Welcome to the first installment of The Hinge Story! The Hinge has brought together readers and writers of poetry in other installments (see discussions of work by Dorianne Laux, Alan Shapiro, and Michael McFee, among others), and we’ve been delighted by the response from readers and the generosity of the writers who have offered their time and work to this project.
This month, we are reading Edith Pearlman’s “The Story” in honor and anticipation of her April 19 reading at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham. Pearlman’s collection of new and selected stories, Binocular Vision, was published in 2011 by North Carolina’s own Lookout Books. As Lookout’s debut publication, Binocular Vision won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The Story Prize. Pearlman will join our discussion on April 17 from 3-4. Her North Carolina book tour, sponsored in part by the N.C. Arts Council, will include stops at UNC-Wilmington, Park Road Books, Davidson College, the Levine-Sklut Judaic Library, and The Regulator (7:00 on April 19! Don’t miss it!).
“The Story” appears below. Please feel free to post your questions, answers and observations in the comment section (if you’re on the home page, you’ll first need to click on “Leave a comment” below or the headline above.) Read what others have written, engage, discuss–and don’t forget to return on April 17 from 3-4, when Edith Pearlman will join the discussion.
I have never read anything from Ms. Pearlman, and am at this moment in a cathartic space of calm, where I landed after having been carefully wound into a tight ball of anxiety anticipating an awkward moment that never came.
I suppose I was wishing that Lucienne would go on and make the da Costas uncomfortable with her tragedy one-upmanship, but Lucienne turned out to have decency. What I was expecting was turned completely around; the very best thing that can happen in a short story. Bravo!
Ms. Pearlman’s style is very reminiscent of de Maupaussant to me. That’s probably the highest praise I know to give.
Thank you for starting the conversation, Michelle! I can only imagine that Ms. Pearlman will appreciate your high praise, and I wanted to say that I have also felt that “cathartic space of calm” after reading her stories (I’ve read and reread “Home Schooling” and “Self-Reliance” for more of that same feeling).
But isn’t it interesting that a story that starts with the word “Predictable” subverts our expectations this way? I also love how multi-layered Pearlman’s stories are. The first time I read “The Story,” I thought, it’s about the stories we choose to tell, then I thought it was about marriage, then I thought, it’s also about children and what is sacrificed for them.
What’s most immediately noticeable to me is the attention to scene-setting, pacing, and tension. The beginning of the story is a little dry, which matches the event being depicted, as experienced by the Savitskys. “Paprika breadsticks!” and “Cocktails!” are rendered as interjections to portray what they are to the Savitskys – little rays of light in what is shaping up to be a boring evening. The aura of faint boredom creates tension, and the tension is maintained by the delay in revealing the details of these couples’ relationship.
The decision to tell “the story” in full, as heard numerous times by Harry, well before the point when it would actually be told in-scene, is a bold move in terms of maintaining the tension of the story. What could come after that? We learn that the decision whether or not to tell “the story” is more important in the present day than the details of “the story” itself, and that what we have been observing all along is the chain of events that leads Lucienne to issue a final verdict on the future of the couples’ relationship.
I agree with everyone that the story doesn’t turn out how we expect it, but it’s not in it is in a subtle very un-Maupassant/O’Henry sort of way. Since all of you did such a great job at pointing out the literary merits of the story, I thought I’d weigh in on a more personal note. For me Edith Pearlman’s stories hit very close to home. While reading her book, I felt as if I were once again in the same room with my grandparents and so many of the people who populated my childhood. This story resonated with me especially since I so often felt that on some level my parents and grandparents believed that, because I did not have to go through the horrors of war and the Holocaust, I was not capable of experiencing the depths of human emotion and suffering. I felt that I seemed to them, like the Da Costas seemed to Lucienne, privileged, spoiled, and superficial, and, worst of all, not worthy of their stories.
When I was a teenager my grandmother started telling me the story of what happened to her during the Civil War in Russia when she was pulled off a crowded train by soldiers, but she couldn’t make it past the part when they brought her to the station master’s office. She stopped, looked up, and said,”You are too young to hear the rest of the story. Perhaps another time.”
Every few years after that, she tried to tell me the story again, but she would always stop at that same point, in the station master’s office, and she would always say, even when I was past forty and she was almost one hundred, that I was not old enough yet to hear the whole story.
