SH Comments
Reged: Feb 16 2004
Posts: 1056
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This thread is for comments about A Coffee Cup / Alien Invasion Story, by Douglas Lain, illustration by Jeff Foster.
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Blue J
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Sorry, but I stopped reading. I just got confused, which happens to me a lot with modern short speculative fiction.
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barth
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A lovely take on national and personal denial, Doug. Thank you. I smiled through the Slinky scene. You totally rock.
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bagoink
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Reged: Jan 27 2005
Posts: 24
Loc: New Castle. PA
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I'm sorry, but this story just doesn't work for me. This seems a jumble of disjointed, undeveloped scenes. I'd rather see two or three of these scenes developed more fully.
Obviously, this story is a fable, that is, a story with a message, much like a parable. When telling a parable or a fable, a simple, easy to understand (and thus to believe) structure works best.
I think now of Kafka, the master of the fable disguised as a short story. Think of the simple structure of "The Hunger Artist." Think also of how Kafka doesn't beat us over the head with the true meaning of his fable, but lets us experience the joy and wonder of figuring it out ourselves.
The author could take some of the advice of the writing instructor mentioned in his own story. Simplify this story. Let the characters discuss the saucers over a beer. The example of this is not Kafka, but Hemmingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place." Note that Hemmingway doesn't beat the reader over the head with the message, either. Let the characters change only a millimeter. A millimeter really is enough.
Drew
PS: My apologies if this post sounds harsh. There is much to like and enjoy in this story, but it's too hard to find and too easy to anticipate. If the author would stop trying to do so much, and realize that less really is more, he could have a trully great story here.
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all the same writing a story makes you sweat even in winter also Im afraid because the lamp has gone out and as the man said my thumb akes
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Christopher Barzak
New user
Reged: Mar 15 2004
Posts: 21
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I thought this story was wonderful, actually, and I feel that the poster who would have it mimic traditional fables would defeat its purpose by doing it that way. The broken, disjointed narrative was a pleasure to read. Though I love Kafka with all my heart, I would not want this story told as A Hunger Artist was told, and I would not like these characters to sit around and "discuss" the alien invasion over a cup of coffee the entire time. I like theh flashbacks, the bits of autobiography and self-reference. It provides a texture to the story that it would lack if it were told in the mode of a straightforward fable. A Clean Well-Lighted Place is one of my favorite stories ever also, but I also don't feel this story would benefit from Hemmingway's style of telling. I like Lain's storytelling style. He knows what he's doing.
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Anonymous
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I liked the story. I compared it to having sex through a hole in a bed sheet over at Lit Haven:
http://www.lithaven.com/main/index.php?p=153
--Simon
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Karen Meisner
Fiction Editor
Reged: Oct 15 2003
Posts: 27
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Now there is a comparison you don't see every day.
I think it's generally a mistake, and taking the cheap way out, to say "This story should be more like that other story by that other writer." It's fine to think "I like that other writer's story/style better", but there's not much point in saying so when discussing the virtues of this one. They're written by different people, in different times and places, for different reasons; they are two different things. I like chocolate a hell of a lot, and I'm not crazy about the work of Anne Tyler, but when I read an Anne Tyler book I'm not complaining that it isn't chocolate. Even though it being chocolate probably *would* make me like it better.
Anyway, if you're going to do comparisons for Doug Lain's piece, you might start with Vonnegut, who sometimes does similar things with storytelling and the author-as-character. It's unusual to carry off that sort of thing so unpretentiously, and I think Lain does it beautifully here, with a sincerity and perceptiveness about society and humanity that is distinctly his own.
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bagoink
New user
Reged: Jan 27 2005
Posts: 24
Loc: New Castle. PA
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Mr. Barzak,
Thanks for your response, and I'm glad you liked the story. I found much there to like, too. Unfortunately, I found myself confused by the story's disjointedness. Reading it for me was like reading an MTV video, with no shot held long enough, and jumpy cuts everywhere.
