A Companion to the American Short Story
Page 105
book). The cycle, composed of ten interconnected stories, traces the story of a story,
from its creation by the author, to its manipulation, dissemination, and extended
life, as infl uenced by the editor, the sketch artist, printer, publisher, critic, and
several readers. The character of the author in the fi rst story, “ The Author, ” is an
invalid who can go nowhere because of his ruined body and the “ coming suffering ”
(9); he merely sits, longingly gazing “ towards the west ” (3), his personal frontier.
Naturally, he hopes his stories will travel where his body cannot; indeed, his story
makes it into the hands of, among others, two engineers, who are “ the pioneers of
civilization in the new West ” (32). Though the story ’ s author wants to write stories
where “ the moral is quite concealed ” (8), this is, perhaps ironically, not the case for
this cycle. In the last story, “ A Reader of Another Sort, ” a boy reads the author ’ s
story in “ a worn and ragged copy of the midsummer number of The Metropolis ” (42)
and his life changes: “ ‘ A fi ne story, mother? ’ he echoed. ‘ It ’ s great. It ’ s true. That ’ s
the kind of man I ’ d like to be ’ ” (48). Years later, the boy, now an adult who has
lived his life in the shadow of the story, tries to contact the author, but learns he
died only a fortnight after writing this last story. The young man writes a letter to
the widow, who is thrilled and surprised at this development, unlike the reader,
who no doubt saw some version of this ending from a mile away, and thus is little
pleased by it. Though Matthews ’ s work represents the inherent dangers of the genre
in that The Story of a Story is much too obviously contrived to be serious literature,
it also mirrors the enduring American drive to create, to move, and to belong, for
the pleasure that the widow takes from the letter is that her long - dead husband ’ s
story was like a “ lamp to [this] man ’ s feet ” (50).
However, the history of the development of this genre is rife with prominent and
superior cycles which explore this tension – to remain in one place or to keep moving
– within the American (sub)consciousness. One such early example is set in the small
Maine coastal village of Dunnet Landing. The characters in Sarah Orne Jewett ’ s The
Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) live sparse lives and pine for loves lost and times
gone. The character connecting the stories is, however, newly arrived to Dunnet
Landing. She seeks an escape from the big city and a peaceful place where she might
work on her writing. Over the course of the summer, the unnamed narrator becomes
an intimate of the townspeople. She begins her summer stay on the island with
Almira Todd, an herbalist who assists the townsfolk with various maladies, real or
otherwise. The introduction of a “ foreign ” person into an established community is
The Short-Story Cycle
487
an oft - used convention of the American short - story cycle (as is a “ local ” desiring to
leave). Jewett ’ s narrator knows her time in tranquil Maine is at best an occasional
respite from her other life. She thus stands in stark contrast to George Willard in
Winesburg, Ohio (see below), whose sole desire – a desire to which he clings at the
expense of all else – is to leave the small town for the city. However, even in the small
town, her city - born restlessness persists, for she soon leaves Almira and rents an old
schoolhouse just outside the village. Throughout the summer, she meets many of the
townsfolk and writes a book, presumably the book we are now reading (unlike the
story in Matthews ’ s cycle or Anderson ’ s “ The Book of the Grotesque, ” which the
reader does not see – unless, of course, Winesburg is itself this book). The book consists
of character sketches, such as that of Captain Littlepage, who complains that, “ when
folks left home in the old days they left it to some purpose, and when they got home
they stayed there and had some pride in it ” (26). The narrator is sympathetic, but
from a younger generation. For when she leaves Dunnet Landing at summer ’ s end, it
is with trepidation, because she will be returning “ to the world in which I feared to
fi nd myself a foreigner ” (158).
In The Golden Apples (1949) , Eudora Welty expands on the village sketch tradition
(see Zagarell). Welty ’ s characters are everyday Mississippians who speak their regional
dialect and are ever - frustrated by the universal tediums of life. Her simple and eccen-
tric characters live lives of gossipy desperation in Morgana, a town with a name as
fantastical as the town itself is average. Like many sequences whose stories were origi-
nally published separately, Welty ’ s stories are clearly meant to go together and to be
read progressively. Besides the unifying effect of an initial list of characters at the
beginning of the book, the book ’ s title likewise links all the stories. It is taken from
William Butler Yeats ’ s poem “ The Song of Wandering Aengus ” (1897) and hints
that the search for the golden apples of truth and beauty, in which all of Welty ’ s
characters are engaged, is greater than any one character.