Thanks for posting this story, which does one of the things that I love best about Pearlman’s work–that quiet restraint and humor. As others have noted, the tension here is so perfect because it arises out of the relationship that these two couples have, are forced to have. What is particularly interesting to me, though, is the way that Pearlman plays that ending–she has placed our sympathies with the Savitskys, yes, but I don’t know that her ending is meant to be read entirely as Lucienne taking the high road, showing ‘decency.’ I think that Pearlman really nicely complicates it, by suggesting that Lucienne, who has given this story to others, withholds it from the de Costas. She gets the pleasure of deeming them unworthy. After all, Pearlman has Justin asking about the father, and Justin has been presented much more favorably than his wife. I love that about the ending, about where it leaves us as readers.
Edith,
Thanks so much for sharing this story with us–it’s magnificent; that word feels right, even though the story is small–and for making time to discuss it, too. As someone who figured out pretty fast that he didn’t (doesn’t) have the skills to write good fiction, I’m always amazed to read something that feels masterful (this does), about the interaction between stage management as 1) a kind of choreography–how do these bodies interact and 2) a kind of presentation–how can I show it to others.
That first page fascinates me. It’s all so sudden: a few names speaking. As opposed to, say, a movie or a play, there are no bodies there to pin those names(I should admit: I’ve always been bad with names), and so it takes a moment to begin tying things down. Then, a few pages later, once I’d sorted things out and become invested in the characters as well as the story, I went back to those first paragraphs and was able to see so much more richness there.
I wonder if you remember how you thought about negotiating that opening. It won me over, but it also seemed risky in a way–you’re relying on your readers to trust you, I think, and I did in part because people I admire loved the book, and in part because it felt so well, so confidently made. How (or: do) you think about that kind of thing when you’re putting a story together, especially its first moments?
I wholeheartedly agree with Jonathan in saying that “The Story,” like so many other pieces in Binocular Vision, is magnificent. Thank you, Edith, for such a fabulous read–and collection. Like Belle, I also think what makes “The Story” so strong is its complexly layered quality, starting with the title itself. Of course it’s primarily a nod to Lucienne’s oft-repeated narrative regarding her experience in the Holocaust, but it would seem to be referring as well to the nature of anyone’s inevitable and perpetually ongoing personal narrative-making as she tries (perhaps impossibly) to negotiate and reconcile the ever-elusive present with her past (while simultaneously rushing headlong into the future–like Lucienne at the “end” of the story). Along the way, various notions of one’s history are retained, others are discarded, others are ablated or forgotten altogether, and others still are being constantly revised. What’s being sustained is a life, fundamentally predicated on a perpetual act of autobiographicalizing, with all of its inherent unreliabilities and self-editorializing visions. That this might be taken as a metaphor for the act of writing fiction goes, arguably, without saying–if one assumes, as I do, that a great story, like “The Story,” is in fact a form of life. What’s particularly captivating about the lives in (the life of) “The Story” is that they’re presented to us exclusively by a third-person narrator biased exclusively through Harry’s point of view. That we learn as much–and generously–about the other three primary individuals in the piece from this limited perspective necessarily makes us wonder: whose story finally is “The Story?” My sense is that literally it’s only Harry’s story (about various stories)–even though, again, our minds are drawn simultaneously on so many levels to so many other aspects about the quartet at the center of this beautiful and ironically overwhelming piece. On this matter, I’d love, like Jonathan, to hear more from Edith about the decisions she made in choosing to tell the story the way it’s told–especially in terms of revision and, well, anything else Edith might like to share about the various excisions, additions, withholdings, etc. she made along the way to presenting the final version.
It would seem that Lori and I read the same story. I smiled my way through the character descriptions and their actions thinking: aren’t they like every in-laws? I also believe that Lucienne withheld the story, because she did not feel the da Costas were good enough — my clue being the description that she “awarded” the story to a stranger only once. Also Judith seems to have snubbed her “in a final manner” (repeatedly, no doubt), and so Lucienne did not feel the need to bring Judith any closer to her by sharing her story. After all, don’t we all tell stories with the sole hope of bringing the readers and listeners closer to us, our way of thinking, and our view of life?
