NYSSD: "When I woke up this morning..."

Oh man.

Fun? No.

Ugh.

Still too immersed to comment, which is usually good (was not nearly so immersed in the Trevor story, for example), but right now just weighed down by the immensity of parenthood. Someone told me when my daughter was born, "You're going to have to learn how to live with your heart walking around outside your chest."

I did like very much his ever-tightening circle of immediacy, the conversational lilt, how it was at a remove, and then it wasn't. Pow.

This story isn't terribly good. It lacks structure, point, and focus. It is also overly detailed. Boyle can't tell you about a pizza without telling you what all the toppings are and how much a slice costs. If you edited out all the irrelevant naturalistic detail this story would be 25% shorter and 25% better.

I disagree with you there. I think the coversational tone is what allows it to pack such an emotional wallop, and that those details (as well as lack of conventional "point" or focus) are very much part of the conversational tone. Also, some details are important, some aren't, and by sneaking in the important details without telegraphing "This is important!", the story is made stronger.

I was impressed with the emotion in the context of Boyle, who I usually find very very clever and witty and dextrous but somewhat hollow. This was anything but hollow.

It is not surprising to me that much of the comment so far is about the style of writing in this story. To me, this story was all mood and atmosphere. Boyle painted a picture in words that was sharp and yet hazy. It was soft focus, yet it packed a big emotional wallop.

I will say this, Boyle would seem to be one of those story tellers whose mind produces similes and analogies at an astounding rate, and he seems to reject very few of them.

I personally do not suffer drunks easily. But here Boyle gives us victims of drunks becoming drunks themselves. The protagonist says that life is a struggle against weakness, and he theorizes that the fight against weakness is really a fight against our own DNA. The only thing he can do is to hang on and never let go.

Again, I personally, have not so far given in to the idea that our lives are pre-determined, but I can see the struggle against weakness part, and I have an idea that many of us have, at some time or other, struggles where we feel like we are holding on by the tips of our fingernails. So, I had sympathy for the people in the story.

I guess I have a special perspective on this story because I am a recovering alcoholic ( now over 11 years sober in AA through the grace of God )...which made me perhaps hypercritical of the way Boyle depicts his drunks. It all seemed too deterministic to me, as though none of them had any choices in their fates. This rubs me the wrong way because, if nothing else, it is contrary to my own philosophy about alcoholism and recovery. But as I say, I may have a skewed perspective given my life experience. I don't think Boyle is writing for people like me.

Interesting, Larry.

I hadn't thought much about the deterministic aspects until you and Hazlitt brought it up -- I was thinking much more about the parental aspects, about those terrifying glimpses of what MIGHT happen. And the relief when those things don't happen.

But yeah, there is a strong whiff of fate about the story, especially Chris, who tried so hard to avoid alcohol and then died from it.

larry, Thanks for sharing your personal perspective on alcoholics. I don't think there is any way to "generalize" alcoholics. Each has their own problems and situations that are unique. There are as many loved ones that go through different experiences of their alcoholic spouse, children, or others. All we know for sure is that alcoholism is a disease. It strikes at every culture where alcohol is available. c.i.

Generalizations are always suspect, but alcoholics often share a surprising number of personality traits. That is why AA works so well--its addresses the psychological makeup of its members in very specific ways. One example among many: alcoholics tend to be defiant and angry, more so than the ordinary person. AA gives concrete advice on how to manage and reduce those "defects of character."

Again, interesting, Larry. I find that your observations about being defiant and angry tend to be true from my personal experience (some alcoholism in my family.)

Right, Sozobe. AA specifically tells alcoholics "anger is a luxury we cannot afford" and warns against resentments as the number one enemy of sobriety and serenity. If you ever see an AA book called TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, check out the Tenth Step--it is largely devoted to a discussion of how toxic anger is for alcoholics. I am sorry that you have had to experience the disease at first-hand!

Checking in.

Here is one of the many paragraphs in this story that I liked. It made me feel like I was there. I could feel the "despair" and the "disbelief." I was very sympathetic to the protagonist.

"I bought Jimmy a drink, watched myself in the mirror behind the bar. I didn't look like anybody I knew, but there I was, slouched over my drink, taking in air and letting it seep back out again. The woman with the deep-dredged laugh was gone. A couple in their twenties had settled into the vacant spot on the other side of Jimmy, oblivious of the drama that had just played out here, the woman perched on the barstool while the man stood in place, rocking in her arms to the beat of the music. The band featured a harp player, and he moved round the confines of the stage like a caged animal, riffling the notes till he'd gone all the way from despair to disbelief and back again, the bass player leaning in as if to brace himself, the guitar rising up slow and mournful out of the stew of the backbeat."

Larry, although I've never been an alcoholic (It's possible I've never been really drunk), in my young adulthood, I lived in fear of being one. My mother, two of her brothers, and two aunts were alcoholics in the truest sense of the word. If I had picked up Boyle's story when I was 35, I'd have set it aside as something too unbearable to read. Now, at 71, I see the protagonist as just one man going through his own little hell; he's got a particular outlook and philosophy; he's hanging on to whatever he can find good in his own history; and he battling the idea that his troubles are rooted in his DNA. I agree with you that he'd have a better chance if he saw himself as a man having a free choice. As is so often the case, I wonder how such a bright, attractive person can allow this to happen to himself.

