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My Two Stories

The most lofty and laudable intention that a person might have for writing, which might also be considered the most simple and natural, is to have a means of direct, human communication. This is the cause of development of language, both spoken and written, and whether we write truth or lies, fact or nonsense, human communication is always the goal. I find it necessary to advocate specifically such a view, which should be universally accepted as self evident, in an age born of the thoughts of Gertrude Stein, and the hordes of Post-Modernists following her sentiments of writing for one’s self. This I find to be a most inhuman activity. Writing and speaking are both means of communication between people, and done as a means of self-reflection, or self-entertainment make void the act in themselves. Therefore, my one intention for writing fiction, similar to that of reading fiction, is communication with other people. There seems to be a vast chasm of unspeakable ideas floating around in one’s head. One method of conveying these human bequests is the act of writing fiction. Stories can say myriad things that may not be capable of conveyance by any other means.

My intention in writing these two stories was to convey specific truths that I have witnessed or thought about. “Buster’s Gift” came about as a mixture of the situations of various young people that I’ve known who’ve been pushed this way or that by the adults in their lives. I began to wonder what could possibly make their situations better, and nearly concluded that a child must be strong enough to ward off the intellectual assaults of those who claim to know what’s best. However, my line of reasoning took me too far, and I concluded that a child’s worst enemy may only be her or his self. Of course, this could only be the case in one containing just the right balance of intelligence and impressionability, which is just what I attempted to present in the character of Buster. I wanted to present Buster as a child whose peculiarly profound spark of intelligence is entirely the key to his destruction. This could only happen with the pressure from his father and the family’s friend Edna, who both play an exact role in prompting Buster to sincerely do what only he himself can do. His intelligence is so great that it essentially destroys itself.

The second story, “Russ the Provider,” makes use of many relationships that I’ve seen in my life. I could not pin this couple, Russ and Ethel, down to any particular individuals that I know, but they surely contain elements of many of the people that I’m acquainted with. As for the central occurrence of the story, I wanted to show how a very strong and capable person might be reduced to near helplessness, through their own choices or preferences. Russ has never had need of the skills required to take care of himself, and so has never acquired them. Ethel, in her way, has become an enabler in more ways than just relating to alcohol. This is the way that these two have chosen to live their lives—it has thus far made them both content. The one vision of Russ that I had when beginning this story was that he would be left on his own with a certain degree of responsibility, and the first thing that he would be able to think of doing is pouring himself a drink, as that would be one of the first things that Ethel would do for him were she there. This didn’t exactly work in the actual writing; the story seemed to take a slightly different turn. However, I feel that the essential image that I wanted to convey by this did indeed come across in the story. Another idea that I thought essential to the story was that Russ should be presented in progressively greater degrees of predicament. If the reader can witness what he does with a slight amount of responsibility, this can be extrapolated out to an ultimate judgment of his fate when the actual responsibility becomes necessary.

As for general comments on technique, the reader will immediately note the use of present tense in "Buster's Gift". I have read it through many times for consistency. I've read that present tense slows the action (what action? one might say) and I have been told that it does indeed do so in this story. I thought it a good experiment with this story that deals with a very thoughtful protagonist to slow things down to mimic the mental processes that he might be engaged in.

The use of vernacular will be picked out as the major element in "Russ the Provider". I tried to use it as a means of reinforcing the drastic differences in the two major characters. In addition to this, it will be noted that dialogue plays a major part in the structure of this story. This is my partial attempt at Hemingwayesque story telling.

Hope you enjoy them.