I have one other observation. The first words of each section, the ones in small caps, seem to serve as section titles:
- Predictable: the reader is introduced to a somewhat predictable back story for the in-laws
- Paprika breadsticks: the reader sees the characters trying new things, the in-laws try to get along
- Cocktails: the reader expects the “happy hour” type of conversation in the story
- The appetizers came: the reader must get prepared for the main course
- Lucienne would tell: the main course of the story (although the actual main course of the meal is served in the previous section, I know)
- The desserts came: and now the reader will taste sweetness (sweet revenge, maybe?)
OK, perhaps this observation is a bit of a stretch, but I would be interested to know if Ms Pearlman structured the story somewhat in this way before fleshing it out.
Thanks!
This reminds me of the structure of a number of 19th century stories – the traveler arrives at the inn, settles into a meal and drinks by the fire, and THEN starts to tell the story, which ends up enclosed in quotation marks for the bulk of the pages. What’s different about “The Story” is how I see that convention turned on its ear. The settling in to dinner is more than throat-clearing or small-talk with the reader, even spotlighting the withholding of the story with “Harry’s wife, Lucienne, uncharacterstically said nothing.” Was “The Story” told with this structural convention in mind, or is it maybe just a fortunate echo for me?
Also: this might be a small mechanic issue, but I’m always interested in how shorter stories concentrate weight or attention on characters and names and actions. The shorter the story, the less extra you can carry around. In this case, the names (and also lack of names) in “The Story” seem to work so well – full names of all four characters in a story of this length about a conversation are going to have to earn their keep from the reader’s standpoint, more than if we were just reading about, say Jotham and MIriam’s parents or Mr.and Mrs. Da Costa and Savitsky, and yet they all seem to all fit so well to me. Did they come to you early on in the writing or was there a point when you made a decision on them? Is this a story that ultimately had a lot cut out to get to the meat of what we see today or has it always been a somewhat shorter length?
Thank you so much for posting this lovely story with an opportunity to contemplate and share our responses – I can’t wait to immediately read the collection.
My thoughts keep returning to how the story wrestles with disclosure – from how much characterization/narrative to develop in the brief space of a short story’s structure to the decision we make in every exchange on what and how much we’ll reveal. How or when is a disclosure shared? Have we readers ‘earned’ it any more or less than the others to which it has (or has not) been bestowed? Our specialness – inclusion – has been thwarted by the recognition that it has been shared in various situations, settings, to many other audiences. Maybe its most precious re-telling would have in fact been the one not told at the end?
With Lucienne’s story presented so that it is within and yet literally separate of the larger story, I’m imagining how different it would have been/felt if we read it instead as an integrated, quoted conversation to a listener. I feel as if Pearlman’s story should make us think about, indeed, the art of The Story…especially its crafting and how it can be delicately controlled – or lost – in countless ways.
This is such a gorgeous story — my sincerest thanks to Edith Pearlman for sharing it with us, and to the Hinge for enabling this discussion. There are so many insightful comments and questions posted here already; I thought I would just touch on the story’s treatment of the dual intimacy and distance that exists on some level in every human relationship. Throughout this piece we are shown the ways that characters both reveal and conceal things, and we glimpse how easily those closest to us can both disappoint and surprise; how relationships with both family and casual acquaintances can be both a comfort and a strain. I am awed at how skillfully the author illuminates, in such a perfectly concise story, such complex aspects of human interaction, in particular with regards to revelation: the stories that we choose to share with others, the stories that are shared against our wishes, the stories we choose keep to ourselves. I would like to ask Ms. Pearlman simply what initial idea or image sparked the creation of this unforgettable story — if she had the idea for Lucienne’s story about her father from the beginning, and built the dinner scene around it, and if/when she decided that Lucienne’s story would or would not be revealed.
Like Meaghan, I would love to know about the initial spark for the story. I’d also love to know more about how characters originate and evolve for Ms. Pearlman. Harry and Lucienne are so particularly real for me, and like Jon, I wondered about the choice to filter this story through Harry’s point of view, which interestingly almost melds with his wife’s in places (in that he recounts what each of them says/thinks), they know each other so well. (For example, “Perhaps it was also too tight for what Lucienne called her few extra pounds and what Harry called her blessed corpulence. He was a fatty himself.”)
