Last time, we began discussing Elizabeth Strout’s Anything Is Possible, focusing on how the nine stories are linked by theme and character. An important question about this book is whether it is a novel or a collection of short stories. I mentioned that one can read each story separately, although reading them all has a synergistic effect. Let’s examine this separate-ness issue more. Do the various stories have the characteristics of short stories, or do they behave more like the chapters in a novel? A novel, let’s remember, is a different beastie in that each chapter is a step in a sequence about transformation. To review, what are the characteristics of a short story? A weighty issue, my friends. Some take the position that the essential characteristic of a short story is its length—typically between one thousand and ten thousand words. A novel is longer. Well, that seems kind of an easy way out. Here’s a definition that covers length but also gets at self-contained-ness (is that a real word?), the quality of something being complete onto itself: A short story is a piece of prose fiction that can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. Here are a couple of other views: A story should be a story; a record of things happening full of incidents, swift movements, unexpected development, leading through suspense to a climax and a satisfying denouement. Anton Chekov thought that a story should have neither a beginning nor an end. It should just be a "slice of life", presented suggestively. In his stories, Chekov does not round off the end but leaves it to the readers to draw their own conclusions. ‘Kay. The first definition emphasizes the need for a short story to have a climax and satisfying conclusion, the second presents the idea that a story should be open-ended and not conclusive. I’ll have a go: A good story shows a protagonist transforming. In a novel, the protagonist is shown at the beginning the way she/he is or was before transforming, usually because of some sort of dilemma. Then the story shows how particular experiences and interactions with others create a moment of crisis that leads to transformation. A novel accomplishes this process over its whole course; a short story must do so in a much shorter space. So, if each chapter in Anything can be read as a short story, it should have these structures. Let’s look at the first chapter, The Sign. Two characters are introduced, Tommy Guptill, who is arguably the protagonist (the story begins and ends with him) and Pete Barton, Lucy’s brother (remember that Lucy is a thread through all the stories). Tommy begins in a sort of pleasant trance state in which he has rationalized tragedy (the long-ago destruction of his dairy farm business and family home) by a belief that, during the disaster, God spoke to him and assured him that everything would be all right. He has worked for years since as a janitor, a job where he encountered and tried to help Lucy Barton, whom he knew of because Lucy’s father had worked for him on the dairy farm. One of his current helping projects is Lucy’s brother, Pete, an isolated and limited man who is largely shunned by the community. So here, the story has begun with a view of the protagonist—Tommy—as he is before the events of the story change him. He is resolutely positive and believes that bad things happen to people to make them appreciate what’s really important in life. During the fire which destroyed his farm, “he had felt—undeniably—what he could think was only the presence of God…pressed up against him and conveying to him without words…some message that Tommy understood to be: it’s all right, Tommy.” Tommy goes to visit Pete Barton and is surprised when Pete asks him to stop dropping by. “You do it to torture me,” Pete says. Tommy is mystified, and Pete explains that it was his father who deliberately set the fire that destroyed Tommy’s business and that Tommy knows this and visits Pete to remind him of what his father did. Tommy doesn’t want to believe that Barton Sr. set the fire and suggests Pete is mistaken. Tommy tells Pete about his experience of God appearing to him the night of the fire, something Tommy has never told anyone before. Pete responds: “So you believe that.” He says this not in a challenging way but more out of sincere curiosity at encountering someone who is capable of such a belief. Tommy affirms he does believe and tells Pete: “I guess there’s always that struggle between what to do and what not to do…to be able to show remorse—to be able to be sorry about what we’ve done that’s hurt other people—that keeps us human.” Pete says in response that his father was remorseful about setting the fire. Pete continues that he was wrong about Tommy wanting to torture him and that he’d like Tommy to come by again so they can have “talks.” Tommy agrees, although he’s aware he really doesn’t want to. Tommy drives home and feels an increasing sense of fear. He doesn’t understand why he told Pete about his experience with God and is shocked that Pete questioned whether it really happened. Tommy feels an emptiness he hasn’t felt before, an absence of God. He goes home and talks with his wife Shirley, telling her about his experience with God the night of the fire. “But now I think I must have imagined it…it couldn’t have happened. I made it up.” His wife reassures him, saying it could have happened just as he believed. “And then Tommy understood…his doubt—(his sudden belief that God had never come to him)—was a new secret replacing the first.” ‘Kay. Tommy transforms significantly over the course of the story. He goes from sureness to doubt because of his encounter with Pete Barton. At the end, there is no neat tying up of the doubt, no happy ending. We are left with a man whose coping mechanism have been shattered. Later in the book, we learn that Tommy, his wife, and Pete Barton have been working at the local soup kitchen since the events of The Sign, and we can speculate that Tommy derives peace from this charitable work. But at the conclusion of The Sign, we are left with a human in despair. So, referring back to the definitions of a short story we began with, The Sign seems to have those characteristics, but is also embedded within a larger work. It has transformation of a protagonist, unexpected developments, and a crisis leading to an open ending. It is self-contained, in that you don’t need to read all of Anything to comprehend it. Next time, let’s look at another of the stories, hunting for transformation. Till then. #AnythingIsPossible #ElizabethStrout #AlanBray

This week, a new one, Elizabeth Strout’s 2017 book Anything Is Possible. Dena recommended Elizabeth Strout to me; I’ve read Olive Kitteridge, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and this is my fifth read of Anything Is Possible. Yes, I like it. Possible is a little different from many contemporary novels in that structurally, it is a series of nine stories, linked by reference to and occasional appearance of one character, Lucy Barton, who, notably, is always seen by others in the stories, never having her own perspective. Of note too is that she is an author who lives in New York City, and this is true of the real author, Elizabeth Strout. The stories are also linked by being about people (including Lucy) who are from the fictional town of Amgash, Illinois. As far as I can tell, only one of the stories, Snow-Blind, was previously published, so we can speculate that Ms. Strout intended for the stories to be published together, i.e. it’s not a collection of previously published works. Of course, you immediately object that this linked short story format is not unique, and I do not disagree. Sherwood Andersen’s Winesburg, Ohio is similar, and a lot of the heavy hitters—Hemingway, Faulkner—have published linked short stories in one book. What does this mean—linked short stories? As I said, they are linked by reference to geographic place and a character Lucy Barton. Other characters also are referred to in more than one tale—Tommy Guptill and his wife, Abel Blaine and his sister Dottie, Charlie Macauley, and Patty Nicely, and of course, Lucy’s brother Pete. Moreover, each story is linked to the others by their treatment of particular themes and by a consistent narrator’s voice. The stories are all in third person and in the simple past tense, with sections that dip back in time. A close reading will reveal that, although most of the stories seem to occur at the same time, there is some movement forward. Pete Barton, who appears in the