Jim Breslin

I spent last week attending The Rosemont Writers Retreat. This is the most formal training I’ve received since college, which was, let’s just say, a long time ago. Here’s some of what I learned.

Deconstructing a short story. Each afternoon, we deconstructed two short stories that were written by our group members. Each day we also deconstructed a short story chosen by our facilitator that we had read as homework. We were a small group, five students and our teacher. Several participants were formally trained; with Creative Writing MFA’s or MA’s. Several participants teach Creative Writing or Literature at local colleges.

While I’d read my peers’ short stories before the retreat, it quickly struck me that each story really needed to be read two or three times before the workshop. The first reading should be for pleasure. In subsequent readings, the structure of the piece starts to stand out. Little clues surface, such as the use of foreshadowing, the importance of word choices. Now, this may seem elementary for seasoned writers. I’ve re-read and marked up short stories before, but not with the tenacity I now realize is necessary.

Our facilitator, Elise Juska, has published three novels and dozens of short stories and currently teaches at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and The New School in New York City. Elise guided us through the deconstruction of these stories, asking exploratory questions and offering her insights. She gently balanced positive feedback with constructive recommendations where she saw opportunities for improvements. She made our group feel at ease the entire week.

In some ways, the deconstructing workshop reminded me of the Philadelphia Writers Group’s process. The writer of the piece simply listened as their story was deconstructed by the group. I scribbled pages of notes as the group discussed scenes they enjoyed, and scenes they’d like given more weight, moments they didn’t understand, etc. What was different was the amount of time we had to deconstruct each story, the insights of the more formally trained participants and Elise’s guiding hand. I have a ton of constructive notes to review.

Each day at noon, a different author was interviewed by Carla Spataro, the retreat’s director. Hearing from different genres of writers; poets, creative non-fiction, novel, and short stories was a nice touch to round out the experience. After the noon reading each day, we sat down to lunch as a larger group, where we had a chance to converse with writers in other workshops. I found myself scribbling down the names of other short stories, novels, and authors I need to read. I now have an extensive summer reading list. The first three nights, we attended readings from other local writers. On Thursday night, each student read a piece of their work.

Throughout the weekend as I decompressed, there’s been one bit of advice Elise offered that I keep reflecting on. Elise attributed the advice to the writer Ethan Canin, who said reading a story is like climbing a mountain with a backpack, picking up and placing certain weighted items in the back pack along the way. When you get to the top, every item you’ve placed into the back pack has to have been necessary or the reader will feel cheated.

Today, I start sorting through my back packs with a more critical eye.

I have an infatuation with Lydia Davis. Today, I drove by the library with her book by my side. I was due to return it. I’ve already renewed it once. I thought I could go cold turkey, simply drop it in the slot outside. I cruised right by, returning home to re-read through some of the gems in this collection.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is a unique read. The first thing is the minimalism. She makes Raymond Carver read like War and Peace.

Here’s the numbers. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is a gathering of her four previous collections, and features 198 stories in 733 pages. That averages out to 3.7 pages per story. Many of her stories are one page long, some are one paragraph. They read like a blend of flash fiction and poetry. A few stories are one sentence. Yet they are often insightful in a an eerily universal way.

One story is entitled, Mother’s Reactions To My Travel Plans. And here’s the story. “Gainesville! It’s too bad your cousin is dead!”

I laughed out loud, because it’s a universal story that reveals insights into aging, interconnectedness, and family relationships. Whose mother has not said something similar?

Several of these short pieces are written in the first person, giving the reader the sense that Davis has written her inner thoughts down on napkins or notepads. Over the years, Davis has translated several books, and she obviously takes delight playing with words in amusing sorts of ways.

Forbidden Subjects and Good Times are two stories that explore the circular nature of our feelings, the idea that our current thoughts produce our next thoughts and we can choose to make it a downward spiral or a rise upwards. Davis draws out lively examples of several zen themes throughout her pieces.

