Category Archives: Points of View Short Stories

The Points of View Challenge – A Father-to-Be – Saul Bellow

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Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 1915 – 2005)

Canadian-American writer, best known for his novels The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler’s Planet, (each winning the National Book Award for Fiction), Henderson the Rain King, Seize the Day, Humboldt’s Gift, (which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1976) and Ravelstein. A Father-to-Be was first published in The New Yorker on January 29th 1955 and in Seize the Day on November 15th 1956.

Available to read online here.

This is the last of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction concludes: “We have included a large number of selections in this group because this technique is the most widely used for telling a short story and very often used for telling a novel, especially in this century. Examples are Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and Marquand’s Point of No Return.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

A Father-To-Be

On a snowy Sunday evening, 31-years-old research chemist Rogin is on his way to his fiancée Joan’s for supper. She had asked him to buy some items on the way, so he stops at a delicatessen to buy roast beef, shampoo and some other treats he thinks she might enjoy. He allows his mind to wander; thinking about how he has to give money both to Joan and to his brother to get him through college, then he observes the behaviour of the people in the delicatessen, and people on the subway as he starts his journey to Joan’s. There’s a man who thinks no one knows he drinks, two children from different families with the same toy, a dwarf whose sex he cannot determine, and a middle-aged man whose facial features reminded him of Joan. He takes an instant disliking to the man – and becomes upset as he realises he is how any son that Joan gives birth to will look like him. His anxieties escalate when he thinks of how the future could turn out, so much so that he considers ending his relationship with Joan. When he arrives at her home, he is initially frosty and grumpy, but Joan insists on washing his hair with the new shampoo, and this gentle, loving action calms him down so that his mind is once again at rest.

This is a very curious short story for two main reasons. First, very little happens. A man goes to his fiancée’s home via a delicatessen and the subway. Almost all the events of the journey happen in his mind. Second, our hero Rogin does not come across as a particularly pleasant person. True, he is generous, not worrying about the thirty dollars he gave Joan a few days ago, buying extras at the shop so that their supper will be more enjoyable, and we note that he pays for his brother’s college fees. But he is very judgmental; he mentally appraises and criticises all the people he meets and observes on his journey. Sometimes he compares them to himself, and always unfavourably.

Bellow’s concise writing is always effective and tells us more than we need to know. He encapsulates everything about Rogin in his first paragraph; not only his age and profession, but the eccentricities of his appearance (for example, his “preposterous gait”) and the fact that he wears a Burberry coat suggests his wealth. He also tells us exactly what the rest of the story will be about: “the strangest notions had a way of forcing themselves into Rogin’s mind”, and “he fell into a peculiar state”.

“Who is free […] who has no burdens?” Rogin asks himself, as he reflects on both the people around him and his own life. He likes to fantasise about inventions he could make – but doesn’t – and frets about his mother’s changing behaviour and condemns the secret drinker for believing he could fool anyone. He rehearses how he is going to compliment Joan when he meets her, as if he has to plan his spontaneity. He condemns the unthinking crowd because of “how they slept through life” and spends more time than he should trying to decide whether the subway passenger is male or female – something that should be of absolutely no concern to him at all.

But it’s when he allows his fanciful brain to expand on the character of the silent man to whom he takes an instant dislike that it actively does damage to the balance of his character. The title of story is A Father-to-be, but it’s not as though Rogin is shortly to become a father; there’s no evidence that Joan is pregnant, and indeed, it wouldn’t be something that would be acceptable in that time and in that social stratum. It’s just his imagination that, if he and Joan were to have children together, and did have a son, he fears he would grow up to resemble this man, about whom he makes the wildest judgments without knowing the first thing about him. To Rogin he is simply “flat-looking, with his ordinary, clean, rosy, uninteresting, self-satisfied, fundamentally bourgeois face.” “What a curse to have a dull son!” he concludes.

As a result, his demeanour has quite changed by the time he gets to Joan’s, but her loving touch and the possible religious symbolism of a hair-washing ritual – using the shampoo that is a “sweet, cool, fragrant juice” – puts all those damaging thoughts out of his mind. However, one does wonder whether those damaging thoughts are gone forever; and it’s curious to reflect on what kind of relationship he and Joan might have long-term. Will his fears of dull suburban existence come true, or will he just enjoy life for what it is?

Finely and precisely written, it’s a fascinating insight into the way one’s thoughts can wander and drift, and how easily it is to catastrophise. It definitely captures a recognisable moment and tells us more about the central character than he would ever want us to know.

The next story in the anthology is the first of three to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Anonymous Narration – Dual Character Point of View, Maria Concepción by Katherine Anne Porter.

