The genre of literary fiction
I was going back over my last rewrite of the Echidnaid, and then I was reading this really good story that leads off the 2005 edition of the Story Quarterly anthology, as story called Measures of Sorrow by Jacob M. Appel.
The thing about Measures of Sorrow is that while being a well-crafted and interesting story, it also conforms to a particular genre gammar, and I'm hardly the first person to note that there is a genre called the literary short story that has as much its own formularity (in every meaning of that term) as mystery or science fiction or pick-your-genre. And basically in the literary short story there is an emphasis on details and style over every other aspect of story-telling, with characterization coming second and plot, if there is one, coming last. Usually there is a single emotional experience that the protagonist of the story needs to work through, and that emotional experience is generally supposed to be something universal, such as the death of a relative, emerging into adulthood, allowing a child to leave the nest, etc etc etc. Typically, as catylized by Raymond Carver and his followers, there is a moment of poigniancy at the end, where the protagonist fullfills the emotional experience and is changed into a better person because of it.
The thing that I'm realizing about the Echidnaid is that in terms of structure, it's the perfect story to take the literary short story genre and swerve into left field with it. As it begins, the protagonist has moved in with his wife to a little brownstone in Park Slope. What a perfect opportunity to paint all sorts of precious and touching details about their life together, and then when Roddie shows up and the whole story shifts to his, suddenly we're in another world entirely, and the effect can be like in a children's book, where you start off in sort of an ordinary hum-drum world, and then cross a threshold into Wonderland, where everything is turned on its head. Meanwhile the narrative of the protagonist can continue to try and pull things back into the world of the literary short story, with that attempt being a metaphor for the protagonist's own desire to pull away from Roddie and get back to the previous and touching life he once knew.
The thing about Measures of Sorrow is that while being a well-crafted and interesting story, it also conforms to a particular genre gammar, and I'm hardly the first person to note that there is a genre called the literary short story that has as much its own formularity (in every meaning of that term) as mystery or science fiction or pick-your-genre. And basically in the literary short story there is an emphasis on details and style over every other aspect of story-telling, with characterization coming second and plot, if there is one, coming last. Usually there is a single emotional experience that the protagonist of the story needs to work through, and that emotional experience is generally supposed to be something universal, such as the death of a relative, emerging into adulthood, allowing a child to leave the nest, etc etc etc. Typically, as catylized by Raymond Carver and his followers, there is a moment of poigniancy at the end, where the protagonist fullfills the emotional experience and is changed into a better person because of it.
The thing that I'm realizing about the Echidnaid is that in terms of structure, it's the perfect story to take the literary short story genre and swerve into left field with it. As it begins, the protagonist has moved in with his wife to a little brownstone in Park Slope. What a perfect opportunity to paint all sorts of precious and touching details about their life together, and then when Roddie shows up and the whole story shifts to his, suddenly we're in another world entirely, and the effect can be like in a children's book, where you start off in sort of an ordinary hum-drum world, and then cross a threshold into Wonderland, where everything is turned on its head. Meanwhile the narrative of the protagonist can continue to try and pull things back into the world of the literary short story, with that attempt being a metaphor for the protagonist's own desire to pull away from Roddie and get back to the previous and touching life he once knew.