One more entry before I leave, and then I promise I really am out of the country for several days.
For this entry, we will pretend that we have all read "A Portion of Your Loveliness," by Amy Bloom. (It's available at narrativemagazine.com.) And now I'll list the things I love in that story:
-"I carried a dead baby in my womb for four weeks and looked and felt perfectly fine." (This is a story--as most, or all, of Bloom's stories are--about duality. The surface is different from the stuff underneath. Sometimes, the surface (apparent health) is very literally different from the literal stuff underneath (dead fetus).
-"Do you know what Grandma said? It's great to feel good, it's better to look good. She meant sometimes you don't want people to know how you really feel--so you can fool them by looking good." I love this heretical bit of advice. Who says this to a small child? But it's true, isn't it? Life is sometimes a game; we have makeup, nice clothing, and big smiles to aid in our small deceits, to help us get by. (I kind of think you can read Amy Bloom's stories as a treatise on How to Make It in the World--as self-help in disguise. As a modern-day version of "The Art of War." No-nonsense, common knowledge--stuff we sometimes forget when we are too much in our heads.)
-"You really don't want me to bring anything? No Sacher Torte?" I love, here, that the Sacher Torte is a weapon; the narrator needs to bring it so that she feels useful, so that she has something to take pride in. I also see the Sacher Torte as a kind of shield; she will walk into the party with her hands full, and the Torte will be a barrier between her and the other guests. Lastly, I love that the narrator doesn't get an answer to her question--and that silence very clearly means, "No. Don't bring the Torte." And she brings the Torte anyway. Sometimes, words mean something other than what they claim to mean. They are like incantations in a ritual. Not all writers would notice this apparently trivial--but actually sort of profound, and painful, and funny--detail.
-I love that Bloom invents, for the narrator, a dead mother. The dead mother appears at the narrator's bed to mock the new girlfriend's "dessert wontons" and to observe that the new girlfriend is clearly brighter than her intended. ("There are many kinds of intelligence," says the daughter, even though she's secretly grateful for the mom's bitchiness--and you get the sense that this particular conversation has happened many, many times, because, in a weird way, it's soothing for both parties. Love this. And I love that the dead mother's role in the story is as powerful as any living character's role; in fact, she seems to have more "agency" than Carl and his new girlfriend. Isn't this just like life?)
-Finally, I love the heroism of the narrator--the fact that she excavates, for her little daughter, everything that that little daughter is thinking (because this daughter can't do the work of excavation herself). I love that the sobbing, snot-soaked conversation ends with pancakes--very appropriate, and a shrewd touch to attribute this idea to the little girl. (Kids sometimes, or often, have ideas sharper than those of the adults around them.) I love that the narrator watches her daughter swaddling the American Girl doll, at the end, rather than pummeling the doll with sticks. (The daughter is now caring for herself--caring for the doll, which is an extension of herself. A small thing with major repercussions.) Seeing this shift empowers the narrator to be bold, to be generous to her ex: "I will be at your wedding with bells on." Life is mainly about very small acts of heroism, which we involve ourselves in--and then we don't fully understand what has just happened. I think AB articulates this very, very well.
For this entry, we will pretend that we have all read "A Portion of Your Loveliness," by Amy Bloom. (It's available at narrativemagazine.com.) And now I'll list the things I love in that story:
-"I carried a dead baby in my womb for four weeks and looked and felt perfectly fine." (This is a story--as most, or all, of Bloom's stories are--about duality. The surface is different from the stuff underneath. Sometimes, the surface (apparent health) is very literally different from the literal stuff underneath (dead fetus).
-"Do you know what Grandma said? It's great to feel good, it's better to look good. She meant sometimes you don't want people to know how you really feel--so you can fool them by looking good." I love this heretical bit of advice. Who says this to a small child? But it's true, isn't it? Life is sometimes a game; we have makeup, nice clothing, and big smiles to aid in our small deceits, to help us get by. (I kind of think you can read Amy Bloom's stories as a treatise on How to Make It in the World--as self-help in disguise. As a modern-day version of "The Art of War." No-nonsense, common knowledge--stuff we sometimes forget when we are too much in our heads.)
-"You really don't want me to bring anything? No Sacher Torte?" I love, here, that the Sacher Torte is a weapon; the narrator needs to bring it so that she feels useful, so that she has something to take pride in. I also see the Sacher Torte as a kind of shield; she will walk into the party with her hands full, and the Torte will be a barrier between her and the other guests. Lastly, I love that the narrator doesn't get an answer to her question--and that silence very clearly means, "No. Don't bring the Torte." And she brings the Torte anyway. Sometimes, words mean something other than what they claim to mean. They are like incantations in a ritual. Not all writers would notice this apparently trivial--but actually sort of profound, and painful, and funny--detail.
-I love that Bloom invents, for the narrator, a dead mother. The dead mother appears at the narrator's bed to mock the new girlfriend's "dessert wontons" and to observe that the new girlfriend is clearly brighter than her intended. ("There are many kinds of intelligence," says the daughter, even though she's secretly grateful for the mom's bitchiness--and you get the sense that this particular conversation has happened many, many times, because, in a weird way, it's soothing for both parties. Love this. And I love that the dead mother's role in the story is as powerful as any living character's role; in fact, she seems to have more "agency" than Carl and his new girlfriend. Isn't this just like life?)
-Finally, I love the heroism of the narrator--the fact that she excavates, for her little daughter, everything that that little daughter is thinking (because this daughter can't do the work of excavation herself). I love that the sobbing, snot-soaked conversation ends with pancakes--very appropriate, and a shrewd touch to attribute this idea to the little girl. (Kids sometimes, or often, have ideas sharper than those of the adults around them.) I love that the narrator watches her daughter swaddling the American Girl doll, at the end, rather than pummeling the doll with sticks. (The daughter is now caring for herself--caring for the doll, which is an extension of herself. A small thing with major repercussions.) Seeing this shift empowers the narrator to be bold, to be generous to her ex: "I will be at your wedding with bells on." Life is mainly about very small acts of heroism, which we involve ourselves in--and then we don't fully understand what has just happened. I think AB articulates this very, very well.
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