30 Ways of Looking at Marumaru South: (3) The Matchmaker.

The matchmaker has three weddings to her credit and (so far) two children that would not exist without her. When she set Holly Mitchell up with one-armed Colin Faeroe, she joked, 'You don't need to name your first born after me, but god parent would be nice.'

Holly fell hopelessly in love with Colin, but he had fallen for the matchmaker.

'I'd give my other arm to be with you,' he professed one day on a popular dog-walking circuit.

'Then you'd be no good to anyone,' the matchmaker replied. ‘Think of Holly,’ she said, but was herself thinking about statistics.

30 Ways of Looking at Marumaru South: (2) The Racist

The racist likes small town living. She couldn't stand to live in Auckland, the traffic is one thing, but… don't get her started.

Whenever anyone cuts her off in Marumaru, she blames the market gardener.

The Albanian who drives the tow-truck once overheard her saying he smelt of sawdust.

'I am European too,' he said.

'Yes, but you must have a touch of gypsy in you.'

There's something spiteful in her unrolled r's when saying Marumaru; it sounds as if her mouth is full, like she's storing something for later. But just listen to her order the arrabiata from Pino’s.

30 Ways of Looking at Marumaru South: (1) The Good Samaritan

The Good Samaritan gave a kidney to Neil Southgate. Neil was no relation, he was not even a work colleague, just a person in need within the community. It made the front page of the newspaper; a framed version of the story graced rooms in both men’s houses.

One good kidney each was plenty. Neil even ran the Boston Marathon and brought a t-shirt back for the Good Samaritan, who’d show people the t-shirt and say, ‘Part of me ran that marathon.’

But when his prodigal son returned, flat-broke and jaundiced, things between the Good Samaritan and Neil Southgate soured.

October, Nice To Know Ya

That's it for Owen Marshall Month folks.  But don't worry, November will be themed too!



In addition to having 'Mr November' stuck in my head for the next thirty days, I'll be writing more hundred word stories...

Thirty Ways of Looking at a Blank Page: 2009

Last November I wrote a self-contained story in 100 words every day and posted them on my blog. I enjoyed the process so much, I'm going to do something similar this year...

Marumaru South - A Portrait

This time my thirty shorts will be linked. Each story will centre on a different character in the fictional South Island town of Marumaru South (there's a real Marumaru in the North Island, somewhere on the East coast). In my mind Marumaru South lies somewhere between Timaru and Oamaru (hence the name).

That's pretty much all I know at this point. My hope is that each day the town will come a little more into focus, and that maybe one day I'll be able return to Marumaru South with more words to spare.

The Process

Unlike last year, I won't include the title of each story in the 100 word tally as each will just be the name (or descriptor) of the character the story is about. I don't think it's fair The Principal gets one more word to his story than The Opera Singer… And maybe there won't be any need for titles when the stories are all brought together at the end of the month.

Another divergence from last year is that I will post each story individually on (or as close as possible to) the day it is written, rather than using the sidebar.

Review: Living as a Moon by Owen Marshall

According to a character in the story ‘Another’s Shadow’: “Realism is only one portal to the depth of life.”  The delightfully named Crocetta Tengalia is discussing the work of Eco and Calvino, but could equally be referring to the short fiction of Owen Marshall.

In looking for new portals to the depth of life, each of Marshall’s short story collections contain a wide variety of styles and modes of storytelling.  The individual stories are, by their very nature, hit or miss for individual readers, but the success of the collections rides on the force of the ‘hits’.  

‘Freezing’ is surely one of the hits in Living as a Moon, Marshall’s ninth full-blown collection.  As the narrator says himself, the story is “just father and daughter getting through the winter as best we can, and lucky enough to have each other.” Sad, understated, poetic, but perhaps lacking that one stand-out feature, that point-of-difference, which differentiates good stories from memorable ones. 

