The Kiss by Anton Chekhov

In 'The Kiss' by Anton Chekhov several military officers are invited to an aristocrat's house at night to partake in a party. The military officers are worried about going to the party because they recently experienced a similar situation where a rich old dude kept them up all night talking about boring stuff. But this party turns out to be a lot better than that experience. There are women, dancing and drinks at this party which creates an awkward situation for one soldier in particular named Ryabovich. For every other soldier, this is seemingly not an awkward situation. Ryabovich is decribed as shy, modest and undistinguished in comparison to his fellow soldiers.

Ryabovich enters a dark room where he is kissed by a woman who mistakes Ryabovich for another man. This accidental kiss has a profound effect on Ryabovich. In the days following the party, he thinks about the kiss constantly and it gives him something nice to think about while going through the day-to-day of a soldier's routine.

This is basically all there is to the story. There is also the detailed descriptions of scenery that for me exemplify Chekhov's unique writing style. The way that Chekhov describes the setting of his story is similar to a painter. Chekhov uses visual language which allowed me to imagine the story in rich detail. Here is an example:

'The red moon was reflected near the left bank; little ripples ran over the reflection, stretching it out, breaking it into bits, and seemed trying to carry it away...'

Writing such as this is my favorite thing about Chekhov's stories. The scenery is so richly imagined and described that it almost takes precedence over the story. I know that Chekhov was interested in landscape painting and this interest is reflected often in his stories. In a story like 'The Kiss' where the plot is short, I find myself looking more at Chekhov's descriptions to find insight regarding the story.

At the end of the 'The Kiss' we can see a distinct change in Ryabovich's mental state. At first Ryabovich daydreams about the kiss, causing him to feel pleasure while going through his daily routine. But after revealing the incident to his comrades, Ryabovich's emotions change drastically. "And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovich an unintelligible, aimless jest." This character arc left me with a sad feeling regarding this story. It would seem that Ryabovich would be better off without the kiss from the woman because it merely opened his eyes to what his life is lacking. It's the kind of encounter that is so far removed from daily life that it opens one's eyes to how unpleasant life is in comparison to other people. Just a tiny taste of a better life has left Ryabovich in a depressed state. It's the kind of revelation that leads people to abandon their jobs in the search of something better. Indeed the story ends with Ryabovich refusing the next invitation to a party in favor of going to sleep in his tent.

Here are some other things I noticed about the story:

• The story's unique structure. There is one climactic event (the kiss) that takes place early on and the rest of the story examines the effects of this climactic event on the story's protagonist.
• The social obligation that requires wealthy families to invite military officers to their home. It provides a great setup for this story.

If you found this article helpful, you can support Short Fiction Daily here: 

Buy Me a Coffe

"Break it Down" by Lydia Davis

The following is my summary and analysis of Lydia Davis's short story "Break it Down". The story is one of the more memorable pieces in Davis's oeuvre. It is so important that Davis used "Break it Down" as the title for her collection originally published in 1986.

A third person narrator describes a man sitting at a desk trying to break it down. The narration shifts to the first-person voice of the man himself assigning a dollar amount to a love affair. The man concludes that each hour of sex costs him 33 to 50 dollars an hour.

But that barely even begins to cover it all because the man and his lover spent entire days together and every small interaction between them is worth something to the man. It is absurd to think that the man's money should only be allocated to the sex because the sex is influenced by so many other things. It's more than just sex too. It's a complex human relationship.

The man worries that he will forget the moments of his relationship. He thinks back to several meaningful scenes. In one moment he admits that without his lover he would be unable to continue living. In a nutshell, the man is obsessed with the past relationship because it gave him something that he never had before.

At this point the obsessive nature of the man's thoughts seem unhealthy. If there is an overarching idea here, then it is the destructive power of love. Perhaps that is where his urge to assign dollar values to his experiences comes from. A dollar value is as concrete and easily understandable as it gets, whereas whatever is going on his head is tough to quantify. The man also remembers many bad experiences with his lover but these moments are few and far between.

The man accepts that pain is a necessary part of the equation. Pain and pleasure are not distinct from each other. The hard part is that the pain lasts much longer than the pleasure. The man understands all of this but he admits that he would still do the same thing over again knowing how bad the pain is. At the end of the day, the only tangible effect of the relationship is an estimated loss of $1,000 and nothing to show for it. Ain't love grand.

If you found this article helpful, you can support Short Fiction Daily here: 

Buy Me a Coffe

Junot Diaz: "The Sun, The Moon, The Stars"

"The Sun, The Moon, The Stars" is the opening story in Junot Diaz's "This is How You Lose Her". The stories in this collection deal with the relationship failures of Yunior, a character who appears in many of Diaz's works. Yunior is a complex character. He is macho like the typical Dominican male, but intelligent and inclined towards referencing famous works of literature.