The Points of View Challenge – The Five-Forty-Eight – John Cheever

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John William Cheever (1912 – 1982)

American short story writer and novelist, best known for his short stories The Enormous Radio, Goodbye, My Brother, The Five-Forty-Eight, The Country Husband, and The Swimmer, and his novels, The Wapshot Chronicle, The Wapshot Scandal, Bullet Park, and Falconer. The Five-Forty-Eight was first published in The New Yorker on April 10th1954. It was later collected in The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories in 1958 and The Stories of John Cheever in 1978. In 1955 it was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Magazine Award.

Available to read online here.

This is the seventh of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “Why, in each particular story, does the narrator place the reader at the vantage point of one character only, and why, in each case, has the author chosen the character he has, and not another?”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

The Five-Forty-Eight

Blake leaves his office at the end of the day only to realise that he is being followed by a woman. What was her name – Miss Dent, Miss Bent, Miss Lent…? He can’t remember now, but it doesn’t matter much, after all, who remembers their personal assistants’ names anyway? It had been six months since they last met, but he doesn’t want to talk to her so loses himself on the Manhattan streets and dives into a bar where she’ll never find him. He doesn’t have great memories of her anyway; quiet, attractive in her own way, but with ugly handwriting. She invited him back to her apartment once for a drink; after taking advantage of her, he got dressed, returned home, and the next day arranged that she should be fired.

Blake takes the 5:48 train home, where she unexpectedly confronts him quietly in the carriage. Even though the train is full of the usual daily commuters, many of whom he knows and ignores, no one else seems to realise there’s a new person on the train talking intimately to him. He doesn’t need this kind of confrontation in his life so he gets up to move to another compartment when she warns him that she has a pistol and she will shoot him if he does.

Panicking, he sweats nervously as the rest of his train journey flashes by. Surely someone will notice her and somehow this torment will quickly end? But no, the train reaches his destination of Shady Hill, and she marches him out of the station at gunpoint. Will she kill him? Or will she just degrade and shame him, and make him realise there are consequences to his actions. Is his death worth a prison sentence? Having forced his face down in the dirt, she’s content that she’s a better person than he is, and that he knows it. A job well done for Miss Dent.

Gripping, suspenseful and unpredictable, this is a beautifully written tale that slowly reveals Blake’s callousness and equally slowly reveals Miss Dent’s own story. John Cheever has a real knack for making the reader appreciate the environment in which the story takes place – the smelly wetness of the New York streets, the crowded but comfortable sanctuary that the bar provides, the unspoken dynamics of the train commuters, and how this terrifying encounter is being held in plain sight by two seemingly diminutive and unimportant people against the backdrop of a busy city.

Cheever has Blake constantly noticing tiny details about the people he meets: Miss Dent’s crooked stockings, Mr Watkins’ long and dirty hair, the brevity of Mrs Compton’s smile. Blake himself finds comfort in the blandness and colourlessness of his clothing, rejecting light and colour. Cheever gives us the detail of Blake putting Miss Dent’s rose in the waste bin (“I don’t like roses” he tells her). There’s nothing beautiful or attractive in his life, and he’ll keep it that way.

But to an extent Blake is a product of his environment. Cheever takes pains to describe a store window: “The window was arranged like a room in which people live and entertain their friends. There were cups on the coffee table, magazines to read, and flowers in the vases, but the flowers were dead and the cups were empty and the guests had not come.” Blake’s hollow and false respectability is no different from this sham pretend shop window living room. Sex with Miss Dent was joyless, transactional and meaningless, just a notch on the bedpost. But this is no surprise when you consider his marital life, diarising the two weeks during which he will punish his wife Louise by not talking to her, for not having prepared dinner when he wanted it. No wonder his fourteen-year-old son Charlie chooses to more or less move in with the next-door neighbours.

Even when Miss Dent is pointing the pistol at him, he still doesn’t take responsibility for his own situation. So many things he could have done to avoid this, and maybe he still could; but instead he thinks: “Help would come, Blake thought. It was only a question of minutes. Someone, noticing the look on his face or her peculiar posture, would stop and interfere, and it would all be over. All he had to do was to wait until someone noticed his predicament.” Cheever increases the tension of Miss Dent’s virtual kidnap of Blake by emphasising the surrounding normality of the environment; the same advertising slogans on station after station, the image of the Hawaiian dancer who haunts his journey, the minutiae of other commuters awaiting their trains. Stable lives going about their everyday existence, such as the “men fishing on the nearly dark river, and then a ramshackle boat club that seemed to have been nailed together out of scraps of wood that had been washed up on the shore”. Suspecting he might die at any minute, he finally understands the concept of regret.

The resolution of the story is uncertain right up until the final sentences. Even Miss Dent herself is unsure how this encounter will end, but Cheever explains the conclusion that she draws: I’m better than you. I still have good dreams sometimes. I dream about picnics and heaven and the brotherhood of man, and about castles in the moonlight and a river with willow trees all along the edge of it and foreign cities, and after all I know more about love than you […] I shouldn’t waste my time or spoil my life like this. Put your face in the dirt […] Now I can wash my hands of you, I can wash my hands of all this, because you see there is some kindness, some saneness in me that I can find and use.”

