Love in Infant Monkeys

Lydia Millet's "Love in Infant Monkeys" was a strange little short story collection. At first it just seemed sort of bizarre to have each story deal with a celebrity and a different animal. It didn't really make sense to me as I was reading it. However, Millet has this humor that covers up the absurdity of the stories/situations and makes it bearable to read. 

This is definitely the most creative of the cycles we have read. In fact, I wouldn't even call this a cycle. Its more of just a collection. There's no recurring characters, setting or narrator as the other cycles have had. The only connection each story has is a celebrity and an animal. And the celebrities aren't even similar. They range from Jimmy Carter to Madonna, a politician and a popstar. "Love in Infant Monkeys" is so different from a cycle such as "Dubliners" or Winesburg." There's no unifier. Each of these stories obviously is able to stand on its own, but succeeding stories do not give the reader more information on stories previously read. I don't think this collection really fits as a short story cycle. 

My main problem with the collection (which I really didn't like, but not as much as "Self-Help" which was just godawful) was that I just found it stupid. Putting themes and style aside, I felt the idea of pairing a celebrity with an animal and writing a whole short story collection is dumb. It wasn't that creative or innovative or any of the other -tives. At points the stories seemed very forced. The one story that sticks out in my mind is "Sexing the Pheasant" where Madonna goes pheasant hunting with Guy Ritchie and his pub friends. Millet painted such a stereotypical portrait of Madonna. She didn't give her any depth. She just made her like the Madonna one would expect, self-absorbed and pretending to be things she's not (Jewish and British). I would have liked to seen another level of Madonna. Maybe an animal lover or someone who is not totally in love with themselves. At one point Madonna says she wouldnt take a coat from one of her fans because the coat would "suck." Would Madonna really think that? Is she that much of a bitch or does the public just perceive her as one? 

The aspect that I liked in the collection was that the stories would rotate between first-person and third-person. There are some celebrities that I just would not want to hear from in the first person, so it was nice to have an outside narrator telling their story. This is something that I would take from this collection for my own. I don't want every story in my collection to be in first person (or third person). I like the change. You can still have unity in a collection even if there's not the same narrator the whole time. 

Other Rooms, Other Wonders

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is a collection that transported the reader to another world that they probably aren’t too familiar with it. I don’t know much of anything about the people of Pakistan or this city of Lahore, so it was a nice insight to a new cultural of people I have never experienced. However, once you get past the setting and culture you find that the stories become somewhat redundant, not only in the collection itself, but in comparison to the other collections we have read.

 

In most collection we have read at least one love story, and in most of them the love doesn’t work out. In “Saleema” and “Provide, Provide” there is the same exact theme of an older man of higher social stature marries a younger female servant although they are both already married. Neither relationship works out for either parties and everyone is unhappy and their lives are ruined. There are only so many ways an author can tell a story about a love affair and this author does it twice—in a row.

 

However, other stories differ in that they have this parable feel. “Nawabdin Electrician,” the first story of the collection definitely feels like a story with a lesson coupled with the gritty realism we saw in “Jesus’ Son.” “Nawabdin Electrician” has the thief who meets a terrible fate for what he has done and in “Saleema” the eponymous character ruins her own life and her son’s by sleeping around. There are lessons to be learned by some of these stories.

 

However, other stories such as “Alice” deal with the theme of re connecting with people and finding your place in the world. It is not so much a parable, but a story that anyone can relate to because we all want connections with people and no one likes to be alone.

The same is true in “A Spoiled Man” as Sonya tries to spread her caring around and in “Our Lady of Paris” Sohail and Helen find love with each and attempt to hang on to each other.

 

The one story that really stood out to me in terms of theme (as all the stories share a similar setting and the presence of KK Harouni) was "About a Burning Girl." In this story there is no lesson to be a learn in a parable-esque way and no feelings of love between a man and a woman. Two brothers attempt to steal their father’s fortune and pin it on one man’s wife by lighting her on father and saying she committed suicide due to her guilt. It is much darker than the others. There is no love, no sex, no caring. The characters in this story all seem very superficial and uncaring, like animals, doing anything to survive, with no emotions. This is probably because half the characters in the story are lawyers.

