My favorite story was "Philanthropy" by Suzanne Rivecca. It made me think about the world that Rivecca took the reader. I felt connected to the characters, in a way that I didn't feel with the others. I could see the emotions in the others, but I wasn't as emotionally invested in them as I was with "Philanthropy". I could feel what these characters were feeling, and even though many of the actions were on the negative side of life, it made me feel for the characters.
The characters were going through things that I've never gone through or seen anyone gone through, but Rivecca's descriptions gave me a window with which to see into a new kind of world for me. The moment that got to me emotionally was when Cora was talking about her cat dying of bone cancer. I could connect with this on a very personal level, and it gave me a place to start my emotionally investment in these characters when, aside from that, I've only read about the world they're inhabiting. Even though I've ever seen a place like this, I could imagine where Cora. DJ and Yvonne were clearly.
I also liked this story syntactically. There was a moment somewhere in the story where it's written the way a schizophrenic would think. I thought that was an interesting approach since Yvonne's daughter was one. I think that part stuck out in my mind because Yvonne's daughter is a major part of the story, and yet she never appears. To me she seemed almost as well developed as Cora and Yvonne are, and that I found interesting because she never appears, and I haven't seen this approach taken that often. I do think it was an interesting move on Rivecca's part though, and I think it worked well for the story.
Of the four stories we read for this class, my favorite (by far) was Suzanne Rivecca’s “Philanthropy.” I really like the way she writes, and she incorporates details expertly. Her figurative language is very on-point; one of my favorite examples is, “In those moments she seemed to have stepped into a transparent sleeve like the plastic sheaths on her novels, an invisible barrier that kept her from getting dirty.” The story itself appealed to me on several levels. I preferred this more urban setting to that of “Breatharians” and the subject matter pulled me in, especially because the writer seemed so familiar with it. I honestly felt like I was learning things, like the more gritty details behind philanthropy, and the more human and honest details of rehabilitation. The story felt particularly insightful when it described the relationship between Cora and her father; the details felt so much truer than in many other stories I’ve read or seen before this one. Even with all this insight, the story never seemed to be pushing an oppressive point or moral. The last conversation could easily have swayed in the direction of one woman or the other, showing how one was “right” and the other “wrong,” but instead it ended in a kind of warm, neutral space. I also just really cared about the characters, and the details made me feel the emotions in the story.
Out of all these stories I really enjoyed Bret Anthony Johnston's story, "Encounter with Animals". Despite it being short, I felt it was very well written. Not having much experience with short-shorts or with keeping stories down to a couple of pages, I admired the way Johnston was able to give us a sense of setting and characterization. I feel l got a good sense of Lambright who and Lisa is. I also felt like I got a good sense of who Robbie was. We didn't see much of the mother but she wasn't a very important character in the story. I thought we got a good description of Lisa on the first page with her tattoo and green hair and when things start to go missing we can assume it was Lisa. I thought she had the upper hand in this relationship and was sort of taking advantage of Robbie because he was younger and had less experience. On page 94 when Lisa says, "We were supposed to turn-" we get the impression that she's not in control anymore and that it could all be over for her. However by the end of the story we see she has the upper hand as she leaves the car and runs along the river bank. I thought she was a very clever girl and admired her quick thinking. The story leaves you wondering what happens next, what the father tells his son, what Lisa will tell Robbie, if she ever sees him again and so on. I also liked how well Lisa tied into the title "Encounters with Unexpected Animals" as shown as an animal herself. One could say she was "wild" like an animal with her seemingly free spirit and all. The last page of the story basically describes her as an animal the way she bounded up the creek as a "rare and dangerous animal". I hope to one day write a story as short as this and still be able to give the reader a good insight on the story.
My favorite story that we read for today was “Philanthropy”. The emotion of the piece was raw in the kind of way that you can’t look away from. The progression of Cora’s thoughts seemed natural in the way that they flowed at times that may not have been appropriate at the time but that we all have at times. I really admired how she used third person point of view in a way that made the reader feel the closeness as if in first person and showed the characters as they were, not what the author idealized them to be. I know in my own writing that I struggle with separating the two ideals and thought that it was really fascinating that she did it with the point of view. Actually, maybe that was a better way to separate those two different aspects. I feel like third person distances someone enough to look at the situation as a bird’s eye view rather than narrowly through one specific point like first person seems to lend itself to. The dialogue seemed incredibly believable and, I felt, kept the reader on the edge of their seat in the way that they seem to skirt around the issue of this woman’s daughter. Usually, I like to have a definitive answer as to what happened in a story, but for this one, I didn’t feel as jilted when we don’t find out whether Cora got the money or not. I think that the climax was that final catharsis of Cora explaining what it was really like to be one of these girls and seeing how, instead of completely lashing out at her, Yvonne tries to comfort her and Cora, briefly, allows her to do so.