For me this is a heartbreaking story. The father’s denial of his son, saying he’s a goy, expresses an immense love — it’s an amazing understatment.. That the da Costas don’t understand what they’ve been told is to come as a reader face to face with ignorance of history. I haven’t read Edith Pearlman and am grateful to have this glimpse into her work. I’ll buy the book.
I want to echo the admiring comments about the understatement and concise quality of “The Story”; one of the things I have noticed, reading Ms. Pearlman’s stories, is how wonderful it is to reread them because they are so precise and dense.
For Lori and Sandeep: I didn’t read Lucienne’s withholding as about the da Costas, exactly, but as a kind of emotional return to the loving and tender Harry. He was “looking for the door” from the beginning, while at the start of dinner Lucienne was distracted and almost distant. When she gets up and leaves in her dignified way, he scrambles after her, relieved (I think). I do agree that it’s partly them–of course the da Costas are not deserving, really, if that’s the word (even Justin’s empathy has a professional quality to it)–but Harry has already heard this story before, so many times, that he could retell it himself.
I wonder what the other commenters think about stories, in general–the kind we tell over and over to people to signify who we are and what we’re about. Do they always (or even usually) draw us closer to people?
Hi Edith,
Thank you for sharing this story with us. I teach an introductory to literature class to college students in the area, and we’ve recently been talking about tone. I find the tonal shifts in this story to be so wonderfully controlled. When “the story” is initially mentioned, I imagined it to be something comical–perhaps something told to relieve the tension of the in-laws dining. I was not expecting “the story” to punch me in the gut. I love to be punched in the gut!
Regarding Belle’s question about the stories we tell: I know my family tells the same stories over and over, and often amongst the same people. It’s as if the telling of these same stories becomes a ritual, not so much about the story themselves but about the emotions they create. We all know the stories. We know how they will end. And we love to hear them for these reasons.
In response to Meaghan Mullholland’s insightful comments on “the story’s treatment of the dual intimacy and distance that exists on some level in every human relationship,” I’d like to add just how I much I appreciate Pearlman’s subtle way of providing us with possible notions, wonderfully and realistically indeterminate all the same, about “how” to make “sense” of the distance/intimacy continuum as it pertains to Harry and his wife. I say ostensible because although we’re told “he understood Lucienne in all of her tongues,” our view of her and our understanding of her story during the war is privileged through Harry’s perspective–which is, again, simply one person’s. So although I have no reason to doubt (and nor do I) that Harry and Lucienne are as “melded” as Belle suggests in her comment–in fact, I have to say that probably my favorite moment in the story is when we’re told how, in the wake of Harry telling her of his “occasional kinship” with Justin, “Lucienne looked at him for a while, then got up and went around the table and kissed him”–I still can’t quite shake the feeling of a kind of loneliness and isolation Harry would also seem to be experiencing in relation to understanding Lucienne “in all of her tongues.” This feeling hits me hardest–and hardest precisely because of how subtly Pearlman suggests it–during Harry’s recall of the “night she [Lucienne] had narrated from his left, leaning toward their friends…on his right. While she spoke she stared at them…Harry, kept in place by his wife aslant his lap, stared at her: her pretty profile, her apricot hair….” Here we get the full force of how pinioned, literally and figuratively, Harry is by Lucienne’s tale–how at once he’s her loving, silent amanuensis and trapped eternally, on a certain level, to view her only in “profile.” In this sense, as Meaghan has touched on, Pearlman reminds us excellently of the universal in her particular: any interaction between two individuals, irrespective of their specific histories, is up for negotiation, both internally and externally. This makes me wonder, then, if Pearlman in an earlier draft of “The Story” may have put down a more explicitly varied view of Harry’s mind as he observes and thinks about Lucienne telling her story. I certainly don’t think we need to know more than what we already learn in the published version, but as with anyone who is intimate with someone compelled to narrate regularly throughout the course of a lifetime one particular story (see: John Cheever’s “The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well”), I imagine Harry might also be harboring alongside his steadfast devotion to Lucienne some kind of confusion, knowingly or not, about her motives and/or emotional reasons for telling the story in the manner that she does (“While she spoke she stared at them.”) After all he’s ultimately, like us, only a witness to the telling of her story; and for all we know, the version of her story that he holds in mind (almost as if it were his own–and, of course, it is) is forever limned with the same details and descriptions–that’s to say, static. But memory is never static. And because our minds are moved to think, like Harry, of Lucienne’s memory (which in the course of the story exists in a largely private or unknowable realm), the question remains: how distant–or stranded from–Lucienne might Harry still be at the end of “The Story”? That he has to run after her out of the restaurant is certainly suggestive of something; but I also love how here, as throughout the rest of the story, Pearlman isn’t telling us exactly how or what to think at any given moment about who exactly these people are. They’re “real” people, with everything that comes with being a person, including deeply felt degrees of mystery and unknowability.