first story The Sign, tells his sister Lucy in Sister, that he’s been working at the soup kitchen with Tommy Guptill and his wife for about a year; in The Sign, the story is about Pete and Tommy but there is no mention of a soup kitchen, so we can infer that at least a year has passed between the events in The Sign and those in Sister. We also have the early stirrings of love between Patty Nicely and Charlie Macauley in Windmills and The Hit Thumb Theory, and then the later mention in Mississippi Mermaid, that they have become a couple. And one of the stories, Snow-Blind, occurs largely in the past. (This story, about the actress Annie Appleby, is a kind of mise en abyme for the whole book—more on this to come). Actually, most of the bad things that the characters are dealing with in the book’s present have occurred in the past. The book’s present is a time of reconciliation and recovery—but that doesn’t mean it’s always happy. Can you read each story as an independent short story without reading the rest? Yessir, and that is one of the reasons this book is such an achievement. However, there is a synergy created by reading the whole thing, as each story contextualizes the others, creating a sort of tapestry effect, meaning you wind up with a richer perspective than you’d get from just one character’s perspective. A tapestry dealing with shame, trauma, and redemption through connection. As I have said, the narrator repeats some information across the stories, and this repetition, I believe, works to tie each story together. For instance, most of the stories—especially in the first half—state that the events are occurring or did occur in Amgash, Illinois. The present time of the book is the reference time for the characters and narrator. For instance, Windmills begins with the narrator stating, “A few years ago…” Most stories reference Lucy Barton, as well as the memories most of the main characters have of how poor her family was, that she escaped and became a writer in New York. Many characters appear in more than one story, for instance Angelina, Patty Nicely’s friend, who journeys to Italy to see her mother in Mississippi Mary. Charlie Macauley has his own story, The Hit-Thumb Theory, but does a “walk-on” in others, Windmills, and Dottie’s Bed and Breakfast. Annie Appleby figures prominently in Dottie’s Bed and Breakfast, and then has her own story, Snow-Blind. These things are obviously not coincidence but the work of Ms. Strout who wanted to create running threads that would connect different parts. Lucy Barton is arguably the center and of course, comes to us through other books, an interesting phenomenon in itself. In this book, she is an adult, a successful author who has left her family and small-town roots and has never returned—till the events recounted in Sister. Most of the other characters know of her and harbor feelings of anger and envy at her seeming success and escape. They see her on TV screens; they encounter her at author events in other cities, they gossip about her to each other. She is remembered, along with her siblings, as being desperately poor and abused by her parents. She is a kind of lightning rod, if you will, to many of the others. “The Barton family had been outcasts, even in a town like Amgash, their extreme poverty and strangeness making this so. The oldest child, a man named Pete, lived there now, the middle child was two towns away, and the youngest, Lucy Barton, had fled many years ago…” The narrator in The Sign. “”I was supposed to be named for my aunt, but at the last minute my mom said, Fuck her…She’s a bitch. She thinks she’s better than any of us…I’ve never met her. She lives in New York…” Lila Lane in Windmills. “I saw Lucy on TV a few years ago. Hot shot. She wrote a book or something. Lives in New York…” Patty Nicely’s mother in Windmills. “And this made him think of Lucy Barton again, how terribly poor she had been as well, how he went as a kid to stay with her family…she would go with him to look for food in the dumpster…” Abel Blaine in The Gift. Lucy is the one who the characters believe escaped the trauma of their lives. But this is an idealization. It is in Sister that the reader learns more of the truth about Lucy and how she has not been able to escape her roots. ‘Kay, let’s adjourn there and return next time. Till then, my friends. #AnythingIsPossible #ElizabethStrout #AlanBray

First, by way of apology, sorry that I didn’t publish a post yesterday as has been my habit for more than two years. Everything is all right but I’ve been traveling around this week, a close family member was in the hospital yesterday. He’s good now. Onward! This week, let’s continue to explore Jhumpa Lahiri’s wonderful The Interpreter of Maladies. Last time, I laid out the plot and characters and began to look at how the story itself does what one of the protagonists does—interprets and shows the reader the characters’ maladies or problems. Let’s build on this brilliant idea and look at how the structure of the story conveys information. Couldn’t we do something else? No. What can be said about Interpreter’s structure? It is a written story, distinct from a film or a play, and these distinctions are big, my friends. Let’s just say that a written story invites re-reading. It is not a performance—or rather, it includes the audience as an active participant in a performance, somewhat private. It is shaped by language; is this shape random? ‘Course not, silly rabbit. Things begin with an entity telling the reader: “At the tea stall, Mr. and Mrs. Das bickered about who should take Tina to the toilet…In the rearview mirror, Mr. Kapasi watched as Mrs. Das emerged slowly from his bulky white Ambassador, dragging her shaved, largely bare legs across the back seat. She did not hold the little girl’s hand as they walked to the rest room.” What’s going on here? The reader may have some clues, pre-reading, based on knowing that the author comes from a Bengali family and was raised in America, and so might quickly decide that the names and location are in India. Thus far, we have four characters, a husband and wife, a little girl, and Mr. Kapasi, who is identified as the owner of an American car. He is apparently sitting in the driver’s seat of the idled car, watching Mrs. Das in the rearview mirror. Wait! What about that first sentence? At the tea stall, “Mr. and Mrs. Das bickered…” Did Mr. Kapasi observe this incident from his car? Was he in the tea stall with the couple? I don’t think so, best B. That is the narrator telling us straight off that there is some tension between the husband and wife. The story does not clearly state that Mr. Kapasi witnessed them bickering; it clearly does not. The story begins in the middle of something, and we learn in short order what this something is in the story’s second and lengthy paragraph of exposition. The narrator tells us that Mr. Kapasi has been hired by Mr. and Mrs. Das to drive them and their three children to the “Sun Temple at Konorak.”—we can infer this is a significant tourist destination. The family—immigrants to America (which is a theme of Ms. Lahiri’s)—are described through Mr. Kapasi’s perspective. And we have that Mr. Kapasi is curious about Mrs. Das, and she herself is grumpy. Is this foreshadowing? you ask. I do? Definitely maybe. We know that as the story develops, indeed, Mr. Kapasi is very curious about Mrs. Das—especially as he begins to believe she is interested in him. And, yes, the lady is grumpy, and we learn why. What the story does is to present the reader with these characters and then show you why they are the way they are. The foreshadowing is perhaps strongest with Mrs. Das as we immediately wonder why is she grumpy and neglectful of her children. We, like Mr. Kapasi, are curious about her. And the story provides an answer. There’s further foreshadowing in the early descriptions of Bobby, who it is revealed is not Mr. Das’ son. “…this boy (Bobby) was slightly paler than the other children.” An innocent comment in itself, but quite meaningful by the time you reach the end. The title works hard for the story. On a concrete level, Mr. Das' job is to literally interpret patient's maladies to a doctor who doesn't speak their language. On a different level, as I've said, the story interprets the maladies of the two protagonists to the reader. The narrator "speaks" both the language of the story and the language of the reader. Another level is that this is a story about the characters' partners, Mr. Das and Mrs. Kapasi, not understanding what is wrong with their mates. They require someone who speaks both languages to explain. Alas, Mr. Kapasi cannot do this within the confines of the story. Finally, to an English speaker (and the story was published in English) the formal, somewhat archaic word "maladies" suggests something exotic. Interpreter is a story about two people, Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das, whose collision exposes sadness for both. One can speculate about what could happen after the end—this is possible because the ending is left open. There’s no statement, after the day trip is over, that Mrs. Das tells her husband the truth about Bobby, or that she enters a deeper depression that leaves her even more neglectful of her family. There’s no statement about Mr. Kapasi returning home and confronting his wife about the unresolved grief over their son, and how he feels deeply unappreciated. We are left to speculate. Or not. Perhaps we simply feel the pleasure of reading a great story. Till next time. #TheInterpreterOfMaladies #JhumpaLahirir #AlanBray