Summary

This story focuses on the relationship between Yunior and his girlfriend Magda. The relationship starts out well but deteriorates after Yunior sleeps with another woman named Cassandra. Magda learns about Yunior's infidelity and starts treating him differently. While Yunior and Magda still hang out, it's clear that Magda doesn't want to stay with Yunior. However Yunior still loves Magda so the two take a vacation to Santo Domingo to hopefully renew their love for one another. Nothing changes. The two still don't get along and Yunior has to placate Magda's every desire. Eventually Yunior reveals that the relationship ended despite his attempts to keep it going.

Analysis

The tragedy of the story lies in Yunior's inability maintain his relationship. Even though he loves Magda, he has no control over his animal desires. The real question is how much Yunior actually loves Magda. His words say one thing while his actions say another. Magda is probably correct in judging Yunior based on his actions rather than on his words.

Similar to other stories written by Diaz, the teller is looking back to the past and acknowledging that he has changed. Yunior wants to show exactly how foolish he used to be, but how do we know if Yunior has really changed? Yunior expects us to trust him merely on his word. You could argue that the main conflict is not between Yunior and Magda, but between Yunior's past and future selves. The version of Yunior telling the story thinks long-term, whereas the Yunior in the story thinks short-term.

The tragedy of the story is balanced by Diaz's humorous tone. This is the main reason why I enjoy reading Diaz's work. He finds humor in some of the darkest places. He also has a good eye for picking out the most revealing character actions. When describing the fancy resort in Santo Domingo, Yunior says, "Every fifty feet there's at least one Eurofuck beached out on a towel like some scary pale monster that the sea's vomited up."

Conclusion

I am excited to read more of the stories from "This is How You Lose Her". If you liked this post, also check out my thoughts on Diaz's story "Aurora". Please let me know what you thought of this post, or why you read my reviews. Tell me what story you are reading and would like to talk about. Thanks in advance.

Buy Here:
https://amzn.to/2P3wNmq

Junot Diaz and "Aurora"

Junot Diaz is an incredible author. I recently read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for the second time and was absolutely floored by its narrative complexity and emotional resonance. The story focuses primarily on Oscar Wao, an overweight ghetto nerd living in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar is obsessed with Science Fiction, fantasy, and anything that provides an escape from the depressingly awful circumstances of his life. The novel deals with a number of themes, ranging from the construction of gender to how Diaspora can change someone’s life. I can’t recommend the novel enough. Anyone interested in sci-fi, adulthood, Latin-american literature, or book in general will greatly enjoy this book. It’s hard to imagine Diaz topping this novel anytime soon. It’s an incredible achievement that I hope will stand the test of time.

While I could talk for hours about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, this post will focus on Diaz’s short story “Aurora” in the collection Drown. Since I originally created this blog to review short fiction, I hope to continue this for as long as possible. After finishing the first four stories in Drown, I can safely say that the literary quality of Diaz’s short fiction is on par with TBWLOW. His stories exhibit the same kind of voice and style present in his longer work. The same narrator is present in both Drown and TBWLOW, making the two works feel like companions to each other. Most authors I’m familiar with switch narrators frequently, while Diaz is content to keep the same narrator. As a part-time writer of fiction, this makes sense to me as it maintains a common thread throughout multiple books. When you can keep something the same in multiple stories, this lessens the amount of work for the writer. The narrator’s name is Yunior and for lack of a better term, he’s a douche. He spends the majority of his time womanizing to build up his fragile ego. In his defense, Yunior does seem to mature later, but his early life is rife with abuse perpetrated by and against him. It’s critical to discuss Yunior because he is always present in both Drown and TBWLOW. With Yunior, Diaz has created a character who may not be likeable, but has arguably redeemed himself by telling us the stories in the first place.

“Aurora” comes at a point when Yunior seems to be in high-school or possibly older. Along with his friend/co-worker named Cut, Yunior has made a steady living dealing drugs in New Jersey. It’s an interesting point in Yunior’s life because he’s making bad decisions all over the place. There’s a tension between what Yunior is doing and how he knows it’s bad. Yunior can’t seem to stop himself from indulging in activities that are dangerous and rewarding in the short-term future. The reader is presented several times with Yunior’s thoughts upon waking in which he laments his choices the prior night. One consistent form of danger comes in the form of Aurora, the title character of the story who is difficult to fully understand as a person. Aurora appears to Yunior sporadically, always ready to do drugs and have sex in exchange for something. It’s easy to dismiss Aurora as a drug-addicted burnout, yet she’s a surprisingly complex character. She’s appealing enough that Yunior describes his relationship with her as love, despite how it sometimes looks like abuse. To me, the story presented a commentary on love as something hard to define. Is Yunior really in love with Aurora, or is he addicted to what she provides for him physically? Yunior seems convinced that it’s love but I find myself unwilling to accept Yunior as a credible source.

The story ends in a hardly surprising difficult place. Aurora has been released from Juvenile Hall and met up with Yunior in an abandoned apartment. It’s a fleeting moment of happiness for both characters and Yunior admits that everything seems fine. It’s tragic because any semblance of normalcy in this moment will disappear because for these characters because love is intertwined with hate and normal equates with danger.

Related Posts:

• The Sun, The Moon, The Stars