Always remember that actions have consequences, and you can’t always ignore them; and you never know quite how much someone might be suffering. Blake learns this the hard way; but you have little expectation that he will change his ways and become a better man.

The next story in the anthology is the eighth and last to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, A Father-to-Be by Saul Bellow.

The Points of View Challenge – Act of Faith – Irwin Shaw

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Irwin Shaw (1913 – 1984)

American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author, best known for his novels The Young Lions and Rich Man, Poor Man.

Act of Faith was written in 1946, and first published in The New Yorker on February 2nd in the same year. It was later included in the short story compilation Act of Faith and Other Stories also in 1946.

Unfortunately I have not been able to find a free copy to read online.

This is the sixth of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “What the stories have in common is the presentation of the inner life of a single character rather than of several or of none.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

Act of Faith

The Second World War is over, but American soldiers are still stationed in Europe. Olson, Welch and Seeger survived Omaha Beach and are now considering their post-war futures. They’re not far from Paris and who can resist visiting the French capital? But none of them has been paid for three months. What can you do in Paris without money? Olson and Welch decide to ask their commanding officer, Captain Taney for a loan, but they delegate Seeger to do the negotiations. Why not? He can only say no.

In fact Taney says yes but can only muster up 200 francs – the equivalent of four dollars. That’s not going to get them very far. But Welch remembers that Seeger has a Lüger, taken from the body of a German he killed. He can get sixty-five dollars for that. That would certainly buy them a night on the town.

Seeger, meanwhile, has received a letter from home. In it, his father pours his heart out to his son about how life is now in America. Seeger’s brother Leonard was killed in action, and his brother Jacob is home but suffering badly with what we now know to be PTSD. Even harder to bear is the fact that the antisemitism rife in Europe has reached the States and the family – who are Jewish – realise that life is no longer the safe comfortable existence they always knew. Even their friends are turning against them.

Seeger doesn’t know what to think. Is all this sacrifice of war in vain? Would it not have been better if, like Leonard, he hadn’t survived the war so that he would not have to see the suffering of his parents? At that point Olson and Welch tell him that they know his Lüger is very important to him and ask him not to part with it if he isn’t completely sure. There are other ways of spending time in Paris. Seeger asks them directly, “what do you guys think of the Jews?” To which they reply that they have no idea what he means and that they’ve never heard of the Jews, and maybe he should ask them an easier question. Filled with hope and the confidence to tackle the prejudice at home head-on, Seeger agrees to sell the Lüger: “What could I use it for in America?”

A fascinating short story, notable for the fact that the action takes place in one continent but the substance of what it’s all about takes place in another. On one hand, it reveals the evil of antisemitism – indeed all prejudice – as it quietly grows all around you, and if you do nothing to prevent its growth, you’re part of the problem. It also shows that a simple expression of kindness and positivity may be all that’s needed to make the future optimistic; Olson and Welch’s flat-out refusal to participate in any antisemitic comments make Seeger feel safe and supported.

Shaw really gets to the heart of his characters in this story; you can sense the likeable laddishness of Olson, the earnest decency of Seeger and the keen practicality of Welch. Although they are of different levels of superiority, there’s no division between them. Shaw’s writing even invites us in to understand the characterisations of the minor characters, such as Taney speaking “like a man who has never quite got the hang of army regulations”, or describing Seeger’s father’s letter as “on the stiff white stationery with the University letterhead in polite engraving at the top of each page”.

The most powerful aspect of this story is the mental journey that Seeger undertakes, over a very short space of time, from being a confident, skilful soldier, to wading through a sea of self-doubt and second-hand grief, and then going back to a positive frame of mind again. A very satisfying and also thought-provoking piece.

The next story in the anthology is the seventh to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, The Five-Forty-Eight by John Cheever.

The Points of View Challenge – Enemies – Anton Chekhov

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Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904)

Russian playwright and short story writer, best known for his plays The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters.

Enemies was written in 1887, and first published in the collection In the Twilight in the same year.

Available to read online here.

This is the fifth of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “Thus the story is told from the point of view of both the speaker and the character, the first person and the third person, Sometimes it is very difficult to separate the two persons and their points of view.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

Enemies

Doctor Kirilov is in a state of shock; five minutes earlier his six year old son, Andrey, died from diphtheria. His wife is kneeling by the boy’s body in silent mourning. But there is a knock at the door; all the servants have been sent away because of the danger of catching the disease, so it is left to Kirilov to answer the door. A pale man named Aboguin pleas for the doctor to come with him as his wife is severely ill, at death’s door it seems, and Kirilov is the only doctor available.