This week, a new one, Jhumpa Lahiri’s 1999 short story, The Interpreter of Maladies. It was originally published in Agni magazine and then published in the 1999 story collection of the same name. The story itself won the O. Henry Prize, the story collection won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Here is a synopsis, with the requisite spoiler alert sign boldly lit: Mr. Kapasi is a middle-aged, part-time tour guide in India and has been hired by the Das family, who are immigrants to America and are in India visiting family. Originally trained as an interpreter for international diplomats, Mr. Kapasi’s main job is working in a doctor’s office where he interprets for patients who do not share a language with the doctor. When he is prompted to tell the Das family about this, Mrs. Das is fascinated, and tells Mr. Kapasi what he does is valuable and “romantic.” This is a new perspective for him, as his wife tends to denigrate his work. The two main characters are troubled for different reasons. Mrs. Das regrets and feels burdened by a secret that has left her irritable and dissatisfied. She denigrates her husband and seems to blame his shortcomings for her unhappiness. “…Mrs. Das gave an impatient sigh, as if she had been traveling her whole life without pause.” She gets a snack and eats it by herself, ignoring the children as the youngest plays with the locks on the car door. She does her nails, and when her daughter asks her to paint her nails too, Mrs. Das says, “Leave me alone.” She complains to her husband, “Isn’t this an air-conditioned car?…I told you to get a car with air-conditioning. Why do you do this, Raj, just to save a few stupid rupees.” Mr. Kapasi’s story emerges, told by the narrator: “The job (interpreter of maladies) was a sign of his failings. In his youth he’d been a devoted scholar of foreign languages, the owner of an impressive collection of dictionaries. He had dreamed of being an interpreter for diplomats and dignitaries, resolving conflicts between people and nations, settling disputes of which he alone could understand both sides…Now only a handful of European phrases remained in his memory, scattered words for things like saucers and chairs…He had taken the job as interpreter (with the doctor) after his first son…contracted typhoid…he bartered his skills as interpreter to pay the increasingly exorbitant medical bills.” The son dies, but there are other children and “the newer bigger house and the good schools and tutors…and the countless other ways he tried to console his wife and to keep her from crying in her sleep.” The doctor offered to pay him twice as much as he was making as a teacher, and Mr. Kapasi accepted. But…”his wife had little regard for his career as an interpreter…it reminded her of the son she’d lost…and she resented the other lives he helped.” Mr. Kapasi is smitten with Mrs. Das, who asks for his address, so that she can send him copies of the photos being taken on the tour, and Mr. Kapasi imagines a whole secret correspondence with her in which he will be understood and appreciated. “In time, she would reveal the disappointment of her marriage, and he his.” The climax of the story is when Mrs. Das confesses to Mr. Kapasi that one of her sons is the product of an extra-marital liaison, and that no one knows this—not even the other father. She describes how she was lonely and isolated in America, feeling angry and misunderstood by her husband. “For eight years, I haven’t been able to express this to anybody, not to friends, certainly not to Raj. He doesn’t even suspect it. He thinks I’m still in love with him.” “I feel terrible looking at my children, and at Raj, always terrible. I have terrible urges, Mr. Kapasi, to throw things away. One day I had the urge to throw everything I own out the window, the television, the children, everything. Don’t you think it’s unhealthy?” Mr. Kapasi denies that he can help. “What need is there for an interpreter?” “…I’m tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi, I’ve been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better, say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.” She hopes Mr. Kapasi will “interpret” this “malady” and thus free her from torment. Mr. Kapasi reacts: “Her confession depressed him…Mr. Kapasi felt insulted that Mrs. Das should ask him to interpret her common, trivial little secret…Still Mr. Kapasi believed it was his duty to assist Mrs. Das. Perhaps he ought to tell her to confess the truth to Mr. Das. He could explain that honesty was the best policy. Honesty, surely, would help her feel better, as she’d put it…He decided to begin with the most obvious question…Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?” Mrs. Das responds: “She opened her mouth to say something but as she glared at Mr. Kapasi, some certain knowledge seemed to pass before her eyes, and she stopped. It crushed him; he knew that at that moment he was not even important enough to be properly insulted.” Mrs. Das leaves abruptly to join her family. But Bobby, the son believed to have a different father, has become separated from the group and is being attacked by monkeys. Mr. Das seems ineffectual, and Mr. Kapasi drives off the monkeys and carries Bobby to his mother. “As he carried him, he was tempted to whisper a secret into the boy’s ear. But Bobby was stunned and shivering with fright.” Mrs. Das comforts her son. As she takes a comb from her purse to brush his hair, Mr. Kapasi observes his address fluttering away in the breeze. “He watched as it rose, carried higher and higher by the breeze, into the trees where the monkeys now sat, solemnly observing the scene below…this was the picture of the Das family that he would preserve forever in his mind.” So, in an ironic sense, Mr. Kapasi actually does interpret Mrs. Das’ malady accurately, although he is angry, and Mrs. Das rejects him. The narrator shows the reader these things even though the characters deny them. The narrator has distance from the characters and can provide these insights. However, this is not a personified, omniscient narrator who might say, “Well, yes, Mr. Kapasi is emotionally crushed at the end of the story.” Instead, the narrator merely shows things in an omniscient way, leaving the reader to draw conclusions. Here's another way to think of this: Is there a sense of the narrator interpreting the characters’ maladies, just as Mr. Kapasi interprets the maladies of the doctor’s patients? Yes, best B.. The story does what its protagonist does, and vice versa. It’s quite likely that Mrs. Das feels guilt over having sex with another man and getting pregnant but never telling anyone. The story shows her acting as if she’s guilty, and then shows Mr. Kapasi offering this explanation. And the story shows Mr. Kapasi’s malady of being lonely and feeling unappreciated despite his sacrifices. The story offers an interpretation of both character’s unhappiness. Could it be that on the surface, Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das both feel they’ve made major sacrifices in life? Mr. Kapasi gave up his dream of being a high-level interpreter in order to provide for his family, and his wife doesn’t seem to appreciate this. Mrs. Das has sacrificed being happy in her marriage and family out of a fear, I think, of losing both and perhaps of being confronted with her error in judgment. Both characters settle for less but for different reasons. Till next time. #TheInterpreterOfMaladies #JhumpaLahiri #AlanBray

