Opposites?

After doing the readings for Monday, which were "Go Like This" and "How to Talk to your Mother (Notes)", I initially thought of them as almost opposite stories both in time and to some extent writing style.

Here's the most obvious one to get it out of the way: "Go Like This" presents a tale in a "correct/standard" way, with time moving forward. "How to Talk to your Mother" is in the exact opposite order. I feel that if either story flipped their chronology around, that is to say if Liz narrated in reverse chronological order and Ginnie narrated the story in chronological order, the stories would be much more lame to be frank. First of all, it's impossible for Liz to narrate in reverse because she'd be dead, and dead people can't narrate. Even if its a story about something like her life flashing before her eyes, I feel the story would 1. be pretty cliche, like the type of stuff you see in second rated movies, and 2. would make little sense, as when your life flashes before your eyes you (supposedly) see the whole course of your life, not just the small details a couple of months before you die. To add onto that, we would also loose a lot of the detail and feelings given off such as when she is talking to her friends about suicide, trying to get their support, her explanation to Blaine about her suicide, as well as her thoughts right before she died. We would also loose a certain sense of honesty from the author, as right now the format seems more like a journal that Liz would pour her thoughts into, and even see her feelings in the moment (like when she tells Elliot "Hey, baby, I'm not dead yet; I'm writing. . ."). As for "How to Talk to your Mother", I feel that making the story flow in reverse chronological order gives it sort of a spin. First of all, if I read it chronological order, then we'd be starting from when she was born, then to her toddler years, and I'd think that that would be quite boring. However, starting out with her murmuring to a fridge makes you think "what the hell happened to this girl" and makes your read on, and as you read further you find out more and more about the things that lead to her going crazy.

Another difference is the time period scope. Like I mentioned above, Liz's story happens over a course of a couple of months, and only talks about certain days in detail, while Ginnie's tales cover the range of 43 years, and her descriptions are very general, summing up whole years in a few sentences. Again, I feel that these narrations worked for their perspective stories: if the styles were switched, the stories would make no sense. For example, the whole point of Liz's narration is to justify her suicide, putting her judgement on paper to further secure her resolve. If we get the whole scope of her life, we would get a lot of irrelevant information as well as little information for the actual point of the story (like I mentioned previously), which is her going through with her suicide. Like so, if we were only to get a short segment of Ginnie's life, we wouldn't see the process (backwards) of how she became from a child who gives her dolls names, to a teenager who can't appreciate her father's love, to a woman who has gone through so many abortions or births (we never quite get to know).

I feel that both of these stories were very well written and unique in their style It would be hard to create another story with similar formats, especially the one in reverse chronological order -- though now I feel like I must mention that for our short stories I was lucky enough to peer edit a story that was in this reverse chronological order (which worked very nicely).

How to write a good short story

By the way the title is just a play on one of the names of the short stories we've read so far. I am in no position to tell you how to write a good short story, as I first need to get my crap together.

Now that we have that out of the way, here comes the real part of my blogpost: so far, all of the short stories we've read so far gives us something to think about after we've read it: for O'Brien, it's about the morality of war; for Hemingway, it's about relationship dynamics between man and wife; for Salinger, it's about social interactions in general; and finally, for Baldwin, it's about racism and how it affects people.

The way each of these authors goes about doing it is different though. All of them do only give a small snapshot of a person's life or a specific event. Some stories give you a satisfying ending, but leaves you thinking about the events that occurred within the story, such as "The Rockpile"; in there, we see the dynamics between Johnnie and Gabriel, and how Gabriel favors Roy a lot more than Johnnie. Others put a twist ending on them, leaving you to speculate why that certain event happened like that; we can see this in many of Salinger's stories - I mean almost all of them, like how in "A Perfect day for Bananafish", Seymour shot himself in the head or how in "The Laughing Man" the laughing man decided to kill himself, leaving the Comanches to walk home in fear. Even others just don't give you a satisfying ending, leaving you with a "what the hell" mentality and then try to understand why the author made it that way. This was typical of Hemingway, such as in "A very Short Story", the ending tells us the narrator got an STD. Another thing that made me keep on reading the stories was that they seemed so real to me. Maybe that was why Mr. Mitchell had us write anecdotes, which is something truthful that did happen to us, and use that truth to flesh out a story that will also seem truthful?

Anyhow, those are just some observations I've made. I would tell a lot more, but I've forgotten a lot of things that I wanted to say... I really regret not writing my ideas down. Look forward to the comments section, as I will very likely be posting followups when my brain is in better shape... but leave in the comments below of how you think a successful short story should include!

Confusion?

Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes has a lot of ambiguity in it, like many other Salinger stories such as the Laughing Man, Teddy, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, and really all the stories in the collection Nine Stories. In class, one of the most debated question in this story is on the relationship between Joanie and Lee. At first, I was a supporter that Joanie wasn't having any sort of affair with Lee. For most of the period, I defended that point of view; I would find a counter argument to any opposing theories, such as:

- The argument about Lee's and Joanie's relief when they convinced Arthur that Lee's not with her. While many people argued that their relief showed that they were having an abnormal relationship, I argued that they just didn't want Arthur to misunderstand them.

- The argument of where Lee didn't want Arthur to come to his house/apartment to have a drink; again the mainstream theory was different from mine, implying that Arthur is having a sexual relationship with Joanie and doesn't want him to find out. I argued, however, that Lee is trying to hide Joanie from Arthur, which makes sense because Arthur is pretty darn drunk.

- The argument that Joanie seems to be really close to Lee, especially in the scene where they are talking on the phone and Joanie puts her ear up to the phone too; I argued that she was just interested in hearing what her drunk husband would say about her when he's drunk.

- That argument that Lee defends Joanie when Arthur talks crap about her, and that might indicate that he has feelings for her; I said it was very possible that Lee just doesn't want to get involved between their problems and just wants to stay neutral, not taking sides (because if he agrees with Arthur that Joanie is a slut then he would be taking his side, pissing off Joanie who at the time is right next to him).

Near the end of class, either Elissa or Mr. Mitchell brought up how Joanie said, "God! I feel like an absolute dog!" No matter what I tried to think up, I couldn't find a reasonable explanation that could refute the idea that Joanie and Lee had a sexual relationship - the only reason she would call herself a "dog" is if she had a extramarital relationship with someone. For a couple of days after that class period I left the "innocent faction" and became a part of the "slept-with-Lee Faction". It was only a couple hours ago that I came up with the simple (but somewhat far-fetched) idea that maybe Joanie had a sexual relationship with someone that wasn't Arthur nor Lee, and she came to hide at Lee's house after the party in order to avoid Arthur, and that Lee was angry at himself not because he had a sexual relationship with Joanie, but that he was feeling guilty for not telling Lee what Joanie did and to some extend help her cheat on him. I guess I separated from both of these factions and joined my own, the "Lee's-fine-but-Joanie's-not faction".

Another question brought up in class is how close Arthur and Lee are. Even though we have moved onto a different book, this question's still stuck in my head because there are so many possibilities. As of right now, I believe that they are best friends who also work together, as seen by the court case with a person named young and how Arthur called him when he was drunk (and spewed all his personal crap that only his best friend should know). However, there are a lot more clues that I didn't take into consideration... what do you guys think about their relationship?