'Only Partly Here'
Sep. 8th, 2004 10:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentBobby works in the pit. Ground Zero. He works there because he can, not because he has to. He works there because, whether he realises it or not, he's trying to understand. He collects souvenirs: black widgets of unknown function, one-half of a blue silk shoe. Other things. He's 23.
After work, he goes to a nearby bar with a few of the guys. They can't go straight home; they have to decompress first. It's the sort of blue-collar place where Springsteen and Santana are playing on the jukebox. Every night, he sees the same incongruous girl in there, in the same seat: a slim, smart brunette, yuppie-type. One night, he gets up the courage to talk to her. Her name is Alicia. She needs to understand, too. "Everybody's going on with their lives," she says, "but I'm not ready." (p.7)
So begins 'Only Partly Here', the first story in Trujillo. I've said before that I think it's one of the best short stories from last year, if not my outright favourite, and yet when I have to describe it I find that it's hard to believe that it works. If I say it's about September 11th--which it is--the automatic reaction is to be wary of cliche, suspicious of empty sentiment. If I say that it might be a ghost story, it just makes things worse. But it does work, and wonderfully so. So far, with each successive reading I find it richer and more satisfying.
It has very little in the way of plot. Really, it's more of a portrait; a succession of nights, of encounters and conversations, between two people just trying to make a connection. At one point Alicia and Bobby are described as being like 'two sketches in the midst of an oil painting' (p.29), and it's an apt description; for all that the story is nominally about their relationship, it's really about the looming sorrow in the background. The sense of a trauma to the city is very, very strong. Little things highlight the way that everyone is on edge, tense. Around the edges of the story relationships break up, and communications break down. You feel that it's only in such improbable, stretched-out circumstances that Alicia and Bobby could even approach one another. They come from different worlds, and even within the story they can't quite connect. When they embrace, Bobby wonders whether they have mistaken 'mild sexual attraction for a moment of truth.' (p.16)
The nature of their relationship is ambiguous in other ways as well. It ends when Bobby shows Alicia the half-shoe he took from the pit. There's a moment of seeming recognition, almost an awakening of some kind. She changes, or he thinks she does; and she leaves, and the shoe is gone, and he's left to wonder if she took it, or if it was hers to start with.
Whether you read this as reality or fantasy is open to interpretation--the story is perfectly poised at the moment of choice. Previous knowledge of Shepard's writing, and the knowledge that it was published in a genre magazine, tip me over into the fantasy reading, but it could just as easily be understood as Bobby's perception of events. In a way, that seems appropriate to the nature of 9/11. The pit itself is a place filled with ash, emptiness and rubble, but it's also described in terms of the fantastic. It's like an alien excavation from The X-Files, thinks Bobby; or, it's like going to work in Mordor. Such language is another way of capturing the sense of unreality of 9/11, in the same way that every news commentator shorthanded it as something out of a Tom Clancy novel. I think it works here because of what is left unsaid. The characters never discuss 9/11 directly. They acknowledge it, and they try to cope, but the event itself isn't mentioned; it doesn't need to be.
'Only Partly Here' is a story of mournful confusion, in which the power comes not from the genre elements but from the human ones: comes from the acknowledgement of what was lost. It marks the human tragedy of September 11th in a way that, for me, is more affecting than any ten acres of news coverage ('gossipy maudlin chitchat', Bobby thinks at one point) ever managed; with a subtlety and grace that you almost would not believe is possible. And, whatever you think of events since, that's a worthy story to tell.
There are legends in the pit. Let this be one of them.
