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| Photo by Zane Williams |
"Good God," cries the Mother. Everything inside her suddenly begins to cower and shrink, a thinning of bones. Perhaps this is a soldier's readiness, but it has the whiff of death and defeat. It feels like a heart attack, a failure of will and courage, a power failure: a failure of everything. Her face, when she glimpses it in a mirror, is cold and bloated with shock, her eyes scarlet and shrunk. She has already started to wear sunglasses indoors, like a celebrity widow. From where will her own strength come? From some philosophy? From some frigid little philosophy? She is neither stalwart nor realistic and has trouble with basic concepts, such as the one that says events move in one direction only and do not jump up, turn around, and take themselves back.
Peekaboo.
I think that this story at its core is a characterization of the failure of human beings. As mentioned in the story the character (mother) is a writer. Yet, as you read further there are other aspects of her that are mentioned such as a family and responsibilities of that nature. Yet, in all these aspects somehow she has not accomplished what she set out to do. Her writings are not that successful and her family life is a mere sham of a real family.So I really connected with this story through the idea of failure in human nature and maybe trying to rise above that act.
ReplyDeleteThe mother in this story is a published writer, so she's used to being in control of her characters' thoughts and actions. Ultimately she controls her characters' lives. So I think that probably only makes it more difficult for her to deal with her baby having to go through surgery and being in the hospital. She has to put her trust in other people for her own child's wellbeing.
ReplyDeleteThis story was a bit difficult for me to decipher, so I'm not sure if I got the message it was trying to convey. I guess I would say that the mother feels like a failure for her inability to directly help her baby, instead of entrusting his life to other people who may or may not be incompetent.
While there is plenty of humor in both of these stories, I really laughed when the doctor asked for the Mother's autograph. It was so unexpected, especially for the Mother, and we could see she really didn't know how to respond initially. I enjoy Moore's quirky descriptions of the Mother but also the other characters. I like that fact that the Baby has personality and both the Mother and the Husband are so off-the-wall.
ReplyDeleteI really like all of the Mother's thoughts as, like I said, they are really quirky. This works well as it makes this story, which has a rather morbid topic, become very funny. One of my favorite lines is in regards to the medical student and it reads, “He shakes everyone's hands, then strokes his chin, a gesture no doubt gleaned from some piece of dinner theater his parents took him to once. As if there were an actual beard on that chin!” This line reflected how I felt about the story as a whole, along with the “Becoming a Writer” story. Moore takes realistic qualities of a person, in this case a mother who is very frantic about everything happening to her baby, and makes it over the top.
I had a little trouble understanding the story at points because the Mother’s thoughts are so interesting. But I think the way that Moore uses such interesting thoughts characterizes the Mother as a writer herself. The way she acts and thinks in the hospital shows her vulnerability and concern for her child. The descriptions that Moore uses to characterize the mother physically are also interesting. One that stands out to me is on pg. 443, “The Mother does not feel large and cheerful. In her mind, she is scathing, acid-tongued, wraith-skin, and chain-smoking out on a fire escape somewhere.” This description gives me a picture of a woman whose outward appearance is shifting with her mental state. She’s in the hospital with her sick child, and she seems to feel very sorry for herself and she’s now unable to write.
ReplyDeleteThe second story, “How to Become a Writer,” includes a lot of humor. I loved how each paragraph just added on top of the last with all of the different scenarios. I really liked how each section showed off the narrator’s quirkiness.
In "People like That" Moore does a really good job with metaphors and elaborating the mothers thoughts. Although at some points I found the mothers thoughts hard to understand and confusing, like when she is talking about the narrator, I still enjoyed it. I think Moore really captures the strong emotion of the mother in this story. I myself being young and not a mother don't fully understand what it would feel like to be told my child has cancer. However, while reading this story I felt like I was so inside the mothers head that I could understand what she was going through. "In her mind, the Mother takes this away from his body and attaches it to someone else." I also think we learn a lot about the mothers emotions, and her smart remarks. "We've got a Dr. Kiss me Kate, here."
ReplyDeleteIn " How to Become a Writer," I found myself enjoying the somewhat comical and monotoned voice of the narrator. It was like she was reading off a list of unfortunate events that were what she went through/ what it seemed most writers had to go through. However, you didn't feel bad for the narrator is was showing a journey, and it was an interesting one that was very life like and relatable.
In "People like that..." I really enjoyed how Moore allowed us to get a sense of her view point character mainly through her thoughts. We aren't sure if the mother is tall or large or small or whatever. However because we get such a sense of her character through her inner thoughts and her actions we are still able to get a good sense of her character.
ReplyDeleteAs a few other people mentioned, I wasn't really sure what the story was supposed to be about. I understood the plot very well, but I wasn't sure about what the larger meaning of that was, or if there was even supposed to be a larger meaning too it.
Lorrie Moore is one of my favorite fiction writers and I was surprised and happy that I had never read “People Like That” before today. The mother is a very interesting character, being a published writer. One of the main moments I noticed this was when she first speaks to the radiologist on the second page of the story (435) and the radiologist says regarding organs, “You don’t know exactly what it is until it’s in the bucket.” The mother simply repeats him and then the radiologist adds, “That’s doctor talk.” The way this scene pans out, the Mother is very much judging the intelligence of the Radiologist based on his word choice. I notice her doing this a lot throughout the story, such as in her conversation with the Oncologist at the end where he refuses to give her an definitive answers.
