On Writing: Study of the short story not going well?

                Today, after my 100^th attempt to write a short story resulted in a ten page outline—solid text left to right—I decided to read some short stories from the anthologies I was forced to buy during college. These were anthologies I mostly found incredibly dull and this is coming from a girl who enjoyed multiplying matrices.

                However, there was one anthology I found interesting the “You’ve got to read this” Book featuring contemporary American Writers Introductions before the stories “that Held Them in Awe”. It’s Edited by Ron Hansen and Jim Sheppard published in 2000 by Harper Perennial. It has authors, most people, familiar even just a bit with literature, know, names like Charles Dickens, James Joyce, and Flannery O’Connor.

I started reading the first story in the anthology that I believed I hadn’t read in college (I was wrong about that, apparently it wasn’t memorable the first time either). It’s titled, “Guy de Maupassant” by Isaac Babel. I found it lacked intrigue or purpose. Within the first two pages I wanted to stop, feeling that, since it was only six pages long I must have some idea behind why I should care about the rest of it. I couldn’t care. But I kept on hoping there was a point. There was artful description of situation and character—short but sweat—yet still I wondered why I should care.

I read the introduction afterwards because long ago I realized introductions interfere with ones perception of a piece and don’t make sense or rather make more sense when one has read the piece. Still the story held no importance or amusement for me other than the entertainment of scratching my head as to why it was important. I know I must have missed something. I’m quite certain Francine Prose, who wrote the introduction never anticipated she’d have to convince the reader that Babel through his story allowed the reader to experience, “something beyond the cerebral something visceral, inexpressible, that shivery mix of pure presence of mystery that both art and sex can provide.”

“Don’t get it.” That’s what I wrote at the end of the introduction. Perhaps, just perhaps, my inability to understand has to do with my lack of experience with the later mystery, which made me confused as to whether Babel was referring to actual sex at times or just the metaphorical. It all just made me a bit uncomfortable—being analytical yet not able to analyze, as well as the other.

There’s one thing I’m fairly certain of now; going through the story in my head has made the story’s purpose come into a fuzzy clarity. The story is a farce; a young man is being paid by a busty female to translate stories, in which sex is being romanticized, which leads the young man to lust for sex. The female refuses him. Later the young male researches the author of the stories and learns he died of syphilis. (Why couldn’t the author just write that. Talk about overusing words.)

Think about a story more than a moment to find its meaning. It might not be the meaning the author or person who wrote the introduction intended but what you get out of the story is your prerogative.