Midnight Man Katherine Strine Bachelor of Science in Education Bowling Green State University May 2005 submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS in English at the CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY December 2016 We hereby approve this thesis For Katherine Strine Candidate for the Master of Arts degree in English for the Department of ENGLISH and CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERISTY’S College of Graduate Studies _________________________________________________ Thesis Chairperson, Imad Rahman, MFA _________________________________ Department and Date ________________________________________________ Committee Member, Michael Geither __________________________________ Department and Date _________________________________________________ Committee Member, Ted Lardner, PhD ___________________________________ Department and Date Student’s Date of Defense December 8, 2016 Midnight Man Katherine Strine Abstract Darkness and violence grace the five stories written in this collection, the culmination of my graduate studies at Cleveland State University. Entitled Midnight Man, this collection encompasses the eccentricities of the human race which inspire the characters and their bizarre worlds. Over the course of two years, I have developed an aesthetic akin to my inspirations (for whom I am thankful to have read): Julia Elliott, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link and Dan Chaon. The memory of images and scenes from any story remains crucial to the reader’s experience. This becomes a way to replay the story in the mind without the printed word: the smell of pencil shavings, a black figure of the night or an orange-spotted mirror may visit the mind after reading this collection. These stories invite readers to relate to characters’ core needs: searching for an unknown, attempting to restore the past or evaluating the worth of one’s own life. In this attempt, I hope readers connect to themes and ideas such as these that relate to canonical writing, and that those themes and ideas remain alive in contemporary writing such as these stories. iii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………...iii Introduction………………………………………………………………………….1 Meditate and Wait…………………………………………………………………...5 Euphemism for a Murderer………………………………………………………….15 Black Tie…………………………………………………………………………….20 Twin Life…………………………………………………………………………….31 Midnight Man………………………………………………………………………..47 iv Introduction By the end of this two year process, I wrote to emulate a combination of Dan Chaon and Kelly Link or Julia Elliott: an emotional pull with a twist of eccentric. It took rewriting drafts, reading short story collections and working through edits to find my aesthetic. Writing the first story in a workshop meant writing the first story I had ever finished. Receiving feedback meant returning to words I had labored over only to evaluate them (and toil over them) yet again. Through workshops I have learned how to write a short story and I have concluded what a short story means to me: from maybe seven to roughly fifteen pages of scene reflection, imagery and sound, a story communicates with readers beyond the page. The five stories collected here, “Meditate and Wait”, “Euphemism for a Murderer”, “Black Tie”, “Twin Life”, and “Midnight Man”, represent five communicated experiences that I hope readers will think and rethink long after each read. In workshops we discussed the components of a short story. We discussed how to write effective dialogue, scenes, structure, point of view, and whose story to tell. What I had to learn in writing a short story is that the story is not only for me. I worked through drafts - stories I had become close to because the story was mine - and fought to make cuts. I shifted my perspective and read stories as the reader. If I could not adjust the story enough, I had to let it go from this portfolio. I am still refining how to make the necessary edits to save a draft; however, I am comfortable leaving stories in my drive for when I can return to them. 1 Ultimately I learned a short story is a shared experience crafted with just enough figurative language that speaks to an audience because of common themes and experiences. Dan Chaon’s short story collections include the reader through memorable moods and observations on human nature. His control of the situation - to tell a story while reminding the reader they are not far removed from the situation themselves - showed me the need not just to micro-manage language but to also steer readers’ emotions. Reading one of his stories from Stay Awake moved me to tears. That is the type of writing, I realized, I needed to focus on. I had spent many of my first drafts laboring over language - stopping for each word - only to hear in workshops that the writing was too tight, not natural enough. Another author I found who suspends the story line in convincing ways is Jess Walter, in particular, one of his short stories, “Virgo” from the collection We Live in Water. The unreliable narrator stalks an ex-girlfriend and by the end, he runs this woman over (along with her new boyfriend). But right before the final scene, Walters steps away from the situation to relate to the reader by asking them rhetorical questions: Who hasn’t been in love? Who hasn’t done anything for love? Who hasn’t driven to extremes to obtain love? And for just long enough, the reader relates to a psychotic character who runs over two people. I started to employ this technique in my writing as well: you can see examples of this in each draft. This discussion with the reader – hopefully – pulls the drafts together as a collection. When I read stories by Julia Elliott and Kelly Link, scenes came alive through a similar trait of Dan Chaon’s: the handling of one distinct image. One Link story involves dolls, boys with specific characteristics, but through a kinesthetic quality, Link livens the 2 dolls, so that after reading the story, I continued to think about that image. It was a fulfilling way to read, and I tried to reproduce that in my own writing. I worked to combine the admirable traits I found in my inspirations and hone an aesthetic for the short story, one for a reader and not me, the writer; after all, to provide a shareable experience, a short story must not exclude the reader. Another inspiration of mine - Donna Tartt - writes long novels; I couldn’t return to her books to study the short story, despite loving her craft. However, The Wilds, by Julia Elliott gives me a Donna Tartt feeling (believable characters caught in suspenseful but strange situations with an acute attention to detail and dialogue). “The Whipping” evokes a weird feeling of Southern Gothic, which I kept finding I was drawn to. The pairing of a father frying up robins and a daughter awaiting a whipping (who ends up donning a diaper to lessen the blow) sets up a strange world where the story is not plot- driven but atmosphere-driven with lines like “...the dog breath of summer pants through the windows (198).” The structure of the story counts down time as the girl awaits her punishment - a structure discussed in class with other stories. The collection opens with “Rapture” which twists religion and southern charm into a gritty setting. The opening line, “Brunell Hair lived in a lopsided mill house with her mama and her uncle and her little wither-up critter of a grandmaw” (11) plays well with nouns and crafts a character in one lines. Her creativity sparked in me another writer realization. I learned that I needed to work through drafts for other purposes than plot. I had spent time moving characters from one place to another within fictional settings and was bored, which meant my reader would be bored. I needed to take an element of weird and twist the characters around it in order to interest the reader. I worked with this 3 juxtaposition of bizarre and emotional first through “Twin Life”. Over the summer I pushed the boundaries further with “Midnight Man” and again with “Meditate and Wait”. Even though I have always written fiction, my first drafts were too close to non-fiction: true stories suspended in a fictional setting. I finally spent time creating an entire story with less real life inspirations. Once I worked through finding my aesthetic, I worked to find literary magazines that might accept my work. I thumbed through the Poets and Writers website, opened numerous browsers, and scanned through magazines’ websites, submission guidelines and then leafed through authors’ stories to decide ‘yay’ or ‘nay’. Black Heart, Furious Gazelle, Ghost Ocean, Gone Lawn, Keyhole, The Lascaux Review all felt realistic with a twist. I cancelled out magazines that wrote for specific niche audiences (some cater to the LGBQT community, communities of mothers, some are location oriented, etc.); I worked to find magazines that spoke not to small groups, but a universal group. Because ultimately in my own writing, I want themes that relate to the widest spectrum of people possible, which I believe is a tradition of literature not to be dismissed. From finishing my first story to writing a novella to completing this thesis, I have pushed through personal challenges in my writing. This art of creating will continue to adjust and adapt with time; however, I am proud of the aesthetic I have accomplished within this thesis. Studying short stories and reading authors’ collections allowed me to define what a short story experience should look like. In the end, I hope the shared experiences communicate long after the initial reading, and that traditional themes found in the literary canon remain alive through contemporary writing such as these. 4 Meditate and Wait They smoke in the garage, four of them, five of them. Can’t see through the haze of sun into the shadowed room.