They had spent countless hours together during music practice and service organizations, studying together, chatting research over lunch, and generally having a fine time together laughing with friends.  Cliff played piano while Annie listened and watched him keep time by shaking his head. Watching Cliff play was Annie’s favorite thing to do when she was upset, without fail it would make her feel better and give her the strength to finish.  Annie discussed DNA replication and bacteriophages with Cliff on a regular basis. Cliff liked to read Science Magazine, and loved to tell her about the latest articles. Cliff had been Annie’s longest and closest friend.

They had been off the Southwest coast of the Cayman Islands four about four months now, and the summer weather was beginning to dwindle into the dangerous fall hurricane season. It was usually too dangerous for research vessels to stay out during hurricane season and the primary research didn’t have much more to do without more funding.

The ship’s mess hall was no different from a high school cafeteria, and Cliff wasn’t sure that the food was much better. There were four lines, each with the same food, and you were lucky to get a choice between green beans and mashed potatoes.  Two long sets of tables lay in the room’s center, with smaller square tables crowded into the corners for officers and misbehaving cadets. The researchers ate separately from the crew, mostly to keep crowding at a minimum, but also to keep the occasional confrontation at bay.

“Cliff, do you remember that guy I told you about last week?”  Annie said.

“The one with the hook in his neck?” said Cliff.

“No, silly, the one that told me about suckle fish.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Well, he asked me out on a date as soon as we get back to shore.”

“I thought you didn’t like him – that he was sly.”

“No, I said he was shy.”

“Well, what made you change your mind?”

“Nothing, because I hadn’t made it up yet.”

“Where is Annie? She’s usually starving at this time,” said Cliff the next day at lunch.  He searched the mess hall and deck twice before finally giving up. Lunch, however, turned out to be a complete disaster; Cliff spilt hot soup all over himself and ended with coke stains down his shirt from slipping on a wet floor. Cliff decided that such a crappy day should include a cookie, but not before burning his tongue on the chocolate chips.

Ducking through doorways and hallways which he was just a little too tall for, Cliff had always looked a bit awkward living on a ship. On his way to Annie’s door, he tried to count the number of times he’d hit his head and how much brain damage it might have caused.

“Where were you at lunch?” Cliff said as he crossed the threshold into Annie’s room.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I got caught up.” Annie was rapidly typing on her computer. She had her glasses on as if she were ready to get in bed. Wearing her glasses was unusual, since she hated them and always wore contacts, even though she kept losing one when a wave smacked her in the face. She thought glasses made her look like too much like a nerd in the same way Cliff refused to ever be caught dead with a pocket protector, even if he did carry a pad of paper in his back pocket and a pen in his ear.

“With what, for goodness sakes?” Cliff leaned on the wall with his arms crossed looking at Annie. She was typing with rapid furry and it usually meant that she was on a role with whatever she was working on.

“Alfred and I were talking about suckle fish.”

“Sure, is that what they call it these days?” Cliff said jokingly.

“What!?  Absolutely not, you have such a dirty mind.”

“And since when did we start calling him Alfred?”

“Since that’s his name, dingbat.”

“Fine, I guess I’ll make plans with Tommy for lunch tomorrow and we’ll talk about plasma.” Cliff started heading toward the door with a hurt look.

“You can have lunch with whomever you choose, just because I miss lunch one day you don’t have to go off on me.”

Cliff turned to retort, but caught it in his throat midway. “Well, I think this guy is up to something.”

“Since when do you say things like that about people?”

“Since Arnold.”

Annie turned to him for the first time since Cliff had entered the room. “His name is Alfred, and have you ever spoken to him?”

“Well, he’s never said anything to me.”

“You’re being so immature, just go talk to him. You’ve never said anything about my boyfriends before. Not a word, and now you don’t even know this guy and you’re willing to say that he has ulterior motives. What happened to your shirt anyway?” Annie said as she perused the dark brown stains on Cliff’s red shirt which ran all the way from his collar to the bottom hem.

“Lunch.” And with that Cliff stepped backwards out of the room and slammed the door.