It is hard for me to pick a story out of the four I would consider my favorite. I think I will go with Johnson's "Encounters with Animals" because the setting was very strong in the piece and it reminded me of Shippensburg where I grew up. I was able to smell the horrible smell and see the dark paths outside of the main road. I pictured the ugly side of Shippensburg while I was reading this. Another thing is that the characters reminded me of people I knew in high school or rumors I heard from other kids. The weird things that happened in this story are the sort of things that actually happened in my high school (the dad hitting on his son's girlfriend *koo-koo-ka-choo* are like the sort of odd rumors that would go around my high school). I guess I preferred this story because it reminded me of the place I grew-up and I don't think this story meant that as a complement or maybe I just have rather bad memories of growing up in Shippensburg. The characters aren't very well dived into, but I don't think it is totally necessary since what more do we really need to know then what is given to us? Other information might have seemed like filler in this simple yet unusual story.
I also liked "Philanthropy" the best out of all of these stories, and I think it's possibly the hardest-hitting story I've read for this class. I don't feel that Rivecca's language is on par with Alice Munro's, but it's still good, and she does a lot of other things very well, too, and does a lot of them her own way (to contrast: while I also felt that "Breatharians" was relatively strong for a story we've read here, with some very interesting details, it felt a lot more like a stereotypical workshop story, where the patterns felt too easy, the dysfunctions too commonplace, whereas Rivecca seems to simply let her story go where it needs to, supporting it strongly with images like the one Audrey cited where it would be most impactful). I think the thing that I like most about the story is that it explores a very dark topic and gives heart-rending details and moments (DJ's suffering, the description of Cora's cat, and Cora's own degrading experience in a facility, to say nothing of the final moment of the story, to say nothing of the "ocean underneath an ocean," or "two people whose primary identities were . . . someone else's mother and someone else's child," and the last line, I mean goddamn) without being bogged down by it, without using it cheaply, without giving only Yvonne or Cora the poignant lines in the last scene, like Audrey said, and without ever letting it oppress Cora so much that she can't keep herself moving, and assert herself through it, and struggle convincingly with her own recovery. I was just very impressed.
It's difficult to tell a really engaging story in a couple of pages. Yet Bret Anthony Johnston pulled it off with Encounters with Unexpected Animals. The reason this story works is how it turns Lisa's character on it's head in the climax. The reader is introduced to her quickly as a wild party girl with a checkered past; from her underage drinking to tattoos and green hair to God-knows what else. And with that characterization, we take her to be a sort of rebel without a cause. A girl that just says "whatever" to anything that comes her way. Well, unless it's a younger impressionable boy she can manipulate. Which the father clearly worries about. However, it turns out in the climax that Lisa isn't just capable of manipulating young boys but also older men as well. She finds a way to take a moment when the father should have control and completely turn the tables him. Using the time that they are alone in the car as a possible moment where he might have taken advantage of her and using it as a way to paint her as a victim was a brilliant move on her part. But even more so, it gives the reader an even deeper view into who Lisa is. I would say, from what I've read, that she is at least a bit psychotic, going to extreme lengths to ensure she has complete control of her boyfriend. (Something that could also be seen as the beginning of an abusive relationship.) In short, we start out thinking that she's just some punk, but she turns out to be something much more sinister than that. And the ending? I would fully believe that this is just one section or the beginning section of a fully-fledged story. So that ending would be believable. It almost begs a story to be written around it. Wonder if the author ever did that, or just couldn't follow this thing up.
