Tag: Fathers

  • Short Story Review: “Smoke” by Nicola Winstanley

    (The short story “Smoke” is part of Nicola Winstanley’s short story collection, which is entitled SMOKE.)

    I took a writing class, long time ago, and the professor pronounced to us on day one, that “Your characters are your babies. And if you want to be a good writer, you have to make your babies suffer.” He was a bit dramatic, but academically, his was correct; characters have to be knocked down to make their eventually rise have any dramatic or cathartic weight. This is not a revolutionary idea, as its just essential to storytelling.

    Nicola Winstanley isn’t afraid to make her characters suffer. In her title story, “Smoke,” she allows the nine-year old Amanda to suffer, but also shows us the suffering of her family, and how each of their own pain affects and inflicts on the others. As the story begins, children are being called home for supper by their mothers, but Amanda’s mother has recently passed away, so no one is calling for her. At home, her older sister Judy, dealing with the loss in her own detached way, instructs Amanda to make herself a dinner of toast, as that is all the food in the house that their father has left for them. They tell themselves that their father is still at work and will be home soon. Eventually, he does come home, but its late, the children should be in bed, and he seems aloof to how to take care of two daughters, let alone himself. What follows is a story about a family dealing with grief, but the focus is on Amanda and her wrestling and discovery of the emotions she is experiencing – as for a nine-year-old, these emotions are just beyond her ability to articulate and understand them, but her feelings are strong enough to engage her to action.

    At times I felt that this story was brutal in its honesty. Amanda at first believes that her mother has just gone away, as if there was a chance for her return, but Amanda’s actions betray this belief of hers. Winstanley marvelously illustrates how Amanda does everything in her power to keep the loneness and the emptiness within her at bay, but Amanda is a child, and handles these complex feelings as a child would – playing with a friend, eating sweets, hiding from her sister, and waiting for her father to return. All for not, as slowly it dawns on Amanda that she is alone.

    The other touch that I enjoyed with this story was how the other two family members dealt with their own grief. Judy’s reaction is to leave this home, and stay with a friend’s family. Maybe Judy is saving herself, finding a way to survive this situation, but to do that she has to abandon her sister. And then there is their father, who’s way of coping is to not be in the home, which clearly no longer feels like a home. Though the story never goes into detail what is keeping their father away, it’s a question that I never felt needs to be answer. No, he is looking out for himself as well, because Winstanley drops an illuminating point, by observing that while the girls are going without, he has time to get new glasses for himself.  From this point, Amanda begins to spiral down, and it is painful to watch. She doesn’t have clean or good fitting clothes. There isn’t enough to eat, and she goes to school hungry, and without a lunch. She finds some sympathy with other children, but she also finds unwanted attention from the local teenagers.

    And here the story takes a turn, in a direction I wasn’t fully expecting; Amanda tries to find her way out of where she’s at. Maybe she doesn’t fully understand why she’s doing it, but we know. The need to sleep in the same bed with her father. The attempts to clean their home. Amanda tries to eat better, and be better. Amanda doesn’t give up, she tries, she fights for security, and to keep the loneness away.

    With the end of the story, and the reconciliation between Amanda and her father, I felt that these characters were now seeing each other, acknowledging that they need to and can do better. But… but there is a melancholy to this ending. The damage has been done. The trauma has been created. These few days of this story might be some of the most impactful days of her life. I felt that at the conclusion of this story, I knew Amanda would be okay, but it would be a journey where she would have to deal with her feelings of abandonment, neglect, food anxiety, authority figures, and shame. There was such a hopeful melancholy with this story, that I just felt crushed by a feeling of compassion for these characters.

    It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting, but as the days went on after reading this story, I kept thinking about Amanda, and how this story very quietly illuminated the exact moment in this person’s life where they stopped seeing the world as a child does, and started taking the first steps toward understanding the world of adulthood.

    Nicola Winstanley made her baby suffer. Yet, Amanda came out on the other end. It was hard at times reading certain passages, and not because something shockingly brutal happened. No, difficult to read because I know that those little indignities that happen in childhood, those are the deepest cuts that take a lifetime to deal with. Maybe I would prefer to be the kid eating sweets, trying to ignore that pain deep down. Nicola Winstanley had the courage to confront that pain, and let Amanda start her healing.

