving the car as a metaphor for the emotional separation and detachment that has seemingly permanently grown between them. “Through the stream of rain on the windshield, I watched my mother get smaller and smaller because of distance and water. It was like watching a person deflate” (181). Carla then takes the metaphor to its full height, saying “I understood that if she wasn’t coming back, I wasn’t going anywhere, not because I was still a few months away from my learner’s permit, but because I lacked the instinct to run. I understood, for the first time, how much I loved my mother. I understood that if I could help it, I would never love anybody that much again” (181). This occurrence seems to set the rules for Carla’s life: don’t ever get too close to someone, because that kind of love is something strangely powerful, and powerfully strange, and it won’t ever end well, when you put that much of yourself into someone.
As the story unfolds further, readers learn that this tough, unattached woman who gets over old boyfriends at the drop of a hat, who seems contentedly distant from even her parents, has a skeleton in her closet. I think Evans is teaching me that characters need skeletons in their closets -- they can't just simply be a certain way, hold certain values, perform an action that only means one thing. There is one exception to Carla’s aloofness, and his name is Brian. We learn about Carla and Brian’s past when we learn that she is driving to North Carolina (now with Chrissie in tow) to see Brian perform in his band. “I don’t own much [clothing] that Brian hasn’t ripped off of me at some point in the past, even when he was seeing other women, even when he was with the fiancée before the one I’m ostensibly going down there to meet” (174). Carla believes that there is some sort of unfinished business with Brian, that there is always unfinished business with him, and in a way, is succumbing to this notion by agreeing to drive down to see him perform and to meet his new fiancée.
Brian and Carla's relationship was amazingly well observed. Once again, this is the kind of stuff I want to write about, and Evans has helped to guide me in the right direction.
I loved when she mentioned setting in the interview that Catherine posted -- how Evans's stories aren't often "grounded in place." Yes! Me too! It's just always good to know that amazing writers struggle with similar things that I do.
Danielle Evans' story Wherever You Go, There You Are was definitely my favorite in her book. The story melds all of the things that we have learned in class together perfectly. She is able to throw setting in while characterizing like on page 170 where she is talking about her cousin Tia and how she does good business in this town that has nothing else to do. She is also able to pull off things like "If her look was a smell, it would be grape bubble gum" (185). It amazes me how much she is able to do in this story without losing anything. She has about 8 characters who are pretty meaningful to the story, which makes me a little jealous because she is so good at it.
ReplyDeleteThis story especially follows the neat upside down check mark and Tom Bailey's opposing arrows diagram. This story could almost teach a fiction class by itself. The one thing that especially struck me in this story was from something that Mr. Gaitskill said in class - write something funny and beautiful on each page. She pulls off humor and beauty and meaning in one piece, creating a story that is fun to read but also something that will stick with you for a very long time.