My favorite was also “Philanthropy” by Suzanne Rivecca. Rivecca immediately draws her audience in by showing how Cora thinks and acts. I think her behavior was so natural, reading tons of an author’s work before meeting them and talking about it, joking about the parts she found interesting. Rivecca shows Cora to be an ordinary person and then reveals her complex past. She reveals information about the characters very naturally. As Cora thinks about Yvonne, the audience gets to learn. I think that Rivecca did a great job weaving Cora’s past into her present. We were able to see her relationship with her father and Yvonne’s daughter Angelica. Rivecca also has great honesty and insight into her characters. Cora tells the audience what she normally says to people, especially possible investors and then Rivecca shows Cora’s raw and natural behavior. Cora tells the audience that she misses the drugs the most. This surprised me because, Rivecca has painted this picture of the new Cora, the person who helps other young women survive the difficult times, I did not think that she would miss the drugs that much. Cora shows the audience what her life could have been like if she was not working there. Rivecca allows the audience to know the characters. We saw the good and the bad of Cora. I think that Rivecca wanted to show that nothing is simple, everything has history.
“Malaria” captured me immediately, more deeply than the character emphasis of “Philanthropy” or the beautiful setting and emotional writing of Wink’s work, or even the focused tension in Johnston’s work. In my mind, one of the most important lessons I am learning this semester involves the use of structure and tension in pieces that are meant to portray what some would call “the realness of life.” Byers hits that so spot on to me, and while I loved the writing in the other works (“Philanthropy” a little less so though there was some great wordplay, which I know goes against most of the class) I was captured by how smooth “Malaria” felt. Byers started the reader off with a direct sense of character, which I have never considered as an immediate tension builder. Yet through his writing I see something about the way that describing a person for their habits and their mundane workings is powerful in its specificity. Byers brings the reader so close to the everyday, especially when he goes into the moments when Nora and the narrator talk to the parents that are so rooted in the nothingness of normal moments, yet Byers understands the way of manipulating characters, specifically George and Nora, to aid with tension and give the reader the sense that their is an underlying presence beyond the simple, which is brought fuller circle by the end of the story. What’s more amazing is that Byers understands a sense of tension breakers. Tension breakers in a story so centered on the every day?! But yes, Byers gives life its fullest credit, and understands that even in the midst of normality there must be breaks for breath. The bus scene allowed the reader the distance of the narrator, so that when the narrator came back to bring everything full circle, it felt like it followed the ebb and tide of life, as well as the speech patterns encapsulated within it. I think more than anything else this is what I’m getting to: Byers is observant, and he captures the idea of life in this story. I feel as though some people would say that his characters are inauthentic, but to me it is more a sense that his characters are real and vital, just nontraditional. They define the situations and tensions, instead of letting experience define them. What I take a way from this is the sense that a character can have as much depth and feel of structure as something more complex and defined, and I give Byers immense credit for developing that idea so beautifully in “Malaria.”
If I had to choose one story that I enjoyed the most about this collection, I think it would be Encounters with Unexpected Animals by Bret Anthony Johnston. I’ve always been captured by short-shorts and the ability for the writer to tell so much in such a small amount of space. I think Johnston accomplished that with this piece. Short-shorts tend to be easier to write because the author is not fully invested in the story or the characters but I think at the same time, they are difficult. I find them to be difficult because every detail has be extremely intentional for the writer because there isn’t as much space to draw on. I think from the beginning, Johnston was deliberate in creating Lambright’s character, and I loved all of the details that she presented to this piece like “the moon looked like a fingerprint of chalk.” And “it stirred in him a floating sensation, the curious and scattered feeling of being born on waves or air or wings.” I think Johnston made an emotional connection for the reader here while also working with beautiful details I also enjoyed “Malaria” but this one took a while to get into. I was’t completely fascinated with it in the beginning, and I don’t think it was until the end that I really felt like I enjoyed the piece. Through the beginning I was wondering why I was reading it, what the tension was. I think that it took awhile for it to rise to the meaning of the story, but once it did, I was invested. I think what captured me most about this piece was the voice of Orlando. I was grabbed by the idea that there can be distant people in our lives that we aren’t completely connected to but for some reason they cause something in us. Of course, Byers had a more eloquent way of describing that, but I think I just really liked the honest voice of Orlando and how he felt so connected to George without really knowing him.
