When a Favorite Short Story Expands to a Novel…

Reading the novel which I feel must have grown from one of my favorite short stories, then rereading the story, made me realize that the novel may be considered the “long form” but the short story will always be the “great form.” Novels intentionally suck everything out of your head.  A short story demands that the reader breath with it, use imagination to inflate it to its deserved size.

What I talk about when we talk about contemporary short stories are my three favorites of the last fifteen years – “Another Manhattan,” Donald Antrim; “The Spot,” David Means; and “The Cold Outside,” John Burnside. I don’t know how many times I have recited this list. Honestly, I wish it would change. I get tired of listening to it myself.

When I read David Means’ novel, Hystopia, I realized immediately that I was reading some inflated version of “The Spot.” When I say inflated, I mean from a balloon to a dirigible.

Means’ is a consummate short story writer. He’s considered one of the best in contemporary letters. His work regularly appears in The New Yorker. He has published four highly regarded and honored collections. Short Story writers can hardly do better than that. I’ve read most of his output. I am a fan.

It’s not my intent to be a critic here or convince you to buy and read Hystopia. I found it worth every page and sentence because I admire how Means’ writes. He makes me feel, feel, feel, what’s going on, rather than think, think, think too hard about it. Honestly, about two-thirds through, I might have put it down if it wasn’t a novel by one of my three favorite short story writers. But because I am familiar with his short works, I was beyond curious how he would handle the long form.

I’m a little weary of Vietnam-era stories (this is one). I’m not a fan of dystopian fiction (obvious from the title). I can’t get movies like “Platoon” and “Apocalypse Now” and “Deerhunter” and all the others out of my head when I read them. I’m also not a fan of female characters who seem like they are being dragged by the hair by barbarian males (there’s at least one). But I was taken with Means’ sense of the pastoral in the setting (essentially the state of Michigan, in a state that can best be described as an extrapolation from the violence, war, and assassinations of the late 1960s and presaging the economic ravages of post-industrial America still to come). I was taken with the tight structure of the novel, an infield of major characters, and an outfield of minor characters vital to what’s going on.

I am always a sucker for stories which depict the trauma and absurdity, and the unintended consequences, of large institutional programs, in this case the government trying to collectively manage veterans post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) in its many varieties, and the consequences of the war in general on what would later come to be known as “the Homeland.”

In two words, the America of Hystopia has just gone batshit crazy. The characters are desperately trying to hold it together, maneuver through what’s left of their lives. And whether the character is on the outside fighting those on the inside, or fighting within their own tribe, or vice-versa or reversa, there ain’t much left of life for any of them. And that’s what Means’ does best in Hystopia, take the remnants of these lives, find their essence under these dire circumstances, and deliver what’s left of the human condition.

But what I really want to convey is a unique experience. I’ve read “The Spot” at least a half a dozen times, maybe a dozen, although it had been a few years since the last time. Hystopia clearly (well, clear to me) builds on the types of characters and, most importantly, the mood from “The Spot,” although who knows which came first, in print or in the author’s mind. Anyway, I reread “The Spot” a day after finishing the novel. Wow! At first, it was deflationary. The short story seemed small, like a balloon, compared to what I had just experienced. But then, I focused on the perfection of the sentences and how each one expands into the next and the next. And what I reaffirmed is that the short story is the dirigible, because, if done right, the reader is given the space, the air, to inflate it to whatever size he/she wishes. Novels are intended to suck up all the oxygen in your system. In many ways, the author does all the work for the reader. Short stories, great ones, are  an opportunity for the reader to air-dance with the story, imagine something larger from the short form.

Here’s a fragment from “The Spot”: “You see, the water is unsuspecting until it hits that spot. It has no idea it’s gonna be collected, drawn under the streets, cleaned up, and piped into homes. Not a clue. But when it touches that suck, its future vanishes. No chance of becoming a wave after that, no kissing the shore and yearning back out into the lake. Instead it ends up pooled on somebody’s lawn, or slipping down a throat, or spooned into a bowl of baby cereal. That’s the mystery of chance. One minute you’re doing one thing, the next you’re another, and choice had nothing at all to do with it.”

Choice has nothing to do with it. How much bleaker can you get? But keep thinking about it. Maybe choice is less influential than we wish to believe.