Analysis of 'How' by Lorrie Moore

Today I am talking about 'How' by Lorrie Moore. This is the second story in Moore's collection 'Self-Help' that I will have written about. A common technique in the collection is the use of the second person. The title of 'How' suggests little in terms of what the story is about which is strange because the story does seem to focus on one particular theme: the difficulty of being in a relationship.

The first thing that struck me about 'How' is its form. The story is composed of several blocks of text that are separated by line breaks. There are a few single sentence paragraphs but most of the blocks contain approximately 5-6 sentences. In general the blocks feel somewhat related in terms of their subject matter but they also change quite a bit. This unique style means that you could start reading at pretty much any point in the story and you wouldn't feel any more or less lost than if you started at the beginning.

The main focus of this story is romance. The story's speaker is giving the reader a glimpse into the intimate details of her relationships with numerous men. Similar to other stories in "Self-help" the speaker's tone is that of a mentor or expert providing advice on how to do something. In the case of 'How' the speaker is telling us how to act in relationships without really stating an overarching objective. I did not get the impression that following the speaker's advice would be a wise decision. There is a lot of tension between the narrator and her various lovers.

I greatly admire Moore's writing for its experimentation with form and language, but I find it hard to muster up enough motivation to discuss her work. Her tendency to write about romantic conflict simply does not interest in me in the way that other stories do. It is difficult to discuss the content of a work that upsets you no matter how much you appreciate the writing style of that work.

"There will be an endless series of tests"

Being in a relationship can feel like a constant struggle. The speaker of 'How' feels like she must meet the demands of others over and over again. This sentence reminds me of shit tests, a way of measuring someone's worthiness as a mate by presenting them with a question. I have encountered these before and they are an unavoidable part of being in a relationship. A shit test is usually veiled in some way to appear less important than it actually is.

"The sadness will die like an old dog. You will feel nothing but indifference."

I can't help but feel bad for the narrator. She seems to have good intentions but her actions inevitably lead her down a path of despair. Changing your habits is one of the hardest things to do. While I have a hard time relating to the romantic trials of a single woman, I can empathize with the more general problem of being stuck with a bad habit. Simply put, being able to break a bad habit is one of the most difficult yet integral things that a person can do to make his or her life better.

While reading 'How to Become a Writer' I found myself unable to stop reading. Reading 'How' is a much different experience. Moore's thoughts about writing are insightful and relevant to myself as a creative person but I find her writing about relationships to be much less appealing.

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Analysis of 'How to Become a Writer' by Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore's 'How to Become a Writer' is narrated in the second person by a character named Francine. The story is told in the style of a self-help column directed to people who want to become writers, but the actual content of the story is extremely personal. Moore seems to be making fun of the idea that there exists a universal path to becoming a writer. The truth is that every writer has experienced their own unique journey and no two writers are alike. The narrator's strategy of presenting her own experience as a path that anyone can take is what gives the story a humorous tone.

This is the first of Moore's stories that I have read. I was drawn to the story by its title and immediately hooked after reading the first sentence: "First try to be anything else." Basically, the best way to become a writer is by trying to become something else.


"You will read somewhere that all writing that all writing has to do with one's genitals. Don't dwell on this. It will make you nervous."

This story is filled with statements like this that seem ludicrous at first but actually contain a deeper truth. Not all writing is completely focused on the writer's genitals but one could argue that the motivation to write often stems from sexual frustration.

 The other idea I found interesting from this story is the concept of writing as a kind of sickness. The narrator states that her obsession with writing causes her to lose weight and she compares being a writer to having polio. The narrator characterizes writing as a bad habit that causes her to lose interest in the more important things in her life. When the narrator reveals to her roommate her grand idea of adapting Moby-Dick, she responds by saying the two of them should go out for drinks. It seems like everyone except for the narrator and the other students in her creative writing classes think of writing as a waste of time. And yet this does not make the narrator any less motivated to write, which gives the narrator a heroic quality. She doesn't care what anyone else thinks and that makes her more attractive to the audience.

By far my favorite part of this story is the ending. Here we see the narrator on a dinner date with a man she describes as having a face like a blank piece of paper. What the narrator means by this is anyone's guess. To me it seems that she is once again relating her own motivation to write to her love life. Earlier Francine admits to using a college boyfriend's sense of humor to generate writing material. This idea was also reinforced when the narrator's roommate states at a cocktail party that the narrator's writing always has to do with her boyfriend. So at the end of the story, Francine remains inclined to use her love interests as fuel for her writing. When the narrator jokes that writing is a lot like having polio, her date responds by saying "interesting" and then by smoothing his arm hairs. This small exchange basically encapsulates society's response to hearing the crazy-sounding ideas of artists. Much of the time, when people with normal lives hear artists speak, they would rather do literally anything else. But people will say anything if they think it will get them laid. We put up with the crazy urges of others because we want them to like us. Lorrie Moore knows better than anyone else that creative writing is a fruitless endeavor 99% of the time. It's a somewhat bleak sentiment to express to an audience of aspiring writers but maybe it's exactly what that audience needs to hear.

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Analysis of 'The Caretaker' by Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr is a writer of short stories and novels. Given his tremendous talent as a writer, it is surprising that Doerr is not more well-known. 'The Caretaker' is probably my favorite of his stories. I first read this story several years ago and certain images still linger with me today. This post will analyze key elements of 'The Caretaker' to better understand how the story works.