All four of these stories hit me in different ways. They drew me in through very different elements. With “Philanthropy,” Rivecca creates a third person close that made Cora feel real. She also worked with slowly revealing details as we get to know Cora and Yvonne’s connection. The harsh difference between the two keeps this story moving, and made me want to understand better just how they connect, and why their interaction is significant to them both. A lot of people have already said that “Philanthropy” is their favorite out of these four, and I can say the same. I wouldn’t say it was because of the subject, but rather it was how Rivecca describes the clinic and Cora’s relations to it, as well as this very different perspective of philanthropy. However, I cannot discount the subjects of the other stories. All of these stories deal with situations I personally have never experienced, and because these stories were able to draw me in and keep me invested, I can say that these authors’ specific ways of holding the reader and making their characters believable. When I think of believability, I turn to Callen Wink’s “Breatharians,” because the mother in this story would be the one character I could possibly consider unbelievable. What she says and how she acts seemed far fetched at first, but then considering how Wink characterizes August, this twelve-year-old who seems to accept the demands of his father, I was better able to see August’s mother, and how her character functioned as this escape for August, a deviation from the “normal” to show him that things are not really finite or sane. And, I am really just getting at one of the ways these two stories work.
Bret Anthony Johnston’s, Encounters with Unexpected Animals, was actually my favorite story. It just grabbed me right from the beginning. These two characters of Lambright and Lisa are in a very weird situation. And what I liked about it, was that you didn’t know what was going to happen. It sets you up to see Lambright, as a bit of a shady character even though you know that he just has his son’s best interests at heart there is still that little bit of doubt the is put into that character that makes you want to read on and find out what is going to happen I was really amazed at how short this piece was, but it really worked fantastically for the story. We didn’t get any over telling and Johnston is very aware of how much backstory he can give before putting us back into the present situation. It was something I noticed while reading it, was how it flowed so smoothly from background information to the present situation. Lambright, driving Lisa home is one thing that struck me as being slightly odd, but the part where he doesn’t take the turn, I got really worried that he was actually going to do something to her. It places even more of that doubt into the character and you really don’t know what is going to happen or what he might do. I had a slight sigh of relief when he said, “Cut him loose.” It was like a little more of my faith was restored into the character. Especially since the moment before he says this, is him pulling off to the side of the road, turning off the lights, and cutting the engine. To me, most of this story was hoping that this guy was good and that my faith in humanity wouldn’t be completely shattered. But as soon as my faith in Lambright is restored, Lisa pretty much tells him that she is going to ruin his life, by lying about what had happened and she runs off into the woods to begin cementing her side of the story. I think that plays a lot into the idea of the animals, and the way that they behave. And the title, Encounters with Unexpected Animals plays into that, because at first we think it is Lambright that is the animal, but it turns out to be Lisa, with how she is so manipulative to both Lambright and Robbie. You never know what weird things animals will do.
Out of the four stories we read for class, I didn't really like any of them. I can't say for certain as to why they didn't but I just never felt attached to the story. Maybe it was because this was the first time i've read each of these authors and didn't have access to some of their other stories but I didn't really like them.That being said, out of the four stories that we read I would have to say "Malaria" was the one I guess I could get something out of reading the story. The voice of the entire piece was interesting and it drew me into reading it when the story first started but then I didn't feel that same pull to the story as it continued. It started off well but I didn't really find myself caring for the characters as much as I would have expected I should have been-especially towards the end with the narrator confessing he knew he had Malaria. All of the stories were well written but they just didn't draw me in or sustain my like of them beyond the beginning.
I respected and enjoyed all four of these stories, but the one that really captured me was Wink's "Breatharian." It is so completely packed with meaning, and something that it pulls off superbly is its balance of deliberateness of meaning with a natural progression of plot. I have a genuinely difficult time reading anything where animals are harmed, especially in a graphic way, and when the father tells his 12-year-old son to kill all the cats, I don't expect the boy to do it. I expect the story to be about a boy who doesn't measure up to his father's idea of manliness because he can't kill, but this story is not about that at all. It completely usurps my expectation when August brutally kills each cat, detaching it from its tail, and I want to stop reading but I can't because the violence is captured in a certain light that throws the shadows of August's actions on the walls of his mother's "old house." This story just feels so driven, and lines like (I can't find the page now, so this may not be direct), "Twelve is as good an age as any/ I thought he was talking about the dog," chilled me. I was fully engaged in this story that is horrific and sad and necessary with centered tension and language that makes your stomach drop. At the end, I expect August to put food out for the cats so that he could beat them while they were distracted, but then he poisons all of them and find all of their bodies, and shortly after he is compared to his father -- it pulled the floor out form under me. This is a brutal, effecting story, and I want to read it again and think about all that I missed in reading it only once.
