The New Yorker interviews T. Coraghessan Boyle.
(You can listen to the author read the story on "The Writer's Voice" podcast. I listened twice (and also read the story).)
Boyle says he just happened into a true tale in which "a girl came into [a] house in the middle of the night, turned on the lights, flushed the toilet, and fell asleep in the back bedroom until the police were summoned to remove her.... Who was this girl? What did she want? Why didn’t she take anything? And what was with the barbecued ribs she brought with her?"
In the story, the ribs take their place inside a lusciously long sentence:
In her right hand was a plastic sack containing spareribs lathered in a gooey red sauce, two ears of corn still wrapped in the blackened tinfoil in which they’d been roasted over the grill, a container of what looked to be potato salad, and dessert, lots of dessert: two napoleons, a wedge of cherry pie, and a fistful of chocolate-dipped strawberries she’d picked out herself, after the hostess, whose name may have been Renée—she reminded her of her mother on one of her mother’s good days—had insisted that she take some food with her, because I don’t know what we’re going to do with it all.
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21 comments:
When I read the headline, i thought it was a new take on the Paul Pelosi attack.
haven't We ALL woken up with a young girl asleep on our couch?
It Was nice that she brought ribs, there Probably wasn't enough porridge to go around
Correct long sentences are delish.
Guilty Looks Enter Tree Beers
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"Guilty Looks!" crater murder angularly, "Hominy terms arena garner asthma suture stooped quiz-chin? Goiter door florist? Sordidly NUT!"
"Wire nut, murder? wined Guity Looks, hoe dint peony tension tore murder's scaldings.
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Guilty Looks Enter Tree Beers a 1940 classic.
I would hazard a guess that there was alcohol involved.
Oh, great, another deconstruction that wants to be taken seriously. I mean, you can do that and I have seen quite excellent deconstructions of children's stories, but you better be creative with it. Reimagining Goldilocks as a home invasion seems uninspired, since the original story is a home invasion. You are not supposed to take that so seriously since it involves an innocent young girl and talking bears. I'm not saying you shouldn't write the story if you feel so inspired, but it's not something that would be front and center on the resume.
If you want a deconstruction of the Goldilocks story, Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears is entertaining at least.
Weird story. Did the girl think she was at someone else's house? There's a development several miles from where I live where all the houses look pretty much the same from the street -- same size, same color palette, similar placement of windows, so I could easily picture somebody thinking that they're at a friend's place when they're really two or three houses away.
"a girl came into [a] house in the middle of the night, turned on the lights, flushed the toilet, and fell asleep in the back bedroom until the police were summoned to remove her.... Who was this girl? What did she want? Why didn’t she take anything? And what was with the barbecued ribs she brought with her?"
Detectives believe alcohol was involved.
Now you have been reminded how to tell a story, and how NOT to tell it.
I am reimagining artists as people who create original works to beat their dead hobby horses.
This is a funny coincidence. I just today a started reading his (?) (I assume it’s a man?) After the Plague. I like it so far.
I don’t want to know anything about most authors. I just want to read their works on their own. I don’t want to know anything about their stupid politics or their infidelities &etc. I generally stay away from author interviews.
I used to ride the elevator with Tom all the time.
I cracked him up once when I told him "if this elevator were faster we could graduate in three years."
@Jason
cool
Did anyone here actually read (or listen to) the story?
I had a theory about it, but reading the interview with Boyle, I abandon the theory. I was wondering if it was possible that a story like this could expect you to realize something so unusual without giving you something closer to a revealer.
SPOILER: I thought perhaps all 3 girls were the same person, at 3 levels of time, in some kind of ghost story. Another clue that it's not a ghost story, is that the New Yorker published it in the November 7th issue and not the previous issue, which had a Halloween cover.
SPOILER: In my interpretation, the mother had a opportunity to perceive that her daughter was headed toward death and might have saved her but, because of her sad limitations, failed.
Really, I think my idea is so interesting that I'd like to reimagine Boyle's story as a ghost story. He reimagined Goldilocks. I would reimagine "Princess."
That goes on my list of unwritten things.
It's a lot of trouble to write a story. You have to flesh things out. It's arduous. That long sentence, quoted in the post. Well, perhaps it's great fun, feeling such a thing coming out of you, after you were fed the scrap of just BBQ ribs.
Boyle is one of the few bearable novelists left in America. Some of his themes -- immigration, global warming, sexual revolution -- sound like they might be off-putting liberal pap. But he steps away from expected posturing to the ambiguous humanism that made an Updike or a Bellow great contemporary onservers. The Inner Circle, Drop City, The Women, World's End, East is East -- all great. Friend of the Earth is a devastating Sophie's Choice between activism and lived life. I don't read modern fiction anymore unless it's procedural or genre, ie. with characters and plots. No postmodern wordplay. No authorial preening. But Boyle doesn't need such props because he can think and write. His historical novels are deep enough dives to recommend to non-fiction readers, especially the Kinsey and Frank Lloyd Wright ones. There must be something literary in that Hudson River water. In addition to all the other stuff in there.
Thank you, rhhardin. That was great fun. And now I never have to finish Finnegan's Wake.
I just can't read short stories anymore, but I'll try this one. Alice Munro finally jaundiced me; James Joyce is dead, and I don't want to know what happened to Ellen Gilchrist.
Not too soft, not too hard, the back bedroom mattress was just right.
Not too soft, not too hard, the back bedroom mattress was just right.
mean, you can do that and I have seen quite excellent deconstructions of children's stories, .. the tales we know but printed and Disney were bowlderized long time ago.
The original fairy tales were gory and sexual. for example, Cinderella´s sister got her feet cut
Sleeping beauty was raped on the orogonal
But in the updated version, she steals Baby Bear's Hummer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeZrr2aTxXA
Boyle is one great writer
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