Reader Response to Death by Landscape

At first I really really didn't like this story. I was reading a library copy but if I had been able to write in the margins I would have repeatedly written where is this going, where is this going on basically every page up to where "Lois can remember everything, every detail; but it does her no good." I feel like this would have been a good opening. That sentence is the one that hooked me, after about six entire pages. 

I cared a little bit about Lois and Lucy's relationship up to that point, but it was almost like every other camp story that you hear, and I was not entirely invested. I thought the dynamic was interesting, but still done before - Lois, the careful one, Lucy, the energetic one, the one that lives on the edge. "The difference was that Lucy did not car about the things she didn't know, whereas Lucy did." After working to the end, though, I understand why we are supposed to care about the paintings. The paintings represent Lois's inner thoughts - they are where Lucy went, still living in the corners of her memories.

I thought the use of tense was an interesting choice. It was another thing that bothered me at first, because the very fact that I was thinking about the tense being used took me out of the story. I understand it now though; the use of the present in both the flashbacks and the current setting show how Lois's mindframe is still very much stuck in the past. 

Overall, I still wasn't a huge fan of this story. I feel like the point is that we don't know what happened to Lucy, but still as a curious reader I still wanted to know or have at least a hint.

Dialogue

“You’ve reached the office of-”

“Yeah, David, hey listen. It’s Ronnie, I -”

“Mr. Douglass. Six O’clock on Monday. Six O’clock on Wednesday. Must I remind you that we are attempting to overcome phonecalls, and this is indeed a -”

“Yeah, I know, I know. Overcoming phonecalls. But this one’s a real doozy, doc, I promise it’s not like that time when my grandma’s cat did the thing, I got a real thing happening here and I -”

“Ronald. Remember. What must we do in these types of circumstances?”

“Breathe.”

“That’s right, breathe.”

“Ok.”

“Are you breathing?”

“Yeah. One, two, three”

“One. Two. Three.”

“Ok?”

“Ok.”

“Now, Ronald, what is your situation?”

“Ok well so I’m driving my truck around and it’s playing goddam wheels on the bus go round and round and round again and you know how much I hate that motherf-”

“Mr. Douglass. Breathe.”

“Oh. Ok.”

“Are you breathing?”

“One, two, three.”

“Good.”

“Ok. So I’m driving the truck. Through this tiny little town, right. And there’s this kid. I see him in my rearview mirror. Get this, he starts running after me, and you know how much that would freak me out, cause what’s he gonna do, you know, so I speed up a little faster but he’s still chasing me -”

“Ronald, let’s remember what we do in these situations.”

“Breathe?”

“Yes, breathe, and remember that we control our own actions.”

“Right, so I was remembering we control our own actions and I’m thinking, well I can’t control this kid’s actions so the only thing I can do is keep on driving and this kid keeps on running after me and he runs out into the middle of the street.”

“He ran out into the middle of the street. Ronald, are you still in your truck? You must pull over to the side of the street.”

“Yeah yeah I pulled over to the side of the street. But the point is - it doesn’t matter. Because right behind me those two cars smashed all up into each other just trying to avoid the kid in the middle of the street who was after my truck and now there’s cars all stopped up right behind them and I don’t even know what I’m supposed to -”

“Ronald, breathe.”

There was silence on the other end.

“Ronald?”

“I’ll take the green limesicle?”

The voice of a little boy on the other end, but Ronald never responded.

Reader Response to "The Disappeared"