My favorite story was "Philanthropy" by Suzanne Rivecca. It made me think about the world that Rivecca took the reader. I felt connected to the characters, in a way that I didn't feel with the others. I could see the emotions in the others, but I wasn't as emotionally invested in them as I was with "Philanthropy". I could feel what these characters were feeling, and even though many of the actions were on the negative side of life, it made me feel for the characters.
ReplyDeleteThe characters were going through things that I've never gone through or seen anyone gone through, but Rivecca's descriptions gave me a window with which to see into a new kind of world for me. The moment that got to me emotionally was when Cora was talking about her cat dying of bone cancer. I could connect with this on a very personal level, and it gave me a place to start my emotionally investment in these characters when, aside from that, I've only read about the world they're inhabiting. Even though I've ever seen a place like this, I could imagine where Cora. DJ and Yvonne were clearly.
I also liked this story syntactically. There was a moment somewhere in the story where it's written the way a schizophrenic would think. I thought that was an interesting approach since Yvonne's daughter was one. I think that part stuck out in my mind because Yvonne's daughter is a major part of the story, and yet she never appears. To me she seemed almost as well developed as Cora and Yvonne are, and that I found interesting because she never appears, and I haven't seen this approach taken that often. I do think it was an interesting move on Rivecca's part though, and I think it worked well for the story.
Of the four stories we read for this class, my favorite (by far) was Suzanne Rivecca’s “Philanthropy.” I really like the way she writes, and she incorporates details expertly. Her figurative language is very on-point; one of my favorite examples is, “In those moments she seemed to have stepped into a transparent sleeve like the plastic sheaths on her novels, an invisible barrier that kept her from getting dirty.” The story itself appealed to me on several levels. I preferred this more urban setting to that of “Breatharians” and the subject matter pulled me in, especially because the writer seemed so familiar with it. I honestly felt like I was learning things, like the more gritty details behind philanthropy, and the more human and honest details of rehabilitation. The story felt particularly insightful when it described the relationship between Cora and her father; the details felt so much truer than in many other stories I’ve read or seen before this one. Even with all this insight, the story never seemed to be pushing an oppressive point or moral. The last conversation could easily have swayed in the direction of one woman or the other, showing how one was “right” and the other “wrong,” but instead it ended in a kind of warm, neutral space. I also just really cared about the characters, and the details made me feel the emotions in the story.
ReplyDeleteOut of all these stories I really enjoyed Bret Anthony Johnston's story, "Encounter with Animals". Despite it being short, I felt it was very well written. Not having much experience with short-shorts or with keeping stories down to a couple of pages, I admired the way Johnston was able to give us a sense of setting and characterization. I feel l got a good sense of Lambright who and Lisa is. I also felt like I got a good sense of who Robbie was. We didn't see much of the mother but she wasn't a very important character in the story. I thought we got a good description of Lisa on the first page with her tattoo and green hair and when things start to go missing we can assume it was Lisa. I thought she had the upper hand in this relationship and was sort of taking advantage of Robbie because he was younger and had less experience. On page 94 when Lisa says, "We were supposed to turn-" we get the impression that she's not in control anymore and that it could all be over for her. However by the end of the story we see she has the upper hand as she leaves the car and runs along the river bank. I thought she was a very clever girl and admired her quick thinking. The story leaves you wondering what happens next, what the father tells his son, what Lisa will tell Robbie, if she ever sees him again and so on. I also liked how well Lisa tied into the title "Encounters with Unexpected Animals" as shown as an animal herself. One could say she was "wild" like an animal with her seemingly free spirit and all. The last page of the story basically describes her as an animal the way she bounded up the creek as a "rare and dangerous animal". I hope to one day write a story as short as this and still be able to give the reader a good insight on the story.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite story that we read for today was “Philanthropy”. The emotion of the piece was raw in the kind of way that you can’t look away from. The progression of Cora’s thoughts seemed natural in the way that they flowed at times that may not have been appropriate at the time but that we all have at times. I really admired how she used third person point of view in a way that made the reader feel the closeness as if in first person and showed the characters as they were, not what the author idealized them to be. I know in my own writing that I struggle with separating the two ideals and thought that it was really fascinating that she did it with the point of view. Actually, maybe that was a better way to separate those two different aspects. I feel like third person distances someone enough to look at the situation as a bird’s eye view rather than narrowly through one specific point like first person seems to lend itself to. The dialogue seemed incredibly believable and, I felt, kept the reader on the edge of their seat in the way that they seem to skirt around the issue of this woman’s daughter. Usually, I like to have a definitive answer as to what happened in a story, but for this one, I didn’t feel as jilted when we don’t find out whether Cora got the money or not. I think that the climax was that final catharsis of Cora explaining what it was really like to be one of these girls and seeing how, instead of completely lashing out at her, Yvonne tries to comfort her and Cora, briefly, allows her to do so.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard for me to pick a story out of the four I would consider my favorite. I think I will go with Johnson's "Encounters with Animals" because the setting was very strong in the piece and it reminded me of Shippensburg where I grew up. I was able to smell the horrible smell and see the dark paths outside of the main road. I pictured the ugly side of Shippensburg while I was reading this. Another thing is that the characters reminded me of people I knew in high school or rumors I heard from other kids. The weird things that happened in this story are the sort of things that actually happened in my high school (the dad hitting on his son's girlfriend *koo-koo-ka-choo* are like the sort of odd rumors that would go around my high school). I guess I preferred this story because it reminded me of the place I grew-up and I don't think this story meant that as a complement or maybe I just have rather bad memories of growing up in Shippensburg. The characters aren't very well dived into, but I don't think it is totally necessary since what more do we really need to know then what is given to us? Other information might have seemed like filler in this simple yet unusual story.