But Kirilov refuses. How can he deal with other problems when his one and only son has just died, and his wife is the only other person in the house? Aboguin begs him – he cannot save Andrey, but he could save his wife. Eventually, after much pressure, Kirilov caves in and accompanies Aboguin on the hour long journey to his house.

But when they arrive, the house is silent; Aboguin thinks this is a good sign at first as no one was panicking about his ill wife. But it quickly becomes apparent that Aboguin has been tricked; his wife was not ill, and just used his absence as a ruse to run off with their regular visitor – and clearly her lover – Papchinsky. Furious at the deception, Aboguin rages against his wife and his situation. But Kirilov is also enraged, at having his own personal hour of distress pointlessly wasted for nothing; and no matter how Aboguin deals with his own situation, Kirilov despises him and everything to do with him for the rest of his life.

A simple tale, but with complex emotions and suffering on both men’s part. Aboguin has no sympathy with Kirilov’s situation but only puts himself first. Similarly, Kirilov has no care about what happened to Aboguin and only thinks of himself. Circumstances and selfishness render them enemies. But is it as straightforward as that? Are they both selfish? Isn’t it reasonable to expect a doctor to come to the aid of a dying woman if he possibly can? And is it reasonable to expect that someone who has lost their only son a mere five minutes earlier needs time to grieve and comfort his wife?

Chekhov’s writing – or at least the translation by Robert N Linscott – is dense and heavy. There is a class distinction between the two men, with a deliberate contrast between their appearance. Kirilov is tall, plain, slovenly dressed, tangled hair, pale grey complexion, and his lips are “unpleasantly sharp, ungracious and severe”. Aboguin on the other hand is solid, fair, robust, exquisitely dressed, noble, leonine, even revealing “a subtle, almost feminine, elegance.” It’s striking that Chekhov makes the point that the Kirilovs are too old ever to have another child: “their right to bear children had passed away, alas! forever to eternity. The doctor is forty-four years old, already grey and looks like an old man; his faded sick wife is thirty-five. Andrey was not merely the only son but the last.”

Far from uniting the two characters in their hours of need, the events of this story divide them, harshly and unequivocally. There’s no right or wrong way to react to grief; and one can never understand the complexity of an individual’s sadness and devastation.

The next story in the anthology is the sixth to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, Act of Faith by Irwin Shaw.

The Points of View Challenge – The Stone Boy – Gina Berriault

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Gina Berriault (1926 – 1999)

American novelist and short story writer, best known for her novels and The Stone Boy.

The Stone Boy was written in 1957, was adapted as a television play in 1960, then published in the collection The Mistress and Other Short Stories in 1965, and then in her 1996 collection Women in their Beds. Berriault also adapted the story into a screenplay for a film of the same name in 1984.

Available to read online here.

This is the fourth of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “The reader sees the world as that chosen person sees it, but he also understands it as the author does, for the hidden narrator is paraphrasing what the character thinks as well as commenting directly.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

The Stone Boy

Nine year old Arnold Curwing wakes up in the farmhouse bedroom he shares with his fifteen year old brother Eugie. They’re going out to pick peas before breakfast. With any luck, they’ll shoot some ducks too, even though it’s out of season. When they go out, he takes his .22 Winchester rifle with him. They make their way through the wheat field down to the lake where the ducks live. There’s a wire fence that they have to crawl through, so Eugie pulls the centre wire down so they can go into the pasture. Arnold is halfway through the fence when his rifle catches on the wire. He tugs at it to free it, and a shot rings out. He expects Eugie to deride his stupidity, but Eugie is silent, having fallen forward onto the earth. Blood emerges from the neck of his motionless, dead brother.

All Arnold can do is continue with the plan to collect peas, and he half fills the tin washtub they brought with them. When he arrives home, he knows he’ll have to explain why Eugie isn’t with him. ““Eugie’s dead,” he told them.” His parents and sister Nora go out to investigate whilst Arnold sneaks off to hide in the hayloft. He can hear the shrieks of grief, the car driving off in a hurry, and his father’s return along with his Uncle Andy and Aunt Alice.

Arnold is driven to the sheriff’s office in Corinth, where they ask him about what happened. He answers their questions calmly, emotionlessly and straightforwardly. Whilst they understand that it was an accident, they can’t understand why he didn’t immediately run back to his parents to tell them. “”I come down to pick peas,” he said. “Didn’t you think, asked the sheriff, stepping carefully from word to word, “that is was more important for you to go tell your parents what had happened?” “The sun was gonna come up,” Arnold said. “What’s that got to do with it?” “It’s better to pick peas while they’re cool.””