This week, I’d like to begin with an admission of error—no, I’m not joking. As Baby’s father says to Johnny in Dirty Dancing, “When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.” I misinterpreted the quote about Joel, the protagonist in First Love, seeing the dead man brought into Natchez, and that “his eyes were for something else, something wonderful.” This was not referring to the dead man’s eyes, but to Joel’s, who is studying the miracle of the vapor-shapes coming from the mouths of the living. So, even the pros can be in error, best B. All right, I feel much better. Today, let’s ponder the overall course of the story and conclude by thinking about the point. What’s the point, Walter? Hold up, “overall course?” You talkin’ story arc? “A story arc is the chronological construction of a plot in a novel or story.” It is a description of how a story moves (or doesn’t move) through time—not so much a description of how a story handles or portrays time but more how the plot interacts with time. In First Love, the story begins, as we have seen, with a statement that “whatever happened…in a season of dreams,” and then with a description of the unusual winter weather in Natchez, Mississippi. The time is set particularly—January of 1807—but the passage utilizes verbs in imperfect tense, implying actions in the past that have not concluded but are ongoing. Then, the language in the story focuses on the particular: Joel Mayes, a twelve-year-old deaf boy who is working at an inn at Natchez as a cleaner of boots. We are showed how Joel came to be at the inn, that his parents were lost, and the story moves back to the imperfect as Joel’s activities as a boot-black are described. Then, after a paragraph break, we are told that “a new adventure began for him.” Aaron Burr and a friend come to the inn and park themselves in the room Joel sleeps in, staying up all night, talking. Joel is fascinated with the men, particularly Burr, although, being deaf, doesn’t know what is being said. He surmises that the man is Aaron Burr, who is in the area to be tried for treason. Joel makes an internal connection in a dream-like way between Burr and Blemmerhassett, and his parents, presumably dead. “Joel stood motionless; he lifted his gaze from Burr’s face and stared at nothing…If love does a secret thing always; it is to reach backward, to a time that could not be known—for it makes a history of the sorrow and the dream it has contemplated in some instant of recognition. What Joel saw before him, he had a terrible wish to speak out loud, but he would have had to find names for the places of the heart and the times for its shadowy and tragic events, and they seemed of great magnitude, heroic and terrible and splendid, like the legends of the mind. But for lack of a way to tell how much was known, the boundaries would lie between him and the others, all the others, until he died.” The time that could not be known is Joel’s infancy and his lost childhood. At the end, he observes Burr leaving Natchez at night, wearing a disguise of turkey feathers. Is he disguised as a turkey? Don’t think so. Historically, we know that Burr was later captured and tried for treason. But in the story, Joel follows him out along the road, thinking that he, Joel, will not return to his job at the Inn. Finally, “he fell down and wept for his father and his mother, to whom he had not said goodbye.” So, Joel realizes Burr is leaving, Joel leaves, and it is then that he experiences the loss of his parents. Before that, he had not mourned them, he had only experienced the tragedy in dream-like terms. It is as if Joel’s whole sojourn in Natchez was a time set apart from the rest of his life. Now, he will go on, a “woke” (if you’ll forgive me) orphan. The title, First Love, refers less to Joel’s feelings about Aaron Burr and more to those he feels for his first love—his parents. This is a story about how a random encounter with a celebrity makes time start up again for a person staggered by trauma. It seems to me that the point of First Love is that this time set apart is a necessary step Joel has to take before he can move on from loss. Till next time, my friends. #FirstLove #EudoraWelty #AlanBray

In Eudora Welty’s First Love, a twelve-year-old boy, Joel Mayes, encounters Aaron Burr and Harman Blennerhassett, two figures, as we saw last week, who stepped from the history books to Joel’s fictional world. However, the story is not “about” them, it is about Joel. Joel wakes up and sees the two men in his room, which is semi-public. They are strangers to him. Being deaf, he does not understand what the men are saying and struggles to make meaning of their gestures. Burr gestures with one arm, and “it was like the signal to open some heavy gate or paddock, and it did open to his complete astonishment upon a panorama in his own head…” Yes, this initial encounter could be described as dream-like, occurring as it does between two episodes of Joel’s sleep. Whether or not it is a fictional dream, Joel connects it to his past. It’s related that Joel arrived in Natchez after being part of a conflict between “Indians” and Settlers, during which Joel was separated from his parents who were presumably killed or enslaved. He is saved by “Old Man McCabe,” a rustic who protects Joel, albeit in a rough manner, dragging him away from his parents into a thicket and threatening him with death if he isn’t quiet. This episode is reprised by Joel in his thoughts about Burr and Blennerhassett as he wonders if they will “…each take him by an arm and drag him on further, through the leaves…He was seized and possessed by mystery.” The common theme seems to be a time of high emotional arousal for Joel, a time when he is assailed by people and events beyond his control. This is quite a bit like what happens in a dream. This is also, I believe, a sophisticated use by Ms. Welty of an interesting artifact of reality, contingency. A contingency is an event you can't be sure will happen or not. The noun contingency describes something that might or might not happen. We use it to describe an event or situation that is a possible outcome but one that's impossible to predict with certainty. So in this story, Joel happens to be in Natchez at the same time as Aaron Burr, who happens to be staying at the inn Joel works at. Joel happens to wake up (not because he heard something) and sees Burr and Blennerhassett, who happen to be in Joel’s room in the middle of the night. There are multiple points in this summary where something different might have occurred, resulting in Joel and Burr remaining strangers to one another. And of course, then Joel learns about Burr’s identity by reading a poster he’s asked to hang up. It’s not recounted but the implication is that Joel had some prior knowledge of who Burr was, a recognition of the name. However, he never makes meaning of this, never says to himself, “Aha, this fellow is the former Vice-President.” It’s more that Joel makes some kind of assessment that Burr is a celebrity, a being unlike himself. A celebrity who intrudes into Joel’s world and whom Joel has little control over. (sort of like Donald Trump you say? Prrrps so, best B. One could imagine a contemporary story about a young deaf boy meeting the former president—an arrogant troublemaker about to be put on trial(s)—in the same way Joel meets Burr. A nightmare). ‘Kay, we’ve got a bit of a paradox, my friends. Eudora Welty wrote First Love; she created the contingency I outline above. And a contingency, by definition, is not something that’s planned out or created. It just occurs. Well…Ms. Welty is showing us the effects of a contingency, one that she had to formulate for dramatic purpose. Maestro, what would be this structure’s opposite? Glad you asked. A different story would be if Joel had decided he wanted to encounter Aaron Burr, and through a series of challenges, made his way to Natchez—knowing Burr would be there—got a position as bootblack at the inn Burr was staying at, and waited in the semi-public room, knowing Burr would appear. It would be a story about a strong-willed protagonist who is in control of his destiny. He gets what he wants; he is pre-destined to get what he wants. But that is not First Love. No, the story is about happenstance, about dreams. There is no pre-destination here. The story begins: “Whatever happened, it happened in extraordinary times, in a season of dreams, and in Natchez it was the bitterest winter of them all.” This certainly creates a question to be answered by