ReplyDeleteI also liked "Philanthropy" the best out of all of these stories, and I think it's possibly the hardest-hitting story I've read for this class. I don't feel that Rivecca's language is on par with Alice Munro's, but it's still good, and she does a lot of other things very well, too, and does a lot of them her own way (to contrast: while I also felt that "Breatharians" was relatively strong for a story we've read here, with some very interesting details, it felt a lot more like a stereotypical workshop story, where the patterns felt too easy, the dysfunctions too commonplace, whereas Rivecca seems to simply let her story go where it needs to, supporting it strongly with images like the one Audrey cited where it would be most impactful). I think the thing that I like most about the story is that it explores a very dark topic and gives heart-rending details and moments (DJ's suffering, the description of Cora's cat, and Cora's own degrading experience in a facility, to say nothing of the final moment of the story, to say nothing of the "ocean underneath an ocean," or "two people whose primary identities were . . . someone else's mother and someone else's child," and the last line, I mean goddamn) without being bogged down by it, without using it cheaply, without giving only Yvonne or Cora the poignant lines in the last scene, like Audrey said, and without ever letting it oppress Cora so much that she can't keep herself moving, and assert herself through it, and struggle convincingly with her own recovery. I was just very impressed.
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult to tell a really engaging story in a couple of pages. Yet Bret Anthony Johnston pulled it off with Encounters with Unexpected Animals.
ReplyDeleteThe reason this story works is how it turns Lisa's character on it's head in the climax. The reader is introduced to her quickly as a wild party girl with a checkered past; from her underage drinking to tattoos and green hair to God-knows what else. And with that characterization, we take her to be a sort of rebel without a cause. A girl that just says "whatever" to anything that comes her way. Well, unless it's a younger impressionable boy she can manipulate. Which the father clearly worries about.
However, it turns out in the climax that Lisa isn't just capable of manipulating young boys but also older men as well. She finds a way to take a moment when the father should have control and completely turn the tables him. Using the time that they are alone in the car as a possible moment where he might have taken advantage of her and using it as a way to paint her as a victim was a brilliant move on her part.
But even more so, it gives the reader an even deeper view into who Lisa is. I would say, from what I've read, that she is at least a bit psychotic, going to extreme lengths to ensure she has complete control of her boyfriend. (Something that could also be seen as the beginning of an abusive relationship.) In short, we start out thinking that she's just some punk, but she turns out to be something much more sinister than that.
And the ending? I would fully believe that this is just one section or the beginning section of a fully-fledged story. So that ending would be believable. It almost begs a story to be written around it.
Wonder if the author ever did that, or just couldn't follow this thing up.
