Narration In Three Parts, Thanks to Frank O'Connor

(image: writer Frank O'Connor, 1903-1966)




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One of the best books I know on the art of writing short fiction, as a genre distinct from novels, is The Lonely Voice, by Frank O'Connor, pseudonym of Michael O'Donovan. O'Connor wrote many great stories, but his best known one is probably still "Guests of the Nation."

In The Lonely Voice, he argues that the short-story form is better suited than novels to the project of revealing the lives of "submerged" populations in society; of course he meant the term figuratively, but during the debacle in New Orleans, the term became frightfully literal and figurative both. People perpetually at the margins of society were also inundated by water--and by incompetence & indifference.

O'Connor didn't have any formula for deciding on who is submerged and who isn't, but he thought that, for short-story writers, Nikolai Gogol led the way when he wrote about the man in "The Overcoat." Social status has something to do with being submerged, but not everything.

At least one other great thing in the book is O'Connor's simple, effective demonstration of the concepts exposition, development, and drama (or conflict). Here's his demonstration, from p. 26 of the 1985 Harper Colophon edition of the book:

"Exposition we may illustrate as 'John Fortescue was a solicitor in the little town of X'; development as 'One day Mrs. Fortescue told him she was about to leave him for another man'; and drama [conflict] as 'You will do nothing of the kind,' he [Fortescue] said."

Yesterday in the fiction-writing class, I invited students to write three "stories" in three sentences modeled on O'Connor's illustration: exposition, development, drama. I suggested that for a couple of these, they could add a fourth sentence that pointed toward a resolution to the drama. I also said they could use more than one sentence, or use a long sentence, for each section, if necessary. They came up with some terrific stuff. As usual, I wrote with them, and I decided to base one of my responses to the prompts on a familiar story. My version goes something like this (I don't think I used numbers yesterday), and I added a sentence that feinted, at least, toward a resolution:

1. Joseph, the owner of a small business in the Middle East, was engaged to a young woman from the same rural area.

2. One day Joseph said to the young woman, "This is going to sound rude, and I apologize in advance, but you look pregnant."

3. Joseph's young fiance said, "I look pregnant because I am pregnant, and what's more, I'm still a virgin, I know who the father is, you're not the father, and I'd still like to marry you."

4. Joseph said, "I'm going to need a minute."

Fiction In A Poem

I observed a colleague's class yesterday. She was teaching a session of introductory short-fiction, and it was a splendid session. The class was discussing ways in which to end short stories, and apparently the textbook had suggested that one way to end was to evoke a sense of "infinity" quietly; the textbook used the example of a lone clarinet ending a symphony. Rather than accepting that analogy uncritically, my colleague went through her collection of symphonies by some of the Greats--and couldn't find an example of the lone clarinet! She played a few symphony-endings for the class, and this generated a great discussion of analogies between musical and fictional "endings," and about the implications of a happy ending, a tragic ending, a vague ending, a surprise ending (the "twist"), and so on. She was able to find a movement in a Berlioz symphony (Fantastique, I think) that ended with the sound of a lone horn.

Poets struggle with how to end poems, of course, but how to end stories may involve even more pressure. Poets are also often able to avoid the struggles of working with characters, who can become quite real (even thought they're just made of words), insistent, and stubborn, telling the author what to do (at least it feels this way sometimes), when the author thought he or she was in charge of writing the story. Sometimes, in my capacity as a fiction-writer, I have the urge to hit an unmanageable character over the head with a clarinet. I think I'd been working on a novel--many years ago--when I wrote the following poem, which concerns unruly fictional characters:

An Author Falls in Love With a Minor Character

I first noticed her in early scenes with
the hero. She was unremarkable,
there to get him
believably from point A to point B.
It was supposed to be geometry.

Now the hero’s been in a bar
in the fourth chapter for a year.
I might as well write the scene in which
an ambulance wails down a wet street,
pulls up to the bar. He’ll die there.

A telephone rings in the novel.
She walks across a room
to answer it. It’s me. I tell her
I’ve thrown it all over, all those
other lives, given up all plots for her.

I ignore how foolish I sound asking
“Where would you like your life
to take you? What kind of smile
shall I invent for you?” She says,
“Oh, you shouldn’t do all that for me.”

There’s something in her voice
I haven’t heard before. A certain
calculation. I consider the prospect
of following her
through my mind’s streets. I’m alarmed.

She says goodbye, replaces the receiver,
gently, crushes out a cigarette. I write,
“. . .crushes out a cigarette . . .” on the screen,
hate it. I’m unable to stop. I write only
to find out more about her.