Four days later Cliff again carefully made his way to Annie’s room with a pair of glasses and a bowl of soup precariously perched on top of a blue covered book with gold lettering.  The waves were getting worse and this, coupled with his extra height made balancing soup rather difficult. Since his hands were full, Cliff kicked the door instead of knocking. Putting the soup and book down, he opened the door. Annie was lying in her bed opposite the desk; she looked like she’d been asleep but had recently woken up.

“I didn’t wake you up did I?” Cliff said.

“No, the only reason I look so tired is because I haven’t been able to sleep.”

“Peter told me you were sick so I brought you some soup,” and at that very moment the ship rolled a bit farther than normal, putting Cliff off balance and spilling some of the soup onto his clean shirt.  Annie laughed, and it made Cliff smile. It felt good to be smiling again.

“Here, you’d better take this before I get it all over you.”

“Did you bring a spoon?”

“Shoot, I knew I forgot something.”

Annie smiled; she knew all too well Cliff’s silverware amnesia. “Well, it’s a good thing I stock up just for you. Look in the far left cupboard I borrowed some from the kitchen.”

Annie was always so organized, and prepared whereas Cliff couldn’t keep his shirt clean. “Is it good?” The solo clanking spoon told Cliff that she hadn’t gotten out of bed for a couple days. “Here, in my pocket are some crushed cracker packages.” He threw them at her feet and moved the desk chair next to the foot of the bed. “So, I wanted to apologize for the way I acted the other day. And I’m sorry you’re sick.”

Annie lowered her spoon and wiped her chin on her sleeve. “I’m sorry too, because I was really harsh. You are my best friend and I know you’re trying to look out for me.”

Cliff flushed a little and lowered his head. “I brought your favorite book; do you want me to read it to you, like old times?”

“Please, please do. I haven’t been able to sleep for two days. So don’t feel bad if I do fall asleep on you.”

She’d fallen asleep in fifteen minutes; Cliff had barely gotten through the four pages of Chapter One before her eyes started dropping. He’d been warned so he didn’t take it personally, but he was concerned that she hadn’t been sleeping. He’d better get some sleep himself if he didn’t want to catch whatever she had, he thought. But as he looked at her he smiled and didn’t move. She really was quite beautiful even with her face flushed from the fever she’d had earlier that morning. Her hair fell around her face almost gracefully with a soft glow. Slowly, he picked the bowl off the floor and got up. He successfully opened the door without waking her up, but as it shut Annie unconsciously knew he was gone.

Walking back to his room, Cliff decided to detour and return the bowl and spoon to the kitchen. She had dated before, especially in college, and he’d even met some of her previous boyfriends with nothing more than a protective eye. Perhaps he had always known that they wouldn’t work out. Her dreams were never going in the same direction as theirs, and she was much too stubborn to give them up. Cliff also enjoyed having the ability to make her laugh after a breakup.

Maybe he’d gotten upset because he knew that their time together was coming to a close. Who knew how long the research funding would last, not to mention the weather was getting worse by the day.  They may well end up on either side of the country. He wouldn’t be able to read her a book or play the piano. “But that couldn’t really be it, could it?” Cliff said softly, speaking to himself. “I mean, the same thing could have happened after high school or college.”

In all honesty, Cliff had never spent much time with this guy Alfred, and didn’t have any opinions on him to speak of, considering his lack of observation. The guy was a sailor and never said anything to the researchers onboard, except for Annie.  He barely spoke to the rest of the ship’s crew.  “Why, all of a sudden, does this guy change his mind and pretend to be social?”

Cliff went back every day to read to Annie. She still wasn’t sleeping well and Cliff was beginning to get very concerned. She was eating soup and crackers well, but she couldn’t stomach anything else, and she still wasn’t sleeping well. In fact, soon after Cliff would stop reading, Annie usually woke up.

“What if I just read until you fall asleep, then I’ll stay here and do my work while you sleep?” He began setting up his books on her desk and checking for any missing supplies.

