Antonya Nelson was born in January 6 1961 in Witicha, Kansas. She received
her Bachelors Degree at the University of Kansas and then went on to get her Master Degree from the University of Arizona. Throughout her career, Antonya Nelson has won many awards for her writing including The National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship in 1989, The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000, The Rea Award for the Short Story in 2003, and The United States Artists Fellow in 2009. In her career she has published 6 short story collections: The Expendables, In the Land of Men: Stories, Family Terrorists, Female Trouble, Some Fun, and Nothing Right. Additionally, she has published 4 novels: Talking in Bed, Nobody's Girl: a Novel, Living to Tell: a Novel, and Bound.
Chapter Two is a story about a woman named Hil telling her own stories at AA meetings. She struggles with alcoholism, yet besides the fact that these stories are told at AA meetings, the reader can almost forget that she has this problem until she orders a beer toward the end. Hil and her neighbors tried to put up with Bergeron Love, the “neighborhood busybody”, although she went too far when she called child protection and accused a man in town of abusing his daughters. The town ostracized her, and her son had to be moved to a different school system when the angry father started stalking him. This is also a possible reason for why he is no longer present in his mother’s life. Hil also struggles with her son’s coming of age, and having him unfortunately see a naked Bergeron Love sitting in his favorite chair only worsens the challenges she faces as a mother with a teenage son.
Bergeron dies five days after the naked night, and Hil’s friend Jo calls it the Chapter two of the story. How did you feel about this being the title of the story?
Throughout Chapter Two, branching off from the story she tells about her neighbor, she includes some in-the-moment sections in which she is addressing the people at her AA meeting or is judging them. In an interview with the New Yorker, Nelson says that she chose this style of layerd storytelling because as she says: “I had the details of Bergeron Love as a character in mind, yet I had a difficult time figuring out how to capture the full range of her personality in a short-story format.” (you can read the full interview here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/03/antonya-nelson.html).
What did you think of these asides to her “audience” at the AA meetings? Would you have prefered a more traditional structure, or did you like the originality?
At the AA meetings, why do you think she told the stories of Bergeron instead of those of her own life? She tells us through her reactions after the meetings that they had been her way of creating this character of herself- is she her own storyteller, or do you think she tells her story through the stories of others?
Female trouble is the story of McBride
and his various interactions with the women in his life. While at first it
deals with mainly his ex-girlfriend and his lover it eventually comes to the
point where he’s dealing five different women in his life. Each women to him is
exciting in their own ways. The story begins to explore, through McBride’s
point of view, what he thinks is responsible for making women tick in general.
While at first he thinks he understands women, the more and more he sees the
differences in the women in his life the more he realizes how strange and
unique they really are to him. Nelson deals with some very heavy themes in this
piece that are handled in a way that doesn’t make them awkward and most would
think they might be. An example of this would be how Nelson deals with the
issue of sex. While it plays a major part in the story, it isn’t the main point
of it and simply serves to show how each of the woman are different in how they
act afterwards.
The Control Group: Nelson’s young protagonist, TV Mitchell, is in love with his elderly fourth grade teacher. While this seems like a simple coming-of-age story in the first paragraph, the second states “His [TV’s] mother had murdered her father, TV’s grandfather. TV’s tale did not differ substantially from the other gruesome stories heard over lunch from the boys’ corner of the playground, but his had the unbearable edge of truth.” (Nelson 784) This fast mood-whiplash, or as Charles Baxter calls it the “sandwich effect,” completely changes the tone of the story which could have easily been about a young boy’s innocent attraction into a gritty portrayal of a tragic childhood. TV, as well as Nelson, seems to shrug a lot of his past tragedy off since he never comes across pitiful and handles the murder as another story and like a naive child would.