‘Bunsen Versus The Republic‘ certainly has that point-of-difference: in the future, it seems, eating plants is considered serial murder, and Liddel Bunsen is charged under the Death, Damage or Detriment to Living Organisms Act of 2062 for eating broccoli (among other things). The story is a wry commentary on consumption and the shifting nature of morality, in the vein of ‘Another Generation’ (in The Lynx Hunter, 1987), but it ends suddenly without ever exposing the true moral compass of the story.

Two more hits, ‘Travelling in Eden’ and ‘Mid-Canvas Figures’, feature recovering alcoholics.  In one the narrator looks back at the characters of his parents; the other reflects on his landlady and fellow boarder in a house they all shared in the Aro Valley.  Taken in isolation, these stories succeed, but after digesting both, it’s hard to recall which alcoholic reminisced about whom.

‘No Stations of Remorse’ strives to be the beating heart of the collection.  It’s the longest story, placed squarely in the middle of the book, is mentioned on the back cover and links with the title (the idea of living as the reflection of another).  Soon after the death of her husband, Peter, from a terminal illness, Margaret drives from Invercargill to Nelson to attend a friend’s wedding anniversary.  Unlike road trips with Peter at the wheel, Margaret takes her time on the journey north, stopping off at various places with a connection to her past. At one point she recalls Peter’s advice not to live in the past after he goes.  “But,” the narrator tells us, “overall it had been a past worth living in.”  The story is gentle and muted; another success, if only a minor one in terms of Marshall’s canon.  

The problem this time is not internal to the story, or within the collection, but that it is hard not to draw comparisons with Marshall’s ‘An Indirect Geography’ from When Gravity Snaps (2002).  Both stories contain road trips and a woman looking back over her life. ‘An Indirect Geography’, however, has that spark of difference (the narrator has passed away and is watching her relatives drive down for her birthday).

Marshall has never been shy about revisiting settings or scenarios in subsequent collections in an attempt to ‘do it better’.  In Living as a Moon we get another school teacher story (‘The Detention’), several more male academic protagonists (‘Segue Dreams’, ‘Another’s Shadow’, ‘Blunderer’, ‘Anacapri’), and stories that prominently feature rural landscapes and communities (‘No Stations of Remorse’, ‘Brian and Baz’).  Familiar names and places pop up throughout the collection (Te Tarehi, Powys Street, Esler, Posswillow, Flowerday, Budgie) to further remind us we are in Marshall country.  

But as with ‘No Stations of Remorse’, the links to Marshall’s wider work are often more disconcerting than comforting.  

‘Another’s Shadow’, the eleventh story in this collection, is strikingly similar to ‘Watch of Gryphons’, the last (and titular) story in Marshall’s previous collection.  Both stories are set in Perugia and are temporarily fascinated by the ancient Etruscan well in the city.  Both feature a male protagonist from New Zealand who doesn’t speak much Italian. The stories have their differences too, perhaps the most significant being length (‘Gryphons’ is at least three times longer).  Of course the longer story has more developed characters.  Of course the longer story is able to paint a more detailed and poetic picture of Perugia.  Of course the stories differ in many ways, but one cannot help feeling that the more recent story is the shadow of another, rather than a new portal into the depth of life.

‘Sojourn in Arles’ and ‘Anacapri’ are also set in the Mediterranean, clearly a source of great inspiration for Marshall, but another case of diminishing the ‘hits’ through repetition. 

‘Don Fernando Motels’ is the rather entertaining story of a long term resident at a motel who turns out to be an unscrupulous novelist researching a novel.  For other stories about the unscrupulous writers see ‘Recollections of MKD’ from Coming Home In The Dark and ‘Poetic Licence’ from Watch of Gryphons.

Not everything feels rehashed, however. The title story, which opens the collection, offers a female narrator and an Australian setting. The narrator explains how she became a celebrity impersonator when Estelle Page (a fictional TV personality from Darwin) became famous.  The other celebrities mentioned are all real – Kevin Rudd, Rove McManus, Ricky Ponting – and give the story a very contemporary feel.  