ReplyDelete“How to Become a Writer” is a great story. I love the “how to” second person style of this story in that it puts you in the eyes of the reader. As a class of (mostly) writers, we read this and think, “Wait do I really want to be a writer if this is how it’s going to be?” We watch the narrator or “you” take a more dangerous path in order to improve her writing. The more risky the situation, the better it is for her writing and, as writers, we feel uneasy because we’re not sure if we want to be in this position.
The ending of “People Like That” surprised me because I thought that the mother would choose for her baby to have chemo. I found myself siding with the husband’s point of view… “Shouldn’t we stomp on it, beat it, smash it to death with the chemo?” The idea I gained from the story was that the mother didn’t want to live through that experience again, and just wanted to escape from the hospital and go back to normal life. I think her desire to forget about the hospital shows how difficult it must have been for her to write about it. I really enjoyed the way that Moore showed how frightened the mother felt in the scene where the baby is given the anesthesia. Her use of details and the actions of the anesthesiologist, the baby, and the surgical nurses helped me imagine how intense the situation was for the mother.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I liked most about “How to Become a Writer” was how a story was told through a how-to essay. I liked how Moore showed the personality of the narrator in lines like “Plots are for dead people, pore face.”
Lorrie Moore’s style is so fascinating/strange to me! The narrative of “People Like That” did catch me up at times, as others have said, and I had a little harder time getting swept up in the flow of the story as I did for previous stories we’ve read. I think it might be the way of the slightly crazed voice of The Mother jumping here and there and maybe just the white-hot mess of the hospital that left me feeling a little lost in parts of the story. Also the dialogue between her and The Husband was funny and weird and hard to connect with at times but yet there were definitely lines that resonated with me like “ ‘when they start referring to it as ‘an art’, I get extremely nervous.’ ‘Yeah. If we wanted art, Doc, we’d go to an art museum.’” I think this dialogue is a good example of the way this couple deals with the trauma of the situation. I don’t know quite how to describe it but it’s a sort of dark humor and sarcastic, dramatic tone the parents take with each other that works for characterization.
ReplyDeleteIn “How to Become a Writer” the second person narrative worked really well for me. The humor too, worked towards the characterization of the narrator and the wry tone of lines like “You have broken up with your boyfriend. You now go out with men who, instead of whispering ‘I love you’, shout: ‘Do it to me, baby.’ This is good for your writing.” The way Moore portrays her characters is fascinating in this way.
I don't know about anyone else, but I seriously loved this style of writing. I guess the fact that it was raw really helped me to relate to it. My absolute favorite simile is in the first paragraph, referring to the blood clot as " startling against the white diaper, like a tiny mouse heart packed in snow." Every sentence that she wrote gave me such an in depth view of what was going on, even though I have personally never been through anything like this. Also, she didn't hold back from describing any situation, especially the ending. Being inside the mother's head was fantastic because it showed all of her ups and downs, like when she believes that the ultrasound is showing the tumor in her kidney rather than her son's, or in the end when even though all of those people in the hospital helped her through, she said "I never want to see any of these people again."
ReplyDeleteI thought that "How to Become a Writer" had sort of a dark turn of what becoming a writer entails. I definitely thought that both stories were very dark, but this story was, at least to me, more showing of the darkness. It revealed the turn of a person's mind, even though they know it might not be the best. The mother in this story referred to the writer's group of friends and "the bad crowd" and in the end, it was as if the narrator was giving up everything to become a writer, as if consuming the narrator. "Quit classes. Quit jobs. Cash in old savings bonds. Now you have time like warts on your hands." Honestly, I don't even know what that means, but it gives me a neverending feeling, like the time is infinite and I wouldn't even know what to do with myself if I had that much time. Once again, Moore uses these phrases to paint such vivid pictures, and I thoroughly enjoy it.
I too like how the Mother’s thoughts dominate Moore’s first story. Particularly, the humor in her thoughts made me want to keep reading and not feel like this was just another extremely depressing story. On page 437 when she thinks that she is being punished because of the Baby’s illness she thinks, “She had, moreover, on three occasions used the formula bottles as flower vases” and how she once said “’Healthy? I just want the kid to be rich…’ Another joke!”
ReplyDeleteI think Moore plays on the idea of “generalizing” her characters in these two stories in the sense that she does not give them names even though she provides specific details about them. By doing so, the Mother could be any mother that we imagine and we are forced to focus on what is happening in the story instead. We hear her thoughts, understanding her feeling of guilt, but to me she seems to be part of the bigger picture. In How to Become a Writer, each one of us can put ourselves in place of the character being addressed. The writer, like the Mother, is faced with a challenge: how to “become” a successful author when you continuously struggle with plot!
Both of Moore's stories grabbed me from the start. The one with the exceptionally long title was depressing with a kind of darkly humorous undercurrent. The mother is a great character, and her thoughts echo those we all have on occasion. The only difference is that she gets all these paranoid, neurotic ideas in her head all at once. Another thing I appreciated about this story was how quickly it got into the meat of it. The story barely has a chance to set you in the world before there's blood in the baby's diaper and we're off.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the how to be a writer story. Every since I switched my major to creative writing, people have had a different reaction when I tell them what I'm doing with my life. When I was a new media design major, the response was always positive, curious, and (if we were related) proud. Now the response is kind of like "Oh... Have you thought about business? Maybe technical writing is something you'd enjoy?" So I love Moore's biting humor here. This way of becoming a writer is the way everyone thinks about writers. The whole piece is funny in a dark way. A different kind of dark than the first story. And I get the sense that she's probably poking fun at many of the things she did on her path to becoming a writer.