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| Photograph by Joshua Butler |
"Jealous Husband" runs into Charles Baxter's essay on "Stillness" at an angle. Not a right angle. More like obtuse. There are moments between the bird/husband's actions when he retreats to stillness, contemplation, and he escapes, momentarily, his need to "thrash." For example: "I sidestep down to the opposite end of the cage and I look out the big sliding glass doors to the back yard. It's a pretty yard. There are great placid maple trees with good places to roost. There's a blue sky that plucks at the feathers on my chest. There are clouds. Other birds."
In accordance with Charles Baxter's observations, these brief moments are sandwiched between violent actions. Is this what Alex Guarco has in mind with "Going, Going"?
Robert Olen Butler keeps it going, at least for this reader. From the bird-husband's conversation with his wife, the one where he feels just for a minute that he and his wife are intimate, all the way to the end of the story, I am in the trance of stillness and believe, albeit briefly, that everything is possible.
I enjoyed reading "Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot," but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what to talk about. Perhaps this is to do with the stillness of the story - there is action and there are flashes of anger and there are even flashbacks, but much of the story feels caged in. The story is short, but it vibrates with potential energy, and so it never feels dull. Maybe that's the importance of the stillness - it's potential. Especially when those calm moments, like the narrator's pacing in his cage, or the lulls between violence in all of Baxter's examples, serve as a contrast to the action. Maybe it's what could be happening, or it's waiting for what will happen next, or it's a character deciding what to do or figuring something out. The potential energy keeps us in one place, but the moment isn't entirely still - it's vibrating with an energy that's waiting to break free, like the narrator spreading his wings.
ReplyDeleteFrom the perspective of a confused fiction student, Ann Patchett’s introduction to Butler was relieving. She says that “there is an enormous creative liberation in recognizing the story that is yours to tell. Once you stop trying to bend yourself into something you’re not, you can find all of the depth and variations that exist in what you actually know and understand” (314) First I thought of my own struggle with this—this “story” that I feel like I write over and over again, and then I thought about Kim, who a couple weeks back, said she was going through the same thing. To hear Patchett say something along the lines of “don’t hide from your story—own it” was a helpful breath.
ReplyDeleteAnd, after expecting Butler’s story to be about one about “strangers” and “outsiders,” I was able to enjoy “Jealous Husband” that much more (315). Having that lens, that expectation for the story, didn’t take away from my experience or make it seem predictable—if anything, Patchett was right in saying that it allowed for a more invested reading.
It allowed me to be aware of details like when the husband’s tail flares and he says, “I feel the stretch and rustle of me back there” (325). He doesn’t have control over the stretch and rustle—he’s a character who doesn’t even have power over his own body anymore. He’s an outsider inside of himself (and, I guess we can’t blame him, as this “body” he’s supposed to control is that of a parrot). We see his lack of control again when he says that “all my feathers went slick-flat to make me small enough not to be seen” (325). He is a passive observer to what’s happening with his own body.
As Catherine mentioned, we can see Butler use “silence” in his own way. One scene that really did it for me was on page 328, where he says “I eased away from that end of the cage, moved toward the scene of peace beyond the far wall…” The narrator here is literally repositioning himself so that he can find silence and peace. This calm, juxtaposed with the tension and “action” of the “Hello, cracker” scene that preceded it, definitely packs a punch. I can almost picture Baxter pointing these two scenes out and noting that the silence here “is an intensifier” and that it “strengthens whatever stands on either side of it” (176).
This is already a beast of an entry, but I have to point out the line “I want to pluck some of my own feathers, the feathers from my chest, and give them to her. I love her more in that moment, seeing her terrible nakedness, than I ever have before” (328). My god, that’s beautiful, isn’t it? Seeing his wife naked, bare, (and in a sense, silent), is when he feels more love for her than ever before. Whew. And then, like a punch to the gut, Butler has “the cracker” come back into the room and the narrator realizes “This is, in fact, what she wants” (329). If we’re comparing this to writing, I guess that means that the narrator’s wife (in this case, a writer), is more attracted to the action—the cowboy boots, the laughter, and the sex—than the silent repose that comes with her standing alone and bare. Maybe this is Butler’s defense of what Baxter would call the “periphery moments?” That sometimes, (most times), the silence between actions is far more important than the actions themselves.