the story: What happened? A full-page description follows of Natchez in this bitter winter, the Mississippi, the Natchez Trace, a Native American trail. The narrator begins with scene setting, utilizing verb tenses and constructions that indicate ongoing—not completed—activity. The first sentence implies a sort of indefiniteness—"whatever happened” means that the story may have more than a single meaning. It’s like the storyteller saying, “I don’t know what happened exactly, but it happened in extraordinary times, when many were dreaming, or in a time when people imagined things happening. It did happen in the bitterest winter of all in Natchez. This indeterminateness fits with a story about contingency. At the end of this first section, a man is brought into the town who had been frozen to death. And after a paragraph break, this leads to the introduction of the protagonist: “Joel Mayes, a deaf boy twelve-years-old, saw the man brought in and knew it was a dead man, but his eyes were for something else, something wonderful.” This is where the story enters the particular. And what are we to make of the dead man’s eyes being for something else, something wonderful? It could show Joel’s experience of seeing the dead man, that he doesn’t see someone who’s frozen to death in agony but someone who died in rapture. Immediately after, he is shown marveling at the shapes people’s speech make in the vapor of the cold air—he is not shown as being terribly empathetic about the other’s suffering. It could also be that “something wonderful” connects with the dream-like nature of the story. Well, sorry for the abrupt transition, best B. but I’ve got to go. Till next time. #FirstLove #EudoraWelty #AlanBray

My short story, The Porous Texture of Snow, is a finalist in Narrative Magazine's Spring Story Contest. Many thanks to Tom Jenks and everyone at Narrative. Snow is a story about discovering roots. I'm really delighted at this recognition. I will post about when and where it's available to read.

This week, a new story, First Love, written by last week’s author, Eudora Welty, and first published in 1942. First Love is classic Welty, set in Natchez, Mississippi, and full of gorgeous descriptive prose, the story shown omnisciently by an active, unnamed, narrator. The dialogue, however, is minimal, as the protagonist, twelve-year-old Joel Mayes, is deaf and mute. Moreover, the story is set in the historic past, 1806, and features three characters based on “real” people, Harman Blennerhassett and his wife Margaret, and your buddy Aaron Burr, who famously shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a July, 1804 duel. To my knowledge, Ms. Welty wrote no other stories featuring characters based on “real” people. In any case, this is no piece of historical fiction. First Love is not “about” Aaron Burr and the Blennerhassetts; it is “about” Joel and his experience of encountering these famous people in a primarily visual way and making meaning of the encounter. And it is not about Aaron Burr’s duel with Alexander Hamilton, which occurred before the events of this story. Well, why Aaron Burr, then? “Kay, an historical digression: In 1804, Thomas Jefferson won the presidential election, but Aaron Burr, who had been his vice-president, was not nominated for a second term, rebuffed, as it were. An angry Burr set off for New Orleans to raise an army and to become the leader of a separate country in the southeastern United States. (sound familiar?) Burr, backed financially by Blennerhassett, who had fled Great Britain after marrying his under-age niece (?), planned to capture Washington D.C. and sought help from both the British and Spanish governments. Thomas Jefferson ordered his arrest for treason, and Burr was eventually captured near Natchez, Mississippi. However, in a significant trial, the government was unable to convince a judge to convict him and an exonerated Burr faded into obscurity, dying in 1835. In First Love, Joel, who is probably orphaned, works in Natchez as a boot cleaner at an inn. For this labor, he receives room and board, and sleeps in a small room at the rear of the tavern. Joel wakes late at night (please remember he is deaf) and is astonished to see two men seated at the table in his room. He doesn’t recognize them. “They were not of Natchez, and their names were not in the book…One of the two men lifted his right arm—a tense, yet gentle and easy motion—and made the dark, wet cloak fall back. To Joel, it was like the first movement he had ever seen, as if the world had been up to that night inanimate.” The men leave. “It was while cleaning boots again that the identity of the two men came to him all at once. Like parts of his meditations, the name came into his mind…There was no one to inform him that the men were Aaron Burr and Harman Blennerhasssett, but he knew.” It's not made crystal clear in the story how Joel recognizes the men, just that he remembered a “great arrival” in Natchez. The implication is that he must have read (being deaf) about Burr and Blennerhassett coming to town, although there’s no sense that Joel knows about the rebellion. Later, he is given a notice to paste up at the tavern that confirms Burr’s identity and the circumstances of the trial. This represents Ms. Welty taking some liberties with the historical record. We know that Burr was arrested south of Natchez but not that he spent time there. He might of. The story depicts the preparations for Burr’s trial, the arrival of the militia to enforce order, and the town giving a dance in Burr’s honor. All possible, all possible dramatic license too. What I want to emphasize here is that this is a story about a non-historical protagonist and his “story” (which we will get into), not a story about the historical figure, Aaron Burr. First Love uses Burr and his friends Blennerhassett and Blennerhassett’s wife, as characters in a fictional story. It is like presenting a sidelight of history, a story showing how a protagonist might react to encountering a “famous” personage. This is no story that imagines the inner life of a figure from history. It is not biography. It does imagine a “what if” scenario. What if Aaron Burr had spent time in Natchez, Mississippi? What effect might meeting him have had on a twelve-year-old boy who was deaf and dumb? Just to belabor things, is the depiction of Aaron Burr historically accurate? Are we enjoying verisimilitude in this tale? The physical description—tall, flowing hair, sharp forehead, a small scar on the cheek—seems congruent enough with the images of Burr that survive—but also nondescript. They could apply to many. Certainly, the attire of the men, boots and cloaks, sideburns, seems very accurate. I’ve noted that the historic circumstance may be embellished a bit, but the idea that Burr was waiting in Natchez seems believable. The descriptions of Natchez and the Mississippi River are evocative (more on this later). So, yes, First Love seems quite believable. I suppose we could say, well, Ms. Welty planned the story out, she was the omniscient puppet-master who put these two characters—one fictitious, one real—together in order to show what might have happened. After all, the story is written in the simple past tense, implying it shows events that have already occurred. Moreover, the story, written in the early 1940s, shows events that occurred in the year 1806—so it’s clear that it shows events that have already occurred. Oh dear. To borrow a phrase that used to crop up often in this blog, I feel like we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. What’s the point, Walter? The point is that Ms. Welty has crafted a story about imaginary events that might have happened in the year 1806 if a fictitious protagonist encountered a real historic figure. It may be said that a story presenting “real” historical characters carries a certain believability by virtue of drawing on real events, however much fictionalized. Till next time, dear friends. #FirstLove #EudoraWelty #AlanBray

