Sorry, my brain is paste right now. I think of Scholes, I think of footwear. His discussion of literary theory feels like it’s going in circles. Tired. I shall post a story I wrote inspired by “Story of an Hour.” Always seemed like an anecdotal story for strictly introductory purposes; all fiction is an elaborate joke to get to a drawn-out punchline:
One day, Dan Freeman was abducted by aliens. These aliens were gentle but firm. They promised to cook, clean, and provide entertainment for him until such time as their study of human behavioral patterns came to an end. All he needed to do was be himself.
Though angry, Dan was also rather excited. It seemed like a nice gig, especially in light of his recent employment opportunities—or lack thereof.
“Finally,” he thought, as the little purple man who was his host finished gesticulating with his three arms (which might have been feet). “I’m finally getting what I deserve. All my needs will be taken care of, and all my days will be a breeze.”
“Zorsplatt!” the little purple man exclaimed. Dan nodded and favored him with a blank smile. His Splurbian translator operated on a ten-second delay. In a moment, the stentorian tones of television actor and history channel narrator Edward Herrmann flowed into his ears: “And, in conclusion, we shall select a mate for you, engaging in a worldwide search of your home planet.”
“Wow!” Dan said. “You said all that in just one word?”
“Snarf blug, chesekstan. Snedley sploo. Elta fremon che so la la garfnoddle. Deweda dweda ne ne.”
In ten seconds time, Edward Herrmann’s mellifluous tones translated this statement as “Indeed.”
“Huh. My own space girlfriend. Do I get to choose?”
The little purple man did a back flip, or perhaps he stood up—Dan wasn’t exactly sure what part of his captor was the head—and unleashed a torrent of rapid-fire gibberish. In a few moments, Edward Herrmann assured Dan they were counting on his input.
“Man, you guys thought of everything.”
“Flurble!” said the little purple man.
“I am not a guy,” Edward Herrmann translated. “I am a hermaphrodite.”
“Oh.”
A door slid open and a little purple chef with an ample belly—or perhaps an enormous cranium—waddled in. He was carrying two gourmet dishes on his tentacle-arms and he skittered across the room on his hundreds of little legs (which might have been hair). “Splattle!” he said. Ten seconds later the powerful voice of veteran character actor and history channel narrator Keith David said “I have brought forth your sustenance!” He slapped the dish down and removed the top; inside, hundreds of little bugs wriggled.
“Um,” Dan said.
The little purple chef slapped his fat belly—which, as it turns out, probably was his head—and gibbered for a bit. “Oops,” Keith David translated. “My Bad. This meal is not for you.” He handed it over to the little purple hermaphrodite, who quickly dug in. He placed an alternate plate before Dan, lifting the top to reveal a well-cooked steak, mashed potatoes and asparagus.
“Ah,” Dan said. “Much better. Although, for future reference, I’m not really a fan of asparagus.”
The little purple hermaphrodite choked on a mouthful of grub; hacking it up, he/she let out a piercing scream. Edward Herrmann soon joined in. The little purple chef looked stricken (I think), at least until the little purple hermaphrodite pulled out an object that looked like a pencil and fired an incandescent beam of tightly focused energy through the little purple chef’s belly/head, coating the wall behind him in a gooey splatter of purple guts. The little purple chef screamed and fell down dead. I stared at the corpse for a full ten seconds before Keith David said “Aaargh!”
“Splittle splottle fooby booby splay nog,” screamed the little purple hermaphrodite, his/her arms fluttering above him/her like a deformed, waving balloon at a car dealership.
“We do not take kindly to failure amongst our staff!” Edward Herrmann translated huffily.
“Evidently,” Dan said, looking down at the little purple chef—now the little dead chef. He gulped and turned back to his dinner. How would he be able to eat now? He winced and began picking at the mashed potatoes.
Dan and the little purple hermaphrodite dined in silence for a few minutes, Dan careful not to touch any of the offending vegetables. He wondered idly if his voice was being translated into a mildly famous Splurbian celebrity. Probably so. He wasn’t sure why, but the thought actually pleased him. As he began debating which celebrity would be best suited for his voice—perhaps the Splurbian equivalent of Edward Norton—he cut at his steak with greater enthusiasm. He spared a glance behind him and saw that the little dead chef, as well as the mess made by his passing, had disappeared.
“Wow,” he thought. “What service!”
As the little purple hermaphrodite and Dan went over the criteria for his stay—indefinite, but pleasant—they finished their respective meals. By the end of dinner Dan was almost certain that he’d imagined the little purple chef entirely. After all, he was in an alien spaceship talking to a creature whose anatomy he couldn’t even fathom.
Anything was possible.
An hour later, after a delicious dessert of caramel apple pie for Dan, and roaches for the little purple hermaphrodite, the two were looking through the Victoria’s secret catalogue for a mate. Suddenly, a little purple man in a little purple HAZMAT suit rushed into the room.
“Flibble flobble,” he wailed. Ten seconds later, the dulcet tones of Meryl Streep translated this sentence as “Code Seventeen-B!” and then the little purple man—probably a little purple woman—exploded, splattering the inside of her little purple suit with little purple guts.
The little purple hermaphrodite seemed to sigh—or perhaps fart—and put the catalogue away.
“What happened?” Dan asked.
When he/she answered, the little purple hermaphrodite’s voice had a fatalistic quality to it. Edward Herrmann almost seemed to take longer, as if he were reluctant to translate. But translate he did.
“We made an unforgivable error,” Edward Herrmann said, voice cracking. “It seems your species carries a certain bacterium which ours cannot tolerate for a sustained period of time. We are all exposed. Though it takes a variable amount of time for death to occur; sometimes earlier, as in the case of my dear wife Garfsblaggle,”—he gestured to the little purple pile of goo in the little purple HAZMAT suit—“and sometimes a little longer, death is nevertheless inevitable. Honestly, I could detonate at any moment.”