 

For my own short story cycle I will take from “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders the concept of not having a continuing protagonist, yet having one character pop up in each story. KK Harouni felt extremely different than Winesburg’s George Willard yet they both appear in almost all of the stories in their respective collections.

I’d like to have one ruling character in my collection who controls everyone (like Harouni), but does not play a major character role in terms of dialogue and plot development. I want a character that is larger than life so he doesn’t have to show himself to make his presence known. 

Ms. Hempel Chronicles

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum's Ms. Hempel Chronicles was able to show just how many layers a protagonist in a short story cycle can have. Each story in the cycle has a chapter-esque feel from a novel because each story builds on the one before it, revealing new aspects of Ms. Hempel's life previously unseen. While each story could be argued to have a "new" Ms. Hempel, they all have the same basic characteristics and we are given a better view of her complex personality. All people in the real world have many layers, just like an onion, and each short story peels this away. Ms. Hempels character does not stray too far away from each consecutive story, but shows us that people are very complicated and can change quickly. This makes Beatrice Hempel the most real and most relatable of any of the protagonists we have encountered. 

This collection feels as if it follows a Ms. Hempel's life in a normal order of time, save for the few stories that served as flash backs to her childhood. This also gives it that novel feel. There is a beginning, middle and an end. And, in the end, the reader is given some sense of closure not always seen in the previous cycles we have read. We know what Ms. Hempel's game plan is and presumabley how the rest of her life will wind up. If stories were added on after "Bump" there might be one about her retiring from teaching, one of her hopefully happy marriage to someone after the breakup with Amit and one with her giving birth to her child or even stories about them all living as a family together. We seen Ms. Hempel grow from a child into a grown woman and future mother/wife, 

What a writer such as myself can take from Ms. Hempel is definitely the layers of the character to make them seem more real. I'd want to reveal new information and backstory of a character in each story. Why just have on story do this? If one were to just read one story from this collection they would not have a complete knowledge of Ms. Hempel's character. You need to read every story in the cycle and have each trait build on itself to get the 100% accurate portrayal of Ms. Hempel. However, there were certain aspects of this that I didn't like too much. There was certain information about Ms. Hempel that was revealed way too casually. We don't learn off Ms Hempel's engagement until a few stories in and it is mentioned without much buildup, as if the reader has already known this. Also the fact that she is pregnant also comes as a surprise to the reader and is again not brought up in what would seem to be a life-changing event type of manner. Nevertheless, the realness of Ms. Hempel is what I want to use in my own cycle. I want a character people can not only relate to, but envision living and breathing in the real world with them. Ms. Hempel is definitely a character that pulls this off. 

Drown

Drown is a very cohesive piece with a  consistent narrator voice throughout. However, at certain times, it is unclear whether Junot Diaz has Yunior narrating the story. One of the most poignant examples of this is in "Negocios." Also in "No Face" the narrator is obviously Ysrael, the kid whose face was eaten off by a pig when he was a baby. Junot Diaz's collection is most like Denis Johnson's "Jesus' Son" of the cycles we have read. They both have this dirty realism quality. While the stories are insightful and artistic, they also all show this dirtiness and grittiness of real life. Both of the cycles are about lower class individuals mixed up in alcohol and drugs and sex. However, the narrators in both cycles, Yunior and Fuckhead, respectively, are able to convey this poetic like language to the reader although we are painted a picture of their dirt, real world.  