The problem, however, is ‘Living as a Moon’ never quite escapes the limitations of its narrative voice: it feels muddled, repetitive, suspended in time; there are virtually no scenes, nothing for a reader to grab hold of.  Aside from the musings of the Australian Elton John which lend the story and the collection its title (being a celebrity impersonator is about reflecting another’s light rather than producing your own), ‘Living as a Moon’ is little more than a failed exercise in ventriloquism.

In ‘Coming Right’ a young couple are struggling to get ahead until Ian gets a second job as a phone sex operator. Interesting idea, but I was tripped up by the opening scene where little things (they’re eating KFC, so the drink would be Pepsi, not Coke) highlighted the distance from the author and his characters. 

Later in the collection, ‘Brian and Baz’ is more successful as it narrows the focus down to a day in the life of the owner of a small mill and his offsider. Again the protagonists are not rocket scientists, and their aspirations are humble, but their labour (felling a windbreak of macrocarpas) is treated with greater respect and much less flippancy.

Another reader will no doubt compile a different list of hits and misses in this collection, which is the joy of reading Marshall’s short stories.  I certainly wouldn’t warn anyone off reading Living as a Moon and suspect I may be suffering from a bit of Marshall fatigue after reading and re-reading so many of his stories recently.  Whatever the reason, I was disappointed that the joys I found in this latest offering were muted by the knowledge that I had peered through a similar portal before.

Watch of Gryphons and Other Stories

This is not a review of Owen Marshall's short story collection Watch of Gryphons and Other Stories to go along with my 'not reviews' of The Lynx Hunter and Coming Home in the Dark… All part of Owen Marshall Month here at This Fluid Thrill.

Watch of Gryphons and Other Stories
Published 2005 (Marshall's eighth full short story collection)
19 Stories, 316 Pages (an average length of 17 pages per story, more than double Lynx Hunter and Coming Home)

The vibe
According to the back cover, "[s]everal longer stories give Watch of Gryphons a special depth and resonance…" There are six stories longer than twenty pages: -- 'Buried Lives' (23), 'A Kind of Living' (25), 'Family Circle' (23), 'Minding Lear' (41), Journey's End (29), 'Watch of Gryphons' (27) -- all of which are longer than the hitherto longest story in the Owen Marshall catalogue according to Peter Simpson ('The Rule of Jenny Pen' from 1992's Tomorrow We Save the Orphans). Some of these stories are more successful than others (check out my top five below for the successes) but it is definitely length, and the extra development of plot, character and/or setting it allows, that stands out in this collection

My five favourite stories in the collection

Buried Lives
After "a breakdown in my third year at university," the narrator moves out to his aunt and uncle's farm in North Otago. Gradually we learn about the entanglement in the lives of a pair of twins, Richard and Rebecca, that led to his departure from university, and also of his fourteen months on the farm and his relatives. Most touching are the scenes with his Aunt Sonia, who he discovers played the viola and went to Sydney on a scholarship, but hasn't played the instrument for thirty years: "When you do something really well," she tells him, "there's no satisfaction in doing it at any lesser level at all." A long story to open the collection and a hard one to forget. [This collection came out after Marshall selected his best of, but Vincent O'Sullivan selected it for his.]

Passing Triptych
The second story in the collection, which is three character sketches sown together by a man's memories of unskilled labour, first in a factory that made wallboard, then as proof reader for a newspaper, and finally on the grading belt at Iceveg. A kind of companion piece to 'Joining the Ishmaelites' from The Lynx Hunter, which argues that a writer should experience a myriad of varied and menial jobs to source material for fiction, especially the last paragraph of 'Passing Triptych': "…sometimes my eye is caught by the Situations Vacant section of the newspaper, or my ear by the job talk of my family, and I wonder at the possibilities of character, the wonderful variety of companionship." The strength of the story, however, is not it's exploration of occupations, but the singularity of each of the character sketches. A special mention should go to 'Images', which comes later in the book, which achieves a similar feat in terms of the narrator's father. [Not selected by O'Sullivan, though 'Images' made the cut.]