“Oh my,” Dan said. “Is there anything I can do?”
The little purple hermaphrodite sighed, looking not at Dan but into the eyes of the Fourth Horseman, and gabbled a bit more.
“No,” Edward Herrmann translated. “Our race is telepathically linked via brainwave. Your bacterium will destroy us all, even those on our home planet…Splurbia.”
“No!”
“Yes,” said Edward Herrmann.
“But, what will happen to me?”
“You shall be returned to your home planet immediately. I am sorry we did not get to continue our association much longer, Dan. But, in the short time I’ve known you, I feel safe calling you…friend.” He held out a tentacle-arm, the last act of a doomed hermaphrodite feeling the ephemeral breath of some slouching beast upon his neck (or perhaps upon his ankle). Dan reached out his hand, a single tear rolling down his cheek…and then the little purple hermaphrodite exploded. Dan was coated with purple substance that felt like a mixture of jelly, honey, and Jell-o.
Ten seconds later, Edward Herrmann said “aaaah…”
In a moment, lights appeared before Dan’s eyes, a deep thrum hummed in his ears, and he found himself in the food court where he’d been abducted. He looked at the people milling by, so blissfully unaware of the truth behind the curtain of their own consciousness. So sad. So short-sighted. So small they all were, so oblivious to the presence of life beyond the stars.
And then Dan laughed.
After all, there was nothing to be oblivious about anymore.
-Matt (maybe)
Uh, interesting response to Scholes? I don’t know how seriously to treat this post. If I were to treat it seriously, then I’d question your proposition that all fiction is a means to an end (a punchline). Your formulation would certainly raise many readers’ and writers’ hackles. But it does, as the story itself, seem very Vonneguttian.
And again, if I were to treat this post seriously, then I suppose there’s a seed of an idea in there about post-structuralism’s take on language and subjectivity (both are shifting, slippery, like your aliens).
But–I don’t think I’m taking this seriously.
I wasn’t really responding to Scholes. I was responding to “Story of an Hour,” offering, in a way, an interpretation for how to teach it. Chopin’s tale isn’t just a feminist parable, nor a lesson about the economy of storytelling in general; it also follows the conventions of an elaborate joke. The reader response can be similar to an interpretation found in Blau of “Any Minute Mom Should Come Blasting Through the Door.” This interpretation found the piece to be an extended verbal joke based on exaggerated forms of hyperbole. In “Story of an Hour,” there is a dissonance between what’s at stake–Mrs. Mallard’s freedom, her autonomy, her happiness, her very life–and the fairness, or lack thereof, of the abrupt finish. Chopin waxes poetic about grief, about misery, about the idiosyncrasies of life that make it worth living or worth exiting. Then, she finishes with a quick “Oops. Her husband is still alive…aaaaaand now she’s dead.” The only thing missing is the soundtrack going Wah-wah-wah-waaaaaaaaaah.Of course, this reading overlooks the subtext of that final sentence–“When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of the joy that kills.”–undermining the duality of the juxtaposed superficial and deeper meanings: she was being rewarded/she was being punished; she died of happiness/she died of misery; her heart broke with joy/she was heartbroken. But those meanings also serve as commentary on the feminist reading. No matter the eloquence of feminine liberation, it’s attainment is still as ephemeral as a dream that evaporates upon waking. Snap of a finger. The passage of a few sentences. The beat before the punch line.I believe more fiction utilizes this technique than we recognize. As for “Aliens!,” it’s not that good a story, but I do make use of a punch line rooted in human narcissism. When the little purple hermaphrodite informs Dan that he has effectively annihilated an entire species, Dan’s essential reaction is to mourn the loss of what would’ve been a cushy life: “What happens to me?”It’s also a simple mockery of the human desire for exploration and understanding of our own universe. Here exists an entire culture that Dan can barely fathom–sometimes noble, sometimes petty, bizarre in appearance and action, prone to exploding–and it’s gone before he can even recognize that its destruction was his fault. I suppose it’s a bit too self-consciously irreverent, only showing a small indication towards that melancholy near the end; but, in my own way, I tried to set it up with a punch line that mirrored what I understood about Chopin’s story, and about storytelling in general.In a class last semester, we spoke of a technique for understanding a text that involved transcription. Copying the text to see how the author went about writing it. Well, if writing is merely thinking on a page, writing a story that duplicates what the student understood to be the intent of the original is arguably the best way to think about it, regardless of how successful the duplication. After all, inspiration does not mean imitation.My comment about Scholes was not really connected; I was merely tired and didn’t want to produce a post that would be completely interchangeable with what everyone else was already saying (and therefore get lost in the shuffle). The argument over this kind of theory always seems to devolve into an argument over semantics, the primary contention being how to say “New Criticism bad, Reader-Response good.” Check your ego at the door and teach the student how to learn to learn, not to learn what your telling them.A fine enough contention. But everybody puts up this specter of the egocentric teaching of yesteryear like one of those blow-up dolls with sand in the bottom that children are encouraged to pummel even though they always pop right back up. Easy targets, but pointless targets as well. A caricature of the real problem. Why else does Laura contend that lectures are not the problem, bad lectures are? Why else does J.J. contend that the five-part-paragraph, while useless in its pure form as anything other than a literary artifact, can still have use as a building block? Everyone in class is looking for happy mediums, but no one’s necessarily happy about the mediums being presented in the readings. The texts just keep preaching to the choir under the guise of saying something new.I suppose this comment would’ve made a better post. But hey, that just means that the comment is in the post and the post is in the comment; it’s backwards! Hilarity!Ba-dum-bum.