Tag: Writing

  • Short Story Review: “Chance the Cat” by David Means

    (The short story “Chance the Cat” by David Means appeared in the January 22nd, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Bobby Beasley for The New Yorker

    (Edited and Updated on 2/5/24)

    I’m guessing here, but I’ve written close to 100 reviews for my blog. And when I write one, I try to come up with some catchy opening, or hook, or gimmick in the first paragraph to get you, the reader, interested in reading further. The reason I do this is mainly because that’s how I was taught to write essays and critical papers in high school and college. Effective? Yeah, sure. Original? Not really. (Now, watch how I do this.) “Chance the Cat” is such a story that has a hook, a gimmick as one would say, that David Means employees to tell his story.

    What “Chance the Cat” really is, is a deconstructed bittersweet rom-com with a cat and a Secret Service agent, which employees the gimmick of starting each section/paragraph by asking “Does it matter…” or stating “What mattered was…” or some other variant of the aforementioned questions/statement. Of the 49 section/paragraphs, only 5 do not use this hook. There must be a reason for this, right? Those 5 parts must contain some weight to them, because dramatically, when a pattern is created in the narrative, inevitable it will be broken for effect. I am not faulting Means for this structure in his storytelling, merely identifying it.

    I bring all of this up because, as I said earlier, the story is a com-com. There is a meet cute, a budding relationship, a jointly cared for cat, a break up, and then the melancholy remembrance of the time shared. There are jumps in time, as the story doesn’t follow a linear format, which works well with the bittersweet tone of the story. I enjoyed how the story played with how disparate people come together, the crutch they use to stay together, in this story the cat, and how as time passes, it still isn’t clear how one should deal with those emotions from that time together. Using the “Does it matter…” “What mattered…” gimmick plays very well into that theme.

    Did I mention the Secret Service agent? Yeah… this is the only issue I had with the story. (Well, it was a little long in parts…) You see, this couple lives down the street from the Obama’s in Chicago, and as such, there are Secret Service agents on the block checking people who live there as they come and go. Being that this information is essential to the breakup and the climax to the story, I found it an odd decision to share this with us about 2/3 way through the piece. A good amount of time is spent on this agent, whose purpose in the narrative is only to annoy the guy so he loses the cat. That’s it. The agent doesn’t weigh on the girl’s mind years later, nor is there some sort of connection between the girl and the agent, which I thought would happen as it would play into the complication of the central relationship. That was just me hoping for something to justify the agents existence.

    I try very hard not to impose what I want to see happen in a story, but only to analyze and critically examine what the writer has presented to the reader. I kind’a fudged this one. In my defense, except for one character choice, I did enjoy “Chance the Cat.” I enjoyed the structure David Means created to tell this story, and there are many details that layered and deepened the central characters. But that agent…

    (And then I got an anonymous comment this morning telling me that the story was about race, and how it was mind boggling that I could miss that. At first I left a quip about boggling minds, thanked the person for their comment, and asked what they thought the Agent represented.

    I went about my day, but that comment kept poking at the back of my head. Was the story all about race? Could that be right? And if that was true, did I honestly completely miss that?

    So, I went back and reread the story… and I took a whiff on this one.

    And I’m embarrassed by that.

    Rereading the piece, I now see what I missed and glossed over. Especially William’s reaction to the agent stopping him.

    Something still doesn’t sit right with me when it comes to this story. I will stick with my original reaction of the Obama’s being down the street, along with the introduction of the Agent, 2/3rds of the way through the story. That Agent and all of his passages still feel odd to me; not fitting in with the rest of the flow of the story.

    But I think the bigger question in all of this, is why did I whiff so hard on this piece? What I wrote in the last paragraph of my original review reveals everything, and shows my mistake. As I reread the piece, I began to discover how I had errored; I didn’t critically analyze what David Means presented, but started to impose in my mind what I wanted the story to be and glossed over what didn’t fit in with my judgement. I got caught up in thinking I knew better. That was my mistake. I want to own up to, and promise to do better.

    Also, I want to thank the anonymous commenter who did an appropriate job of smacking me upside the head.)

  • Short Story Review: “The Beach House” by Joy Williams

    (The short story “The Beach House” by Joy Williams appeared in the January 15, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I will SPOIL this story.)

    Illustration by Mia Bergeron

    Of all the storytelling tricks that are out there, the “MacGuffin” is my favorite. If you don’t know, a MacGuffin in a story is any object, device, or person that is essential to the plot and motivation of the characters. Think of the Ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark; it’s the object everyone wants and is also what drives the plot. And the beach house in Joy Williams “The Beach House” is a MacGuffin, but the rest of the story doesn’t play along.