Although the characters seem to be uneducated with nothing insightful or intelligent to say, there are moments when Yunior would surprise me. In "Edison, New Jersey" he shows a very advanced knowledge of history, "There are Incan Roads in the Andes that even today you couldn't work a knife between two of the cobblestones. The sewers that the Romans built in Bath were so good that they weren't replaced until the 1950s. That's the sort of thing I can believe in." Here he shows that he is actually very intelligent and knows quite a bit about something as abstract as artichectural methods of the ancient world. He is also able to analogize it to his present day situation at fixing pool tables. He takes something innovative, amazing and beautiful (the aqueducts of Rome and roads of the Incans) and is able to make a strong comparison with fixing tables. This is his reality, his dirty realism, that fixing tables to him is as much of an art and science as building aqueducts in ancient Rome. 

However, there is also that vulgarity throughout the cycle that keeps the reader placed in their dirty world. Right from the beginning in "Ysrael" the characters speak so frankly and vulgarly that its impossible to miss. This is how they speak, "He'd take the campo girls down to the dams and swim and if he was lucky they let him put it in their mouth or in their asses." And you have to remember this is a little child saying this. This statement is in stark contrast to the seemingly smart and proud man that knew so much about building aqueducts and prided himself on his skill of fixing pool tables.

The language of Yunior and his family and friends is what makes Drown, well, Drown. Its unique to anything else we have read. Right from the opening quote we know that language will be a major theme. The quote from Gustavo Perez Firmat tells us that although he is writing in English he has failed to tell you what he wanted to tell you because he does not belong to the English language culture. He does not belong to those traditional American values. He is an outcast in the mainstream society and through his language he makes this obvious. It sets him apart from main stream America, but it keeps him and his family together, keeping their culture and traditional language of the Dominican Republic. 

In high school I remember reading Denis Johnson's "Emergency" then reading Diaz's "Aurora" and thinking to myself that "Aurora" was just a Hispanic version of "Emergency." The styles of the two authors are very similar. But, now that I have read the stories the way they were supposed to be read, inside of their respective cycles I can see how each has its own unique language and style. For my writing cycle I would like to have a distinct language and style to it. One comprable to Johnson or Diaz. I want each story in my own cycle to feel similar to one that precedes and succeeds it. 

Jesus' Son

Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son is one of the more cohesive cycles we have read in this class in terms of narrator. While many of the cycles have had this omniscient narrator throughout, Jesus' Son's narrator not only tells us the story, but is the central protagonist. Each story is told through the eyes of "Fuckhead," a disillusioned, alcoholic, drug-addicted hospital orderly and aspiring writer. He travels throughout the midwest United States telling us his tales of meeting others like him and going through his drug and alcohol fueled adventures.

While on the surface Fuckhead appears to be a strung out loser, as I read each story I began to sympathize with the character more and more. He's very real. Although he's not relatable to me by any means, I find his actions and thought processes fascinating. He is so UNlike me that I find myself caring what happens to him and what he's doing. Deni Johnson makes him such a real, visible character that its hard not to sympathize with him. He's a human being in need of some serious assistance. Even as a reader you can't turn your back on him. 

The way in which Johnson is able to garner sympathy for Fuckhead is through the use of first-person narration. If he had written a cycle of short stories that were in the third-person then we would never have seen inside Fuckheads, well, head. He would just seem like a loser to us, someone polluting the world population that we would care lived or died. However, we are able to see what's going on in there. From the first story, we get this split persona of Fuckhead the drug-addict mess and Fuckhead the semi-caring, kind human being. In the first few pages of "Car Crash" he talks about all the bourbon he drank, hashish he smoked and amphetamines he guzzled down. We realize from the start that this man has a serious addiction problem. He remains in this inebriated state throughout the story, as well as throughout the cycle. However, once he is involved in the car crash that kills a man, Fuckhead shows his caring side. He holds on t o the baby that was in the car with him, making sure it was safe. He goes around the wreck seeing if he could help in any way. He then shows his all too human side once at the hospital. Once the woman is told that her husband has died in the car wreck, she begins hysterically crying and screaming. Fuckhead says, "It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere." While it may seem that Fuckhead himself is being entirely UNsympathetic to what is going one, he is just showing human nature. He had just been in involved in a deadly car wreck in which he survived without a scratch. Now he's sitting there listening to the torment of a woman who has just lost her husband. This makes him appreciate his life. No matter how terrible his life is going, and how terrible he knows it will be, he knows it is better than dying or have a loved one die on you. Anyone would feel like this. He's just happy to be alive. By the end of the cycle Fuckheads life is being to get back on track. He's shown us his moments of drug-addicted misadventures such as roaming around with Georgie or going bar to bar looking for a belly dancer. He's also shown as a kind side like when hes the only person who wants to bring McInnes to the hospital and cares if he lives or dies. He's a lost soul wandering the earth looking for some respect. He so desperately wants to be liked and just cannot seem to get what he wants. The drugs and alcohol are able to curb his appetite for human interaction and love, but it just never happens for him. Hes a sad character, one you have to not only sympathize with, but pity. 