I find myself now reminded of Jubal Harshaw discussing art with Ben Caxton: Quote:
But in general it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.
That's stronger language than I would use: I don't think the writer is in any way incompetent or a joker. But it makes the point well.
Drew "Damn it, you punched one of my buttons."
quotes from Heinlein, Robert A. The Original Uncut Stranger In A Strange Land. New York: Ace, 1991. P.400
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all the same writing a story makes you sweat even in winter also Im afraid because the lamp has gone out and as the man said my thumb akes
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bagoink
New user
Reged: Jan 27 2005
Posts: 24
Loc: New Castle. PA
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Quote:
Now there is a comparison you don't see every day.
I think it's generally a mistake, and taking the cheap way out, to say "This story should be more like that other story by that other writer."
I agree. I was merely pointing out one example of a fable that is cohesive and understandable. Should it be more like that specific example? Perhaps, probably not. I could give a list, starting with verses from the Talmud, then the Gospels, through Plato, the brothers Grimm, and more, all that show fables in easy to understand language. If an artist's message can't be understood, how is the work successful?
Quote:
It's fine to think "I like that other writer's story/style better", but there's not much point in saying so when discussing the virtues of this one. They're written by different people, in different times and places, for different reasons; they are two different things. I like chocolate a hell of a lot, and I'm not crazy about the work of Anne Tyler, but when I read an Anne Tyler book I'm not complaining that it isn't chocolate. Even though it being chocolate probably *would* make me like it better.
We agree here: Chocolate is great, Anne Tyler not so much.
But I'm not complaining that it isn't chocolate; I'm complaining that its wrapper is stuck on so tight that I can't tell if it's chocolate or Hamburger Helper. If the writer wishes that the story be Hamburger Helper, or Drano, or a bottle of good Bordeaux, or whatever, that's the writer's prerogative and I can't complain. But the writer's job, regardless of the content, is to help the reader take the wrapper off so we can see what's inside.
Quote:
Anyway, if you're going to do comparisons for Doug Lain's piece, you might start with Vonnegut, who sometimes does similar things with storytelling and the author-as-character. It's unusual to carry off that sort of thing so unpretentiously, and I think Lain does it beautifully here, with a sincerity and perceptiveness about society and humanity that is distinctly his own.
Okay, valid point. And perhaps I'm not as well versed in Vonnegut as I should be. But from what I have read, Vonnegut understood that his writing was complex (although simplistic, they are different things) and helped the reader, through various tricks (including being laugh out loud funny) to get through it.
I don't think Vonnegut would have partially titled a work "A Coffee Cup ... Story", then shown us a (fragmentary) scene where the author is schooled in the "New Yorker Cup of Coffee Stories," then give us something else, at least without clearly exposing the irony.
There are great scenes in here: The failing of the author to find "Superman" ironic. The aforementioned slinky. "I was saved all summer long." Disneyland on September 11. Much more.
Each of those scenes deserves to be developed into more than just the sketch that it is here. Dammit, Disneyland on 9/11? That deserves to be a whole story. Maybe that's my problem: This story is a bag of M&Ms, and it deserves to be united into a whole chocolate bar. Nothing seems to be fully developed; scenes just bang from one tantalizing taste to another, never giving the reader enough time to enjoy, never seeming to enjoy themselves. The author needs to slow down, and realize that what he acutually has here is an underdeveloped novel. This story could be a whole Hershey Chocolate World.
I wish it was.
Drew
PS: Thanks for sharing this story with us, though. A mark of success could be, should be, the stiring of strong debate. In those terms, certainly, I appreciate this story. (Although it has diverted me from my own writing for too long now... :)
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all the same writing a story makes you sweat even in winter also Im afraid because the lamp has gone out and as the man said my thumb akes
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Susan Marie Groppi
Editor-in-Chief, Fiction Editor
Reged: Jun 04 2003
Posts: 52
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If an artist's message can't be understood, how is the work successful?
But in this case the artist's message can be understood, it just isn't understood by every reader. Not every piece is going to work for every reader, after all.
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