What can be said about No Place For You, My Love? It is beautifully written, breathtaking. But the story remains enigmatic. Two strangers go off on a drive through an exotic and strange area south of New Orleans. The landscape and the situations they’re in seem to reflect their own predicament—which is not made terribly explicit but mostly hinted at. He is “long married” and in New Orleans on a business trip in which the business seems to be concluded. He is free, his hours unstructured. She is involved in an affair with a married man—at first presented as a suspicion of her companion, and then confirmed later on. This married man is physically abusive. She is caught in a triangular relationship in which she loves someone who is unavailable. She and the man leave a luncheon impulsively to go off together on a journey whose parameters are largely undefined. They both avoid thinking and talking about their predicaments; they concentrate on the present and the weird environment they’re in. They arrive in a small village called Venice—a bit of irony there—and go to a bar called Baba’s. They are in wonder at the exotic tableaux, but perhaps to assert their difference, the man orders a ham sandwich, and the woman contemplates asking a for a glass of water—both odd choices in a place of beer and shrimp. When the man is called away briefly, the woman has a new awareness: “She lifted her head to watch him leave her, and was looked at, from all over the room. As a minute passed, no cards were laid down. In a far-off way, like accepting the light from Arcturus, she accepted it that she was more beautiful or perhaps more fragile than the women they saw every day of their lives. It was just this thought coming into a woman’s face and at this hour, that seemed familiar to them.” Without the protection of her companion, she is an object of wonder, perhaps desire. Please notice the shifts in perspective. Even the proprietor takes notice: “Baba was smiling. He had set an opened, frosted brown bottle before her on the counter, and a thick sandwich and stood looking at her. Baba made her eat some supper, for what she was.” Baba offers a tribute, and she accepts. “The evening was at the threshold.” This observation from the narrator sets the reader up for what occurs next: “And suddenly she made a move to slide down from her stool, maybe wishing to walk out into that nowhere down the front steps to be a cool a moment. But he had hold of her hand. He got down from his stool, and patiently, reversing her hand in his own—began moving her, leading her. They were dancing.” If they had ever been going to overstep themselves, it would be now as he held her closer and turned her, when she became aware that he could not help but see the bruise at her temple. It would not be six inches from his eyes. She felt it come out like an evil star. (this is the confirmation that she’s having an affair). “I get to thinking this is what we get–what you and I deserve, she whispered, looking past his shoulder into the room. And all this time, it’s real. It’s a real place—away off down here… Then, they were like a matched team—like professional, Spanish dancers wearing masks—while the slow piece was playing.” They are like professionals, hired to put on a show, not a real part of the scene at Baba’s. And like professional dancers they keep a distance from one another and do not become even more intimate. They leave Baba’s and retrace their path back to New Orleans. “Once the car light picked out two people—a Negro couple sitting on two facing chairs in the yard outside their lonely cabin—half undressed, each battling for self against the hot night, with long white rags in endless, scarf-like motions.” This is a nice reflection of the protagonists, “battling for self.” I think that’s a clear statement of their dilemmas, that each feels their lives are disconfirming their identities—he is approaching middle age, in a marriage that may not be fulfilling—and she is involved in an affair with an abusive, married man, not the sort of life she’d imagined. Then: “At length he stopped the car again, and this time he put his arm under her shoulder and kissed her—not knowing ever whether gently or harshly. It was the loss of that distinction that told him this was now. Then their faces touched unkissing, unmoving, dark, for a length of time. The heat came inside the car and wrapped them still, and the mosquitos had begun to coat their arms and even their eyelids.” What is going on here? They kiss—and he can’t tell whether it’s done gently or harshly—with love or anger. Then, my friends, then there is a big “Then.” What occurs between the kiss and the indication that some time has passed? It’s like in the film Casablanca when Ilsa goes to Rick’s house to persuade him to give her the letters of transit. The film cuts from Ilsa saying she’ll do anything to convince him, to later when he’s shown smoking by the window. (He gives her the letters). What occurs in that unshown time? Same in No Time. Do they have sex in the car, in the hot darkness? It’s absolutely ambiguous, although Ms. Welty herself, in a commentary, only states that they kiss. They kiss, and then their faces touch “for a length of time.” Then they seem to be aware of the heat and the mosquitos. The next mention of the woman is “She appeared to be sound asleep, lying back flat as a child, with her hat in her lap.” Then, when they say goodbye, back in the city, they shake hands, and the man begins speaking “Forgive…” but falters. “For just in time, he saw she expected it of him. “And that was just what she did, forgive him. Indeed, had she waked in time from a deep sleep, she would have told him her story.” What is he asking forgiveness for? What does she forgive? That he kissed her and maybe more? Maybe that he took her on the hot car ride. I don’t know, my friend. I don’t know. Maybe, it’s that she forgives him for not waking her—and this carries a lot of meaning, the literal and also that whatever he did do during their time together, he did not press her to reveal herself. He allowed her to remain “impervious” which is a theme of the story. Of course, this begs the question: what difference would it make whether or not they had sex? Really, not so much to the reader. What’s clear and important is that they acted out a ritual of lovemaking just as they acted out the dance at Baba’s—a distant ritual. At the very end, after he drops her off at her hotel, he drives away, thinking that he has one more day of his business trip. He observes the New Orleans nightlife, thinks of his wife, and then remembers being a young man in college in New York City, “and the shriek and horror and unholy smother of the subway had its original meaning for him as the lilt and the expectation of love.” What about the title? you ask. Well, I’ll tell ya. It certainly could have several relationships with the story. One is that the protagonists end up feeling there is no place for love. It’s implied that he is in a loveless marriage, and that she is wasting her time on someone who will not commit to her. And their afternoon together is an expectation of love that is not met. The love they’ve felt for each other in the strange unreal world of southern Louisiana has no place in their regular lives. Till next time, best b. #NoPlaceForYouMyLove #EudoraWelty #AlanBray

Last time in our discussion of Eudora Welty’s No Time For You, My Love, I threatened to get into the manner in which Ms. Welty presents the landscape of the area south of New Orleans. Now is the time. As everyone doubtless remembers, the story shows two unnamed characters from the North, strangers who meet at a luncheon in the city and who agree to drive south during a long, hot afternoon. The year, never specified, may be in the 1940s—the story was first published in 1952. The statement I made (not an original one, my friends) is that in the story, the landscape becomes a character. How could that be? Landscape is usually thought of as the setting, the background of the action of a story. Landscape doesn’t talk or walk. After much thought, I’m going to say that it’s not so much that the landscape is a character, but that the landscape reflects the two human characters and their dilemmas. Of course, this is what landscape and description should do, but in No Place, it succeeds to a marked degree. The narrator is very close to the landscape, showing it, while at the same time, showing that the characters also focus on it, because they don’t want to focus on themselves or what they’re doing. Whoa! Well, think about it. It’s a familiar human experience to focus on immediate experience if one doesn’t want to deal with more enduring thoughts/feelings. Like if you’re telling someone about a major upset, and they comment on the weather. “It’s clouding up,” they say metaphorically. In No Place, the unnamed characters go on the drive together very precipitously. The man is married; the woman maybe involved in an affair with a married man—that’s what the man in the story thinks. We don’t know exactly, but we get a sense