Minding Lear
The big daddy of the book. A cash-strapped student gets a job minding an elderly man with dementia while his daughter and husband go on a much needed holiday. At first, the sequential nature of the narrative is disconcerting. The story feels looser, flabbier, than 'classic' Marshall. But this slow build is necessary; the repetition of routines and embarrassments crucial to the effect the story achieves. [Selected by O'Sullivan.]

Hodge
Only five pages and far more whimsical than the rest of my top five, 'Hodge' tells the story of a man who was "a sort of lightning rod that deflected misfortune from the rest of us." The many ways in which Hodge's relatives met their fate is nothing short of hilarious, and Hodge's own demise, crushed by an overweight woman who leapt from a building to kill herself (she survived to become a "born-again Christian trauma consultant"), should be a hoot, but instead it's sombre and touching. I guess it's the difference between Schadenfreude and sympathy; there's a bit of Hodge in all of us. [Selected by O'Sullivan.]

Watch of Gryphons
Paul, a kiwi in Perugia as a consultant on the construction of a new reservoir, forms a friendship with his neighbours, Giancarlo and Maria. She doesn't speak a word of English, and Paul doesn't speak Italian, Giancarlo, who is in a wheel chair is virtually stuck in their second floor apartment, is fluent in both. There are many other aspects to this story—what it's like to work in a foreign country, dealing with Italian bureaucracy, the depiction of the old Etruscan city—and there's even a sort of twist near the end concerning Maria. A great example of a longer story: intricate, humane, poetic. [Selected by O'Sullivan.]

Invisible Keywords, Hiccups, Geodes, Excel Formulae

Every so often I do a reading binge of stories published in the New Yorker. I go to the website, open the stories (making sure to click on "entire story"), copy and paste them all into the one word document and plough through them that way.

Somehow, in this copy and paste process, I end up with seven "keywords" under the title for each story which are not visible on the website. For a few examples, the latest story, 'Procedure In Plain Air' by Jonathan Lethem, lists the following keywords:

*  Cafés
*  Prisoners
*  Holes
*  New York City
*  Jumpsuits
*  Coffee
*  Guards

'Complicity' by Julian Barnes, from last week, had:
*  Hiccups
*  Fingers
*  Gloves
*  Love Affairs
*  Heartbreak
*  Divorce
*  Doctors

This reeks of IT logic: In order to improve the searchability of short stories, you need to provide keywords for each story.

I'm sure no one is suggesting you can capture the essence of a story (not a good one, anyway) in seven key words or phrases, but it's still worth noting how misleading some of these keyword clusters can be.

Based on keywords alone, George Saunders' rip-roaring 'Victory Lap' from a couple of weeks ago looks pretty dire:
*  Teen-Agers
*  Kidnappings
*  Rapes
*  Rapists
*  Murderers
*  Crime, Criminals
*  Cross-Country Runners

A fairer set of keywords for this quirky story would surely include: geodes, over-parenting, and imaginary baby deer.

Cynics may point to the stultifying sameness of the fiction published by the New Yorker (George Saunders aside) and say that seven keywords is enough to guess the contents of the story. (Perhaps that's why the keywords are not visible on the website?)

But I approach it from the other direction: with a bit of cut and paste, you have at your fingertips a database of story ideas. Hiccups, gloves and a love affair? Sounds like enough to get you started.

(Here I should acknowledge the similarity of this suggestion with the world-famous-in-New-Zealand, Wellington,–IIML-Graduate-circles 'Six Things Exercise'.)

Don't want to be limited to odd convergences in a single story? (Probably wise…) Pick and choose from several sets of keywords (or let Excel and its RAND and IF formulae do the choosing for you).

Someone more web savvy than myself could write a code to randomly generate a set of New Yorker keywords. This may be a service to the writing community, or it may lead to a spate of stories prominently featuring hiccups being submitted to lit-mags everywhere...

Coming Home In The Dark

This is not a review of Owen Marshall’s short story collection, Coming Home In The Dark. Last week, I did not review The Lynx Hunter as part of Owen Marshall Month here at This Fluid Thrill.