Self-Help

Lorrie Moore's "Self-Help" fits the mold of a short story cycle perfectly, as one that does not require the same setting and recurring characters. As I read the stories I did find that the narrators, their mothers and significant others all blended into the same characters. After the first few two or three stories I even began to think that the narrators were all the same character, but then they were assigned different names and each had their own mother with some sort of psychological or physical ailment. From "How to be an Other Woman" to "To Fill" there is a constant voice from a female narrator. To me I felt like each of these women shared the same thoughts. One could easily have been substituted for another. While "Dubliners" relied on setting as a constant throughout the cycle and "Winesburg, Ohio" and "In Our Time" had recurring characters, "Self-Help" has none of these, except in spirit. 

That being said, I found "Self-Help" to be incredibly difficult to read. One of the major qualms I had with the way Lorrie Moore wrote is that most, if not all, the narrators were extremely either anti-male or had a very negative attitude towards men. Having to read almost 200 pages of feminist drawl was excruciatingly painful and boring. It made me want to jump into the book and argue with each narrator. While Moore can be praised with writing a cycle of short stories professing feminism and showing things from a woman's point of view, I felt that she may have done the opposite. All these women seem the same. Is that the message she wanted to send? That all women, when they are in similar circumstances, will act and think the same? She's grouping women together, not individualizing them. Can you really tell the difference between the mistress in the beige raincoat from "How to be an Other Woman" and the woman who cheats on her boyfriend from "How?" They act like the same person and blame the men in their lives for their problems. 

Both of these stories paint men in a negative light, albeit in different ways. The man in "an Other Woman" sleeps around, admitting that while he is not married, has several girlfriends at once while sleeping with the narrator. He obviously seen as a scumbag. The boyfriend in "How" is a very loving, friendly guy who treats his girlfriend well and wants to start a family with her. He loves her very much, yet the narrator pushes him away, cheats on him and tells him that she no longer loves him. HE was suffocating HER. Here you have a woman who hates the man she's with because he's sleeping around and in the next story you have a woman who hates the man she's with because he's too loving and too faithful. This makes no sense at all. This just draws women in a more negative light because Moore writes them as irrational. In fact, in almost every story the, for lack of a better word, antagonist, is a male. In "What Is Seized" there is the cold father.  In "A Kids Guide to Divorce" the father and ex-husbands side of the story is never shown. In "Go Like This" the loving husband Elliot is pushed aside and thought of as an "asshole" whenever he tries to help his dying wife. "In How to Talk to Your Mother" the father is extremely distant. In "Amahl" Moss the boyfriend gets very angry as the narrator tries to get closer to him. There really aren't any male characters painted in a positive light.