My favorite story out of the collection is Meat, My Husband. It’s a lovely story where the female narrator discusses her preparation of healthy vegetarian meals, and how her husband eats these meals with resignation. The wife knows her husband loves red meat, but she believes she has his best interest in mind with her tofu recipes. I’ve read this story a few times, and it appears to be such a simple story, yet it leads to the narrator’s own insightful revelations about her own actions in the marriage.

At nights, I found myself scanning through the book choosing the shorter stories to read or re-read. Even though it was time to turn out the lights, I kept getting drawn in, telling myself, one more gem, one more, just one more.

Reading Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, the first thing to strike me was that his prose reads like butter.

The first seventy pages or so, detailing the relationship between Corrigan and his brother was so beautifully rendered, I found myself gasping at times, wanting to underline certain sections. Corrigan, a Catholic monk with his own flaws, spends his life helping those in need without passing judgement. Corrigan is so giving of himself, so selfless, that his brother struggles to understand.

Through Corrigan’s brother, we meet several other remarkable characters, including a mother and daughter who are prostitutes. Later, we are transported from the slums to the wealthy home of a judge and his wife who’ve lost their son in Vietnam. We also take a trip with two artists whose lives comes to a crashing halt. The lives of these disparate New Yorkers is pulled together on the remarkable day in August, 1974 when Philippe Petit walked on a tightrope between the Twin Towers.

Two films came to my mind while reading this book. Crash and Babel were two movies that showed the improbable connectedness of our lives, and McCann has rendered a similar feeling through the fleeting moments his characters share.

The structure of this book was a marvel. McCann wrote the back story for each of these characters in a way that allows the reader to glide effortlessly through the pages. While I started out loving the prose, I ended the book realizing McCann balanced it all – the prose, the characters and the structure – as gracefully as Petit himself walked the tightrope that day.

As I was two hundred pages into a memoir that was marginally satisfying, I picked up and read the first story in Bonnie Jo Campbell’s collection, American Salvage. This story, The Trespasser, packed such a punch in four pages that I was instantly reminded of why I love short stories. I was shaken to the core within the span of ten minutes.

In The Trespasser, a family steps into their cabin to discover it has been broken into and turned into a drug haven. Although the family never sees the perpetrators, we learn what has transpired as the family rummages through their disturbed belongings. The violations that have taken place upon the family, as well as the young female trespasser are disquieting, and Bonnie Jo’s linkage of the two is simply haunting.

Bonnie Jo’s stories are first and foremost about the the tough rural life of Michigan families. Her characters are desperate, struggling to keep their clan together, often preparing for some impending doom while searching for their own redemption.

In World of Gas, a “cranky broad” rants against the men in her life. Her husband is gone, she catches her teenage son in bed with his girlfriend. Locals come into the hardware store making preparations for Y2K. Her father is coming to visit for the Christmas holiday, carrying his burdens and expectations as gifts. The voice of the distraught woman captures that delicate balance between comedy and tragedy, upon which sits the truth.

The Solution to Brian’s Problem is written in second person, which puts you in Brian’s skin evaluating six options in dealing with your meth addicted wife. The story is heartbreaking as Brian details what he sees as his six options, all of which will lead to death or disaster to some degree. By the time Brian details his sixth option, you feel the sense of his despair and the thin thread by which people in this situation are hanging on. Heartbreaking.

In Family Reunion, a teenage girl has stopped speaking after an incident the previous year. She has become a remarkable hunter, shooting deer, and learning to gut the deer herself. Bonnie Jo slowly peels back the details of what transpired last year that led to the estrangement and the silence, ending the story with a dramatic climax that will make any man wince.

And Storm Warning packs a powerful punch as well. Actually, all these stories are just fascinating. I just loved this book and have re-read several stories already. Warning though – they are not for the faint of heart. These are desperate people making tough choices. There is violence, drugs, extreme poverty and even boar taint. Yes, boar taint.

Looking back at 2009, I stumbled across several short stories which inspired me in one way or another. These short stories were not published in 2009, they are simply the stories that I read over the year that have resonated with me. They are stories which got under my skin somehow, stories I found myself reflecting on, marveling at their construction, their prose, and their revelation of themes that matter.

