February 3 was a dark and dank day altogether: cold spitting rain in the morning and the low, steel-gray sky the rest of the afternoon.
At four, Jim convinced his wife to go out to do her shopping before full darkness fell. He closed the door on her with a gentle wave. His hair was thinning and he was missing a canine on the right side, but he was nevertheless a handsome man who, at thirty-two, might still have passed for twenty. Heavy brows and deep-set, dark-lashed eyes that had been making women catch their breath since he was sixteen. Even if he had grown bald and toothless, as he seemed fated to do, the eyes would have served him long into old age.
His overcoat was on the hall tree beside the door. He lifted it and rolled it lengthwise against his thighs. Then he fitted it over the threshold, tucking the cloth of the sleeves and the hem as well as he could into the space beneath the door. Theirs was a railroad flat: kitchen in the back, dining room, living room, bedroom in the front. He needed only to push the heavy couch a few feet farther along the wall to block his wife's return. He stood on the seat to check that the glass transom above the door was tightly closed. Then he stepped down. He straightened the lace on the back of the couch and brushed away the shallow impression his foot had made on the horsehair cushion.
-Alice McDermott writes like a poet, even though she writes prose. So, for example, the two back-to-back stressed syllables in "cold spitting rain" (no comma) seem to reproduce, for you, the effect of getting stung by rain. All the stressed syllables (and the comma) within "low, steel-gray sky" slow you down; they burden you, as an actual steel-gray sky would burden you. This is intentional. We're looking at the opening of "The Ninth Hour."
-A plot requires a transgression, a bit of duplicitousness, and there it is in the second sentence: "At four, Jim convinced his wife to go out to do her shopping before full darkness fell." "Convinced"? That word seems unusually strong. Why not "suggested"? "Convinced" suggests that something is off, as indeed it is. "Closed the door on her"--an abrupt, almost violent action, and then Jim tries to cover his own tracks with a (calculated) "gentle wave." Gestures mean everything, and McDermott mines most gestures for all they are worth.
-The God-like narrator now takes time to assess Jim's appearance. He reminds me of Jon Hamm's character in "30 Rock"--maybe so handsome that he has never been required to learn anything, or to fend for himself. There's a further elaboration of the cunning/calculation theme: Jim's eyes "serve him"; Jim "makes women catch their breath." This is a man who knows (often) how to get what he wants. Also, he is at war with time: He will grow bald and toothless. But a tougher man might continue to make his eyes work for him; Jim doesn't really want to wrestle with time.
-The chilling third paragraph makes clear what Jim intends to do. This is the story of a suicide. But McDermott knows that labels are reductionist; at any moment, something could go wrong, and a plot could change. So she just narrates the steps of the process--dispassionately. The gap between what she is describing and the coolness of her tone helps to set you on edge. (She's a master.) Each detail makes the situation clearer: Sealing the little air-passage, checking the transom. The real heartbreaker is the moment when Jim checks to erase the impression his foot made on the horsehair cushion: This is a man who doesn't seem to mind leaving a corpse for his wife to discover, and yet wouldn't want anyone to see a dented cushion. That single gesture conveys all we need to know about the disorderly nature of Jim's thoughts: Here's a guy who is going to choose a drastic solution to a temporary problem. He's a fool. And our hearts ache for him, because we're all fools, as well. And that is how good storytelling is done.
P.S. Maybe I'm being too hard on Jim. Maybe "shutting the door on her" is merely a manifestation of herky-jerky nervousness. And maybe Jim sees his suicide as a necessary act of self-sacrifice. You can read it both ways. And that's often a feature of memorable fiction.
At four, Jim convinced his wife to go out to do her shopping before full darkness fell. He closed the door on her with a gentle wave. His hair was thinning and he was missing a canine on the right side, but he was nevertheless a handsome man who, at thirty-two, might still have passed for twenty. Heavy brows and deep-set, dark-lashed eyes that had been making women catch their breath since he was sixteen. Even if he had grown bald and toothless, as he seemed fated to do, the eyes would have served him long into old age.
His overcoat was on the hall tree beside the door. He lifted it and rolled it lengthwise against his thighs. Then he fitted it over the threshold, tucking the cloth of the sleeves and the hem as well as he could into the space beneath the door. Theirs was a railroad flat: kitchen in the back, dining room, living room, bedroom in the front. He needed only to push the heavy couch a few feet farther along the wall to block his wife's return. He stood on the seat to check that the glass transom above the door was tightly closed. Then he stepped down. He straightened the lace on the back of the couch and brushed away the shallow impression his foot had made on the horsehair cushion.
-Alice McDermott writes like a poet, even though she writes prose. So, for example, the two back-to-back stressed syllables in "cold spitting rain" (no comma) seem to reproduce, for you, the effect of getting stung by rain. All the stressed syllables (and the comma) within "low, steel-gray sky" slow you down; they burden you, as an actual steel-gray sky would burden you. This is intentional. We're looking at the opening of "The Ninth Hour."
-A plot requires a transgression, a bit of duplicitousness, and there it is in the second sentence: "At four, Jim convinced his wife to go out to do her shopping before full darkness fell." "Convinced"? That word seems unusually strong. Why not "suggested"? "Convinced" suggests that something is off, as indeed it is. "Closed the door on her"--an abrupt, almost violent action, and then Jim tries to cover his own tracks with a (calculated) "gentle wave." Gestures mean everything, and McDermott mines most gestures for all they are worth.
-The God-like narrator now takes time to assess Jim's appearance. He reminds me of Jon Hamm's character in "30 Rock"--maybe so handsome that he has never been required to learn anything, or to fend for himself. There's a further elaboration of the cunning/calculation theme: Jim's eyes "serve him"; Jim "makes women catch their breath." This is a man who knows (often) how to get what he wants. Also, he is at war with time: He will grow bald and toothless. But a tougher man might continue to make his eyes work for him; Jim doesn't really want to wrestle with time.
-The chilling third paragraph makes clear what Jim intends to do. This is the story of a suicide. But McDermott knows that labels are reductionist; at any moment, something could go wrong, and a plot could change. So she just narrates the steps of the process--dispassionately. The gap between what she is describing and the coolness of her tone helps to set you on edge. (She's a master.) Each detail makes the situation clearer: Sealing the little air-passage, checking the transom. The real heartbreaker is the moment when Jim checks to erase the impression his foot made on the horsehair cushion: This is a man who doesn't seem to mind leaving a corpse for his wife to discover, and yet wouldn't want anyone to see a dented cushion. That single gesture conveys all we need to know about the disorderly nature of Jim's thoughts: Here's a guy who is going to choose a drastic solution to a temporary problem. He's a fool. And our hearts ache for him, because we're all fools, as well. And that is how good storytelling is done.
P.S. Maybe I'm being too hard on Jim. Maybe "shutting the door on her" is merely a manifestation of herky-jerky nervousness. And maybe Jim sees his suicide as a necessary act of self-sacrifice. You can read it both ways. And that's often a feature of memorable fiction.
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