Another major theme is disease. In several stories the mothers of the narrators are sick and dying and in "Go Like This" the narrator has decided to end her own life while suffering from cancer. Most of the mothers in these stories are weak and pathetic, even before their illnesses begin to dominate their lives. Many of the mothers have been cheated on and are without a husband at the time of their deaths. This is a subtle way of creating a situation where Moore shows men abandoning their wives and the young, strong-willed daughter must come to the rescue and care for the mother. This happens several times which gets redundant and frustrating to read. Moore may have just titled this book "Pathetic Women who Hate Men" because this is the type of woman she writes about. 

In Our Time

The character's and dialogue portrayed in Ernest Hemingway's "In Our Time" are a perfect example of saying a lot by just saying a little. Hemingway is famous for this concise, to the point writing that leaves  certain stories ambiguous and for the reader to decipher the meaning. Basically every single vignette fell into this style along with, most poignantly, "A Very Short Story" and "The Revolutionist." What these two stories, and more of the vignettes have in common, are that the narrator and/or main protagonist is unnamed and once again ambiguous which is sort of a running theme throughout this cycle. 

It would seem that the unnamed protagonist in "A Very Short Story" is Nick Adams, the main character in many of the other stories as he is a soldier returning from war back to Chicago where Nick is from. Then again, this character could be any number of soldiers who returned home from World War I to Chicago. Obviously Nick Adams was not the only young man from the Chicago area to fight in the war. The narrator of "The Revolutionist" is even more difficult to decipher. While there story (All one and a half pages of it) are written in first-person there is absolutely no internal monologue. The narrator is just observing what is going on, not stating his opinion or thoughts or emotions. The narrator is a character in the story, not some omnipresent force telling the events from on high. He's there in the action of what is going on, yet Hemingway has him merely reporting the events of this other man, this revolutionist. The unnamed narrator could again be Nick Adams, but in perfect Hemingway form it is impossible to know for sure. 

What Hemingway has done in many of these stories is created what one could call clones of Nick Adams and placed them in stories and situations that the "real" Adams would have gotten into as well. In most of the stories or vignettes where the narrator or main character is unnamed (save for the ones about the matadors) one could easily replace the "He" or "His" or "Him" with "Nick Adams" and the stories would not be any different. There is one story however that even though the main character is named with his own identity, he could easily b replaced with Nick Adams.

In "A Soldier's Home" Krebs is a young man who has returned from Europe following World War I. Krebs has seen terrible things and is noticeably shaken and still dealing with this past trauma. His anger is only more so fueled by this bitterness that rises in him when he does not receive any sort of hero's welcome when he returns home. It is explained that Krebs did not come immediately home following the war and people even "seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over." 

Krebs is an angry young man who has lied about war stories in order to talk to people. Even when he tried to make his war stories more exciting he received a negative reaction from people which just fueled his bitterness. He seems almost dead on the inside even telling his mother, "I don't love anybody," including her which prompts her to burst into tears. What is so striking about this story is that we never learn what exactly it was that Krebs saw in the war. It was obviously some sort of atrocity or traumatic event, but Hemingway never reveals any particulars. The fact is, we don't really even need to know what happened to Krebs. Hemingway is allowing us as the reader to create a war scenario in our head as to what happened to Krebs that made him so desensitized to the world. An interesting note is that Krebs could easily be Nick Adams. Along with the main character in the vignette that precedes this story. Either Krebs or Nick could be the solider who is trapped in a trench and in desperation calls out to God and promises to spread his world if he lives, yet when he does, never says a word about God to anybody. This could be the traumatic event that shaped Krebs life. This could be a traumatic event in Nick Adams live. This could also be a traumatic event in one of the millions of soldiers who fought in World War I. It doesn't matter who it is. This is the point I believe Hemingway is trying to make. All the soldiers, no matter where they are from, what their names or what they were like before the war, can sort of melt into the same figure following the war. People from different backgrounds are thrown into this horrific setting of death and destruction and come out as these stoic individuals shaped solely by the atrocities of war. All the soldiers are the same. The unnamed narrators, unnamed characters, Nick Adams or Krebs can all be the same person. The war makes people feel like that. It stripped people of their identity before the war.