[Reading Room] Boule de Suif by Guy de Maupassant

This is an extraordinary story, and the one that sky-rocketed Guy de Maupassant to literary stardom. I can see why.

Unlike many stories written in the later 19th Century I found this one immensely accessible. The language was vivid yet not convoluted (perhaps because it has been tranlated from the original French?) and the characters intense and vivid.

It is set during the Franco-Prussian war (and if you don’t know much European history, the lively description of the occupation of French towns by the German armies in the 1800s does a lot to set the stage for what happened during the two world wars at the start of the 20th century).

The story has a longer set-up than modern stories tend to. The author spends a lot of time setting the scene before what we would call ‘the inciting incident’ that gets the story underway, but somehow it doesn’t drag. It is fascinating and descriptive and energetic and I couldn’t stop reading, even though I had no idea yet who the main characters were going to be or what the story was ‘about’.

When things do get rolling (literally) we embark on a long carriage ride with an unlikely group of companions who are thrown together by their desire to escape their occupied town and their wealth, which gives them the means to do so. Wealth, of course, is no indicator of social class and de Maupassant populates the carriage with a fascinating bunch of characters. Yes, they are largely stereotypes (much as the characters in Dickens often are) but they each have enough color to make it seem possible they might actually be real.

The story crests along with false starts and it teases us that things are going to turn out one way until we reach a point of no return. Now all that scene-setting and character-building de Mauppassant has been doing finally pays off as the story slides to its inevitable conclusion. The masterful part is that, like someone watching a mudslide or avalanche engulf a pretty mountain village, the reader can’t help but root for a miraculous change of course.

Read Boule de Suif online

[Reading Room] Dr. Heidegger’s Experiement by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This is a story that, as well as being enjoyable and stuffed with great language, is firmly rooted in short story history.

Dr. Heidegger invites five old reprobates to his study for an experiment (as apparently all men of learning did from time to time if Hawthorne and H. G. Wells and all the rest are to be believed). Of course, it turns out that the guests are the subjects of the experiment and, of course, it doesn’t go well.

As I was reading it I was aware that the style is so far from our modern style of writing and talking as to be almost as foreign as Shakespeare (in fact, it probably will be in a couple of generations). It’s not quite as dense as Dickens, not quite as antiquated as Washington Irving, but has that strong third-person narrator that not so many writers use any more (with apologies to Terry Pratchett, who lets the narrator visit from time to time).

It wasn’t just influenced by the past, though. I could clearly see how this story (and others like it) had influenced another generation of writers: the early science fiction and fantasy writers; the people who wrote for The Twilight Zone and other early TV shows. There’s a strong dose of the mysterious, the tricksy, the twisty ending (though this one doesn’t twist so much). I could clearly imagine this, updated and dusted off, in a Twilight Zone episode.

In fact, it occurred to me that this would make a perfect story to use in the CopyCat Workshop component of the I, WRITER course. If you already have your copy, why not dig out that workshop and give it a try today?

[Reading Room] The Judge’s Will by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Screen Shot 2013-06-04 at 10.34.42 AMRead this story in The New Yorker

Set in Bombay, this is a skillful story that features four distinct characters: an elderly judge, his wife, his son and his long-time “kept woman”. The author is economical and shares a lot of detail — characters, culture, physical setting — in relatively few words (even though this is not a short-short story). Not a word is wasted and it is worth reading if only to see how that’s done.

I have a couple of problems with this story, and they are matters of personal taste.

Firstly, I don’t like any of the characters. I know there’s a place for this in literature, but I really prefer a story where I like at least one of the characters at least a little bit. I can sympathize to some extent with almost all of the characters in this novel (a testament to the writer’s skill), but I don’t like any of them, which leaves me with a feeling of not having enjoyed the story.

Also, I know there is a kind of resolution in here, if I go looking for it, but I prefer a good, strong ending. This story, like real life, just pauses for a moment and then carries on, anticlimactically. It’s a literary style that is much admired, just not by me.

What do you think? Do you like this kind of story? Do you like storybook endings or are you OK with thinks just petering out?

[Writing Prompt] Epistolary Stories

This is one of my favorite forms of writing and I don’t know why I don’t do it more:

The Prompt

Write a story in the form of letters, journal entries, blog posts, tweets or other epistle.

Tips

  • This used to seem like a bit of an old-fashioned story form now that we no longer have five-times-a-day letter delivery (as in Jane Austen’s day) but with all of our new ways of communicating in the written word it is ripe for a reboot.
  • You should feel free to use old-fashioned letters, but consider using other communication vehicles.
  • Remember that all the information must come in the form of communications from one person at a time. No dialogue attribution, no speculation by a narrator. This is essentially a First-Person format, but you can have more than one person talking, in turn.

Go!

[Reading Room] The Distance of The Moon by Italo Calvino

This wonderful sci-fi fairy tale will certainly feel familiar to anyone who saw one of the more recent Pixar shorts, La Luna (in fact the director freely credits Calvino with inspiring elements of the film).

It is funny, and wildly imaginative and, perhaps necessarily, told in a very prosaic, almost pedestrian way. You probably have to write in an almost documentary style when you are writing a story as fantastic as this: the premise being that, years and years ago, the moon was so close to the earth that you could climb up to it at certain times of the month.

It is a wonderful example of how to let your creativity fly free, and still end up with a story that talks about essential truths everyone can relate to.

Listen to it here

[Reading Room] Vanilla Bright Like Eminem by Michel Faber

In “Vanilla Bright Like Eminem” by Michel Faber, a father sits with his family on a train, traveling through Scotland. A passing mention of the inadequate overhead luggage racks drew me into a story that ended with me blinking furiously and which I know I’ll remember for a long, long time.

Faber didn’t describe the gorgeous scenery whisking past the window. He didn’t spend any time at all describing the train (only that their bags were on a seat because they were too big for the overhead rack), but just that detail made the setting seem real for me (I’ve traveled on a lot of Scottish trains).

This story also featured an interesting trick I haven’t come across too often: the flash forward. Rather than tell the story in flash back, the story just unfolds and then gives us a glimpse of the future. It’s more than a gimmick though. It really works.

You can listen to the story here”