Arnold and his family are allowed to return home. After work, the neighbours arrive, recounting memories of Eugie, quizzically wondering about Arnold and his reaction to what happened. But Arnold stays silent, and assumes that he must be a bad person because, clearly, everyone else thinks he is a bad person. Later on he tries to open up to his mother but she, in her grief, rejects him. The next morning, however, she asks him if he had tried to speak to her the previous night. ““What’d you want?” she asked humbly. “I didn’t want nothing,” he said flatly. Then he went out the door and down the back steps, his legs trembling from the fright his answer gave him.””

Beautifully under-written by Berriault, she quietly tells us about this grim event in a colourless, hard-working environment. The power of this work is in the contrast between the devastating events of the story and the emotionless reaction of Arnold and, indeed, the matter-of-fact manner of the narration. Understanding Arnold’s character is key to appreciating the story as a whole. When we first meet him, he is taking one of the few opportunities he has of asserting himself over the superiority of his big brother; by waking up first, and shaking Eugie from his sleep, he is in command of the early morning situation.

As soon as Eugie takes control of his own day, Arnold must return to taking a back seat. “Eugie passed his left hand through his hair before he set his cap down with his right. The very way he slipped his cap on was an announcement of his status […] Arnold never tired of watching Eugie offer silent praise unto himself. He wondered, as he sat enthralled, if when he got to be Eugie’s age he would still be undersized and his hair still straight.” The only superiority Arnold can muster over Eugie is possession of his rifle. It was old, and no one else used it or wanted it anymore. Yet, at the age of nine, Arnold is fully competent to load the gun with cartridges, and he has the power to kill ducks as he wishes.

With his stultifyingly logical mind and willingness to answer the exact question he is given, rather than see through a question to understand the motivation behind it, today we would probably venture Arnold to be neurodivergent. A good example of this is when the sheriff asks Arnold if he and Eugie were “good friends”. He’s trying to identify if there could be any rift or disagreements between the two brothers. But Arnold can’t answer that because of course they weren’t friends, they were brothers. They’re different things. He can’t intuit what the sheriff is getting at.

At the time of writing, there was no such concept as “neurodivergence”. At the end of his short interview with Arnold, the sheriff tells his father and Andy “he’s either a moron or he’s so reasonable that he’s way ahead of us […] the most reasonable guys are mean ones. They don’t feel nothing.” Clearly, it’s the sheriff’s view that Arnold will return to his attention in a few years’ time; he expects him to continue a life of crime. That’s not Arnold’s view of his own life at all; but he is shocked at himself when he can’t bring himself to open up about his brother’s death.

A fascinating and disturbing read, not only illustrating how a simple incident can accidentally bring catastrophic results, but also showing how shock can compound an inability to communicate.

The next story in the anthology is the fifth to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, Enemies by Anton Chekhov.

The Points of View Challenge – The Prison – Bernard Malamud

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Bernard Malamud (1914 – 1986)

American novelist and short story writer, best known for his novels The Natural and The Fixer.

The Prison was first published in Commentary magazine in September 1950 and then in the collection The Magic Barrel in 1958.

Available to read online here.

This is the third of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “A point of view, naturally, is both a physical vantage point and a personal way of perceiving events, What we mean by “single character point of view” is that the author takes us only where a certain character goes and permits to know only what that character is thinking and feeling.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

The Prison

#Tommy Castelli is in prison; a prison of his own making and in accord with his environment. At least, that’s what it feels like, every day having to work in the candy shop that his father-in-law paid for to keep him on the straight and narrow. He runs it with his wife Rosa; they don’t love each other but they muddle through. Tommy had a bad start in life, holding up a liquor store; he escaped justice but allowed himself to be bought into the marriage and running the store – sixteen hours a day of sheer boredom and frustration. He even consented to becoming Tommy, whilst his real name is Tony.

Recently a young girl has started coming into the store and buying tissue paper for her mother, who apparently encourages other children to make toys and dolls out of it. One day he realises that whilst his back is turned, she steals two candy bars. His initial reaction is to challenge her, but he also feels sorry for her, seeing something of himself in her behaviour. It also reminds him of his Uncle Dom, who is in prison, and whom he misses. Still, he can’t let her keep on stealing from him, so he devises various plans of catching her out, making her realise that he knows what she’s doing, and encouraging her to stop before the habit gets out of hand. But nothing he does seems to prevent her regular thefts.

It’s not until Rosa catches her thieving that things escalate quickly. She grabs the girl and shakes her within an inch of her life; identifying more with the girl than his wife, Tommy slaps Rosa across the face until he draws blood. The girl’s mother arrives, and when she discovers what her daughter has been doing, she too administers corporal punishment on the girl. But in a moment of total defiance, the girl still finds time to poke her tongue out at Tommy as her mother manhandles her away.