My favorite was also “Philanthropy” by Suzanne Rivecca. Rivecca immediately draws her audience in by showing how Cora thinks and acts. I think her behavior was so natural, reading tons of an author’s work before meeting them and talking about it, joking about the parts she found interesting. Rivecca shows Cora to be an ordinary person and then reveals her complex past. She reveals information about the characters very naturally. As Cora thinks about Yvonne, the audience gets to learn. I think that Rivecca did a great job weaving Cora’s past into her present. We were able to see her relationship with her father and Yvonne’s daughter Angelica. Rivecca also has great honesty and insight into her characters. Cora tells the audience what she normally says to people, especially possible investors and then Rivecca shows Cora’s raw and natural behavior. Cora tells the audience that she misses the drugs the most. This surprised me because, Rivecca has painted this picture of the new Cora, the person who helps other young women survive the difficult times, I did not think that she would miss the drugs that much. Cora shows the audience what her life could have been like if she was not working there.
ReplyDeleteRivecca allows the audience to know the characters. We saw the good and the bad of Cora. I think that Rivecca wanted to show that nothing is simple, everything has history.
“Malaria” captured me immediately, more deeply than the character emphasis of “Philanthropy” or the beautiful setting and emotional writing of Wink’s work, or even the focused tension in Johnston’s work. In my mind, one of the most important lessons I am learning this semester involves the use of structure and tension in pieces that are meant to portray what some would call “the realness of life.” Byers hits that so spot on to me, and while I loved the writing in the other works (“Philanthropy” a little less so though there was some great wordplay, which I know goes against most of the class) I was captured by how smooth “Malaria” felt.
ReplyDeleteByers started the reader off with a direct sense of character, which I have never considered as an immediate tension builder. Yet through his writing I see something about the way that describing a person for their habits and their mundane workings is powerful in its specificity. Byers brings the reader so close to the everyday, especially when he goes into the moments when Nora and the narrator talk to the parents that are so rooted in the nothingness of normal moments, yet Byers understands the way of manipulating characters, specifically George and Nora, to aid with tension and give the reader the sense that their is an underlying presence beyond the simple, which is brought fuller circle by the end of the story. What’s more amazing is that Byers understands a sense of tension breakers. Tension breakers in a story so centered on the every day?! But yes, Byers gives life its fullest credit, and understands that even in the midst of normality there must be breaks for breath. The bus scene allowed the reader the distance of the narrator, so that when the narrator came back to bring everything full circle, it felt like it followed the ebb and tide of life, as well as the speech patterns encapsulated within it.
I think more than anything else this is what I’m getting to: Byers is observant, and he captures the idea of life in this story. I feel as though some people would say that his characters are inauthentic, but to me it is more a sense that his characters are real and vital, just nontraditional. They define the situations and tensions, instead of letting experience define them. What I take a way from this is the sense that a character can have as much depth and feel of structure as something more complex and defined, and I give Byers immense credit for developing that idea so beautifully in “Malaria.”
If I had to choose one story that I enjoyed the most about this collection, I think it would be Encounters with Unexpected Animals by Bret Anthony Johnston. I’ve always been captured by short-shorts and the ability for the writer to tell so much in such a small amount of space. I think Johnston accomplished that with this piece. Short-shorts tend to be easier to write because the author is not fully invested in the story or the characters but I think at the same time, they are difficult. I find them to be difficult because every detail has be extremely intentional for the writer because there isn’t as much space to draw on. I think from the beginning, Johnston was deliberate in creating Lambright’s character, and I loved all of the details that she presented to this piece like “the moon looked like a fingerprint of chalk.” And “it stirred in him a floating sensation, the curious and scattered feeling of being born on waves or air or wings.” I think Johnston made an emotional connection for the reader here while also working with beautiful details
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed “Malaria” but this one took a while to get into. I was’t completely fascinated with it in the beginning, and I don’t think it was until the end that I really felt like I enjoyed the piece. Through the beginning I was wondering why I was reading it, what the tension was. I think that it took awhile for it to rise to the meaning of the story, but once it did, I was invested. I think what captured me most about this piece was the voice of Orlando. I was grabbed by the idea that there can be distant people in our lives that we aren’t completely connected to but for some reason they cause something in us. Of course, Byers had a more eloquent way of describing that, but I think I just really liked the honest voice of Orlando and how he felt so connected to George without really knowing him.