(Outside he saw fireflies. No one had ever mentioned fireflies in Detroit. Night was coming on. He gazed up at the sky. Same stars, same moon.)
I thought the writing in this story was beautiful, I kind of just hated the storyline, or at least the outcome. Therefore I can't decide if I liked this story or not, because I appreciate the writing I just don't like the way the author chose to end it.
I don't really even get what is going on in the end. Is it trying to imply that he got Lauren pregnant and one day the baby that he's looking at in the end at the hospital will be his? And why did he just get randomly whacked in the head at the church? The ending seems so unfinished, like the author was just like "eh whatever I don't know what to do here so this is good enough" and moved on to another story hoping that the beginning of this one was good enough so we didn't care about the end. Nope, sorry Baxter, I just didn't like it.
I really do like Anders though. Even though basically his one and only mission for being in America is to sleep with an American girl (Standard rule of characters #1 explain what your character wants), he still seems like kind of a stand-up guy to me probably because of how innocent he is.
My favorite part is when Lauren asks Anders if he missed her and he tells her "It was hard to breathe." Something about that response is just undeniably real. Maybe it's got something to do with Baxter trying to write Anders as sounding foreign, but usually when someone asks if someone missed them they say "yes" and the response "It was hard to breathe" just sounds like a much more accurate description of how that actually feels. So Anders was the takeaway character for me in this, with his likability and unique voice.

Reader Response to "My Father's Chinese Wives"

When I was looking up this story to try to find it online (I don't have the book! The copies were much appreciated) I stumbled upon a few sources that said that it was an autobiography, which I'm not certain I can trust because it didn't seem like that to me from reading it but it still could be true. Which might actually be a kudos to Loh's writing style, because when writing non-fiction I would say one of the biggest fears is that the story isn't going to be exciting enough, and I was engaged the entire time with this story. Unfortunately, or maybe I should say fortunately, my father isn't crazy and seventy years old and petitioning for wives from China, but everyone has a story to tell and we shouldn't second guess whether it's exciting or not - anything can be exciting if the story is told well enough.

First of all I feel like the writing workshop thing is much too real and that might be me in twenty years. I also feel as if almost every workshop class I have been in has at least one Fred in it. Please, people, if you're reading this, don't be Fred.
I think part of the success of the story is the way it is so dryly told. It does not marvel at the things that are happening, even though they're pretty crazy. It just tells them in a straightforward manner and lets the events speak for themselves:

"And 47-year-old Liu - the writer of the magic letter - is the lucky winner! Within three months, she is flown to Los Angeles. She and my father are married a week later."

  She doesn't waste any time going what in the world my elderly father just flew a woman overseas and doesn't even know this person and just up and married her in a week's time how crazy is that what is my life - she just states what happened and lets us infer that this is probably what shes is thinking, because that is what most normal people would think under such circumstances.

They probably have a healthier relationship than some of the crazy ones I've seen between friends and acquaintances, but that's beside the point.

The point comes at the end of the story:

"The song has nothing to do with him personally: it is from some old Chinese fable. It has to do with missing someone, something, that perhaps one can't even define any more.
...we are even sitting our home, and we long for it."

The entire story is of searching for something, of trying to find our place in this big planet, where doing crazy things might not seem that crazy if it helps us find out where we belong.

Reader Response to "Convalescing"

First of all can we take a moment to talk about how Joyce Carol Oates basically looks like Professor Trelawney in her author portrait. You do you, JCO. Anyway.

Things that I underlined:

"Life was a joke she hadn't caught"

This is such a simple statement but says a lot. I feel like I know a lot of people like this - it's just saying that some people take things much too seriously, while also giving a little insight into David's perspective on the world.

"The first question had panicked him because he did not know the answers."

This struck me because the questions the girl was asking were not difficult questions at all, which shows a great way how to reveal something was wrong with David before saying precisely what. It also glimpses into David's thought life and the importance of describing the way a character is feeling.

"Her name was Eunice, not David's idea of a name for a baby girl, but now she had grown up into a Eunice and dragged her cello off to a music lesson every Saturday..."

I absolutely love the idea of someone growing into the way their name sounds. I knew a Eunice once. Sadly to say I feel like this is completely true.

"He loved her but could not truly believe in this love."

Again, showing that something is wrong without saying precisely what it is. Such a sad statement.

"The emotions faded, the events could not be remembered - and where, in such a puzzle, was a fixed point?"

I didn't dislike this story, but I don't know if I particularly enjoyed reading it either - not because it was poorly written, but because it was well written. The whole way through I was just sitting there going "errrrrrrghhhh" (in my head, not out loud, we all hope) because David's situation is just so disheartening and groggy, and it made me feel that way throughout as well. Sometimes I like to write about sad things, but JCO writes so powerfully that it makes you feel that way through to your bones.

