"A Platonic Relationship" & "Eric Clapton's Lover" by Ann Beattie

I found Ann Beattie (not that she was lost) through Dan Kois, who went on a mass-market paperback binge this summer for Slate Magazine.  My copy arrived from the street drug known as "Amazon Prime" two days later, smelling like an old person's shoes.  Note the stains of unknown origin on the cover.

The pages are that perfect burnt gold color of old paperbacks and I have to hold it ever so gently so that it doesn't disintegrate in my hands.

I chose my first story by its title, "Eric Clapton's Lover."  I went through an intense period of obsession with an Eric Clapton Greatest Hits Album in my late teens.

Writer's Note: How great is Spotify?  I am now listening to the exact album I used to play on repeat while driving around my one-horse town with my best friend. "After Midnight" was our favorite song.

The second story, "A Platonic Relationship," was Beattie's first to be published in The New Yorker.  She was 26 at the time.

I have swallowed the jealous bile in the back of my throat.  On to the stories...

Opening lines: 
(ECL) Franklin Fisher and his wife, Beth, were born on the same day of March, two years apart.
(APR) When Ellen was told that she would be hired as a music teacher at the high school, she decided that it did not mean that she would have to look like the other people on the faculty.

Gonna cause talk and suspicion, we gonna give an exhibition....

Inciting incidents:
(ECL): Franklin Junior leaves home with his new bride, a tractor-trailer driver.
(APR): Ellen gets a new roommate named Sam.

Surface problems:
(ECL): Franklin is fired from his magazine job and has to work at a movie theater that has rats in the soda machine.  Beth can't get out of bed.  Franklin starts to drink and seeks out women in parking lots.  Beth gets out of bed and becomes a feminist, but still dates a man who tries to name her cat for her.
(APR): Ellen spends inordinate amounts of time cleaning Sam's room for him, replacing one albatross (her ex-husband) for another.  She drinks too much beer.  Sam hightails it out of town on a hot, new motorcycle, leaving Ellen behind to reconcile with her ex-husband.

I desperately want Taylor Swift and John Mayer to cover Clapton's "Promises."  

Story-worthy problems:
(ECL & APR): Beattie's stories is understated.  They are not the fireworks; they are the uncomfortable barbeque where your divorced parents each bring their new partner and you sit watching your mother devour the crudite and your father stare at his much younger girlfriend's ass.  They aren't the murder in the dark of night; They are the days created the motive.

I love this line from ECL: "Being born on the same day seemed a very good thing to go on," he said.  And this: "I realized there was nothing I wanted to say to you and there was nothing I wanted to hear," she said.  Isn't that just the perfect two-line summary for a divorce that goes out as a whimper instead of a bang?

I found Ellen much less sympathetic than Beth.  At least Beth shows a little verve by getting transferred out of the lingerie department at her new job for talking too much to the customers.  Ellen just circles back to where she began.  Having gathered the courage to leave her husband and pursue her own dreams, she lets Sam use her like a gas station and ride off into his own sunset.  I want to visit her in another ten years and if she's still with her husband, or cleaning for another tenant, I'm staging an intervention.

Click HERE to read ECL on the VQR website.  Gotta buy the book or snag an old New Yorker for APR.  And go listen to "Lay Down Sally" while you're at it.

"The Messenger Who Did Not Become a Hero" by Douglas Watson

One of my most recent writing goals was to subscribe to a lit mag.  After months of vacillating, I finally settled on One Story.  Only the rocket scientists among you will figure this out but the gist is that you receive one story every three to four weeks.  I love that I know I'll read the entire thing and it's also pint-sized cute.  Note comparison size with equally esteemed literary magazine in picture below.  

 

Now on with the story.  It should go without saying that lovers of literature should have the patience to give stories a minute to form before we make any rash decisions.  That being said, aspiring writers are berated and barraged with the lament that WE MUST GET TO IT! or terrible things, things much worse than eternal oblivion, will befall us.  Who can blame me if I've become part of that culture where something must explode or die or cheat or implode in the first sentence, lest we should become momentarily bored?  