Hi everyone, I’m writing to introduce my creative writing class from the Hawbridge School, a charter school in Saxapahaw, NC. We have read a few of the stories from _Binocular Vision_ this year, including “Self-Reliance” and “Home Schooling,” and have just been talking about “The Story.”
We spoke a little bit about this story in our Writing class today, and one factor kind of stuck to me. The story within ‘The Story’ was different from the Holocaust tales I came across in previous years. While most involved actually being within the camps, this was about a character avoiding it because of a major sacrifice by the father, and it was definitely effective; I literally had to stop for a moment to let that settle, just imagining how it affected Lucienne’s brother. This was interesting to me, and I wondered: Ms. Pearlman, where did the story come from? Was it simply realistic fiction, did you hear of a similar tale from an acquaintance, what is the origin of the story?
Ms. Pearlman,
Although I greatly enjoyed both works, I must admit the story “Self-reliance” was a personal favorite. “The Story” caused me to think, and ponder the deeper themes, less than your other pieces but it was still a good read. I had a question concerning the your writing habits, although writer’s block is seldom a personal issue, switching to a different story can asset in this. Because you have written so many stories do you find yourself working on many at one time, or choosing an idea and plowing though it?
Thanks, Jonah.
Hello Edith! I found your story very interesting to read; something new that I have never read before. What was your inspiration? Was it grounded in something that really happened? I am also interested to know something about your writing career in general: How does it feel to have published more than 250 stories in your lifetime? Very accomplished I would think.
Dear Ms. Pearlman, I found your story incredibly fascinating. Being Jewish myself, I’ve always enjoyed seeing people creating a story based around, mentioning or even entirely devoted to the Holocaust. Your story, however, was much more interesting, although the Holocaust was present and a prominent idea, you created a situation that was outside of it, and even somewhat mundane like dinner. Not to mention that you did not succumb to the typical Holocaust story. I also enjoyed your authorial voice and how Harry’s thoughts are often shown through the third person voice, like: “He was a fatty too”. I do not know why I like that line, but I’m pretty sure I’m being immature. In our Creative Writing class, we’ve read some of your other stories, but I like this one best. If I was to ask one question, it would be how you wound up with the idea of revealing such a tragedy over dinner, and if you had an inspiration for such an idea? I hope we get to read more of your work, and that you keep writing!
-M.A.R.C
I thoroughly enjoyed “The Story”, but I can’t keep from asking how you knew that you wanted to be a writer, or when you decided to be one. I’ve been thinking about my future a lot recently. There are many careers I have potential for, such as acting or engineering, but I can’t find the one thing I’m good at and love doing. Another problem is a successful career; it’s probably best to get an annual paycheck, and in order to do that and go into the arts I have to be extremely talented, and even then there’s no guarantee. My parents and friends say that you realize these things through high school and college, but I wanted to know if you had the same problem, and what was your deciding factor to become a writer.
This story has so much insight into why people do the things they do, if that makes any sense at all. For example, when someone changes their mind at the last moment in the checkout line, or when someone completely disregards the speech they had written and just improvises the entire thing, we don’t know why they made that decision and we never ask. This story, though, encompasses that unknown information really well through a small space of time at a restaurant. This story offers a point of view that as people we don’t have access to: Inside the mind of a man who knows a woman so well that he can anticipate what she’s going to do and why she’s going to do it, along with the “story inside a story” of Lucienne’s Dad’s sacrifice for saving his son.
Awesome.