Also, was anyone able to find the website to Butler's real-time writing process that Patchett mentioned? All I could get to was one of those "The page you requested could not be found" messages.
It seems as of late, I've lost my filter, if I ever had one. So, here's warning, I will almost definitely be departing into rant and tangent territory. There are too many things to be figured out and I will use any forum necessary (be it lit club minutes, text messages, drunken declarations, blog comments, or otherwise) to begin to sort it out. I find with Baxter essays I'm either bored by them or fascinated or both. But usually my fascination is spurred by something I see relating to my poetry, maybe it's just because I have more poetry under my belt (I originally typed "pelt" here and if this were a poem, I would have kept it) than fiction. Anyway, while reading Catherine's comments above and Baxter's essay, to my right, spread open, upside down, on top of folders (both of which are orange), I kept thinking "this is my poetry, this is what I'm doing." And this has happened before with Baxter, that repetition essay comes to mind because how does a collection of poetry hold together without repetition? And this is a trait I've carried over to my fiction, if you haven't noticed, the things I think and write haunt over and over taking different forms. But back to stillness. Dear God. Is that not how I feel every day, always, forever. The little releases, the craving for a thrash, and then silence and get me out, pinned-downness. I enjoyed "Jealous Husband Returns" quite a bit. The part I actually didn't love so much was when he told us what he wanted to be saying. I wanted to input my own words there, when he says "bad bird," when he says "pretty." Yeah, sure. I'd probably never infer the right thoughts, the right words, I'd probably sit here and say "yeah, that was alright, but I felt like it was missing something." But I don't know. "I don't know." As Catherine has written at the end of my critique letter and said in class. And I don't know either. Do any of us? Okay. Let's get back to the subject. Stillness. Let me tell you about my poems: I try to freeze an image and in that image is a humming, buzzing, infestation, a crawling of the skin. I hope figuratively, but literally, it's on the page. A moment, a foal carcass, a paring knife, a muffled chirping in the distance. I hope I can freeze everyone and infect them, get under their skin, in the most literal sense, a chigger, a silverfish inside an eggshell skull. I want the stillness to drive you mad. I don't understand how anyone can not feel this way. Like a parrot in a cage. How can you not thunk your body against the windowpane over and over? To not makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteIn conclusion, maybe it's just me, right now, but stillness in fiction is necessary. It drives me to crave the release in action. That moment on the phone, where you hear the humming and clicking and breathing and who talks next, I don't know.
PS I love it too too much when that spam filter read-these-random-letters-and-type-them box says "please prove you're not a robot." How absurd. How short story material. I cannot.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, when the jealous husband comes back again, what he will be this time. Or if he will come back again. I was stuck on thoughts of reincarnation, on the idea that this man was making up for what he had done in his human life now that he was a parrot. I don't know if he learns his lesson. It seems that rather than snoop around in his wife's business, perpetuating his neurosis, but as a parrot he is only escaping. And while he owns up to his inability to use language, he seems unable to understand why he cannot use it.
ReplyDeleteThis is where Baxer's idea of stillness seems the most real to me. It is in the keeping your self from saying something as well as the inability to say something that fills the air with this prickling that races like electric eels over your skin. I don't know if it's the want for something or the expectation of something to happen in a story that shakes it's way up your spine and radiates in across your chest instead of out, instead of releasing down your arms. But when these moments happen in life, I think for me it's about the millions of possibilities of things that could happen that we know never will. Like Kim's stories with their multiple endings or different scenarios. Only stuck in my head or your head.
It's all that built up energy of thing that could happen, the best and the worst and the plain and extraordinary things. So many things. I think this is why I turned to such strange fiction as of late, making worlds were people light up from the inside. I'm afraid of this stillness. I'm scared of leaving things in the open to hang heavy in the readers' minds. In my mind for that matter. I need, as Baxter says, the action of the event to take the edge off. But the edge off that silence, that stillness were so much happens. I can't leave a word left unsaid in my writing or in my life. More than ever I’m sure that I don't have the words, much like this husband, to ever properly get my point across. Until I can get over this fear of these moments of stillness, I will never have them. My double dialogue is an attempt to avoid that heaviness. The wife in my story is very much a reflection of me.
