'The Same Old Story'
Sep. 28th, 2004 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentIf nothing else, 'The Same Old Story' is almost certainly the most self-aware tale in Trujillo. The very first paragraph tells us exactly what to expect:
Along the way Pete attempts to tell his story. He tries to tell a group of teenage Christian charity-workers in one bar; he tries to tell some punkish Brits in another. Every time he tries, he fails. Something is holding him back, and it's not clear what. Is it that nobody wants to hear his story? Is it that he doesn't really want to tell it? Is it that everyone's simply heard it before?
It is, however (if that first paragaph didn't give things away), a story for which a metafictional reading is almost compulsory: it's a story about an attempt to tell a story. I mentioned in my notes on 'The Drive-In Puerto Rico' that there are certain narrative patterns in Shepard's work; there are thematic recurrences, too, human and political issues that tie many of his stories together. 'The Same Old Story' can be read, I think, as a defense of what might otherwise be uncharitably described as a lack of variation.
In his description of the dirty, messy Mosquito Coast, for instance, as the final and most impactful clause in an extremely long sentence Shepard writes that it is the place 'where the privileged world in which we live has the reality of a science fiction film.' (p.462) Perhaps one reason why so many of his stories are set in this and similar locations is that they are in deliberate pursuit of that particular perspective.
Or another example: at one point, if his brain wasn't so fogged by alcohol, Pete thinks he would have argued that his story mattered because 'even if it wasn't news, it was important to remind people where they were, in what greater context their love affairs and vacations and baby-making were taking place.' (p.459) In the same way, many, arguably all, of Shepard's stories are political in some respect, but they are rarely the politics that appear on the six o'clock news.
I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, but I would say 'The Same Old Story' is excellent--intense, absorbing, one of the best stories in the collection--even when taken straight. That everything I might want to say about the story is already said by the story about itself (it has 'the slick reality of a hardboiled metafiction' (p.464), for instance) is just the icing on the cake. To call this the same old story would be a disservice; this is Shepard at the top of his game.
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This story begins around six o'clock in the evening at the Bahia Bar, in Trujillo, Honduras, on the Edge of Nowhere, and meanders through a succession of bars before achieving a total lack of resolution.(p.443)And, indeed, that's pretty much what we get. Our narrator is Pete. He served with the 11th Engineers back in '83, helping amongst other things to build Trujillo's airstrip; now he's suffering from blackouts, though whether these are the result of illness or an excess of drinking is unclear. The latter is certainly a strong possibility, as the largest portion of 'The Same Old Story' follows, as promised, an increasingly drunken trail through the clubs and bars of Trujillo.
Along the way Pete attempts to tell his story. He tries to tell a group of teenage Christian charity-workers in one bar; he tries to tell some punkish Brits in another. Every time he tries, he fails. Something is holding him back, and it's not clear what. Is it that nobody wants to hear his story? Is it that he doesn't really want to tell it? Is it that everyone's simply heard it before?
"What I don't understand," said the girl, giving a sniff, "is why you think we'd be concerned with your little historical passion in the first place?"The night wears on: more drinking, some fighting. His old commanding officer, Munoz, reappears, either as a drunken hallucination or a genuine spirit, and warns him that he promised never to talk about what he saw. Eventually Pete winds up at a table with Delmy Jerome, a prostitute. Somehow he can tell her his story, the whole unhappy affair; it turns out that he was a passive witness to a wartime atrocity, and he doesn't know what his inactivity means. Did he somehow like it? In telling it he gives the story more life ... in the end, it becomes a dark, possessive thing. This is not a story with a happy ending.
"You think this is historical, man?" I said. "This is a live fucking wire running right through the fucking ground you're walking on. It's like, y'know ... this here, today, it's part of what I'm talking about. The same current."
"Exactly! It's the same old story. Shit like this happens all the time, so why should we care?"
It is, however (if that first paragaph didn't give things away), a story for which a metafictional reading is almost compulsory: it's a story about an attempt to tell a story. I mentioned in my notes on 'The Drive-In Puerto Rico' that there are certain narrative patterns in Shepard's work; there are thematic recurrences, too, human and political issues that tie many of his stories together. 'The Same Old Story' can be read, I think, as a defense of what might otherwise be uncharitably described as a lack of variation.
In his description of the dirty, messy Mosquito Coast, for instance, as the final and most impactful clause in an extremely long sentence Shepard writes that it is the place 'where the privileged world in which we live has the reality of a science fiction film.' (p.462) Perhaps one reason why so many of his stories are set in this and similar locations is that they are in deliberate pursuit of that particular perspective.
Or another example: at one point, if his brain wasn't so fogged by alcohol, Pete thinks he would have argued that his story mattered because 'even if it wasn't news, it was important to remind people where they were, in what greater context their love affairs and vacations and baby-making were taking place.' (p.459) In the same way, many, arguably all, of Shepard's stories are political in some respect, but they are rarely the politics that appear on the six o'clock news.
I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, but I would say 'The Same Old Story' is excellent--intense, absorbing, one of the best stories in the collection--even when taken straight. That everything I might want to say about the story is already said by the story about itself (it has 'the slick reality of a hardboiled metafiction' (p.464), for instance) is just the icing on the cake. To call this the same old story would be a disservice; this is Shepard at the top of his game.
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