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"Pygmalion" by John Updike

You can read the beginning of the story here.

You can order the collection here.

Even on the first read of this story, something inside me immediately was drawn to it, in the way that favorite stories give me a certain specific sense of “aha!” or recognition. Updike builds the story so expertly, brick by brick, not a word wasted. In the first paragraph, he sets out the blueprint for the rest of the story: he characterizes the first wife by describing her skill of impersonations; he characterizes the second wife by ingeniously having the first wife impersonate the second wife; there is tension and plot in the knowledge that Gwen will become his second wife; and there is a contrast between the two women with the statement about Gwen’s “liveliness in bed” and the detail about Marguerite falling asleep night after night while he rubs her back. In addition, we get a sense of the character of the narrator, even in just the first paragraph – here is a man who likes women to perform for him, who ranks sexual performance as a priority, who likes making fun of people behind their backs, who has no loyalty (neither to his first wife Marguerite, as he cheated on her with Gwen; nor to Gwen, as he enjoyed and laughed heartily at Marguerite’s biting impression of her.)

In addition, the main character’s name (which is also the title of the story) is loaded with meaning and foreshadowing: Pygmalion is a familiar play by George Bernard Shaw about a man who tries to change a woman into the feminine ideal he desires. This is alluded to in the second page, when Gwen impersonates Marguerite’s new husband and the narrator “laughed and laughed, entranced to see his bride arrive at what he conceived to be proper womanliness – a plastic, alert sensitivity to the human environment, a susceptible responsiveness tugged this way and that by the currents of Nature herself.” We as readers suspect there is more to this than him simply enjoying being entertained by impersonations; Updike confirms this in a single statement, subtly buried in the middle of a paragraph: “He could not know the world, was his fear, unless a woman translated it for him.” With this sentence, the story expands not just into a story about this single couple, but about the whole genders they represent.

Updike creates one of those perfect endings that is surprising at first, but then at the same time feels inevitable; the reader realizes the story was building up to it the whole time. By changing one aspect of Gwen, the narrator has changed other aspects of her as well. Not only does she fall asleep, night after night, just like the first wife, but “something in her that was all her own – fell out of reach.” With this single detail, Updike calls back to the first wife, making the reader wonder if she had been changed and broken by the narrator before the story began; this detail also reaches forward to the future beyond the story, making the reader wonder if the narrator will leave Gwen now, just as he left Marguerite.

"You're Ugly, Too" by Lorrie Moore

You can read this story here: http://books.google.com/books?id=E79awtsD3tYC&pg=PA669&lpg=PA669&dq=you%27re+ugly+too+lorrie+moore&source=bl&ots=TxqEyCIIfz&sig=qSw7LjrB_CBraRLPQdmSeCFmhDE&hl=en&ei=nlpIStupFpX4NayOvZcB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9

The setting struck me as a very integral part of this story – and it was not a specific town, but rather an entire area: the Midwest. From the first paragraph of the story, this is set up as a backdrop to the actions of the characters, perhaps on a subtle level influencing their actions and feelings. “You had to get out of them occasionally, those Illinois towns with the funny names” – this opening line of the story creates a sense of restlessness and confinement. When we meet Zoë, she confirms and expands this sense. Is this going to be a story about the quirky outsider bringing life and pizazz to a small Midwestern town? I wondered. Her students are described as “good Midwesterners, spacey with estrogen from large quantities of meat and cheese.” Though the story is written in third person, we get the idea that this is Zoë's description of her students, which reinforces her offbeat sense of humor. I also liked how Moore built her character with specific examples of actions that shed insight into her way of thinking – for example, when she is delighted to have her own tree and hangs a sign on it that says, “Zoë’s Tree.” This single example shows that for all the generalizations and ironic humor she makes at the Midwest’s expense, in some ways she is entranced by her new home as well.

The setting of the Midwest is contrasted sharply when Zoë goes to New York to visit her sister – this separates the story into two distinct sections. The city is glittery and chaotic and impersonal, reinforced by Moore’s decision to have Zoë’s sister hosting a Halloween party the same weekend she is visiting. Everyone is in costume, adding to the layers of anonymity, and drinking alcohol, making their interactions seem exaggerated and their emotions overly intense. Zoë seems to be searching desperately for human connection – and her need is similarly intensified by her recent medical problems, and the news that her sister is getting married. I like that Moore does not spell any of these things out for the reader – she simply gives us all the information, all the components, and lets the reader sift through Zoë’s emotions and the possible reasons behind her actions, such as when she shoves Earl at the very end. Zoë says she was “just kidding” – but, like Earl, we do not quite believe her. She seems like a woman on the edge of a breaking point; Moore ends the story before she fully reaches that point, but it seems like Zoë world is very definitely beginning to unravel. The story captures this moment, rich with all its banal, bizarre details.