This claustrophobic, depressing yet simple little tale takes the notion of imprisonment and applies it both to the reality of what Tommy escaped in his youth, but it has been replaced by a virtual prison; and what could become the future for the girl if she doesn’t change her ways. There’s an overwhelming sense of regret in the story; regret for the “dreams and schemes” he never achieved, regret for the loss of freedom, regret that he married the “plain and lank” Rosa, regret that the girl’s future could become the same as his, even regret that he changed his name. There’s also regret that Tommy didn’t prevent the girl from stealing in the first place, as his virtuous attempts to shame her into decency are thrown back in his face.

It’s tightly, darkly written; a sparse combination of sentences that make for one of the shortest stories in this collection. It paints a severe picture of down-at-heel life amongst the poorest in society and how crime and violence are an inevitable consequence of the poverty. “Time rotted in him, and all he could think of the whole morning, was going to sleep in the afternoon.” The story does not offer any possibility that life will change for the better; as such, it comes across as a negative, pessimistic piece.

The next story in the anthology is the fourth to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, The Stone Boy by Gina Berriault.

The Points of View Challenge – Horses – One Dash – Stephen Crane

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Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)

American poet, novelist, and short story writer, best known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage.

Horses – One Dash, written in 1895, first published in a newspaper in 1896 and then in the collection The Open Boat and Other Stories in 1898. Also known as One Dash – Horses or simply Horses.

Available to read online here.

This is the second of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “Some authors comment openly on the characters and the action, perhaps even correcting the perspective of the characters; others make their point only through selection, arrangement, and phrasing.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

Horses – One Dash

 

Richardson, a New Yorker, and his servant, José, ride their horses through the mesquite-strewn hills of Mexico. Needing somewhere to shelter for the night, José arranges for them to stay at a house in a remote village. All is peaceful until the noise of rowdy, drunken men outside the house wakes them in the middle of the night. It quickly becomes clear the men plan to break in, steal their goods and doubtless murder them in the process. Both men are terrified, but Richardson maintains an outward show of calm. Fortunately the men are diverted by the arrival of a group of women, and they turn their attention to singing, dancing, drinking and fraternising with the women.

The next morning Richardson and José make their escape. José is keen to rush ahead as quickly as possible, but Richardson holds back, much to his servant’s fury and frustration. They can see figures on the horizon behind them, and they know they are being pursued by the men from the night before. Fortunately, José heads down a hill to discover a group of rurales, a Mexican army cavalry corps policing the plain; José convinces them that Richardson is an influential and rich American, so the rurales are determined to protect him. When the marauding men start hurtling down the hill in pursuit of Richardson, the last thing they expect is to be met by the cavalry.

This fascinating little tale recounts the activities of maybe no more than twelve hours, but which have a profound effect on everyone involved; Richardson and José, the marauders, the rurales, even their horses. Crane makes it clear that, despite his outward show of calm, Richardson is wholly scared by the men and the danger in which he finds himself; whilst José never conceals that fact. The reader can never predict how the story will resolve itself; and its sudden ending emphasises its lack of sentimentality or indeed any future interest in the two main characters.

Crane’s writing style is fluid and full; each sentence holds your attention with its unexpected observations and delicious descriptions. Even from the very start, Crane loves to concentrate on colour and sensuousness. For example, the first paragraph includes references to crimson, blue and green, painting, and the notion of sun-shot water, a memorable description of what one sees when sun beats down on a river. He emphasises the blackness of the blanket and of José’s horse, a lemon-coloured patch of sky, red spears of fire, the greenness of the fat Mexican’s face. This all paints a very vivid picture for the reader’s imagination. Elsewhere he shows his mastery of alliteration; consider the use of d, f, w, and s in this sentence: “José rolled and shuddered in his saddle, persistently disturbing the stride of the black horse, fretting and worrying him until the white foam flew and the great shoulders shone like satin from the sweat.”

This is an excellent example of the type of narration described in the introduction by Moffett and McElheny, where the narrator comments on the action and the characters. Crane breaks away from his narration to address the reader directly: “My friend, take my advice, and never be executed by a hangman who doesn’t talk the English language”; or “the man who said that spurs jingled was insane”, a good example of Crane’s occasionally unexpected flashes of humour in a deadly situation. Others are “José’s moans and cries amounted to a university course in theology” and “if toboggans half-way down a hill should suddenly make up their minds to turn round and go back, there would be an effect something like that produced by the drunken horsemen.”

And, of course, Crane asks the most direct question about his main character, a question posed via the thoughts of his horse, and which is never truly resolved: “At the approach of their menacing company, why did not this American cry out and turn pale, or run, or pray them mercy? The animal merely sat still, and stared, and waited for them to begin. Well, evidently he was a great fighter! Or perhaps he was an idiot? Indeed, this was an embarrassing situation, for who was going forward to discover whether he was a great fighter or an idiot?”

A gripping narrative and exquisite use of language; Horses – One Dash is one of the highlights of the Points of View collection.

The next story in the anthology is the third to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, The Prison by Bernard Malamud.