All four of these stories hit me in different ways. They drew me in through very different elements. With “Philanthropy,” Rivecca creates a third person close that made Cora feel real. She also worked with slowly revealing details as we get to know Cora and Yvonne’s connection. The harsh difference between the two keeps this story moving, and made me want to understand better just how they connect, and why their interaction is significant to them both. A lot of people have already said that “Philanthropy” is their favorite out of these four, and I can say the same. I wouldn’t say it was because of the subject, but rather it was how Rivecca describes the clinic and Cora’s relations to it, as well as this very different perspective of philanthropy. However, I cannot discount the subjects of the other stories. All of these stories deal with situations I personally have never experienced, and because these stories were able to draw me in and keep me invested, I can say that these authors’ specific ways of holding the reader and making their characters believable. When I think of believability, I turn to Callen Wink’s “Breatharians,” because the mother in this story would be the one character I could possibly consider unbelievable. What she says and how she acts seemed far fetched at first, but then considering how Wink characterizes August, this twelve-year-old who seems to accept the demands of his father, I was better able to see August’s mother, and how her character functioned as this escape for August, a deviation from the “normal” to show him that things are not really finite or sane. And, I am really just getting at one of the ways these two stories work.
ReplyDeleteBret Anthony Johnston’s, Encounters with Unexpected Animals, was actually my favorite story. It just grabbed me right from the beginning. These two characters of Lambright and Lisa are in a very weird situation. And what I liked about it, was that you didn’t know what was going to happen. It sets you up to see Lambright, as a bit of a shady character even though you know that he just has his son’s best interests at heart there is still that little bit of doubt the is put into that character that makes you want to read on and find out what is going to happen
ReplyDeleteI was really amazed at how short this piece was, but it really worked fantastically for the story. We didn’t get any over telling and Johnston is very aware of how much backstory he can give before putting us back into the present situation. It was something I noticed while reading it, was how it flowed so smoothly from background information to the present situation.
Lambright, driving Lisa home is one thing that struck me as being slightly odd, but the part where he doesn’t take the turn, I got really worried that he was actually going to do something to her. It places even more of that doubt into the character and you really don’t know what is going to happen or what he might do. I had a slight sigh of relief when he said, “Cut him loose.” It was like a little more of my faith was restored into the character. Especially since the moment before he says this, is him pulling off to the side of the road, turning off the lights, and cutting the engine.
To me, most of this story was hoping that this guy was good and that my faith in humanity wouldn’t be completely shattered. But as soon as my faith in Lambright is restored, Lisa pretty much tells him that she is going to ruin his life, by lying about what had happened and she runs off into the woods to begin cementing her side of the story. I think that plays a lot into the idea of the animals, and the way that they behave. And the title, Encounters with Unexpected Animals plays into that, because at first we think it is Lambright that is the animal, but it turns out to be Lisa, with how she is so manipulative to both Lambright and Robbie. You never know what weird things animals will do.
Out of the four stories we read for class, I didn't really like any of them. I can't say for certain as to why they didn't but I just never felt attached to the story. Maybe it was because this was the first time i've read each of these authors and didn't have access to some of their other stories but I didn't really like them.That being said, out of the four stories that we read I would have to say "Malaria" was the one I guess I could get something out of reading the story. The voice of the entire piece was interesting and it drew me into reading it when the story first started but then I didn't feel that same pull to the story as it continued. It started off well but I didn't really find myself caring for the characters as much as I would have expected I should have been-especially towards the end with the narrator confessing he knew he had Malaria.
ReplyDeleteAll of the stories were well written but they just didn't draw me in or sustain my like of them beyond the beginning.
I respected and enjoyed all four of these stories, but the one that really captured me was Wink's "Breatharian." It is so completely packed with meaning, and something that it pulls off superbly is its balance of deliberateness of meaning with a natural progression of plot. I have a genuinely difficult time reading anything where animals are harmed, especially in a graphic way, and when the father tells his 12-year-old son to kill all the cats, I don't expect the boy to do it. I expect the story to be about a boy who doesn't measure up to his father's idea of manliness because he can't kill, but this story is not about that at all. It completely usurps my expectation when August brutally kills each cat, detaching it from its tail, and I want to stop reading but I can't because the violence is captured in a certain light that throws the shadows of August's actions on the walls of his mother's "old house." This story just feels so driven, and lines like (I can't find the page now, so this may not be direct), "Twelve is as good an age as any/ I thought he was talking about the dog," chilled me. I was fully engaged in this story that is horrific and sad and necessary with centered tension and language that makes your stomach drop. At the end, I expect August to put food out for the cats so that he could beat them while they were distracted, but then he poisons all of them and find all of their bodies, and shortly after he is compared to his father -- it pulled the floor out form under me. This is a brutal, effecting story, and I want to read it again and think about all that I missed in reading it only once.
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