It's definitely easier to have the stillness in stories. In stories the stillness can have an apparent ending. Things have to move. The bullfrogs occasionally croaked in Baxter's example from Huckleberry Finn's observations. But the effect it has on the story doesn't end. That silence slowly fills up the page with the mounting tension and eventually someone is going to through themselves at a glass door to keep from going mad.
I read this story a few years ago when I was in high school, so I knew the basic premise (which is also conveniently outlined in the title). But, of course, I picked up on many more details this time, particularly my own feelings while reading it. I felt extremely claustrophobic. I have issues with being trapped somewhere I can’t escape from (a locked room, the middle of a crowd, those dreams where I’m trying to scream but my vocal chords don’t work), and this story stoked that tendency in me. The jealous husband is stuck inside the body of a parrot, unable to communicate his true feelings and having to settle for words like “Hello,” “Pretty bird,” and “Cracker.” He is still a jealous being, but now when he sees his wife with another man, all he can do is puff up his feathers and try to look intimidating. He realizes: “I can never say what is in my heart to her. Never.” In the first paragraph, he wonders if all the other parrots in the pet store are in the same situation, “if somebody is trapped in each of them, paying some kind of price for living their life in a certain way” (325). The fact that he still has (most of) his human memory makes his new and restrictive life as a parrot more cruel, because he still remembers what life was like before his reincarnation. All of these restrictions made me anxious as I read, and I can’t blame him for wanting to fly out the window and escape.
ReplyDeleteAs for Baxter’s ideas on stillness, I like the discussion on “information sickness” on page 178. For my modern publishing class, I just read an article about how we as a culture want our information fast, now, and are unknowingly reprograming our brains to skim instead of read and interpret a text. Baxter says that “we are being bombarded by information at a rate unknown to previous eras” and that this creates a problem for fiction writers because it “block[s] the experience of being transported by the storyteller” (178). Periods of stillness are necessary to slow down that flow of information.
This is my first time reading “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot,” but it’s been on my radar for probably over two years. I first heard of it when Dana and others read it in a fiction class during my sophomore year. Someone told me the title, and I thought, “That sounds like something I might like to read,” and then I never read it, until now. I feel like I don’t have a wealth of insight to bring to the table this time, so I won’t hesitate to share my thoughts on the title of the story. I really like the fact that the title is not “A Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of a Parrot,” but instead “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot.” You don’t generally hear that kind of diction (particularly “in Form of”) unless someone whose first language is Russian speaks to you and they leave out all the articles, or, more likely, you’re looking at a newspaper headline. I think that subtle nuance of the title adds to the playfulness of the story. While I’m talking about first impressions, I’ll say that, although I heard of this story before, I never knew that it was written in the first person, from the perspective of the husband-turned-parrot. The point of view was a surprise for me, as I expected either a third-person omniscient narrator or the perspective of the wife. I appreciate the voice in this story because, thanks to his choice of narrator, Butler manages to make his protagonist “half himself and half the bird,” in the words of Ann Patchett in her introduction.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that surprised me about this story is the protagonist’s level of self-awareness. Obviously he is aware of his current status as a parrot, the strangeness of that condition, the fact that he was once human, what his human life was like—he knows loads about himself and nothing about, say, windows. More important, in my mind, is the fact that he knows he is the jealous husband. When I imagine a character simply based on the words “jealous husband,” I think of someone who is arrogant, controlling, obnoxious, over-protective, and most of all too consumed with his jealousy to know that he’s doing anything wrong. I expected a jealous husband who would be unlikable and unaware that he has a problem. On the contrary, this bird-person is totally self-aware where his jealousy is concerned. He says plainly, on page 327, “I was jealous in life. I admit it. I would admit it to her.” These lines provide evidence only for the fact that he acknowledges his jealousy now that his human life is over and he’s a bird. However, we can also find evidence to support the notion that he was also self-aware while he was alive: “I was working on saying nothing, even if it meant locking myself up. My goal was to hold my tongue about half the time.” And, now that I think about it, perhaps I can tie this in with Baxter’s subjects of stillness and silence. Butler, I bet, is smart enough to know that his protagonist must be aware of his own jealousy, or else he would never subdue himself. Without self-awareness, the jealous husband would always be raging violently, and the reader would never get a moment’s peace. In this story, self-awareness begets stillness.
“Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot” by Robert Olen Butler is definitely one of my favorite stories I’ve read this semester. Probably the main reason is I just love reading about people turning into animals or what it is like for a human to be trapped in animals’ bodies. It really fascinates me and I’ve tried to write it myself but it never came out the way I wanted. This story by Robert Olen Butler was very instructional to me at least on how to still have a human speak from an animal’s body. The little details that signified a transition from human to complete animal and sort of in a reverse were very interesting because of how Butler describes it. For instance the part where the narrator talks about the words he learned in the pet shop, he doesn’t complain about being able to talk in the beginning as it feels like to me that he is used to being a bird. It isn’t until the ending when we get to see the narrator really desire to be human again, which wasn’t what I expected. Yet it made it very believable and I feel like this idea is what is missing in my own writing in that Butler’s narrator could still maintain a human connection with the reader even if he was a bird. I was going to write a story based on this piece but I feel like I’m not ready yet to tackle this kind of subject. Writing about a human inside an animal I think is very hard to accomplish which Butler does beautiful and I’m very curious to see what his other stories are like.
ReplyDeleteAs for Baxter’s chapter on stillness, I think it is interesting how even people in the movie industry talk about the importance of stillness. If I get this idea of stillness correct. I was watching the Avenger’s world premiere live on the internet and one of the things they talked about was how the most intense and even best scenes were the ones that didn’t involve any action. These scenes just involved dialogue between two different characters and really evoked a sense of emotion from the viewer. I totally understood more of what the actors were saying because I had just read Baxter before. I think stillness is a very important part of fiction in that it reveals many characteristics of the characters and is often the most emotional part of the story.
Of course I might be getting this wrong but I think if there isn’t any action or violence then the scene can become very intimate and still. I think this is why Americans especially prefer the action movies and novels because they don’t want to be reading something that doesn’t propel the story at all. In a way I think it is true and that I agree with Baxter in that Americans need the action to feel satisfied as I myself prefer to watch action movies. But these action movies I feel like don’t go in depth about the character because there isn’t a whole lot of stillness in between all of the action. I think the stillness in movies and in books is necessary for character development. It keeps a good balance between the action and the scenes that don’t have any action. In the Avenger’s premiere, a couple of actors said that their character comes out the most when they don’t have any action. I will probably keep using this example because it really made me realize that there is a connection from Baxter’s essays to not just writing fiction but to movies as well which I guess is a form of writing. It provided a great example that helped me see Baxter’s point more clearly which couldn’t have come at better time.
I’ve never been a bad person, but I’m certainly no saint. If reincarnation is real, then I must have done something right in a previous life. Maybe I was a dog, loyal to my master, maybe I was one of those service dogs, building up good karma. I might be good enough to proceed to nirvana, but who can say?
ReplyDeleteI volunteer, well, sometimes. I could do it more often. What if I’m not good enough and I’m reincarnated as a cat or a rabbit, or some other rodent. Will I even know I need to be good to come back higher on the food chain? I might not even be sophisticated enough to determine the good and bad.
If I shape up and live a selfless life, I’ll make it to nirvana, but what exactly is that? What would I strive for then? If there’s no room for improvement, then what’s the point to living? There would be no drive, just a simple peace of mine, perhaps a bit too much peace.
I want to continue living, interacting with others. If I became a criminal I would most definitely come back as a rodent, an insect even, if my crimes were really bad. I could start the process over and live forever, constantly coming back as new life forms. It seems I have discovered the truth to immortality.
I don’t want to kill anyone, but I suppose I could rob a bank or something, that’ll score me at least a possum. If I robbed several banks, I could even be a squirrel. No point in doin’ too much crazy stuff. Now that I think about it, insects are kinda useless.