    So, in the story, Amber’s elderly father is near death, and he owns a beach house which he is planning on willing to a charity that save dogs. Amber finds this charity suspicious, but more importantly, if the house is not willed to her after her father’s death, she will be homeless. This is about as textbook as you can get with a plot, and motivation and the whole thing. He wants one thing, she wants another, and the stakes are high as she has a desperate need to get her hands on this beach house.

    But this story never seems to get its dramatic act together. It plods along with little urgency. Amber seems resigned to talk about her plight, but never take action. And the father, though its hinted at that he might be suffering from early dementia, doesn’t seem very interested in his daughters situation of near homelessness. I feel that there are other issues simmering under the surface between these two, but I also think I am giving the story the benefit of the doubt here. When the climax of the piece occurs, the father falls and the daughter wants to take him to the hospital, it in no way affects the plot, the motivations, or the MacGuffin. Nothing is resolved or concluded with this action – the issue of the beach house is still there.

    It’s not a badly written piece, but the aftertaste I am left with is that “The Beach House” might be the first chapter of a novel. Again, all the pieces are here for a good story, and like I also pointed out, there seems to be a subtext between the characters that could be richly explored. But, with the story in this state, Williams introduced a gun and then didn’t fire it.

  • Starting Things Off Wrong

    So… I didn’t blog yesterday.

    In fact, all I did was write in my journal at 6am. (I’m trying that out, seeing how it goes.) I’m still gun’na stick to the idea that I will blog five days a week, with a minimum of 250 words per post but there can be exceptions, and also keeping a daily schedule of creative writing as well. Simple plan, not too complicated. And things started off great on Tuesday.

    And then Wednesday arrived, and I was cursed with the advantage of additional free time during the day that I was not expecting. Like an additional hour. When I made this discovery of time, my first thought was to take a portion of it, and do something a little mindless and have fun.

    My mindless fun took up two and a half hours, and ruined the rest of my day.

    And I can admit that what destroyed my yesterday is a thing that I have very little power over:

    Axis & Allies 1942 Online

    I got the game over the Christmas/New Year’s Break. I thought I had it under control. I mean, the whole family was on vacation, and everyone had their video games to play. A&A was my game, and with nothing going other than relaxing and eating, I spent some quality hours playing.

    I thought I had it under control.

    See, if you don’t know, there was the original board game back in the 80’s that my brothers and I played often. Then I went away to college and took the game with me, and on many evenings me and my friends would play the game late into the night, often a little drunk. I wouldn’t call myself a great player, but I was competent, and I won more often than I lost. To be very honest, if I played the UK or Japan, I can rule the whole world in 9 turns.

    Just saying.

    But yesterday, when my computer player Allies choked and didn’t take the Caucuses back, nor did they invade Wester Europe fast enough, I was placed in a situation as the UK where I had to go and save everyone’s butt. And it’s not easy to invade Southern Europe while simultaneously building up a Pacific Fleet.

    The point here people, is that I failed on day two.

    Now I have to set a time limit on the game…

  • Starting Things Off Right

    You know, the first thing I have to do when I start writing at the beginning of the year is create a new folder to save my documents in. Hello file, 2024.

    This is also my last day of Winter Vacation. The kid goes back to school tomorrow, and though the wife started back at work today, we didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, so it felt like we got to sleep in a little. Wednesday, we will all hit the road running; Making breakfast for the family, making the kid’s lunch, getting everyone dressed and out the door. Back to the grind.

    Speaking of grind; I gotta figure out what I want to do for this year. I have the standard stuff like cutting down on alcohol, working out more, more sleep, more reading, getting published in two journals this year. I do have some around the home projects that I need to take care of, and I would like to get better at the family budget and get our collective ass out of the final bit of our debt. (HA! We’ll never be out of debt…)

    I can say that I need to work on taking more time for the things I want to accomplish. I got a bit frustrated in the last three months of the year as I stopped working on my stuff. My writing production fell off sharply, and I know that I was to blame for it. But, I’m starting a new year, and it’s a new chance to correct old problems.

    Optimism can be a nice thing to have around.

  • Matthew Groff Blog – The Best of 2023: An Introduction

    It’s that time of year again, when I post the “best of” of my blog for 2023.

    As in previous years, I am presenting the most popular posts in terms of views, and only the top 5. Sure, I have a few blogs that I put up that are dear to my heart, but I prefer this format as it showcases what the readers were most interested in.

    As such, this list owes its existence to you, the followers, viewers, and the friends of this blog. This year had the largest amount of views I had ever received. In fact, if you added together the previous five years together, that total would still be smaller than all the views for 2023.

    So, thank you, all of you, for spending your time on this little blog.

    And enjoy The Best of 2023!