To begin I will provide a brief plot synopsis of this story.

'The Caretaker' is narrated in the third person by a nameless voice. The protagonist is Joseph Saleeby, a bookkeeper for the Liberian National Cement Company who embezzles a small amount of money each month. Joseph's life is very orderly and regimented until Liberia descends into a civil war that lasts 7 years. Joseph's mother disappears and he leaves his home. He wanders through his country witnessing horror after horror. At one point Joseph shoots a man who may or may not be innocent. Joseph leaves Liberia and finds himself on the Oregon Coast where he is hired as a caretaker by a man named Mr. Twyman. This is where Joseph's actions become more ambiguous and the story increases in complexity.

An Intensity of Detail

To put it simply, Doerr is a master of injecting realistic details into his stories. One could argue that plot is secondary to the detailed descriptions of the objects and things present in the story. Having such an incredible amount of detail brings the story to life and makes imagining the events easier. I imagine that a lot of research went into creating such vivid and realistic descriptions.

Whale Hearts

The defining moment of this story is when Joseph takes it upon himself to bury the hearts of five beached sperm whales. For Joseph, this act is an attempt to atone for the sins he committed in Liberia. It's clear that Joseph has been traumatized. For much of the story, Joseph's actions seem to make very little sense. It's no surprise that Joseph still feels distraught after this difficult act. Perhaps we can look at Joseph's actions in contrast to those of other people who seem to be scavenging whatever they can get from the whales' corpses.

This section of the story almost has a comedic tone to it. I can't help but laugh as Joseph first saws through a decaying whale carcass and then labors to bury them in a massive whole.

"he had told himself it would be like cleaning a fish, but it is completely different - it's more like eviscerating a giant."

This is the kind of thing that would only exist in fiction. What exactly this moment means is still a mystery to me. Joseph feels bad for the whales so he saws through their organs and buries their hearts in a giant whole in the ground.

"The hearts are still there, sitting just beneath the earth, waiting. What good does burying something really do? In nightmares it always manages to dig itself out."

This quote encapsulates what I believe to be the main idea of 'The Caretaker'. Essentially, the idea is that one cannot heal from trauma by burying or neglecting one's emotions. One must face the emotions head on to truly recover. Many of Joseph's decisions stem from a desire to bury his emotions deep within like whale hearts in the dirt. Joseph has this realization and then strategically pivots to burying things that will grow such as seeds.

I find 'The Caretaker' to be truly remarkable but also kind of a bummer to read. I read fiction because I am obsessed with stories and figuring out how they work and I can't help but see 'The Caretaker' as somewhat disappointing. The majority of time is spent with a deeply traumatized man as he labors without any reward. The story's ending does contain some hope as Joseph learns that he can go back to Liberia, but what good is that when Joseph's entire life there has been destroyed?

Ultimately 'The Caretaker' serves to engage readers with an alternate version of reality. Few things in the story make sense and that is okay. Fiction creates experiences that not good or bad. They are simply experiences.

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George Saunders on Process

In a piece titled “On Process”, George Saunders discusses several interesting ideas about fiction. Saunders starts his process by looking at a single sentence and repeating it until a next step appears. Ideally the next step should come should come unwilled. Saunders hopes that the forward movement of his stories feels natural, instantaneous, and unstoppable. However the mechanism of this process is mysterious. Where do narrative impulses come from and can their quality improve? Saunders cares deeply about the quality of his writing, as most fiction writers do, so it behooves him to understand process as much as possible.

An enabling characteristic of Saunders’ mentality is zero investment in the writing. Saunders wants to feels like he is reading a piece for the first time. Saunders cares not about the piece’s success or quality and focuses only on the story’s natural energy divorced from any thematic aspirations. Saunders wants to keep it interesting and believes that the most interesting connections come from the mind of someone with zero previous experience with a given story.

The other critical idea for Saunders is iteration, or repeating the process over and over until a story becomes its own unique thing. On a given day, Saunders averages about three readings, each followed by integrating changes into the text and generating a new printout. Yet Saunders runs into trouble when he says, “the result will be more like you, the writer, than even you, the ‘person’ is.” It’s difficult to pinpoint what Saunders means by this.  He obviously supports the iterative process, but how does making something more like the writer than the person improve quality? To clarify, I think Saunders wants to keep his “real self” out of his writing because deep down, he considers himself a boring person.

So what is the point of fiction? Why go through the trouble of Saunders’ intensive writing process? Well have no fear because Saunders is here to give us the answer:

“Most of us, at a certain point in our lives, come to understand that we are here to grow. To grow in love, patience, gentleness; to become more able to deal with the harshness and victories of life with aplomb and generosity. But how to do it? Art can be a way of training ourselves in these virtues – not in a holy or precious or dogmatic way, but in the same way that a crazy night on the town, or a catastrophic love affair, or a close brush with death, can train us. Reality says: here I am. Likewise in a story, the truth says: here I am, albeit in a strange garb.

Here is what I think Saunders is getting at. To grow in virtue, people need “reality” checks. Normally people get this from formative experiences but fiction can also provide it. Fiction should mirror reality. The work should be an accurate encapsulation of a realistic situation. If something is an accurate depiction of reality, it is more likely to resonate

Ok, that is enough for now. I want to stop before I jump to any more conclusions about what George Saunders may or may not be trying to say. You can find the piece on the Kenyon Review website.

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.

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