I'm wondering if, as a professional writer, you found any parts of the story that seemed especially well told?

One thing I will say is that alcoholism as described in this story has about it a slight tinge of the romantic. There is perhaps a bit of a mystic of the drunk. He drinks almost endlessly, and yet, remains charmingly insightful and philosophic. In reality, drunks are absolutely the pits. There is no charm, mo mystique, and nothing romantic. Their own life is a hell, and the life of those around them becomes a hell.

Although, I'll admit: some are worse than others.

Thanks, Larry.

Diane, so so so what'd you think?

Hazlitt, interesting observation about the romantic aspect. I wonder if that's where the drunk woman (Grace?) came from, that he noticed that tendency and wanted to get something purely squalid in there. She didn't seem to contribute as much as the rest of the story.

I'm really interested in what other parents thought about this story. I saw it as being fundamentally about parenthood -- the heartbreak, the staggering responsibility, the constant worry about all the things that could go wrong -- and wonder if that's just me.

Hazlitt, I just read the story again in the print edition and liked it a bit better. I think Boyle is good at atmosphere, evoking the miasmic mood inside the bar and the college-boy drinking nightmare very well. Where he slips--at least for me--is on character. Some of this weakness may be due to the technical fact that he is trying to characterize a relatively large number of people rather briefly. The Trevor story we read last week stuck to 2 protagonists and handled them in some depth. Boyle doesn't give himself space enough to do this. For example, when he encounters the brother at the bar, their dialogue is reported in a rushed summary, rather than directly, which would have given us more sense of the brother's personality. This is what makes short story writing so hellishly difficult--the battle against the limitations of the form.

I think, Sozobe, that Boyle is a skilled writer and that he pictured things the way he wanted them. I get a sort of film noir atmosphere. There is a certain sordid glamor about this kind of escapist drinking. Maybe when we see this in literature, we just have to accept that it's not a reflection of reality, but rather a well intended effort to show, symbolically, that the drinker is having a stressful time in life.

The drinking of Jimmy's parents was more like the real thing. They sat in a bar all day, neglecting the children and in general making life miserable for their family. The unrealistic thing about alcoholism as depicted in Jimmy, his brother, and the protagonist is that they remain so rational, charming, sober, and insightful after drinking an amount of whisky that put an elephant to sleep.

You are right, Sozobe, the story of Chris at the frat house party was harrowing. What a horror for parents of a beloved child who send him off in good faith for an education. Then he dies in a senseless drunken orgy. Talk about heartbreak.

Our narrator/protagonist seems to have had a sort of an awakening as a result of the near accident while playing catch with his nine month old son. I remember a couple of these narrow escapes. Fact is I'll never forget them, and I shudder every time I think of them.

Larry, I really prefer reading the print version myself. Dunno why. Just re-read it in print, liked it more. (Loved the photo.) That definitely happened with previous stories, and I think I'm just going to give up and start these discussions on Thursdays, if people don't mind. That still means Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday to discuss.

I agree about the brother, too. He seemed more of a device than a fully-fleshed character, while the others did seem so (characters, not devices.) I found myself wondering what purpose he served, then, though. Jimmy's backstory, how he got that way? Confirmation of Jimmy's story, which could have been just a ploy for sympathy?

Hazlitt, what got me in the gut more than Chris' death itself (which was, of course, horrible) was the two premonitions, or whatever you want to call them, the two incidents bracketing the story in which the parent pictures the accident in all of its gory detail and then... it doesn't happen. All is well. Only in the case of Jimmy's premonition on the LaCrosse field, all is not well... it was, back then, when Chris was smashed and then got up and shook it off, but it wasn't, in that moment that he was remembering it.

Well that was convoluted, but what I am getting at is I live that on a daily basis. Every situation is scanned for possible dangers and then the dangers play out in livid detail -- is my daughter really around back behind the garage or has she somehow opened the gate and is out in the street in the path of oncoming cars? Heartbeat quickens, strides lengthen, the corner is turned -- and there she is, poking at the ground with a stick. And on, and on.

Larry, I agree with you that the character of the brother is under developed. Also the way in which the narrator recognizes the very presence and existence of the brother is foreshortened. As you say, the short story has its limitations.

What I like about short stories is that they allow the writer to say something he/she wants to say, or do something , or show something in very little space. If done right it can be stunningly effective.

By way of an appreciation, I find good writing to be breathtaking and dazzling. Frankly, my critical threshold (whatever I mean by that) is lower than that of most, so that just about anyone who is good enough to be in the New Yorker dazzles me.

Another thing that bowls me over is the writing of good dialog in the movies. I don't want to be too gushy, but at times I almost gasp, and wonder how the hell anyone ever thought that up.

You're a good mom, Sozobe, and quite right to be vigilant. When things go awry, it's usually within the twinkling of an eye.

It was interesting the way the premonitions were used. The first time it was really a precursor of things to come. In the second case, I was thinking of the first, of course, and expecting the worst.