Naked Ladies is a third person story told about a girl named Laura and her family who are at the Easter Frolic at the House’s house. The story is closely centered around this image of naked women. There are pictures on the walls, the Betty Boop necklace, the chocolates in the shape of naked women, and also the issues of Playboy magazine that Frank Jr. The story also revolves around the idea of different classes of people and certain expectations. Laura’s family arrives at the house dressed nicely and encounter the House family wearing sweatpants, sneakers, and whatnot. Laura finds this slightly annoying because where her family is not as wealthy, they at least tried to dress appropriately for the occasion, and the Houses couldn’t really be bothered even though they have this extravagant house. This idea is another theme that shows up throughout the story, which also ties back to the idea of the naked women pictures everywhere. We a painting done by Mr. Laughlin on the same wall surrounded by the “naked women”. This is another point where Nelson uses the very visually based aspect of this story to reveal the off-balance to the issue of class going on between the two families. Nelson writes, “The painting stood out among the women like a beggar” (796). Which becomes almost more ironic towards the end when we are led to believe that the naked women are in fact ink drawings of Mrs. Laughlin.
Naked Ladies is a third person story told about a girl named Laura and her family who are at the Easter Frolic at the House’s house. The story is closely centered around this image of naked women. There are pictures on the walls, the Betty Boop necklace, the chocolates in the shape of naked women, and also the issues of Playboy magazine that Frank Jr. The story also revolves around the idea of different classes of people and certain expectations. Laura’s family arrives at the house dressed nicely and encounter the House family wearing sweatpants, sneakers, and whatnot. Laura finds this slightly annoying because where her family is not as wealthy, they at least tried to dress appropriately for the occasion, and the Houses couldn’t really be bothered even though they have this extravagant house. This idea is another theme that shows up throughout the story, which also ties back to the idea of the naked women pictures everywhere. We a painting done by Mr. Laughlin on the same wall surrounded by the “naked women”. This is another point where Nelson uses the very visually based aspect of this story to reveal the off-balance to the issue of class going on between the two families. Nelson writes, “The painting stood out among the women like a beggar” (796). Which becomes almost more ironic towards the end when we are led to believe that the naked women are in fact ink drawings of Mrs. Laughlin.
I love the way Nelson chose to write “Chapter Two.” At first, I had a little trouble following the transitions, but I soon fell into them. I think they contribute to why this story is such a good example of one that focuses on one character, but ultimately is about the narrator, who in this case is Hil, though the story is in close-third person rather than first. Curiosity about Bergeron is what keeps the story moving for the reader, but just the way Hil tells the story says a lot about her. For example, she makes observations about how different people at A.A. meetings react to her story, showing us how much the audience means to her. I think part of why she chooses to tell the story of Bergeron rather than her own is because she isn’t put in the same kind of vulnerable position as she would be if she were telling her own story, but at the same time Bergeron’s story matters to her, which communicates something about her. She clearly feels a connection to Bergeron most strongly through the fact that they both have sons. Hil sees that Bergeron is alienated from her son, and fears the same thing for herself. But she also seems to have a powerful sympathy for Hil that she never expresses in words, but communicates in ways such as allowing her to come into her house naked and drunk in the first place, and also in hugging her at her front door. I love that even through third person, I get a strong sense of Hil’s “voice,” especially with the kind of matter-of-fact and occasionally theatrical way she looks at things.
ReplyDeleteAntonya Nelson develops the culture and description of the setting by making the dialogue quaint and very tuned in to the characters' personalities in "Chapter Two". One of the main characters, Hil, encounters her drunk neighbor, Bergeron Love. She supposedly used to be a woman of high Southern status, but Hil refers to her as a "Southern belle in decline, a dismal After picture"(174). Although she seems crazy at first since she arrived at Hil's door naked, Bergeron gradually shows elements of her surprisingly distinguished, witty, and smart personality. She blatantly says what she thinks, calling Hil's roommate Janine "big" and that she's glad Janine wasn't the one to be naked.
ReplyDeleteThe story takes a surprising turn when I saw that Boyd, Hil's boyfriend tells Bergeron that he loves her. At first I thought he was just trying to comfort her after she said that nobody loves her, but then it seems to be evident that Boyd and Bergeron had a romantic history together. Bergeron's family life has fallen apart, but she seems to get along well with Jeremy, Hil's son. This relationship dynamic is confusing and abnormal, just like Bergeron- the situation is very unassuming.