“That might work,” she said sleepily, stifling a yawn, “but I don’t want you to get sick too.”

“Why not? Then we’d have our own hospital ward.”

Annie smiled weakly and closed her eyes, she hadn’t been feeling any better and underneath all her covers she was shivering.  Alfred had tried checking in on her, but he never stayed long and most of the time she pretended to be asleep.

“Annie, you’ve been sick for a week, I’m starting to get very concerned. And it doesn’t seem like you’ve been getting any better.”

“Cliff, could you look at my leg?”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Annie didn’t sound normal, and in fact he had almost missed her speaking completely. She didn’t respond as Cliff ran to her bed from the opposite side of the room. She was completely unconscious and breathing shallowly. Cliff, in panic, threw off the covers to find a huge red welt on her lower left calf. Knowing it would be faster and better equipped; Cliff picked Annie up and ran as fast as he could to the medical ward, while trying to keep his head intact.

She had, as a matter of fact, been stung by some sort of jelly fish. It could have just been a stray tentacle floating in the water, the doctor had said. Cliff couldn’t imagine Annie ever being so reckless to have deliberately swum too close to one. She knew too much about the dangers of venomous sea animals to have been that careless.

Two days later, Cliff was allowed to see her, but not after being kicked out of the medical ward no less than six times.  Cliff also noticed that he’d never seen Alfred bother to stop by.  When Cliff finally got to see Annie, she was attached to all kinds of monitors and had a fluid bag hanging by the bed. She was also sleeping without the rasping sound which had panicked Cliff so much the day of the incident. With only one question in his mind, Cliff sat by Annie’s bed.  “Why didn’t you say anything sooner? You could have died.”

“I didn’t know, there wasn’t a rash before. The doctor also said he suspects I had Lyme disease from a stray tick off one of the ship’s cats. I had found one of them dead the day before I got sick. The rash didn’t show up until that day, and by then I think I was a little delusional.” She smiled a little, but based on the fluid bags’ markings, Cliff knew she was far from out of the woods.

Cliff wanted to grab her hand and not let go until she was cleared from the medical ward, but something held him back. He was her friend, and she needed him now, more than ever, as a friend. “What about Alfred, hasn’t he come to visit?”

“He did once, but I told him to stop coming.”

The surprise on Cliff’s face was evident, but Annie’s eyes were closed. “Why would you do that? I thought you liked him, and let’s face it, I can’t be here all the time.”

Annie’s eyes opened and turned her head to face him, “But you’re still going to come read me stories right?”

“As long as you want me to.”

“Will you read me stories forever?”

Cliff’s smiled slowly in surprise and realization and curled his hand around hers as he said, “There are plenty left to go.”

November 30, 2009

Quotation

“He’d gotten what he wanted, but he didn’t seem too happy about it, just worried all the time.” (page 248)

Talking Point

At the beginning of short stories some authors have a bad habit of bringing on the story too quickly and explaining a small bit of the setting but forgetting that their readers don’t know how this new world works. And so the reader is confused about what is really going on and what the story is really about.

This story had the previously stated problem in the worst way possible. I suppose the author thought that the confusion would catch their attention and entice readers to keep reading but it had the complete opposite effect on me. If an author cannot describe a setting or a story line exceptionally well then I simply don’t want to waste my time trying to figure it out, and I feel that the story is not worth reading if I have to battle my way through it for understanding.

Connection

The metaphor and symbolism was very easy to distinguish in “The Things They Carried,” but this story’s metaphors elude me. The point of the story seems to be that your actions can haunt you and getting what you want won’t make you happier.

End of the Line

November 28, 2009

Quotation

“The little man had become boring. Now that he was less of a person, he was easier to get along with and less fun to play with.”

page 235

Talking Point

The big man simply wanted someone to belittle because he hated his own life and had no self esteem. At the beginning, when the little man would talk about all the things he had accomplished and done with his life and about his family, the big man tortured him. Once the little man stopped saying anything the big man was no longer amused.