If, and I still think it's a big if, an immediate inciting incident is one of the rules, then Watson breaks that rule.  We have (gasp) about a page and a half of backstory before the proverbial crap hits the fan and everything changes for our new friend, the unnamed messenger.  

First line: There was a messenger who was stuck working for a no-good king.  

Inciting incident: The messenger lays eyes upon the woman of his dreams, she of the wispy-hair and revolutionary predilection.  It is love at first sight.

Surface problems (spoiler alert): His true love is shot and dies in his arms.  He is captured by the king who he betrayed and banished to Sumatra.  His ship wrecks.  He has his Tom Hanks moment in the sun.  Like Tom, he seeks salvation and travels over harsh lands until he comes upon the city of Our Zurich.  I realize that this all sounds very morose but it's actually hilarious if you get this kind of humor.  I laughed out loud in several places.  

Story-worthy problem: In the messengers's own words to the people of Our Zurich, "Are you misspending your life?"  It is, I think, probably the question of our time.  I love that Watson put this SWP into the context of a different era because it wouldn't have been as effective if the messenger was some poor 21st century office worker trapped in a cubicle.  The resolution is satisfying because it is not entirely fulfilling for the protag.  His life was not wholly misspent.  He had awoken.  He had escaped.  The flip side of this is that he waited too long and was old, so he soon dies, but not before he realizes that, "Life thrummed in all things."  

It's an unexpected, poignant, funny and weird story that I hope everyone will check out.  

"After Rosa Parks" by Janet Desaulniers

I mentioned last week how influential Hooked by Les Edgerton has been in my reading and writing.  This week, I edited three short stories and watched as the inciting incidents connected to the surface problems which both led organically to the story-worthy problem.  I finally get cause and effect and can feel my story-worthy problem guiding my way.  Pun intended: I'm hooked.  Not only has this approach changed how I write and edit, but it has changed how I read.  I'm picking up books at random and seeking out the inciting incident.  I'm barraging my husband with plot summaries and talk of the all-encompassing "SWP."  On tap this week: "After Rosa Parks" by Janet Desaulniers.

Opening Line

Ellie found her son in the school nurse's office, laid out on a leatherette fainting couch like some child gothic, his shoes off, his arms crossed over his chest, his face turned to the wall.  

Inciting Incident

You know when you were a kid and your mom used to respond to some generic childhood crisis with the wise question, "Wouldn't life be boring if we were all the same?"  After reading this story I'll pose a question to you, dear obscure short story blog readers.  Wouldn't life be boring if the inciting incident was obvious?  If we all saw the same inciting incident in a story?  When we read, don't we want to delve into the dance of creation along with the author?  

I'm going out on a limb but I'm going to argue that Desaulniers breaks some rules here and begins with some significant backstory.  The inciting incident, the disruption to Ellie and Cody's stability, comes later with her brother Frank's cancer diagnosis.  That's what changes everything.  

Surface Problems

Oh there's a lot to pick from here.  Ellie is a struggling single mom to young Cody, a child with a nervous stomach and a sensitivity to the sharp edges of the world that let's us know the future and all of its blemishes will be hard on Cody, and Ellie in turn.  Cody's an old soul, and what's worse for an old soul than a cookie-cutter public education?  Uncle Frank has come to help since the divorce went through, but his belly hurts too, for more nefarious reasons.

Story-Worthy Problem

If you haven't read anything by Parker Palmer, who writes about education but who really writes about life and justice and courage, please give him a try.  He changes the shape of your brain and heart.  He refers in his work to something called "The Rosa Parks Decision."  To paraphrase, it is the moment in your life when you decide to live on your own terms, at whatever the cost, because the cost of living under someone else's thumb will forever be too great once you see your world through your new eyes. 

This is the story-worthy problem for Ellie.  She's not the child quivering on the diving board, afraid to jump in.  She's the kid that won't even get off the bench, too resigned to the certainty that she'll fail to even stand up.  I imagine, though don't know for sure, that this moment of diving into the deep end, of reclaiming one's tenacity and hope, is common after divorce.  Ellie decides that if she can find her own terms, and then live by them, she and Cody will find their place in the world.  They'll both be free.