Circle Writing

For Ice Cream

It was the absolute perfect day.

Clouds etched against the sky in brushstroke wisps, the sun a willowy pinprick of yellow. The city of Orange today was the city of blue skies and brown brick buildings, the downtown plaza tickled by the slight breeze and toddlers skirting the sides of the big water fountain in the middle, balanced on tiny tiptoe. Bird cut through the air on red-tipped wings. People ate their brunch wearing trendy hats at hole in the wall cafes, chattering about their to-do lists and dinner plans. Palm trees, rose bushes, magnolias lined the red brick sidewalks. Nothing possibly could disturb such an idyllic, quaint town.

TJ was engaged in the most difficult battle of his young life.

Daddy had been holding his hand while mommy held his younger sister Sara in her arms when he’d first heard it.

The dulcet tones of the song, getting louder as the truck came closer. The wheels on the bus go round and round, it played. He had never heard anything sweeter, literally and figuratively.

Ice cream.

He had to have it.

“TJ, wait!” Daddy called after him when he realized TJ had broken free from his grasp. But TJ had a head start, Daddy had been preoccupied with talking to an older couple admiring Sara in her pink headband.

“Yes, she’s something, my daughter,” he’d said proudly, just as he’d noticed his son racing off on stubby legs faster and disappear around the corner, faster than he thought possible.

We’ll have to put that kid in soccer, he thought.

If TJ made it back alive, of course.

TJ. Five years old. Clad in Ked sneakers, blue button down shirt, green eyes, sunglasses. Mission - ice cream truck. Acquire ice cream. Obstacle - every foreseeable object in his path. Parents heavy on his heels. Mission accepted.

He reached the roundabout in the town center. Problem - so had the ice cream truck. Even though his stubby legs were fast, the V4 cylinder engine of the truck was faster.

For a split second TJ watched as it turned, like slow motion, along the street. It was painted with colorful sloppy stick figure children smiling lopsided blue and orange smiles. It was playing Twinkle twinkle little star now, and there were popsicles and ice cream sandwiches in its belly.

TJ started to run. He needed them in his belly, too.

Target: ice cream truck. Location: Chapman Avenue roundabout.

Being but five years old, to TJ the avenue was not yet a place of rampant danger, pick-up trucks and sirens and buses all the precise size necessary to squish a young child.

No, it was the location of the ice-cream truck so TJ hopped off the sidewalk and sped toward it. His stomach audibly rumbled as he did so.

Well, it would have been audible but for the two cars that abruptly smashed into each other while trying to avoid the little boy stepping out into heavy traffic.

Parents, this may be a lesson why not to feed your children broccoli for dinner two nights in a row.

Target - in sights. Almost in reach. TJ looked behind him. All the pesky cars had piled up behind the two smoking sedans. A siren sounded in the distance, mixing with the tune of We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

The street was now entirely clear, because everyone was rushing to look at the scrunched up hoods of the Toyota and the Camry. Perfect.

The ice-cream truck was pulling to the curb now. If it had just done that in the first place, TJ thought, he wouldn’t have had to hurry so quickly.

He stepped up to the window, panting, starving, thirsty, hair all angles on his head.

The stickers on the white door swam before him. Cherry rocket, lemon swirl, Oreo sandwich, dripping with syrupy anticipation.

He walked up to the window. The man in the driver’s seat was on the phone. Sweat beads were dripping from his forehead.

“I’ll take the limesicle,” TJ said.

Then he realized without Daddy he didn’t have any quarters for the limesicle.

First Line Story

Sunflowers in Heaven

The letter was unexpected.

First of all, it was the only handwritten letter Amy had gotten in years. No one handwrote things anymore. It was all text messages - hey, you on your way, bring a sweater, where you at. Even grocery lists were tucked away into virtual notes on phones. Dear blank, how are you? was no longer heard of.

Yet there it was, two skewed stamps in the righthand corner, circle postmarks stamped all over them from across the world. The return address - New Zealand.