The primary location of these stories is Morgana, MacLain County, a county named
after the ancestors of King MacLain, the cycle ’ s dominant and unifying, if elusive,
fi gure. In the fi rst story “ Shower of Gold, ” we learn that King has married Miss
Snowdie MacLain – a name that fi ts her albinism – an act for which we must, appar-
ently, give him some credit; after all, “ Lots of worse men wouldn ’ t have ” (4). But
King himself is a wanderer, planting his seed like Johnny Appleseed, so much so that
it seems he is related to someone in every story. Though he marries Snowdie, his
location is usually a mystery: “ there are people that consider he headed West ” (3),
looking for his own golden apples. Returning upon occasion, King won ’ t even meet
his wife in the house, but sends word to her that they are to couple in the forest. The
local gossips don ’ t understand King ’ s reluctance to enter the town, for King and
Snowdie are indeed properly married. Though King, it is assumed, comes back for good
in the last story, “ The Wanderers, ” his presence is felt throughout the rest of the
stories, both genetically through multiple offspring, and spiritually.
In “ Sir Rabbit, ” King waits in the forest with his twin sons, hunting and seducing
a girl wandering in the forest with the foreshadowing name of Mattie Will. King ’ s
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Jeff Birkenstein
earthy, pagan ways are well known in the town and enticing to Mattie: “ ‘ I know the
way you do ’ ” (98), she cries. Later, after Mattie is married to the simpleton Junior,
she keeps these memories to herself. Years later, thinking about King and his beauti-
ful twins and their “ aching Adam ’ s apples ” (111), Mattie “ thought they were mysteri-
ous and sweet – gamboling now she knew not where. ” It is the search for the golden
apples and not the fi nding of them that continually lends a glimmer of hope to these
character ’ lives, unlike in Winesburg, Ohio , where the grotesques are irretrievably mis-
shapen – both phys
ically and psychologically – by their fruitless searches and their
obsession with appearing normal and civilized. Throughout Apples , the characters
strive for something more, but mostly the search is a futile one. The disparate char-
acters, who have sung their song like the wandering Aengus, literally come together
in the fi nal story, “ The Wanderers, ” in a way that echoes the coming together of the
themes of all the stories in Joyce ’ s story “ The Dead ” or Kelly Cherry ’ s last story “ Block
Party ” (see below).
Though for very different reasons from Europeans, Native Americans have likewise
long been unsettled – since well before Congress passed the “ Indian Removal Act ” in
1830. Though on the move for hundreds of years, after being endlessly lied to,
manipulated, and slaughtered, for just as long Native Americans have struggled to
resist Caucasian encroachments and to (re)claim some semblance of an original culture.
Indeed, the form of the short - story cycle, “ far from being an artifi cial aesthetic con-
struct, is the traditional form of extended fi ction among Native Americans ” (Nagel,
Contemporary 21) and is seen in the work of many Native American writers, from Leslie
Marmon Silko ’ s Storyteller (1981) , Louise Erdrich ’ s Love Medicine (1984) , to Sherman
Alexie ’ s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfi ght in Heaven (1993) .
Alexie ’ s text explores Spokane/Coeur d ’ Alene Indians and their desire to reclaim
the ancient traditions of an oral culture as well as their paradoxical rejection of that
culture for the Anglo trappings of Diet Pepsi and basketball, both on and off the
reservation. The book ’ s very fi rst scene, in “ Every Little Hurricane, ” hints at both the
communal spirit on the reservation and a world where everything might be upset at
any moment:
Although it was winter, the nearest ocean four hundred miles away, and the Tribal
Weatherman asleep because of boredom, a hurricane dropped from the sky in 1976 and
fell so hard on the Spokane Indian Reservation that it knocked Victor from bed and his
latest nightmare.
It was January and Victor was nine years old. He was sleeping in his bedroom in the
basement of the HUD house when it happened. His mother and father were upstairs,
hosting the largest New Year ’ s Eve party in tribal history, when the winds increased
and the fi rst tree fell. (1)
The party quickly degenerates into a fi stfi ght between Victor ’ s two drunk uncles. That
they were “ slugging each other with such force that they had to be in love ” (2) is
most probably, we shall learn, a result of their frustration – a collective, tribal - wide
The Short-Story Cycle
489
frustration
–
with their suppressed history and general lack of purpose. At any
moment, everything on the reservation can be upset anew by an action taken by a
government far away and utterly removed from local control or interest.
This confl ict sets the stage for the book as we follow loosely the story of Victor
and Adrian and their sometime - friend, Thomas Builds - the - Fire. In their own way
and at every turn, they struggle with the desire to remain on the reservation and to
leave it. True, Victor and Thomas leave the reservation to collect Victor ’ s father ’ s
corpse (or what is left of it) in “ This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona, ”
and later Victor temporarily leaves the reservation to live in town, but mostly this
desire is replaced with the stasis of indecision. They want the old ways to return.