Coming Home In The Dark

Published 1995 (Marshall's sixth full short story collection)

27 Stories, 215 Pages (an average length of 8 pages per story)






The vibe

Coming Home In The Dark packs plenty into its 215 pages. As in The Lynx Hunter, the first four or so stories look and feel like what one may call ‘realism’, but we soon get pieces like ‘The Lenny Fudge Bibliography’ (which, as the name suggests, is a list of books featuring, or perhaps by, Lenny Fudge) and ‘Recollections of MKD’ which is the transcript of an interview between an academic and a school friend of a recently deceased writer.

There’s moments of fun and cajolery, but there’s a dark heart to this collection. In the third story, ‘Cometh The Hour’, James Cumuth confronts an escaped convict, “the nation’s galvanised degeneracy,” and comes off second best. In ‘Flute and Chance’, Rabber likes to talk in non sequiturs, but one day meets his match in a razor-wielding misfit for whom randomness is not confined to the verbal. The title story, which closes the collection, features another criminal intrusion into ordered life, this time giving the criminal, Mandrake, a chance to argue his case for nihilism and bloodshed. At the conclusion of this story, the sedate Coming Home In The Dark title seems much darker. A story like ‘Goodbye, Stanley Tan,’ in which the narrator returns to Singapore with his wife and recalls his time there several years ago, working in an illegal pig abattoir, suddenly seems to be saying more than it did on a first reading.

My five favourite stories in the collection

Working Up North

The opening story in the collection. Exhibits many common features in an Owen Marshall story: first person male narrator (university student) doing a character sketch of a passing acquaintance; temporary job (fish splitter in Nelson for summer holidays); unlikely character names (Mr Trubb, which I believe is the scum they skim off the top of beer during the fermentation process). The strength of the story is its conciseness, in both plot and language. The sudden death of Mr Trubb is the first of many explorations into the seemingly arbitrary nature of misfortune. [Selected by both Marshall and Vincent O’Sullivan in their anthologies.]

A Part of Life

One of the longer stories in the collection. Middle-aged Polly spends the summer cleaning a motel in Tekapo with her daughter. An older American visiting NZ with his sisters, complains that he cannot buy “womanly company”, and after a time Polly and he agree on a transaction. Interesting stuff and deftly handled. Dark, too, when you think about it. [Selected by Marshall but not O’Sullivan.]

Growing Pains

“When I was fourteen I began suffering cruelly from lovesickness,” the story begins, and it goes on to detail all the girls and women the narrator has fallen for. Marshall often uses such frames for character sketches, and I’m a sucker for these stories: they seem to align just as well with the way we recall life as a story centred around a character (‘Cass Robbins’) or an event (‘Day One’) rather than a theme. This story in particular is full of quotable lines and exacting detail: “Mrs Lassiter liked me: she said I had a cheeky face. With a thrilling freedom of language, she said bugger and shit… She smelt of silver paper and fabrics dried in the sun.” [Selected by O’Sullivan but not Marshall.]

This Man's Army

There’s so much detail in this story of a man’s recollection of National Service that you can’t help but wonder how autobiographical it is. Who cares when you get this sort of thing: “The best letters I got were from Debra Eastcliff… almost everything around me as I read her letters, or replied, or thought about her, was incomprehensible to someone not living it. That particular sound of the chain through the trigger guards, the two guys who had started bumming in the showers, the MP’s Land Rover at three or four in the morning so that the barrack room was briefly lit with flashes through the windows.” [Selected by Marshall but not O’Sullivan.]

Day One

Owen Marshall is a master of the first paragraph. Look at how much you learn, or can infer, from this one:

“In the mid-60s I finished my thesis on extruded igneous dykes of Banks Peninsula and sat back to receive the plaudits and post-graduate study offer of the academic world. The academic world remained strangely mute and I accepted a job as assistant house-master at a traditional boys’ college. All the physical possessions that I owned into the world were crammed into my series E Morris and I drove up the day before the start of term one.”

[Selected by Marshall but not O’Sullivan.]