The Points of View Challenge – Patricia, Edith and Arnold – Dylan Thomas

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Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914 – 1953)

Welsh poet and writer of short stories and screenplays.

Patricia, Edith and Arnold, first published in the collection Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog in 1940.

Available to read online here.

This is the first of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. From their introduction: “The authors of the next stories do not refer to themselves or tell us how they know what they know. But, of course, there is no narrative without a narrator. True, he does not identify himself, but the materials, the way they are put together, and the choice of words are all his.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

Patricia, Edith and Arnold

 

Our narrator is fully preoccupied with the playing and games of a young boy, backing his invisible engine into the coal hole, saluting a fireman, being King of the Castle; whereas the boy is occupied with the secret conversations between Patricia, who is looking after him, and Edith, the maid who lives next door. They’re both anxiously planning about how to meet Arnold. Arnold is a young man who has been stringing them both along, seeing Edith on Fridays and Patricia on Wednesdays, writing them both love letters without having any idea that they knew of each other’s existence.

They take the boy to the park – it’s snowing and he’s excited to make a snowman. He’s also quietly curious about meeting Arnold. And while the two women confront the man about his duplicity, the boy runs around teasing, playing and calling out names. Much to Edith’s remorse, Patricia forces Arnold to confirm that it’s she whom he really likes. But when the boy later realises he has left his cap behind, he quietly discovers Arnold reading Edith’s letters, turning them over in his hands; he doesn’t see the boy, and the boy doesn’t tell Patricia what he saw.

This is a subtle, introverted little tale, where the substance of what actually goes on is related to the reader at a tangent to the boy’s games. He doesn’t fully appreciate the truth behind the meeting between Arnold and the two women, and he doesn’t understand why it appears to have such a profound effect on them. It’s just one of those little moments in childhood when you get swept up in an adult activity that you know is important and significant, without having the experience or insight to grasp it fully.

Delicately written and occasionally deliberately obscure, it’s a curious, satisfying read about a domestic, romantic crisis seen through the opaque understanding of the boy. Perhaps it’s even more curious that Dylan chose to not to have the boy narrate the story himself; the presence of the unnamed narrator adds a further dimension of distancing from the nub of the action.

The next story in the anthology is the second to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, Horses – One Dash by Stephen Crane.

The Points of View Challenge – Johnny Bear – John Steinbeck

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John Ernst Steinbeck (1902 – 1968)

American novelist, and writer of short stories, non-fiction and film screenplays.

Johnny Bear, first published in the collection The Long Valley in 1938.

Available to read online here – and you can hear John Steinbeck reading it here.

This is the fourth and last story in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Memoir, or Observer Narration. From their introduction: “Memoir, or observer narration, is the hinge between autobiography and biography, first-person and third-person narration. In it we can see clearly the channels of information and the personal ties which disappear from the text when the narrator no longer identifies himself.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

Johnny Bear

 

Our unnamed narrator has arrived in the Californian village of Loma to work on constructing a ditch through a swamp, reclaiming the land for planting crops. He’s not local, so rents a room at Mrs Ratz’ house, and the only social activity there is in the evenings is to go drinking whisky at the Buffalo Bar, run by a lugubrious but charismatic man known as Fat Carl. The narrator has met a local girl, Mae Romero, but it’s just at the friendship stage. He has also befriended Alex Hartnell, who owns one of the local farms. One night in the bar, Johnny Bear walks in. He is a big, clumsy, unkempt man; the locals think of him as a half-wit. But he has a skill; he can remember and recite overheard conversations with pinpoint accuracy of both the words and voice – he has a remarkable ability to imitate. His trick is to come into the bar and ask someone to buy him a whisky, and the more he drinks, the more he recites these conversations. On their first meeting, he recites the conversation our narrator had previously had with Mae, much to the former’s embarrassment and the amusement of his friend Alex.

Obviously, Johnny Bear deliberately spies on people to hear what they are saying. On another occasion he relays a conversation between Miss Emalin and Miss Amy, the Hawkins sisters, known as the local aristocracy. Alex is upset at this; these sisters represent everything that’s good about Loma and feels they should be treated with respect. As their conversations become more wildly known, it becomes apparent that Amy’s mental health is deteriorating badly. One day the news permeates through that she has taken her own life. Johnny Bear comes into the bar and starts to reveal the final conversations she had with both Emalin and the doctor; and in attempt to protect the memory of Amy from scandal, Alex lands Johnny Bear a punch that stops him in his tracks, which escalates to a full brawl also involving Fat Carl and the narrator. In the end, we discover the vital fact that Johnny Bear was about to reveal, but Alex thinks the other people in the bar won’t have heard it.