[Back to Trujillo index]
After work, he goes to a nearby bar with a few of the guys. They can't go straight home; they have to decompress first. It's the sort of blue-collar place where Springsteen and Santana are playing on the jukebox. Every night, he sees the same incongruous girl in there, in the same seat: a slim, smart brunette, yuppie-type. One night, he gets up the courage to talk to her. Her name is Alicia. She needs to understand, too. "Everybody's going on with their lives," she says, "but I'm not ready." (p.7)
So begins 'Only Partly Here', the first story in Trujillo. I've said before that I think it's one of the best short stories from last year, if not my outright favourite, and yet when I have to describe it I find that it's hard to believe that it works. If I say it's about September 11th--which it is--the automatic reaction is to be wary of cliche, suspicious of empty sentiment. If I say that it might be a ghost story, it just makes things worse. But it does work, and wonderfully so. So far, with each successive reading I find it richer and more satisfying.
It has very little in the way of plot. Really, it's more of a portrait; a succession of nights, of encounters and conversations, between two people just trying to make a connection. At one point Alicia and Bobby are described as being like 'two sketches in the midst of an oil painting' (p.29), and it's an apt description; for all that the story is nominally about their relationship, it's really about the looming sorrow in the background. The sense of a trauma to the city is very, very strong. Little things highlight the way that everyone is on edge, tense. Around the edges of the story relationships break up, and communications break down. You feel that it's only in such improbable, stretched-out circumstances that Alicia and Bobby could even approach one another. They come from different worlds, and even within the story they can't quite connect. When they embrace, Bobby wonders whether they have mistaken 'mild sexual attraction for a moment of truth.' (p.16)
The nature of their relationship is ambiguous in other ways as well. It ends when Bobby shows Alicia the half-shoe he took from the pit. There's a moment of seeming recognition, almost an awakening of some kind. She changes, or he thinks she does; and she leaves, and the shoe is gone, and he's left to wonder if she took it, or if it was hers to start with.
Whether you read this as reality or fantasy is open to interpretation--the story is perfectly poised at the moment of choice. Previous knowledge of Shepard's writing, and the knowledge that it was published in a genre magazine, tip me over into the fantasy reading, but it could just as easily be understood as Bobby's perception of events. In a way, that seems appropriate to the nature of 9/11. The pit itself is a place filled with ash, emptiness and rubble, but it's also described in terms of the fantastic. It's like an alien excavation from The X-Files, thinks Bobby; or, it's like going to work in Mordor. Such language is another way of capturing the sense of unreality of 9/11, in the same way that every news commentator shorthanded it as something out of a Tom Clancy novel. I think it works here because of what is left unsaid. The characters never discuss 9/11 directly. They acknowledge it, and they try to cope, but the event itself isn't mentioned; it doesn't need to be.
'Only Partly Here' is a story of mournful confusion, in which the power comes not from the genre elements but from the human ones: comes from the acknowledgement of what was lost. It marks the human tragedy of September 11th in a way that, for me, is more affecting than any ten acres of news coverage ('gossipy maudlin chitchat', Bobby thinks at one point) ever managed; with a subtlety and grace that you almost would not believe is possible. And, whatever you think of events since, that's a worthy story to tell.
There are legends in the pit. Let this be one of them.
[Back to Trujillo index]
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Legends?
Date: 2004-09-08 04:30 am (UTC)Re: Legends?
Date: 2004-09-08 05:22 am (UTC)They're going to be hard for anyone to write; most of them, especially this close to the event in question, are likely to be simplistic and clumsy. That's part of the reason why I find 'Only Partly Here' so remarkable--it seems to avoid all the traps I can think of.
Re: Legends?
Date: 2004-09-08 05:49 am (UTC)Yep.
Some disasters are so devastating in their entirety that their less obvious human costs, and the subtle alterations wrought by them in the psychological and political make-up of the society, are often ignored. I find it both fascinating and crucial to examine these changes, and stories are usually a good way to explore this changed landscape.
Re: Legends?
Date: 2004-09-08 09:46 am (UTC)Re: Legends?
Date: 2004-09-08 11:05 am (UTC)Re: Legends?
Date: 2004-09-08 11:05 am (UTC)Re: Legends?
Date: 2004-09-13 06:01 am (UTC)Re: Legends?
Date: 2004-09-13 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-08 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 03:04 am (UTC)