The Theory of Light and Matter, by Andrew Porter. This was the most beautiful short story I’ve read this past year. The title story in Porter’s collection details an undergraduate’s relationship with a professor while she’s dating her future husband. Porter’s stories are written in first person flashbacks, often in non-chronological order, as if the narrator is remembering bits and pieces of their lives. This story explores themes of love lost and how everyone deals with reaching their own limits. As with the best tales, this story builds until the final page.

Starving, by Elizabeth Strout. This is just one of the few remarkable stories from Elizabeth’s Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteredge. When an older man and his mistress are drawn into helping a young anorexic girl, the girl leaves a lasting impression on the man. I loved how Strout intertwined the stories of two generations into one tale, and how the slang of the younger generation causes the man to reflect on his own relationships.

Bethlehem is Full, by Boomer Pinches. A beautifully constructed story about a couple who deals with some unpleasant business before taking a vacation in Australia, only to have their relationship fall apart while in the Outback. The story is also told in prose that’s as spare as the Australian Outback it’s located in. This story takes a difficult look at a complex heart rendering situation from a male perspective, at one point the man is literally wrestling with his demons. The ending to this story took me totally by surprise. Totally heart wrenching.

A Different Road, by Elizabeth Strout. This is one of those stories that starts out with belly laughs and then turns terribly wrong. The story begins innocently enough when Olive insists that her husband stop the car so she can use the ladies room. The story veers from comic moments to sheer panic to desperation. What started out a being in the wrong place at the wrong time turns into surprising sad revelations. What a great ride.

The Interlopers, by Saki. This is the oldest story on my list. I was turned on to Saki by a Twitter friend, whom I’m most grateful for. This story revolves around two men who continue carrying on the feud of their two families over land. My favorite short stories are the ones that build to a crescendo and leave me soaring at the end; when the final paragraph acts as the catapult, sometimes the final sentence. In Saki’s story, he boils this down to the final word of the story. Just marvelous.

Real Life, by Donald Ray Pollock. This is the opening story in Pollock’s first collection, Knockemstiff. The first line of the story reads, “My father showed me how to hurt a man one August night at the Torch Drive-in when I was seven years old.” What occurs at the drive-in that night is brutal, but what transpires afterwards, and the cumulative effect at the end of the story is simply haunting. This entire collection is remarkable “grit lit,” a reminder that terrible things happen in this world.

Outage, by John Updike. I read this on the New Yorker’s web site, maybe late last year but then immediately re-read it again when he passed away in January, 2009. Updike captures the essence of a fierce blowing rain storm beautifully, and how life in a small town comes to a halt when the power is disrupted. He captures the hopes and fears of a man and his female neighbor when they are alone without the distractions of the electronic age, and the ending is so natural.

If any short stories have gotten under your skin this past year, I’d love to know what they are.

Has this ever happened to you?

You are quietly reading a short story that has meticulously drawn you in. The writer has seduced you with engaging characters and a magical interweaving storyline. The momentum of the story has accelerated, built upon itself, and you flip to the last page, breathless, being hurled towards a powerful climax the likes of which you have rarely witnessed in all of literature, and then, unexpectedly, your spouse walks in the room and asks, “Did you pick up cat treats at the store today?”

Ugh!

Short stories should be read uninterrupted. After all, isn’t that what makes the short story so powerful? There’s nothing like the intensity of reading an entire story in one sitting, where every paragraph, sentence and word matters. There’s a joy in reading a well-crafted short story and marveling at how the sum is greater than it’s parts.

The novel is fine. I also enjoy a good poem, an intriguing film, or strolling through a local art gallery. But in the end, I always return to reading the short story, which I maintain is the most powerful art form, when it is read… uninterrupted.

Welcome to my web site, where I will be posting a select few short stories and occasional essays. Right now, you can click on the link above to read “The Ex,” which was published in Think Journal’s Summer 2009 issue. You can also read two other short stories, “Shane,” and “Real Gentlemen.”

I currently have a few short stories submitted to various journals and am unofficially participating in National Novel Writing Month, which is November, 2009. I’m also busy planning the official launch of West Chester Story Slam! We plan to go public with this monthly event in January, 2010. Check back for more information, and thanks for visiting.

Jim