she is excited by the journey. “South of New Orleans? I didn’t know there was any south to here. Does it just go on and on?” The man is described as “nodding” and has to be prodded by the woman because he is not paying attention to driving, swerving across the yellow line. Perhaps it’s the heat that’s affected him. Not a lot of information is presented about these two, but their actions say a lot. They each decide to go on a drive through uncharted territory with a stranger. What does that say? That they both feel they haven’t anything to lose? That they both feel far away from their ordinary lives and loved ones? That they are both wild rascals? More questions than answers. In any case, the reader gets a sense that they each don’t want to think much about what they’re doing. So they focus on the present and their surroundings. The narrator assumes the task of connecting the ways that the landscape reflects who they are and what they’re doing. An important theme in the story is that the land they are driving through is as strange and unfamiliar as they are to each other. “It’s out of this world” the woman says, actually referring to the heat. “Below New Orleans, there was a raging of insects from both sides of the concrete highway, not quite together, like the playing of separate marching bands. The river and levee were still on her side, waste and jungle and some occasional settlements on his—poor houses.” Considerable space is devoted to beautiful descriptions of the area they’re driving through, a landscape that is eerie and alien. Exotic, to say the least. They are beset in their regular lives by many troubles, and in the story, a bizarre and frightening natural world assumes this role. There is so much description that, as I wrote last week, the landscape may be thought of as another character in the story, a presence that the two human characters interact with. This is no simple scene setting: “More and more crayfish and other shell creatures littered their path, scuttling or dragging. These little samples, little jokes of creation, persisted and sometimes perished, the more of them the deeper down the road they went. Terrapins and turtles came up steadily over the horizons of the ditches. Are the man and the woman like the “jokes of creation” that they (actually the narrator) observe? Yup. “Back there in the margins were worse—crawling hides you could not penetrate with bullets, or quite believe. Grins that had come down from the primeval mud.” There’s an other-worldly sense here, almost like traveling through Hell, it’s menacing and potentially dangerous. The couple crosses the river on a ferry, an experience that’s described at length. Of course, there’s a sense that the river is a border to another realm. What is not described or shown is much of what’s going on between the two human characters. The story stays very close to their consciousness, as if they’re mostly “taking in the scenery” and not having many thoughts about each other. Perhaps what’s being shown is that they’re actively trying not to think about each other. But at times, their concerns break through: We know that the man thinks the woman is probably having an affair with a married man. This is pure imagination on his part; there is no direct confirmation of it presented to the reader. In contrast, the woman is aware of herself, that something about her, an “it” that makes people think they can love her or hate just by looking at her. He decides that “something” about her predicament had been settled—at least for the time being. So he believes she is in a predicament. When he invites her to go on the drive with him he says, ”If it’s all right with…” he trails off, indicating his awareness of there being someone else who might or might not sanction the drive. She doesn’t argue with him but goes along. When they are assailed by mosquitos, he increases their speed, thinking that his wife wouldn’t like it if he brought malaria home. “…she stood there, thinking that they all must see that with her entire self all she did was wait.” “Had she felt a wish for someone else to be riding with them? He thought it was more likely that she would wish for her husband if she had one (his wife’s voice) than for the lover in whom he believed. Whatever people liked to think, situations (not scenes) were usually three-way—there was somebody else always. The one who didn’t—couldn’t—understand the two made the formidable third.” “Her eyes overcome with brightness and size, she felt a panic rise, as sudden as nausea. Just how far below questions and answers, concealment and revelation, they were running now—that was still a new question, with a power of its own, waiting. How dear—how costly—could this ride be?” “What is your wife like?” she asked. His right hand came up and spread—iron, wooden, manicured. She lifted her eyes to his face. He looked at her like that hand. “Then he lit a cigarette, and the portrait, and the right-hand testimonial it made, were blown away. She smiled, herself as unaffected as by some stage performance, and he was annoyed in the cemetery. They did not risk going on to her husband—if she had one.” They cross the river and continue to a town called Venice, an ironically romantic locale. The road they travel on stops being paved and instead is made of crushed shells—they are walking on eggshells. In this brilliant story, dense description of the landscape profoundly reflects the plot and characters. As I said, I believe the narrator often becomes the landscape, reflecting and observing the characters. Till next time, my friends. #NoPlaceForYouMyLove #EudoraWelty #AlanBray

This week, a new story, No Place For You My Love, by Eudora Welty, originally published in the September 12th, 1952 issue of the New Yorker. (Edited by William Maxwell, if you’re keeping track). The style of this story is different from other texts we have explored. There is little dialogue, and the plot is simple. The emphasis is on the characters and on the prose, which is poetic. There are two human characters (more on this to come), a man and a woman who are never named. The first two sentences establish them and what they are doing. “They were strangers to each other, both fairly well strangers to the place, now seated side by side at luncheon—a party combined in a free-and-easy way, when the friends he and she were with recognized each other across Galatoire’s. The time was a Sunday in summer—those hours in the afternoon that seem Time Out in New Orleans.” There is no further reference to “Time Out” or explanation as to why it is capitalized. It may be a reference to a real interval of time in the hot summer afternoon. In the context of the story, it does indicate that the story-time is a different time, set aside from the normal hours of the characters’ lives. These first two sentences work pretty hard. They establish who, where, when, and why, and they raise a dramatic question: what’s going to happen to these two strangers seated side-by-side? Another important question is: what were they doing before the story began, and a third—what happens after the story ends? We’ll get to these. The plot is that these two people are seated next to each other at lunch in a restaurant in New Orleans. They have never met but have mutual friends. Immediately, they are drawn to one another, not so much romantically, I think (more on this later), but in fascination. “The moment he saw her…It was one of those odd meetings when such an impact is felt that it has to be translated at once into some sort of speculation.” The man feels sure that the woman is having an affair “with a married man, most likely.” He himself is “long married.” “Did he dream of making her disloyal to the hopelessness that he saw very well that she’d been cultivating down here? He knew very well that he did not.” So the man thinks that his unknown lunch companion is intensely interesting and sad—hopeless, although he knows that he does not want to give her hope. He doesn’t want to “rescue” her. She sits there, aware of him, not speaking. “It must stick out all over me, she thought, so people think they can love me or hate me just by looking at me.” I think this “it” represents her awareness of being involved in an affair. She is aware of herself, of how she might appear to him. What follows, somewhat abruptly, is that the man tells the woman he has a car and proposes that they go for a drive south of the city, a place neither has ever been. The terms of this drive—their destination, how intimate they might become—are