Second of all, she thought he was dead.

What else could it have been? After a whirlwind of two years, watching mom and dad pass away right after each other; Dad went first. The cancer spread faster than they’d thought it would. Mom was always a fighter. She didn’t have cancer, but she didn’t have Dad after that either, and Amy thought that’s what really led her in the end to slip peacefully into his arms in heaven. The doctors say heart attack. She said heartache.

But those two hardest years was what really brought them close. Growing up they had always eaten dinner at the family table together and gone to each other’s soccer games, sure. When the two parts of their lives went missing that had been such a certainty, they bridged the missing pieces with phone calls, about how Dad always ate his peas one by one, mom’s favorite pair of dangly earrings and how she would even wear them when she would garden in the early mornings. Her favorite was sunflowers. She liked to think that heaven was full of sunflowers.

So there were long phone calls, short phone calls, visits. But never letters.

The phone calls had stopped. One day they were laughing at Dad’s attempt to lure a bluejay into their backyard by making what he deemed professional bird calls, the next there was absolute silence. And then the next day, and the next. For the last ten years.

Amy -

I guess you are probably wondering where I’ve been.

Soft tears, gentle, running over the wrinkles of her face that had formed while he had not been there to see. The wrinkle that had formed at the place in her forehead when her husband Tom told her he was going on a business trip - two, three, four business trips. The laughter lines when he second, current husband David and her stayed up late watching the cars pass outside their window because they both had a chronic addiction to coffee. The little beginnings of crow’s feet around her eyes that started when Layla would cry in the middle of the night and “your turn” was David’s favorite phrase after the coffee finally wore off.

He had missed her daughter growing up. He wasn’t there for the first time her son blew out the candles on his cake.

I don’t know if there a point in saying sorry. Sorry is an empty word people say when they want to feel better for whatever thing that’s eating their conscience. It’s up to the other person to realize the person saying sorry feels truly sorry about what they’ve done. I’m going to say it anyway though. I’m sorry.

Can a single word cover ten years? Sorry he’d said when both of her front teeth had fallen out at the same time and he made fun of her gappy smile. Sorry when he spilled the hot chocolate on her stuffed seal Sealo Blue. They weren’t even supposed to be up but they wanted to watch funny videos on the internet. They told mom and Dad sorry too. Sorry for taking her bike to the beach without asking, sorry for never washing the car when he said he would, for missing her violin recital because Jessie the pretty new girl at school needed homework help.

Sorry for missing her first marriage, her second marriage, the birth of her daughter, the birth of her son, and all the life that happened in between.

The world had a finite amount of sorries and his might not cover all the pathways of her life.

He went on to say

I’ve never been good at goodbyes so saying bye mom, bye dad, was something I was not very good at. When I got offered the job I just went. I didn’t think I could stand saying goodbye to anything else. I thought, everything will be here when I get back, and that’s enough.

He never did come back, so she spent her life filling in the empty spaces where spaces should not have been.

He went on to say

Every day I told myself I was fine. I was lying to myself. No matter where you are, if something’s missing, something’s missing. It just took me this long to tell myself the truth.

It was three o’ clock in the afternoon and her hands trembled as they held the plain paper. The sun wafted through her pink daisy curtains. The mailman was making his rounds and Mrs. Anderson’s rottweiler was barking at him.

Now I realize that saying hello can be even harder than saying goodbye depending on who you’re saying hello to.

He went on to say some other things about why when what who and how and then said

For now I will just start with hello.

How are you?

-Matthew

She stood up from the kitchen table. Her chair scraped the linoleum floor. There was stationery in the second drawer of the cabinet, mostly for to-do lists that never got done. It had a cat in the bottom right corner of the paper curled into a circle, three letter Z’s rising from its pointed ears.

The only pen she could find was orange. It matched the cat.

Dear Matthew, she began.

From down the hall she heard her son wake up from his nap, knowing the quiet sounds he made before her really started to cry.

“Coming, Matthew,” she said as she stood up to go to his room.

She left the letter lying on the kitchen table.