True, we’re the same age and we both live in New York, but I’m not sure that matters much. For the record, that other city dweller is spryer than I am, and his clothes fit better, and I think he has fewer moles than I do. I’m avoiding the question, but then I’m not sure there’s a good answer, though I certainly understand why someone would ask. The facile answer is that he’s a character in a story and I’m probably not. The more complicated answer is that writers lie; they may not mean to, but they do. Their job is to create effects by adopting a tone, a tempo, a manner of address, and this takes precedence over truthtelling. Although my story certainly seems to be saying a lot about the author, the author states flatly herein that what is being omitted or entirely imagined says far more about him than what you’re reading. Even if I had a better answer, I would advise people to listen to Rebecca West, who said that we should believe little of what people say about each other and even less of what they say about themselves.
The character takes us through a stream of seemingly random memories. Is there a logic to them, or to the order in which they come to him?
An intriguing question. The memories are seemingly random and therefore not beholden to logic, and yet there is, I believe, an order to them. Let’s do away with the obvious fact that the author is selecting and including items that may be true (West notwithstanding) but also, believe me, patently false. Clearly, I have formulated various sequences throughout the story that suited me. For one thing, I wanted them to flow reasonably well, so, if a memory or observation didn’t sit right or sound right, it was discarded to make room for something else.
Now, it’s a bit of a mystery how these particular memories emerged at all. I engaged in a game of mnemonic Ping-Pong with myself, and often had no idea what would come bouncing at me or how I would respond. In fact, I’m not sure how much of this was conscious or unconscious, which also makes it difficult to know where the character ends and I begin. As far as I know, I was working to create a stream-of-consciousness effect of a mind involuntarily finding (or creating) memories. Whether they blend with or jostle each other in an interesting way is not for me to say.
There’s a very good chance that without the pandemic there would be no “Hummingbird.” Something else you can now blame covid for.
The protagonist retired a few years before covid hit and was feeling so alone that he considered suicide. The pandemic “perks him up.” Obviously he doesn’t take pleasure in the suffering around him. What is it that animates him?
“Animates” only in the sense that a virus has suddenly forced him to worry actively about dying, which naturally makes him want to live. I think living for him has now become more instinctive, more basic. Before the pandemic, he had no obligations, no place he really had to be, no people he needed to see. But, once the pandemic hits, he’s not so different from anyone else. Everyone is now on his frequency, and maybe that makes the pandemic more bearable.
When you sent the story to me, you mentioned that it was the first short story you’d written in forty-two years. What made you want to write fiction now?
I’m afraid the answer is neither profound nor heroic. I stopped writing fiction when I was around thirty-two because I didn’t think I was much good at it. And, when I stopped, I was pretty certain that I would never take it up again. What changed my mind was a combination of boredom and vanity. Sometime early last year, I was talking to a friend of mine, the writer Lore Segal, and mentioned that I didn’t have much to do and was writing an essay that I was sure would interest no one but myself. But that’s the challenge, Lore said. See if you can take an inherently boring subject and make it interesting. Well, I wrote that piece and sold it, though I’m not sure I accomplished what Lore had hoped. And then I wondered if I could do the same with fiction—that is, get inside the head of a more or less ordinary guy, maybe even a boring guy, and drop in on his thoughts and memories, and write something that might compel readers to keep him company for three thousand words or so.
Were you inspired by any other stories when writing this one? Do you plan to write more fiction?
No and no. But, a few weeks after I finished a draft of my odd duck of a story, I suddenly remembered a short story by Tobias Wolff that had appeared in The New Yorker many years ago. At first, I didn’t know why the story flashed in my mind; I couldn’t even remember its title, but it didn’t take long to track it down. It’s called “Bullet in the Brain,” and it appeared in 1995. I read it again and saw that Wolff had included in his story a brief litany of what his character could not remember. And then, for some reason, I thought of Ambrose Bierce’s tale “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Both stories contain presumably real events that either occur or are recalled right before someone dies. And both stories, without my being aware of them, were clearly lodged in my subconscious (along with who knows how many other stories) and were “resurrected” as I was finishing my story. So, perhaps in the same way that one memory triggers another in my character’s mind, an unconscious associative process was also occurring in my mind, discovering/recovering things that I’d last read twenty-seven or forty-seven years ago.
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