not addressed. She agrees, and they set off into a completely alien landscape. The precipitousness of this plan shows the intensity of their connection. It is reckless to drive off with a stranger. One of the story’s rules that the above passages shows is that points-of-view may alternate within a scene. He perceives and acts, and then in the next paragraph, she perceives and acts. This is very different from a story written from one character’s perspective or even one that alternates perspectives chapter to chapter. I think the effect this provides is to focus the story as being about both of them, or about the relationship, if you will, they share. A third entity in No Place is the narrator, and this entity is highly developed, not as a personified “I,” but as an omniscient being who explains and comments on the action in a very active and emotional manner so that the reader is presented with a strong sense of a storyteller telling the story, affected by the story. “Of all human moods, deliberate imperviousness may be the most quickly communicated—it may be the most successful, most fatal signal of all. And two people can indulge in imperviousness as well as in anything else.” The reader learns quickly that another of the rules of No Place is that the narrator is very active and breathless and nearly intrusive—”The stranger in New Orleans always sets out to leave it as though following the clue in a maze. They were threading through the narrow and one-way streets, past the pale and tired bloom od tired squares, the brown steeple and statues, the balcony with the live and probably famous black monkey dipping along the railing as over a ballroom floor, past the grille-work and the lattice-work to see all the iron swans painted flesh color on the front steps of bungalows outlying.” I love the “bungalows outlying” —what kind of bungalows? The bungalows outlying. This narrator has a florid and feverish quality that fits well with a story about being hot. Of course, this narrator is very close to the character’s perspective. The above description of driving south of the city could be experienced by either the man or woman, or both, which would be an instance of free indirect speech, as everyone probably recalls. The key distinction we should look for (and we will) is whether the narrator knows more than the characters. This would separate the two. That quote above about imperviousness is probably a good example. The characters are not aware that they are “indulging in imperviousness,” this is something that an outside entity would note. Another “rule” is that the landscape of the area south of New Orleans becomes another character; it is that central. It is described in great and wonderful detail, and we will get into it, I promise you. Till next time. #NoPlaceForYou,MyLove #EudoraWelty #AlanBray

What we have been shown in William Trevor’s melancholy After Rain is that Harriet, the protagonist, has an epiphany while coming out of an Italian cathedral—after the rain. The narrator entity says it: “Too slick and glib, to use her love affairs to restore her faith in love…She has cheated in her love affairs.” Her experience of her parents’ marriage and divorce——a marriage they maintained while romantically involved with others—broke Harriet’s faith in love. There is a paragraph break, and then: “The sun is still reluctant in the watery sky. On her walk back to the Pensione Cesarina it seems to Harriet that in this brash smother of heat a different life has crept out of the foliage and stone. A coolness emanates from the road she walks on. Unseen, among the wild geraniums, one bird sings.” ‘Kay, this continues the sense that change has occurred during her time away visiting the Cathedral, although it is tentative and fragile. That “one bird sings” is well done—is it Harriet? (Whiny voice) Duh. But how can a bird be a woman? Harriet now tacks away from her epiphany, returning to self-doubt and torture. She recalls her parents making her wear a hat “she didn’t like” while they skulked in the sun “behind dark glasses and high-factor cream.” After this unpleasant memory of dissatisfaction, she immediately thinks of her most recent ex-lover whom she was supposed to be with on vacation. She imagines that he found someone else to replace her. “She sees him with a companion who is uncomplicated and happy…” In the hotel garden, her shoes are soaked. Then she hears the Cathedral bells: “six o’clock in Santa Fabiola, six o’clock a minute later somewhere else.” She has another powerful epiphany. The painting she saw, the Annunciation “…was painted after rain…It was after rain that the angel came: those first cool moments were a chosen time.” It’s a nice touch that she briefly returns to her dysphoric state of distress. It would be less powerful if she had the epiphany and it had stuck for all time. No, she must return to her previous unhappiness and then have another revelation about her revelation. An interesting touch too of hearing the nearby bells ring and thinking the same time is occurring somewhere else “a minute later.” Time, then, is not absolute but relative. Although things are framed formally as present and past, I believe the story’s intent is to show that Harriet has existed in two different time “zones,” one her present at the Pensione Cesarina, and one in the past, when she is a little girl betrayed by her mother and father, and then later when she cheats at love. After a final paragraph break, the story returns to the beginning, in that time has skipped ahead a few hours and she is once again having dinner at the Pensione. “…the table where the man with the garish shirt sat has been joined to a family table to allow for a party of seven.” We’ve come full circle. The small table that, in the story’s first sentence, had been set for a single diner, has been joined to a family table. “New faces are dotted everywhere.” Harriet eats. “It’s noisy in the dining room now…It felt like noise in the foyer of the Rembrandt Cinema when he told her: the uproar of shock, although it was quite silent there. Bright, harsh colors flashed through her consciousness…For a moment in the foyer of the cinema, she closed her eyes, as she had when they told her they weren’t to be a family anymore.” So, her present time now links with two other significant past times: the recent break-up and when her parents told her of their divorce. She tastes the food, familiar from other stays at the hotel: “She won’t taste that again; as mysteriously as she knows she has cheated without meaning to in her love affairs, she knows she won’t come back, alone or with someone else. Coming back has been done, a private journey that chance suggested.” She thinks of her most recent lover: “He backed away, as others have, when she asked to much of love, when she tried to change the circumstances that are the past by imposing a brighter present…She has been a victim of herself…she knows that now and wonders why she does and why she didn’t before. Nothing tells her when she ponders the solitude of her stay in the Pensione Cesarina and she senses that nothing ever will…The story of Santa Fabiola is lost in the shadows that were once the people in her life…Rain has sweetened the breathless air, the angel comes mysteriously also.” The story ends with this long pronouncement by the narrator, excerpted here. Harriet has changed profoundly because of her stay at the Pensione and the trip to the Cathedral. It’s key to the structure of the story that there is a narrator entity who comments and contextualizes the action. It could be written in a different way, perhaps with Harriet as a first-person “I” who thinks herself into a new place. But that would be a different story. In this one, the narrator knows a bit more than Harriet does, the narrator is always a half-step ahead of her awareness. Harriet finds the reasons for her having revelations about herself to be as mysterious as the Annunciation. But the reader, guided by the narrator, sees more clearly that she has accepted painful parts of herself because of the experiences at the Pensione and the Cathedral. After Rain begins with Harriet alone and in pain and ends with her ready to return to her home with a resolve to break the painful pattern she’s been acting out. Maybe it could be said that the story poses a will she/won’t she question—will she recover or not. And the author knows the answer and leads the reader to the end. William Trevor is God. Next week, a new story. Till then, dear friends. #AfterRain #WilliamTrevor #AlanBray