Last but not least, when Hil reveals that Bergeron has been dead since five days after she appeared naked on her doorstep, I was shocked. This plot twist was completely unexpected, and I found myself a little angry that she was dead. I had grown to like Bergeron as a character as I read more about her, and was really surprised at the abrupt revealing of her death. I thought that it made sense for Nelson to reveal her death near the end of the story, in order for the reader to connect with Bergeron's character as the story went along, instead of just writing her off right away.
I agree with Audrey about Hil’s voice coming through really distinctly and thought that that was fascinating with the point of view. In my own writing, I sometimes struggle with the third person point of view and creating a distinct voice through that. I also agree with Gaby that the story is really confusing and abnormal. I will admit that when I first started to read the story, it was a bit hard for me to get into. I think that because the situation is confusing, it is a little more difficult to get really into the story until Bergeron is introduced.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to see more of Hil, but I think that the fact that she feels more comfortable telling other people’s story is a huge indication of her character, but I felt like she was acting. Like Audrey says, we only really get one glimpse of her actually having a drink and it is pretty brief. But, Hil also says that they believe she has been sober for a year. I felt like she doesn’t divulge her own life because she is mostly going through the motions. If we did see more of her exclusively, I am not sure that I would have believed it because she gets so into her stories that I would think it was just another act. I think that the title is really appropriate because she is so into telling other people’s stories, especially Bergeron’s that it would make sense that she would continue the saga of it and that there is more to it that others don’t realize.
This semester I've learned to enjoy stories that have a quirky structure, and I've enjoyed that. With "Chapter Two", I felt like this was one of the things I liked best about the story.
ReplyDeleteI never felt like I connected with Hil the way I was supposed to. I finished the story, and felt like there was something about her that I was supposed to understand, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I felt like I understood Bergeron Love more than Hil, even though the story was told in third person close from Hil's perspective. I think part of why I didn't connect with Hil is that towards the end, it's revealed that she's been lying in the AA meetings. It threw me a little, and I felt like I had just been thrown a curveball. I know it's a short story, and one can't possibly explain why she's been lying in the space that she had left after that. I still wanted to know why. I felt like if this were a novel, I would've connected with Hil's character more. I felt like the curveball obliterated a majority of what I thought I understood about Hil.
I agree that Antonya Nelson alternated between scenes, and I think it made it both more interesting and confusing. I think it took me longer to read, because I had to back track at times to really understand when the character was speaker and to whom. Hil preferred to tell the story of Bergeron than her own at the AA meetings she attended. I think she was putting up a wall. She did not want to have to talk about herself and her failures. It seems like Hil has been going to these meetings for some time now, she has become comfortable talking with this group, but she still cannot see any of her shortcomings in front of them. I am curious to know how she sees her own problems. She quickly told Bergeron that she and her son, Jeremy, have a good relationship. He did not respond. The lack of vocal response may have disrupted Hil’s facade. She would hate to have a relationship like Bergeron and Alistair have. The narrator tells us she drags Jeremy along on her drunken rants just as Bergeron embarrasses Alistair.
ReplyDeleteHil likes to hide her problem behind other’s problems. She tells the AA meeting about Bergeron, and she tells Joe that there reasons why she lives with Janine, a woman with an addiction too. She said “It’s good to have somebody else’s bad habits around to put your own in perspective” (182). Nelson’s narrator tells us that Hil lied to AA. We learn that she said she has been sober for eleven months, but we see her drinking with Bergeron. Bergeron asks about Hil’s husband, and Hil becomes upset and angry at her. We do not learn very much about him, one more way that Hil has blocked out an issue in her life.
As I was reading I was trying to figure out the meaning of the title, Chapter Two, until finally Joe mentions it. I think it is very interesting. That night was not Bergeron’s typical behavior; she once had a better image of herself to other people. That night she was able to talk about deeper things, such as Alistair. Nelson has multiple stories through her complex characters. The second chapter goes deeper into the story than the first. The main character, Hill, reveals more to the audience as the story progresses, just like it would in a longer piece.