Connection

The allegory in this story is the obvious big man “belittling” little man; beating another up to make himself feel like a better (bigger) person. Symbols in this work include the little man’s desire to use silverware, his ability to speak French well, and his trips to Paris and Milan, which shows how he is an accomplished person even though he is small. The big man is insulted by the woman he asks out, no one notices his new suit, and he tortures this little man which symbolizes his unhappiness with life.

November 23, 2009

Quotation

“They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing – these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.”

“They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture.”

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien  (pg 230)

Talking Point

When Lieutenant Jimmy Cross talked about Martha in this story he spoke in less gruff terms and spoke almost poetically. Since Martha was a poet herself he tried to see the hidden meanings in everything she wrote. But after Lavender dies Jimmy Cross simply believes that there were no hidden meanings because he’d only wanted them to be there. The reality was that he was in a war and there was no room for the carelessness and stupidity that had cost Lavender. After Lavender’s death Jimmy Cross never spoke poetically again and from then on only spoke realistically.

Connection

The imagery in this story is that of weight, except when we hear the thoughts of Jimmy Cross because he continually talked about loving Martha. I very much like O’Brien’s usage of weight in this story. He refers to the weight of everything that the solders carry in such detail and precision, but places also the emotional weight upon them and makes the story interesting and worth continuing.  Especially when Lieutenant Lavender died the emotional weight changed, especially in Jimmy Cross, and that changed what the solders carried from then on. This emotional baggage also becomes a motif throughout the story.

November 19, 2009

Quotation

“Remember the wisdom of the child: Make a scene when you really want everyone’s full attention.”

Making Shapley Fiction, pare 211

Talking Point

Honestly I really hate this story. I don’t understand how in this story the creepy guy, Arnold, seems to know where her family is and what they are doing.  Arnold is a complete stalker, and I don’t understand why Joyce Carol Oates wrote this story at all.

Connection

The summary was greatest and most effective in the beginning of the story. Summary was used to describe the way the girl acted, how she always had two sides, the way her mother acted, the setting and description of the diner. Summary was also used to describe the character’s feelings toward the diner, the boys there, and the actions of the character throughout the beginning of the story.

The scene with the greatest impact of the entire story was that of the girl picking up the phone and trying to call for help but only hearing a dial tone as a scream in her own head.

November 17, 2009

Quotation

“After this draft exists, then you can bring to bear some of your critical faculties and see what you can see about your creation. Then you can try to discover what story you have made, which is not necessarily the story you started out to make.”

Making Shapley Fiction, page 93

Talking Point

Jerome Stern states in Making Shapley Fiction, “You start writing the end when you write your first word,” and ”The trouble with the ending might be that the beginning or middle doesn’t set up the ending.” However, a common problem in writing is that you may labor miserably over the beginning of the story only to find out that after writing the rest of the story the beginning is easy. Therefore, should writers simply begin writing the end of the story and then set up the rest of the story just for the ending. If this is the case, then it seems to imply the importance of the ending and not the importance of the journey, the story itself.

Connection

Jerome Stern said in Making Shapley Fiction, “Remember, begin with tension and immediacy.” Salinger accomplished that with her introduction to “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” and right away the reader got to know the woman and her mother.  The tension was good, because the reader wants to know what has happened to the guy they are speaking about and if he really is going crazy. The tension just kept building until the second scene, where all of the tension disappears because the reader becomes confused about who Sybil is and how she knows Seymour. Eventually the reader figures out that they probably met while Seymour was playing piano, but their relationship could not have progressed to the point it was expressed within the story in only two days. And then the woman and her mother seem to have no other significance other than to introduce the state of the main character, Seymour. In my opinion, the effect of this story completely diminishes after the first scene.

November 15, 2009

Quotation

“I could appreciate the intricacies of her pain. But as long as she was in Cleveland, I could never look her straight in the face. I couldn’t talk about the wounds she suffered. I can’t even write her name.”                          page  214, Michael Cunningham, White Angle

Talking Point

Why does Frisco end the narrative story with a discussion of what happened to Carlton’s girlfriend instead of talking about his own feelings and regrets? Did Frisco feel badly for wishing harm on his brother, death for one party’s loss?

