The other night we were talking about my inability to understand fiction to finer degree and I asked RedSoxSooner for some good starting points. We discussed short stories as they might offer an ease into reading and discussing.

Here is what he had to say:

RedSoxSooner Wrote:First off I remember we were discussing audio books and podcasts so I'd point you to The New Yorker's website where one author reads a favorite NY story by another author. http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction

I particularly recommend the ones titled 'Reunion, 'One With a Bullet,' 'This Is It,' 'Off Base,' 'The Living Dead,' and 'Knife In the Eye.' For some reason the podcast titles don't match the story titles. In any case, they're all good, easy to follow ways to dip your toe into the water. [links go to MP3s]

Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is one of the genre's classics and I've always found that students respond well to it.

Ditto this one by Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man Is Hard To Find.

And this one by John Updike: A&P

This is my favorite thing J.D. Salinger ever wrote: For Esmé - with Love and Squalor.


This is my favorite short story of recent years: The Smoker by David Schickler

I think you guys would both like this Kurt Vonnegut story: Welcome to the Monkey House.

Well this seems like plenty to start with. I hope you enjoy them. Or at least some of them.

So here is a place we can learn and discuss.

I started off with Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?". I think I might need to digest it for a while and come back with more to say. Maybe I just need some sort of literary vocabulary to express my thoughts about it in. I'll revisit the story and post more soon.

i've read the oates & updike. loved both. ready to discuss those, but i'll wait until everyone has read everything on the list, i guess? i'm going to say now that i don't think i'll get around to the podcasts. unless there is one that can be recommended out of the few mentioned.

There is no need to wait on others, feel free to post away. In fact, it might be helpful to get the ball rolling a bit.

Last night RedSoxSooner and I had a good time discussing the Oates story. He did quite a bit to help me understand more about the story and to help me understand what I felt and comprehended about the story. Of course we were pulled into the gravitational well that is “what is art?” after a while…

After I finished "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", my initial thought was “why?” What was the point? Why write this story at all? I thought about other forms of art or entertainment and I was able to make a little sense of it, I think. I noticed I don’t find myself asking questions like that after listening to a song, even if the song is not all that special.

The first answer to ‘why’ came partway through the story when it turned from what might be innocent teen flirting to something more creepy or dangerous – right around the time when Ellie asked about pulling the telephone. I noticed I felt different. I underwent a change in emotion and all that goes with it – felt a little warmer, heart beat increased, etc. It wasn’t a major change, but it was just enough to notice.

Creating something that consistently evokes a change in emotional response in somebody is reason enough. But I know that is not all there is to the story.

The other part that really stands out is the sharp change Connie undergoes closer to the end. She changes from resistance to submission without any major event, just some sort of straw that breaks the camel’s back. This got me thinking about people in abusive relationships, which I thought was kind of interesting.

RedSoxSooner did a great job of pointing out about a dozen or so life parallels in the story and the underlying Bob Dylan-ness of the story. In my 1.5 readings of the story I missed a lot. Probably a bit of practice will help me catch more of these kinds of things in the future.

The thought I was left with not necessarily by the story, but by reading and thinking about reading the story, was how much of the deeper meaning under (or behind) a story is consciously intended by the author and how much is project onto the story by the reader? And does it really matter?