Going off the introductory blog post, to me the title Chapter Two draws on how Hil conceals her problems. She only ever tells the AA groups chapter one of this tale of Bergeron Love. Hil focuses on the beginnings, telling the tales that will get the group’s attention. However, like how she seems to avoid and cover up her drinking problem, she never reveals chapter two, or rather the meat of the problem. I see the title as playing into this idea of avoidance, Hil reflecting back on the stories about Bergeron, rather than her own. She does not share these stories of Bergeron to reveal herself to the AA group. She uses them as anecdotes to ease the crowd, showing how she does not take the meetings so seriously. Hil goes to multiple AA meetings, testing the crowds at each. I see her as trying to see who will believe her stories, who will hook onto them and forget about AA. Especially, because in the end we can see that Hil fabricates how long she has been sober. She can throw back a beer at a bar after a meeting, and there seems to be little consequence. I think Antonya Nelson gives us a glimpse of Hil’s problems through the way Hil presents herself at these AA meetings and at the bar afterwards. Hil does not so much reveal herself through the stories she tells, but rather she reveals herself through how she presents these stories. Hil is observant of the crowd, crafting the story to fit the group she shares it with. She observes the Blind man, using him as a gauge. Speaking of the blind man, Nelson says, “He had, Hil thought, become like a dog himself, unable to judge” (174). This line reveals how Hil goes to these meetings that are supposed to be nonjudgmental, however the way she presents herself, by deflecting the attention away from herself, I can see how the crowd could sense this wall she has put up. The blind man’s reactions, in a way, give her permission to continue the charade. In another part of the story, Nelson mentions how Hil cannot admit a lot about herself, but she can speak the truth with these stories. This brings back the idea of Hil’s avoidance, focusing on other people’s problems so she doesn’t have to admit her own.
ReplyDeleteOut of all the other authors we have read I think I enjoyed Antonya Nelson's the best. I found these stories were able to hold my attention. I thought she did a good job creating and maintaining tension in all of them.
ReplyDeleteI liked the way Chapter Two was written. As I started reading it my first thought was Hil is telling Bergeron's story just as the narrator did in Friend of my Youth and that got me thinking to who's story is it really? Who is the real focal point of the story? We have Hil, her roommate, Jeremy, Bergeron and her husband all with their own struggles, all with their own story. I liked the way the title was incorporated with the story, a lot of the times I find the titles don't always fit for me or I don't understand how the title and the piece are related but I liked how it made sense here and I liked how it was pointed out to me. I thought Chapter Two was an appropriate title because that's where this story is headed. After Bergeron dies, what happens next? Does life change for all the characters in the story? I would assume so, and I would assume for the better-Bergeron came across as a burden to everyone so Chapter Two seemed appropriate to describe life after Bergeron's passing.
One thing I never thought of was if Hil was actually telling her story by using other characters. This idea was brought to my attention after reading this blog post and I think this really changes the way the reader can read the story. I'm definitely interested in seeing what others have to say about this in class tomorrow. I think we can have a good discussion on whether or not Hil is telling her own story or not. And I would also have to agree with what has already been said here. I too would like to see more of Hil. i realized since Hil is telling a story that may not be her's, like the audience in the meetings, we as the reader don't really know her story either. And that got me wondering if Antonya did that on purpose? Because as the reader, we are the audience.
In the story, it's mentioned that one thing that helps with an addiction is to room or live with someone who also has an addiction. Hil proves to be an example of this via her overweight roommate. However, it almost seems that Bergerson might also have a subtler addiction; one to attention. It seems as though she is always going out of her way to be noticed by others, perhaps partly because most of her family had passed on and there was no one else around. Perhaps this addiction is the reason that Hil brings her up at her AA meetings; they help to put her own problems in perspective. She likely talks about them in order to make her own addictions seem smaller by comparison. Lord knows, she doesn't seem like the kind of person to follow through on a resolution, as evident by her continued drinking (albeit on a lower level than what I'm assuming what was more in the past.)
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty ironic that it isn't until after Bergerson passes away does she begin to receive the attention that she was craving. Hell, I'm sure she would have wanted to tag along with Hil to the meetings in order to garter it. She drinks plenty already, and even if she didn't she doesn't seem above pretending to in order to draw attention to her.