They want to be warriors, though their attempts to re - assume this mantle of mas-
culinity and freedom means that mostly they “ just parked it in front of the Trading
Post and tried to look like horsepowered warriors ” (13). They ingest hallucinogenic
drugs to conjure the old visions, think back without irony to the time Victor
’
s
father was the only Indian who heard Jimi Hendrix play the “ Star - Spangled Banner ”
at Woodstock and, as a community, put Thomas on trial for telling too many old
tales, tales which cause the Indians to weep and “ admit defeat ” (97). Even their
modern warriors – basketball players – are almost certain to fl ame out to alcohol
and apathy: “ There ’ s a defi nite history of reservation heroes who never fi nish high
school, who never fi nish basketball seasons ” (47). Still, the search continues for the
next generation
’
s savior. Sitting on the porch, discussing past glory, Victor and
Adrian will take anything they can get, even the future hope now residing in a third
grade, little female warrior - basketball player (53). But based on the past, there is not
much hope.
Solidifying a Genre: Sherwood Anderson ’ s Winesburg, Ohio
The American short - story cycle with perhaps the greatest effect on the genre is Sher-
wood Anderson ’ s Winesburg, Ohio (1919) , the enduring infl uence of which is diffi cult
to overestimate. Sherwood Anderson claimed to have sought “ a new looseness, and in
Winesburg , ” he said, “ I had made my own form. There were individual tales but all
about lives in some way connected ” ( Memoirs 289). Perhaps he sought this “ new ” form
because, as Malcolm Cowley argues, Anderson couldn ’ t write successful novels, for
“ those moments at the center of Anderson ’ s often marvelous stories were moments,
in general, without a sequel; they existed separately and timelessly ” ( “ Introduction ”
11). The novel form required of Anderson a character endurance he seemed unable to
maintain, and were he to carry out, as Poe called it, the “ fullness of his intention ”
( “ Review ” 61) – in this case, the representation of a troubled community – he needed
some other form. Carl A. Bredahl argues that “ [w]hen Sherwood Anderson rejected
the novel form as not fi tting an American writer, he rejected the values of continuity,
direction, and completion complicit in the traditional form
”
(422). In a form
found somewhere between a cohesive novel or an independent short story, Anderson
490
Jeff Birkenstein
captured in Winesburg the basic tensions between the desire to remain in a small com-
munity promising prosperity through unity (even if rarely achieved), and the urge to
leave the small town for the big city.
Young newspaperman George Willard, the book ’ s quasi - protagonist, is regarded
as a key representative of the town, even by those who despise him ( “ ‘ George belongs
to this town, ’ ” Seth believes, in “ The Thinker ” [131]). Nevertheless, George ’ s prime
desire is to escape the town ’ s grip and to make “ something ” of himself ( “ ‘ From this
time on, ’ ” Wing tells him in “ Hands, ” “ ‘ you must shut your ears to the roaring of
the voices ’ ” of the town [13]). This is a confl ict with which many Winesburgers
struggle. Indeed, many still have “ adventures, ” but they are mostly already broken
by time and disappointment when George fi rst learns their story. Thus, George
seems a bright spot in town; in him, there is hope, for, as the narrator explains in
“ Departure, ” G
eorge ’ s life “ had become but a background on which to paint the
dreams of his manhood ” (252). That George fi nally undertakes the journey that has
so preoccupied him might suggest that all is well, or, at least, hopeful. Indeed, many
critics read the book
’
s ending this way. But there remain contradicting signs
throughout the book which suggest that George ’ s quest will ultimately be both frus-
trated and futile; it seems doubtful that the mere act of leaving the small town will
be the antidote for the insecurities which plague him. For instance, in the aptly
titled story, “ Loneliness, ” Enoch Robinson leaves Winesburg for New York City to
become an artist (thus foreshadowing George
’
s own exodus?). But Enoch
’
s city
sojourn is a failure; understood by no one except for the woman he drives away with
vulgarities, he is, he tells George, all alone (177). However, this warning, along with
many others throughout the book, is lost on George; he remains undaunted, though
Tom, the train conductor, “ had seen a thousand George Willards go out of their
towns to the city ” (251).
Throughout Winesburg , George remains focused on – or obsessed with – his quest
and learns little along the way from so many who try and teach him: “ ‘ I ’ m going to
be a big man, the biggest that ever lived here in Winesburg ’ ” (240), he tells Helen
White. The irony, of course, is that in order for this to happen, George never entertains
seriously the idea of staying in Winesburg. No, in order to be the biggest man in
Winesburg, George believes, he must live out of it, thus falling into the trap that
Wing Biddlebaum warns him of in “ Hands ” at the very beginning of the book: “ ‘ You
are destroying yourself … You want to be like the others in town here ’ ” (12). His
family decimated, his love - life too complicated, George leaves because he feels that
he must, little understanding that all these issues will leave Winesburg with him.
When he is with Helen – a moment when “ they had both got from their silent evening
together the thing they needed ” (248) – George “ sees himself merely as a leaf blown