"Tiny Smiling Daddy" by Mary Gaitskill

You can read this story here: http://forums.interestingnonetheless.net/display.php?tid=15208

And you can buy the collection here:

http://www.amazon.com/Because-They-Wanted-Mary-Gaitskill/dp/0684841444/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244253036&sr=8-1

I was impressed in this story by the way Gaitskill delves so completely into the old man’s thoughts and perspective, even though it is written in third person. We immediately get a sense of his vulnerability, which makes us empathize with him – his dream is that all his friends who had died or gone away “had really been there all along, loving him.” At the same time, this subtly clues us in that he might have the type of stubborn, unapologetic personality that alienates friends; perhaps part of why he has lost some friends has been his own fault.

Gaitskill also does a great job of creating well-rounded characters. This is not a story about “good” people and “bad” people, but rather real people, trying to make their way through their days, doing things they are proud of and things they regret. Kitty is not purely a victim – she is shown saying hurtful things, like calling her mother a “stupid bitch,” and we can feel her father’s pain that she would publish this story about him and their relationship in a national magazine. We can feel how violated he feels. Yet we can also recognize what a difficult time Kitty has had, with a father so violently unaccepting of her lesbianism. We remain firmly in the old man’s perspective, and this adds to the emotional power of scenes in which he is abusive to Kitty because he glosses over them so quickly – for example, on page 311 when he remembers punching Kitty and trying to shake the conviction from her face. Then the narrative moves on, while we are left reeling from this disclosure. But Gaitskill never judges her characters – even after we find out about the father punching Kitty, it is difficult to fully cast him in the role of “bad parent” because we are in his head, and we recognize how bewildered and frustrated he is by this daughter he can no longer reach or understand. To me, this story is not really about Kitty’s pain growing up – she seems happy and healthy now – but rather about the father’s loneliness and isolation, made even more poignant because he is the one who has cast it on himself by being so angry about Kitty’s sexual orientation.

"Sitting" by H. E. Francis

You can find this story here:
http://www.amazon.com/Sudden-Fiction-American-Short-Short-Stories/dp/0879052651/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243402825&sr=8-6

So much was encompassed in this story in only a page and a half. Not a single word seemed unnecessary; everything was taut, focused, pared down to its essence. As a writer who leans naturally towards long synonym-filled sentences of descriptive prose, this writing style struck me as powerful in its tacitness, and as something I would like to try in my own writing.

It also was a story that left me with many questions and an overall feeling of ambiguity. I felt like the sitting people were supposed to symbolize something, but I could not grasp what it was. The people are described as just sitting there, staring, indifferent. They do not say a word throughout the entire story. They sit through sun and rain; when the police take them away, they are back in the morning. There is a creepy, other-wordly quality about them – you never see them do essential human things like eat, sleep, or communicate. By the end, it seems the man who lives there simply resigns himself to their sitting on his front step.

The ending was powerful for me – it gave me a clear visual image, like something out of a movie, of a camera drawing back over hundreds of houses, with anonymous people sitting on the front steps of all of them. However, again, I felt like there was a touch more meaning to this image that was just beyond my grasp – that if I only knew a bit more about the sitting people and what they meant, I would be able to unlock a deeper understanding of the whole story. Perhaps that is part of the writer’s intent: if you are not exactly sure what the sitting people represent, you can apply them to all sorts of different things happening in your life, as varied from a stubborn problem that won’t go away, to a resilient truth that won’t let you escape it. This story also showed me that it is possible for the reader to enjoy and relate to a story without even wholly understanding it; as a writer, I don’t always have to explain everything to death.

"Twirler" by Jane Martin

You can read this story anthologized here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=eEY0wIVuYdIC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=twirler+by+jane+martin&source=bl&ots=j0T6y4OHLN&sig=n2_Vm1rHyh_tu4VAAYH1jRuRY6A&hl=en&ei=WQ4bSvyLBI-ctgO0_-zWCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPA37,M1

Martin’s story struck me because she managed to cram such a great deal of emotion, action, and exposition into such a short space. I was also interested to see how Martin used the dramatic convention of a monologue to create an entire story.

At the beginning, the tone seems very innocent – the young woman describes how when she was six her mother made her a baton by sawing off a broom handle. While I do not have experience baton twirling (and, I am guessing, neither does the majority of the story’s readers) Martin drew me into the story immediately with her description of the homemade baton. It brought to mind the many homemade Halloween outfits, theater costumes, and doll-house accessories of my own childhood. However, as the story progresses, Martin slowly and subtly darkens the mood, until we suddenly come to realize that twirling is not just a fun hobby for this girl. Martin builds this epiphany through the character’s statements: first, she describes the “prejudice” twirlers face, then mentions how with a baton you can “draw on the sky,” and eventually says twirling is the “throwing up of yourself to God.”

Still, it comes as a shock when, on the final page, she describes the “God throwers” gathering for a religious-type ceremony with razor-laced batons, and the twirlers purposefully cutting themselves as an offering to God. Because of the story’s structure as a monologue, I felt an odd combination of being one with the character and yet also being separate from her – like I had been drawn into her psyche, and yet was also watching her from a distance. By the end, my heart was racing and I felt a bit sick to my stomach. The scene of the “God throwers” was so vivid that I couldn’t help but picture it in striking detail, for example the image of the red blood on the white snow. For me, “good” stories are ones that strike me in this unexplainable, visceral way – the stories I “feel in my gut” – and this was definitely one of them.