I've read quite a lot of Margaret Atwood's work, but I've never gotten around to reading a single short story she has written. I decided to read stories by Atwood and Alice Munro this weekend. Wilderness Tips was recommended to me a long time ago, so I finally pulled it off my shelf. Not sure where to start, I read the first story in the collection. I can see I will be reading the entire collection now. Why have I had such a "prejudice" (for lack of a better word) against short stories? With each new one I read, I enjoy this form of writing more and more.
The thing with short stories is that you are plopped down into this little world and have to orient yourself very quickly. In just a few pages, paragraphs even--who, what, where and when and even why enfolds when a novelist might take chapters to work all this out. I don't feel like I know enough about this genre yet to really talk about the stories very well. I generally let the story wash over me and just enjoy it at face value, but I know that quite often stories are more sophisticated than they appear. Perhaps I will look around for a book--there seems to be a book for every topic, so why not on "how to read short stories". Still my main motivation is as always to simply read for pleasure first, and dig a little deeper later.
As for "True Trash", the story I read, the setting is a summer camp for boys sometime in the late 1950s. While the boys rough it in terms of nearly every other aspect of their camping experience, they do have waitresses at their mealtimes to serve them. Nine young women fresh out of high school. They, of course, serve as one of the prominent subjects of discussion amongst not only the boys, but also the counselors. The boys go so far as to pay for the use of binoculars to ogle the girls as they swim and sun themselves during their free time between meals. For entertainment the girls read stories from the True Romance magazines that were so popular at the time. Over the course of the summer there will be pairings and unpairings between the girls and counselors. And the fiction the girls find so entertaining to read will become reality for one of the girls. Without giving away any spoilers, as the book jacket blurb says "Atwood deftly illuminates the single instant that shapes a whole life".
Alice Munro. I chose a story from Selected Stories, a compilation of stories from her other collections. "Wild Swans" is, I believe, from The Beggar maid. I can see I am going to have to read that collection as well, which is a set of interwoven stories about Rose and Flo, her stepmother. I'd be curious to know if anyone has read this story, and what you think of it. Spoilers to follow in this case.
The story, to put it in the simplest terms, is about a young woman's "adventures" on her first train journey from rural Hanratty to Toronto. In a broader sense it is about a young woman's sexual initiation. Or maybe about her sexual assault. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure which way to characterize it. Perhaps a combination of both. Rose sets off on her journey to the big city with money in hand she's won from an essay contest. There are things she'd like to buy that she doesn't want everyone in Hanratty to know about. Know about them they will, because people talk in small towns. Flo has been sure to warn her of the variety of dangers awaiting a young, attractive girl traveling on her own--white slavers for instance. Beware of men who say they are ministers--this is a common disguise for white slavers.
In the seat next to Rose an older man asks to sit down. He converses with her--he's a Unitarian minister, though not in his uniform. After chatting he eventually closes his eyes, lays his newspaper on his lap and appears to sleep. Although Rose did her best not to engage with him too much, she didn't want to seem rude. When she starts to feel a pressure on her leg somewhere under the newspaper and the coat she has draped on her lap she isn't sure what's happening is really happening. She wants to say no, but she can't get it out. Well, I'll leave it to your imagination what occurs next.
Rose is a young, naive woman. This is the 1930s or 40s? She's from a rural town. Perhaps she doesn't know how to say no. The man is older, conceivably a minister. He's not particularly attractive. She didn't want to talk to him really. Yet she reacted to his actions. "She never saw him again in her life. But he remained on call, so to speak, for years and years, ready to slip into place at a critical moment, without even any regard, later on for husbands and lovers. What recommended him?".
See? I'd call it an assault, but it's still all rather gray to me. I just picked this story entirely by random (well, it was actually a tad shorter than the rest). Now I feel like it needs to be put into some sort of context and will have to read the other stories in that particular collection. Two very good short stories, the latter especially would be excellent for discussion.