Connection

Carlton was an interesting character in the fact that he was a stereotypical drinking, drug doing teenager from the sixties. However, he was different in the fact that he was actually trying to change the way grownups and teenagers saw each other and the world. He tried changing the world through people and actions instead of simply wishing that the world would change. I admired this character for that.

The author also did a very good job “showing” what was happening throughout his story. I especially remember the scene that Carlton ran into the glass door and the scene in which Frisco puts his father to bed, showing how badly his family has reacted to the death.

Quotation

“It all started when I was twelve years old. Before that, everything was a peaceful blur of childhood, growing up in the small town of Beck, Nebraska.”

Big Me

Talking Point

This is a first person viewpoint, but switches between the past and present versions of himself. In certain ways they are the same, such as his propensity to still follow people and imagine strange things. But when he explains those past events to his wife it makes the narrator seem more normal. His is reliability is still in question, however, especially due to the amount which he doesn’t remember about his childhood.

Connection

This character makes the reader wonder “how accurate or how distorted his version of events is” (Making Shapley Fiction, page178). It is especially disturbing to think that the narrator still follows people around as an adult, though not to the same degree as before. From the person he described himself as during the story; it is strange to think that he has grown up and leads a “normal” life in the fact that he has a wife and two children that he loves.

November 8, 2009

Quotation

“After striking the cranium the bullet was moving at 900 feet per second, a pathetically sluggish, glacial pace compared to the synaptic lightning that flashed around it.”

page 190, Bullet in the Brain

“The bullet is already in the brain; it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. That can’t be helped.”

page 191, Bullet in the Brain

Talking Point

I very much did not like this story. I suppose the whole thing was about identity crises like the physiatrist said, because the narrator does say that she did start loving Heidi. What I don’t understand is why would the narrator go through the trouble of going to college and finding a way to pay for it all on her own if she wanted to spend her life in her room? What was it she wanted to do with her life anyway?

Connection

Most things that people cherish, like love, family, laughter, and respect this character did not remember. Nor did he remember things he disliked, such as professors, or death, or pain. It is interesting and sad that he only remembered the first time he discovered his joy of unexpected language, which is the only thing that actually made him happy, and killed him.

I think that the reason authors write short stories is to emphasize unexpected results.

I also wonder why Anders didn’t write himself. He was a book critic, and he had his own love of unexpected language, but why did he never put language together himself?

November 3, 2009

Quotation

“They recognized that ordinary people and ordinary lives could make lively fiction, that plots could be simple, that texture and atmosphere could create a story, and that regional, non-standard speech had its own poetry.”                         Making Shapley Fiction page 151

“Places you know are not necessarily familiar to others.” Making Shapley Fiction page 173

Talking Point

This story has personal connection for me. I moved quite often when I was younger, and I still do, but that’s because I’m in college. The voice was real, the description was real. And since the speaker is a child you can tell that the voice is genuine, especially when the speaker says “I  knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to.” An adult would have said something like “A house that I could be proud of,” but instead as a child the speaker said, “A house that I could point to.” Mostly I enjoy the simplicity of this story. It’s point is simple like the thoughts of a child, but the concept is something that everyone longs for. Everyone longs for a place that they can call theirs and be proud of, a place in which they can look forward to coming home to at the end of the day.

Connection

In the biography of George Saunders, before his story, “My Flamboyant Grandson,” he stated the following: “When I write I know that I’m going to have to produce 40 percent more than I need. Sometimes I’ll write a whole page and there’ll be just one little schtick that’s good in there.” This reminds me of the reading by Carl Phillips earlier this year. Before one of his poems he stated that the poem used to be much larger and actually had appeared in a newspaper as the previous version. But then he said while he was editing the book he decided that most of what he had written in the that poem was crap and he took it out. I believe this generally happens to writers, but I refuse to believe that bad books happen because of bad editors. The author should be able to decide what to cut, and with my own work I generally write much more than what is actually good. The more we write the more we practice, but editing is crucial.