There is some questioning that perhaps, through the telling of Bergenson's stories, that Hil might reveal her own story. While I didn't get a sense of her story (by which I mean what she has gone through, like the divorse) I do get a sense of what she herself is like. From how she reacts to Bergenson's antics to how she considers the AA group, I don't really need to know too much about her back story. Given what she is like currently, I can take a guess as to why she and her husband divorced. In this sense, it's much more superior that simply explaining where she herself has been, but rather, by explaining who she is, the reader sees both her past and where she is going in the future.
I would disagree very slightly with the notion raised in the introduction to this post that Hil tells her own stories at the AA meetings. I agree more with Aubrey in the thought that the point is not that she is telling her own stories, but that she is purposefully telling the stories of others, allowing herself to exist as a slight outsider, both in the world and in her alcoholism. What complicates it is the way that she actively seeks to tell stories that are pleasurable or fascinating to the audience. She actively attempts to taste the reactions of her audience and tailor the stories to their personal whims. It’s part of the reason that she does not tell the meetings that Bergeron is dead, the detail that would perhaps show the greatest depth in her emotional state and the way that she exists in both the world and her alcoholism.
ReplyDeleteI will say straight out that I was not the biggest fan of Nelson. While I liked the larger picture of some of her larger stories, I felt as though she was an example of storytelling before writing. Many of the details were written well and interestingly, but in a way that didn’t feel as if they had a purpose all the time. I’m a little afraid that Munro has ruined Nelson slightly for me, because there is such a violent shift between reading a writer defined by the incredible depth and multitude in her stories where every detail becomes its own story and then moving so quickly to one who starts on a trail and stays there, attempting to make the experience pleasurable for the reader but without really digging in to every minute facet.
Part of what frustrated me was the distance I felt between the writer and her characters. I felt a little like Nelson was viewing these characters through a glass window where they were just as much an enigma to her as they were to the reader. It seems as if she is slowly attempting to discover them fully as she goes, and while I love and appreciate that concept, I think sometimes it needs to be edited out slightly. In this case, Bergeron seemed to me to be written as something as a spectacle, as were characters in many of the other stories, that made them seem artificial even as they existed in their “real” traits. On the one hand, I think Bergeron intends to be a spectacle, and that this sense would only be amplified by the fact that this story is being told mostly out of Hil’s eyes, who would see her that way. I think partly what frustrates me is the way that I didn’t feel like the self-awareness of the characters in Nelson’s stories were all the times real. Many of these characters do not have either a revelation or a constant self-awareness, but rather the constant potential for self-awareness, which made these moments feel like writing vehicles and nothing more. I wanted Hil to be more self aware or less. I wanted the girl in the House story to either see her world fully or else not. I just wanted them to feel real, and while I think there is a world in which these patterns of self-awareness exist, it’s not something that I feel really gives that illusion of reality.
I will classify this level of self-awareness another way — even I have stated that Hil shields her drinking problem by telling the stories of others. Yet I’m not really sure this idea of a drinking problem came to fruition. I saw her habits as much ones of flippancy and carelessness and quirk as I did a sign of serious issues. She doesn’t really go overboard with drinking, and I think that if this is where the story wants to go, it needs to use those subtle moments that aren’t being taken advantage of to develop that out. I love the character flaw of Hil that makes her seek out these positions and then laugh at the people that are secretly similar to her, but I think it needs to exist in a larger capacity on occasion where something complicates it that does not feel as simple, and I’m not sure Nelson went fully to that place for me.