I really enjoyed "Jealous husband returns in form of parrot" For some reason it created an emotional response in me, and I can't seem to figure out what caused it. It probably was Butler's use of stillness. Nothing really happened in this story, it was mostly the reader listening to the thoughts of the parrot. That could have been it. Everything felt so still and motionless. And that is what the Parrot is experiencing in his life right now. He no longer does anything except sit in his cage and think which is all the reader gets to do. Since the beginning of the story I was hopeing that something amazing and interesting would happen. He could have turned back into a human, his wife could have realized it was him. The fact that he even ended up back in his old house suggested that something should happen. But nothing great happened to him, and I am glad it didn't, because that seemed to reflect real life better. It was about a person who had to cope with the imprisoning situation that he was in. I felt imprisoned as a reader, because everything was moving so slowly, and he wasen't getting anywhere. I felt like imprisoned by the limited mobility that the parrot had. Even at the end when it feels like he is getting somewhere, he really isnt, and it is for lack of a better word, sad. So I think that this use of a still story definately had a good effect. And that is one of the big things I felt that made it so strong of a story.
ReplyDeleteI felt my mind wandering quite a bit as I read this story. I kept thinking about the inability to communicate, of being aware of a situation that no one else is, of being powerless. I’ve wondered this about my own dogs multiple times. I talk to them, so it seems only fitting that they should have their own ways of communicating with me.
ReplyDeleteAs morbid as this may come off, I was thinking a lot about coma patients. Are they still mindfully present while they lie immobile in a hospital bed? While their family and friends are crying over their still bodies, talking to them, are they silently trying to will their bodies to cooperate? Twitch a hand, open an eye, squeak out a single word, just to let someone know that you’re still there.
This was a very interesting concept to me, this husband-parrot hybrid. I couldn’t help but question if this was a life sentence, a sort of punishment for his jealousy and outrageous behavior during his human-man-husband years. Or was this a mistake of some sort and he was never supposed to remember his old life at all, as reincarnation is usually thought of? Or when we die does everyone remember all of their past lives or at least the most current one? Or is the bird just crazy and imagining that he was once the husband of his lovely female owner?
This is probably all too much speculation for a piece where the real meat of the story doesn’t even lie with the transition from manhood to parrothood. I know the audience is just supposed to accept this premise and go with it.
My favorite section of the story was when the husband-parrot saw his wife naked for the first time since becoming a bird. I loved how his perception of her had changed and his description of wanting to pluck off his own feathers just to cover her because she somehow seemed wrong, even though he knew that he remembered her being beautiful and desirable.
I also enjoyed the part where the husband-parrot put together the phrase “hello, cracker” just because it seemed so clever and petty and overall very amusing. That made me think about how if I was trapped in this type of position, how it would be the small victories that kept me going.
I've read this story before, but I actually really like this story and I think it holds up. It addresses an example of something as other-worldly as the reincarnation of this woman’s husband a s a bird (as the title suggests) as if it were something very normal and everyday. I think I agree with Alexis that it has a sense of stillness to it, or rather simplicity. And we as a culture are not extremely fond of that these days. The attention span of the average American is severely shorter today, especially due to ADD in all its forms.
ReplyDeleteIn theatre, actors must always ask themselves, “Why is today different from every other day?” This rings true for fiction. What is the point of writing about something commonplace? What grabs us is that element of something different, something out of the ordinary. And although there are no events in this story that are earthshattering (although the “cracker” thing is pretty funny) the entire concept of it is what gives it that significance. I know when I’m writing with a story, I always try to come up with some event or situation that raises the stakes, which is why I have Deacons trip and fall in front of entire rooms of people and throw teenage boys out of trees to their death.