  • SNOW DAY!

    For real! No Fooling! An honest to God snow day has befallen the City!

    Sadly, most kids have to “remote in” to school today, so they aren’t off.

    But not my kid!

    Nope, her school closed, and she gets the joy of having a bonus day! She got to sleep in, and when she did wake up, she got a super sugary cereal for breakfast. There was an art project of making her own trading cards. Then we went out in the snow and walked the dog. That took it out of us, so we had hot chocolate and she curled up in her bed to read the first book in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Then she finished her homework, and is watching TV next to me on the couch as I work.

    Looking out the window, huge fat and chunky wet snowflakes are blowing sideways. For me, a kid who grew up in Texas, snow has never stopped being amazing and magical. I also remember that on those completely rare occasions when it would snow in North Texas, as we’re talking a total of 2 inches was like a blizzard there, there was this running clock in my head that I had to get out there and play in it before it went away, because it would go away. My parents grew up in Illinois, so snow was nothing new to them, and I know there were highly amused at my excitement for that least amount of snow.

    My kid has a much more chill attitude toward snow, clearly due to being born in a blizzard and having grown up in NYC. Though we haven’t had a major snow event in almost two years, we do get one good storm a season. The kid owns her own sled after all.

    But the day feels lazy and relaxing. The running clock in my head doesn’t tick anymore, and we’ll hit up the local sledding hill after lunch.

  • This is What Dad Does

    I got to do something last night with my daughter that I have been looking forward to for years. We went to a presentation of four works-in-progress puppet shows. The venue was Dixon Place down in the Lower East Side, and the showing was part of their Puppet Blok series. And, it was a school night, so this was a very special occasion. My daughter got to experience the world of puppets that I had been in, and meet some of the people I have been working with for over 15 years.

    The kid has known since forever that puppetry was the “thing” that I did in New York, but for most of the time when she thought of Dad and puppets, she was thinking “Muppets.” Slowly, as she’s grown, and I have shown her videos, and pictures of the type of work I was involved in. Some of it was traditional puppets, and some of it was mime, and other shows were more about movement and physical theatre. I never did marionettes because that is a hard skill to hone, and those guys are crazy.

    Last night, the kid got to have her first experience in seeing what it was that her father did. And I was especially happy that we chose last night because two good friends were showing their work, and both of them are very talented women who I have worked for. I wanted my daughter to see women being themselves, out front, creating art, and leading their projects.

    I was also a little nervous that the kid would get bored with the show. I learned a while ago that just because something is important to me, doesn’t mean it will be important to her. I’m not looking for her to want to become an artist or a performer. I just would like for her to have an appreciation of the arts, and the creative process. And works at this stage can be rough, very much “in progress,” and still a ways from a final form.

    But I needn’t have been concerned. She got it. She was into it. She was a great audience member as well. All four of the pieces engaged her, and lead her not to ask a bunch of questions, but to tell me how each piece made her feel. At the talk back after the show, she was a little shy to give her comments, but she whispered them to me, and I spoke up for her. Yeah, she got it.

    And it was a late night. We were riding the D train home, and she snuggled up next to be with her show program in her hand. I’m pretty sure she had a good time. I got what I wanted, which was to share a part of me with the kid.

  • Short Story Review: “Self-Portrait in Assignments” by Max Kruger-Dull

    (The short story “Self-Portrait in Assignments” by Max Kruger-Dull appeared on November 30th, 2023 in Milk Candy Review.)

    I am a strong proponent for flash fiction to not behave like a short story. That’s not to say that a writer cannot craft a well written short story in under a thousand words which exhibits all the qualities of a traditional short story; opening, rising action, climax, conclusion, character development…etc. I hold to that flash fiction should reject the use of plot, climax, and even resolution. Flash should be its own beast that is about the expression of an idea or an emotion, wherein the narrative ends with the conclusion of the idea or emotion, but does not necessitate a resolution of the idea or emotion.

    (Academic enough for you?)