I have to agree with Regan that I wasn't a big fan of Nelson, and that I preferred Munro. With "Chapter Two," I didn't feel like Hil ever really came into her own as a character. She has a few interesting traits - her attempts at being an interesting storyteller, her dodging around whatever her own issues might be and using others' issues to make herself feel better - but then she's never as interesting as Bergeron; it's hard to care about her in her own right because she never comes into her own (again, like Regan said, we never really see her struggle with alcoholism, whether her past struggle with it or even perhaps the nonexistence of it that exists now, and how she got to that). Not that I wanted every character to be "quirky," or anything (in fact, I've grown very tired of quirky, and the constant showboating of Bergeron's antics began to grate on me before long even in spite of the interest of individual antics), but that was really so much of the story, and the reader is kept at too great a distance from that.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I noticed earlier on in the story that was more interesting to me, though, was that it managed to deal with the three kinds of content warnings that one would see on, say, TV programs and movies: there's the sexual element, with Bergeron parading around her nudity and commenting on what Janine would have looked like naked; there's the frozen frame of a person who's been shot through the heart on TV (indeed, Bergeron recalls the arguments about sex vs. violence in saying that if we can watch people's hearts get shot out, what's the big deal about nudity?); and there's the blind man's one reaction to a story, a snap reaction to Hil's accidental "fuck"-bomb. I've thought for a little while as to how this could relate to the story, and I think maybe it ties in with the idea of spectacle that was created through Bergeron's actions and Hil's recounting of these actions to an audience, this need to grab attention and express oneself vividly, consciously or unconsciously. I think that's really the interest of the story, or the depth of it. I don't think that this aspect of the story feeds in well enough with the rest of it to make something truly interesting or memorable.
Nelson isn't my favorite of the authors we've covered to date, but there is something peculiar about her writing that I don't think I've encountered before. It's difficult for me to say what exactly it is, but I felt it the most strongly in "Chapter Two."
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is this uncomfortable tone the story takes that leaves me feeling unsure if I feel bad for Hil. I think as a reader I am supposed to -- here she is, an alcoholic without a husband who goes to AA meetings only for the attention of telling a funny story about Bergeron and to grab a drink at the nearby bar afterward, and she can't even own up to the fact that Bergeron, her lonely, crazy neighbor is dead. Maybe it is because of personal experience with alcoholism that makes this story feel less authentic to me than a Munro story or even a Moore story that utilizes a somewhat similar black humor approach, but even though Hil needs help, even though she is headed down the same road as Bergeron, I don't find myself feeling sympathetic for her. I chalk it up to the tone -- the flaunting nature of putting Bergeron on display even after she's dead -- that is given by Hil. I just didn't connect with this story on an emotional level.
The movement of the story was new for me too, and I found it to be both impressive but also easy to mix up certain details. For instance, I'm still a little confused about Jeremy's situation -- does he go to AA meetings too? Is he friends with Alistair; do the young people have some kind of sad understanding of their parents? I feel like they do, but the movement of the story, this layering technique, make it difficult for me to track this. Maybe I just need to re-read the story because I found Nelson's other stories easier to digest. However, I had a hard time connecting with any of her characters on an emotional level. Her style, although admirable for its craft, just isn't for me.
For the most part, I enjoyed reading Antonya Nelson but felt disconnected more so to Chapter Two than I did the other stories in 3 x33. I didn’t feel a strong sense of knowing the character of Hil in Chapter Two as I did McBride in Female Trouble. The tension in Female Trouble for me was always present, as in Control Group, but with Chapter Two, I found myself easily distracted and not rooted in the story. I think some of the distance may have been derived because of the structure of the story and also the fact that at the AA meetings, she told the story of Bergeron instead of her own.
ReplyDeleteI think that Hil uses Bergeron’s story to remain at a distance from the people in the AA meeting. It’s far safer to tell the story of someone else than to divulge your own life in front of people that are more or less strangers. I agree with Audrey, in saying that the story she told still matters to her which says something about her character regardless of the story not being her own. I think however that AA meetings, or other situations similar to Chapter Two, carry much weight to them, and give the writer a real chance to dig into the story of these characters and I didn’t get a complete sense of that. While reading it last, of the four stories, it reminded me of the hospital scene in Female Trouble, and wanted more of that sense in Chapter Two with the AA meetings. I think however, that the structure of the story threw me off a little bit, and it’d have to go back and re-read it to understand more of the concepts.
I think what I mostly enjoyed about these stories is that Antonya Nelson took these really gritty details of peoples live and shaped them in way that still made me enjoy the characters. There is a strong sense of sadness to her stories, because a lot of her characters have these somewhat hopeless lives. You end up trusting them in way however, which really drew me in to her writing.