It’s an engrossing read, with well-developed characters and a richly imagined environment so that the whole story rings true. Alex is motivated by his wish to preserve the dignity and reputation of two respectable women, whose integrity contributes so much to the good standing of the community. If it means having to descend to physical violence against an oaf who knows no better, then sobeit. In addition, it offends Alex’s values because Emalin and Amy were always kind and generous towards Johnny Bear, giving him food and clothes. But Johnny Bear doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to distinguish between repeatable conversations and unrepeatable ones. If they result in him being bought a whisky, then he’ll do it.

Alex’s actions also highlight a social unbalance, however, in that it’s unacceptable to treat these women in the way that Johnny Bear does, but having him mimicking the narrator’s private conversation, who is working class, a stranger, and without a good name to uphold, is fair game. Johnny Bear is a typical Steinbeck creation, very much in the mould of Lennie from Of Mice and Men; his gift is to speak the truth indiscriminately, whether everyone else wants to hear it or not.

I learned a new word – fumadiddle! Fat Carl is said to be not a fan of them. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s a variant of flumadiddle, a mid-19th century name for a dish made from stale bread, pork fat, molasses, and spices, baked in the oven. This came to mean nonsense, humbug, something trivial or ridiculous.

The next story in the anthology is the first of eight classified by Moffett and McElheny as biography, or anonymous narration – single character point of view, Patricia Edith and Arnold by Dylan Thomas.

The Points of View Challenge – The Tryst – Ivan Turgenev

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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818 – 1883)

Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright and translator.

The Tryst, first published in Contemporary Magazine (Совреме́нник) in 1850, then in the collection Hunter’s Notes (Записки охотника) in 1852.

Available to read online here – please note, this is a different translation from that published in the Points of View volume.

This is the third of four stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Memoir, or Observer Narration. From their introduction: “The stories selected for this group demonstrate some of the different relationships a narrator may have to events and main characters; these relationships determine how he gains information. He may be a confidant of the protagonists; he may be merely an eye-witness to their actions; he may be a member of some group or community in which they’re generally known, in which case he behaves like the chorus in Greek drama.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

The Tryst

 

Our unnamed narrator finds himself resting in a birch grove in autumn. All around him are the beautiful, sensuous sights and sounds of nature at its most perfect; verdant, lush, almost over-ripe in its sheer stunning presence. He drifts off to sleep and wakes up later and spies a peasant girl sitting in this lavish environment – but she is crying, and her delicate white skin stands out against the green grove. The narrator remains hidden, but eventually, another figure enters the scene – an arrogant, posturing young man, whose “face, rosy, fresh, brazen, belonged to that category of faces which, insofar as I have been able to observe, almost always move men to indignation and, regrettably, are very often found pleasing by women.”

The girl, Akulina, is relieved to see the boy, Victor Alexandrych, but he brusquely tells her he will be leaving tomorrow with his master. Stunned into sadness, Akulina begs him to stay but he callously shows no interest in her feelings and tells her to stop talking nonsense. She gives him a garland of cornflowers, but he shows no interest in them. Desperate to hear a kind word from him, he disdains every opportunity to soothe her sorrow. He patronises her for her lack of education, says she cannot possibly imagine what life is like in glamorous Petersburg, says it’s impossible for them to marry and eventually shrugs his shoulders and walks off in silence, leaving the cornflowers behind. A chill comes over the birch grove; the leaves now seem dry and lifeless, and nature’s colours have turned grey. The narrator starts to approach Akulina but she runs off. His final comment on the incident: “I came home; but for a long time the image of poor Akulina would not leave my mind, and her cornflowers, withered long since, are still treasured by me…”

The incident that Turgenev describes is simple enough. A meeting between two young people, she is clearly in love, and he is only in love with himself. He never has any intention of behaving honourably to the girl and she is just left to rue her unhappy affections. But we see it all through the eyes of the narrator, and he is biased from the start – finding Akulina fetching and pure, and “very far from bad-looking”. Victor Alexandrych, on the other hand, “did not create a pleasing impression on me. He was, judging by all the signs, the spoiled valet of some young, rich seigneur.” And whilst there’s no doubt that the boy mistreats the girl in this tryst, you must wonder if the narrator has an ulterior motive in framing the story in the way he does.

Turgenev gives us a superb contrast between the description of nature at its most fecund before the meeting, and then dry and lifeless afterwards – which clearly symbolises the optimism and positivity about their relationship before the meeting, and how it is dead and buried after she has been so badly let down. I also like how he suggests that the narrator has been so affected by what he saw that even today, some time after the event, he still treasures the memory of Akulina. “Treasure” is a strong word!

Brief, thoughtful, and packed with gorgeous descriptions, this is a juicy nugget of the short story genre, that suggests just as much (if not more) than it actually says. Not exactly enjoyable, but certainly memorable and I really admire Turgenev’s construction and use of language.

The next story in the anthology is the fourth and final classified by Moffett and McElheny as memoir, or observer narration, Johnny Bear by John Steinbeck.