    “Self-Portrait in Assignments” by Max Kruger-Dull came across my desk last week, and I have been kicking it around in my head ever since. It’s the type of flash story that was a bit of a gut punch and made me question my approach toward this style of fiction. The piece is made up of ten short vignettes, just about all dealing with words that, in one way or another, have been assigned to the narrator. Each short piece is titled with the abbreviated name of the person who did the assigning.

    So, that’s the form of the piece.

    The way these ten vignettes play with each other creates a picture of the narrator, though not in a linear timeline, more of a sequence that exemplifies the narrators emotional standing, and ultimately, emotional growth. Though the narrator comes across as a smart person, there is also a hint of a lack of self-confidence, though a determination to keep trying also exists in the character. That determination is exemplified in the love and care that the narrator has for his daughter. Kruger-Dull smartly gives three examples of interactions with the daughter; one being before the daughter was born thus showing how her influence was already present in the narrators life. By using the rule of three, the importance of this relationship is made paramount, thus signaling the emotional conclusion of this “self-portrait.”

    All the notes are played right in this piece, which left me feeling satisfied with the journey that this piece took me on. I want to say that the narrator started in one place and finished in another, but did they? Did the narrator only acknowledge their shortcomings, and choose not to pass them on to their daughter? I first thought there wasn’t a conflict in the piece, but was there? Was the narrator fighting to accept himself in the eyes of his daughter? To be better for her, even if that means he has to fake who he is?

    See; I can’t put my finger on what it is. But what I do know is that “Self-Portrait in Assignments” is using flash fiction in a specific way to express an emotional idea that couldn’t exist an any other format.

  • Short Story Review: “I Am Pizza Rat” by Han Ong

    (The short story “I Am Pizza Rat” by Han Ong appeared in the October 23rd, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (There are SPOILERS!)

    Photograph by Melissa Schriek for The New Yorker

    As a kid who grew up in the 90’s, I am a sucker for slacker lit. You know, meandering stories, aloof narrators, whacky characters, and a general revelry for nothing happening… you know, whatever… Perhaps Kerouac created this genre of fiction with On the Road and Dharma Bums. And it’s a tough genre to execute. The form appears antithetical to the general format of short fiction and novels, as slacker lit just wants to stay mellow and float on down the road, but to work effectively, it still needs a climax. And it pains me to say this about “I Am Pizza Rat” by Han Ong, which is a charming and enjoyable short story, but lacks an effective climax, and leaves the end of the piece feeling flat.

    And I liked this story and the writing. The narrator is a fifty-one year old struggling writer who lives in New York City, but is out in San Mateo, California taking care of his seventy-six father who recently had a fall and is recovering. The writing has just the right tone of sadness and depression in it, but also a touch of irony and humor which never lets the story go too far in the dark corners. We meet the instructor of a FALLING NATURALLY class, and his pot selling brother, Bun (pronounced “Boon”) the African nurse, members of a Gilbert and Sullivan Group, and the idiosyncratic routine of an elderly father. And there are animal videos. But at its core is a father and son story, and slowly the life of the father is revealed, and the trauma he experienced, and how he made imperfect efforts not to pass that along to his son. And the son is aware that his father tried, and mostly succeed, at ending this cycle of trauma.

    This is all great stuff, which makes the climax all the more disappointing. I read the story twice, and decided that the climax is the last paragraph of the second to last section. See, the father asks the son where he goes when the nurse comes to the house, and the son replies that he goes to the university library and has started writing again, thus gaining his confidence back. Then the narrator goes on to say in the same paragraph, “In stories, books, I’m a sucker for the moment when the dormant character awakens.” As if this ironic “wink and a nudge” of a line is to suffice as the “realization moment” in the “Hero Cycle” where the hero has changed from the events of the story, thus leading to the resolution. Unfortunately, this lands hollow as the action is told to us, and not shown. This choice feels lazy in an otherwise active slacker story.

    Look, endings are hard, and I don’t believe this ending “ruins” the story. It’s just more like a record scratch in an otherwise very good song. There are moments and observations in here that Han Ong shows a deft hand with. Especially with the father/son relationship, which is the core reason I would recommend reading this story.