I thoroughly enjoyed “The Story”, but I can’t keep from asking how you knew that you wanted to be a writer, or when you decided to be one. I’ve been thinking about my future a lot recently. There are many careers I have potential for, such as acting or engineering, but I can’t find the one thing I’m good at and love doing. Another problem is a successful career; it’s probably best to get an annual paycheck, and in order to do that and go into the arts I have to be extremely talented, and even then there’s no guarantee. My parents and friends say that you realize these things through high school and college, but I wanted to know if you had the same problem, and what was your deciding factor to become a writer?
Dear Ms. Pearlman,
I enjoyed your story “The Story” very much. I am so impressed by how you put so much emotion and meaning into a story that is very short and also fairly simple. I have a question though: often when I write a story I feel like the protagonist is just a version of me, and that even though I write stories about somewhat different people they are all similar in certain ways. How do you make your main characters different and original?
Thanks!
Sophie
Dear Ms. Edith,
“The Story” really had a punch to it that I didn’t expect. It left me fulfilled and satiated. How do you do that? I tend to have trouble putting enough “umph” into my stories so they hit home. If I have any type of twist or surprise for the reader, it often falls flat. How do you put enough importance and interest into a story to keep it from sounding trite or flat?
Also, do you struggle with thinking of ideas or with beginning a story? How do you overcome it?
Do you ever look back on a story and find that you think it’s awful, even if you liked it at the time you wrote it?
I really appreciated and enjoyed your story “Self Reliance”, which Belle Boggs introduced to me.
Thanks so much for sharing your writing,
Sierra
Hi I’m here, reading your interesting comments. Stay tuned for my replies. Edith
Many of you have wondered if the story within the story is something that really happened. I have heard many incidents like the one Lucienne describes, though not identical. But I’m certain that various sacrifices like her father’s for her brother occurred regularly. As for the presentation of the story: I wrote the inner story first, and then circled around it outwards, creating the four characters as I went, and realizing somewhere along the way that they were connected, and then how they were connected, and then how uncomfortably they were connected; and then deciding along with Lucienne that the story should not in fact be told to them.
Thank you for taking time out of your busy tour to join us!
Jonathan, I usually write the beginning last, after about ten drafts; and so it was with this story. Jon, I excise a little with every draft, replacing a sentence with a phrase, a phrase with a simile, a simile with a metaphor or a metaphoric verb. And so, Jon Mozes, yes it was more explicit in the early drafts. Marc, the restaurant dinner was inevitable, since these two couples have to meet once in a while, but as briefly and unintimately as possible.
Sophie, try to imagine what it’s like to be your characters, not what it would be like for you to be your characters — in other words, forget your own preconceptions, attitudes, even ethics. for a while be them. Sierra, yes I have found that later I disliked a story I liked at first, and so I throw it out. Marc, “he was a fatty too” appeals, I think, because of the high flown language that precedes it:”blessed corpulence”. It took a while to write that section, and I’m glad he effort paid off. Thanks, Lori, foryour acute comment, which taught me something about the story I hadn’t realized myself — that Justin has won the reader’s sympathy, however clumsily. You remind me of a comment made about Becky Sharp: “She drank, but Thackeray didn’t know it.” Jereml, I became a writer because I love to read. It issuch a deep pleasure; I wanted to give people something to read.
I’m so happy that my students will read about your ten drafts.
The circular drafting you describe, writing the ending last, helps me understand the reading experience of a story like “The Story” or “Self-Reliance” or “The Coat”–they are wonderful the first time, but even better on a second or third read. You mention the pleasure of reading, and I wonder if you have collections of stories, or individual stories, that you especially enjoy rereading?
Anna, having published a lot of stories does not change the fundamental worry: will I be able to do it again? Jonathan I do expect the reader to trust me, to trust me not to be obscure or unnecessarily enigmatic. And at the same time I trust him to collaborate with me, to enter the story together with me. By the same token, I consider that once the story is in print it belongs not only to me but to anybody who reads it, and his interpretation is as valid as mine.
I have to go to my next gig now but would love to continue later. I’ll check in again. Thank you all. Edith
Thank you for joining us! We’ll be glad to hear from you later, and many of us will also see you on Thursday at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham.
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