Speaking of which, that reminds me, I while I was writing my Oak story something kept nagging at me in the back of my mind and I couldn’t put my finger on it, and I now realize it was the fact that the tree wanted to become human for the sake of the boy, but my memory of this story made me want to portray it the other way around so that the tree would instead of wishing for humanity, wish for the kid to be tough and strong like a tree. Similar to the bird wanting to make his wife more bird-like that it would makes more sense for the narrator to want to continue to stay in their comfort zone and bring someone they care about into that state instead of sacrificing everything they’ve grown accustomed to. And in this story, the parrot does express how he would do things differently if he were still human, if he could go back in time to when he was still married. But the fact that in that part he doesn’t blatantly say I wish she were more parrot-like but smuggles it in in a sub-textual manor is something I really admire and I wish I was better at.
Ok, so I decided to do the homework last night when I was stuck on part of the story I'll be sending out for workshop today. I decided to use that story's character/sort of plot, and do one of those exercises where you mimic the sentence/structure and style. What I came up with isn't great, but it did loosen some stuff up in my head and a very, very revised version does appear in the story, so it was frankly exactly what I needed. So starting at the paragraph that begins "And since I've had success in the last few minutes with words, when she comes back I am moved to speak." for that paragraph and the next.
ReplyDeleteAnd since I’ve had this dead-weight for the last six hours in my chest, when my cat greets me at the door I lift her and hold her to my chest. “Hello kitty,” I say, meaning, You are too small to replace this weight against my heart. “Hello kitty,” I say again. You aren’t enough, I still miss him.
And she begins to purr and the vibrations from her tiny body do something to ease the pain I now realize is longing. “My baby,” I say, and I am reminded why cat ladies exist as she rubs her soft head against the underside of my chin. “Baby.” I want to be holding him in my arms right now. “You’re a good girl,” I say. You’re a good girl, but I’m not, and I’m sorry. “Good girl.” Your love is at least making me feel a little bit better. “Good kitty,” I say. How can I feel whole if he is not here to fill the hole he left, and nobody else is big enough?
Okay so trite, don't go into my story thinking about this, if you read it. I thought the actual story "Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot" was really lovely. Lovely and sad and poignant, which is often a dooming word but I like it, because when the parrot is half trapped in his new life and half longing to hold onto his old life and her, i really felt it.
'Jealous Husband in Form of Parrot' was definitely an interesting read into not only the concept of reincarnation but the concept of 'what do your love ones once you are gone?'
ReplyDeleteSidenote (and now, I'm just going all over the place.) When I read the title, I automatically put in missing words so I read the title as 'Jealous Husband in the Form of a Parrot' which I didn't realize I was doing until I read Will's blog entry
But besides that I also wonder what they thought when they found his body outside of his wife's …. secret love 's(?) house. That must have raised a lot of eyebrows
The feeling of this man being returned to his wife and yet not being able to communicate with her is so sad. He can't express himself, no matter how much he may think at her, he does not have psychic powers and cannot mystically speak to her besides parroting words back at her. (Though there were points when I wanted to happen, honestly.) But in this story there is no magical solution – in the end, the parrot-husband just wants to be free in a way but he is trapped – perhaps but his jealousy because he hasn't quite let go yet but by the end, he seems almost ready to let go.
I’m posting months later! Annnyway. I’ve read this story a few times and it makes me feel like a few other classmates: claustrophobic. As Will points out, the husband is keenly aware of his situation. He once was human, has died, and returned as a bird in a cage. Despite all his rage. This, to me, is horrifying. The idea of being locked in a cage is bad enough, which is why I hope to avoid any long stretches in Sing-Sing, but it’s the inability to speak which is truly haunting. The husband has so much to say, we the reader know, but as no ability to express it. It’s like the idea that when someone is in a coma, they can hear and think but just can’t move or speak. I’m fairly certain that’s been scientifically disproven but the thought still scares the bejesus out of me. As has been mentioned, we don’t know how accurate the husband’s view of the world is. We talked about silence and stillness, a quality the husband had as a man but seemingly wishes he could reverse as a bird. I’ve never been strong at writing stillness. I don’t have gas stations exploding or anything (although that does sound exciting) but I do like dialogue and action. The ability to convey a lot of emotion by setting mood and underwriting to a degree is a talent I wish I had and want to try to develop. Like jazz, sometimes the beauty is in the notes that aren’t played. I have to figure out what is necessary to a story and what is writing for the sake of writing. Butler knows how to do this. Jerk.
ReplyDelete