INVASION OF THE BEES AND OTHER STORIES A Project Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Chico In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in English by © Emily Huso 2019 Spring 2019 INVASION OF THE BEES AND OTHER STORIES A Project by Emily Huso Spring 2019 APPROVED BY THE INTERIM DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES: Sharon Barrios, Ph.D. APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE: Robert Davidson, Ph.D., Chair Jeanne E. Clark, Ph.D. PUBLICATION RIGHTS No portion of this project may be reprinted or reproduced in any manner unacceptable to the usual copyright restrictions without the written permission of the author. iii DEDICATION for Mom, the strongest woman I know iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my chair, Dr. Robert Davidson, and my advisor, Dr. Jeanne Clark, for their endless support during every stage of my work in the graduate program. Jeanne, you have inspired and believed in me all along. Thank you for helping me to believe in myself. I treasure all your kind words. Rob, you have seen some of my worst efforts and helped me to produce some of the best work I have ever written. Your feedback and guidance have been invaluable. Thank you for all you have taught me and for serving as my chair for this project. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Publication Rights ................................................................................................... iii Dedication ............................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. v Abstract .................................................................................................................. vii CHAPTER I. Critical Introduction ............................................................................... 1 Development and Influences ...................................................... 1 Realism ...................................................................................... 2 Magical Realism ........................................................................ 11 Next Steps .................................................................................. 15 II. Short Stories .......................................................................................... 17 Invasion of the Bees ................................................................... 17 Apart From You ......................................................................... 29 Swing ......................................................................................... 42 Drift ........................................................................................... 54 III. Flash Fictions ........................................................................................ 65 Beach Town ............................................................................... 65 Afterwards She Counts the Money ............................................. 67 Skywriting.................................................................................. 68 Luck ........................................................................................... 69 High Tide ................................................................................... 72 IV. Works Cited ........................................................................................... 73 vi ABSTRACT INVASION OF THE BEES AND OTHER STORIES by © Emily Huso 2019 Master of Arts in English California State University, Chico Spring 2019 Invasion of the Bees and Other Stories is a collection of short stories and flash fictions that explore themes of paternal absence and neglect, female distrust of men, relationship discord, self-sabotage, and various forms of abuse. Firmly footed in the genre of realism, the short stories in the collection attempt to reveal the aspects of ourselves that we try to conceal, stifle, or seal away like bees in an attic. Tethered together by shared themes and setting, the flash fictions in the collection borrow elements of magical realism to expose our most secret vulnerabilities. The critical introduction discusses the craft aspects of realism and magical realism with respect to authors such as Marilynne Robinson, Charles Baxter, John Gardner, Benjamin Percy, Alice Munro, and Maria Romasco Moore. vii CHAPTER I CRITICAL INTRODUCTION Development and Influences I attribute the writing style I have achieved in this collection to the influence of contemporary writers such as Marilynne Robinson and Alice Munro. I first encountered Robinson’s Gilead trilogy during my senior year of my undergraduate studies at Walla Walla University (WWU). My thesis project analyzed Robinson’s use of ruins as a metaphor for the legacy of slavery in the United States. Although I admired Robinson’s work in terms of its literary merit, I found myself particularly impressed by her graceful, revelatory prose. Robinson’s novels, Housekeeping and the Gilead trilogy, instilled in me an appreciation for language, sound, and what Leesa Cross-Smith terms “quiet” stories: stories that treasure the “small, quiet moments” and give the reader “room to think” (25). Having the opportunity to meet and interview Robinson at WWU further solidified my appreciation of Robinson’s voice and style, which is consistent between her writing and her speech. Because I so admire Robinson’s work, it has been my imperative to carefully attend to language, sound, and substance in my work throughout this collection. Another writer who has profoundly influenced my style is Alice Munro. Munro’s intricate short stories in Open Secrets taught me how to interweave narratives from different timelines to capture the full complexity of characters. Munro taught me not to oversimplify my stories and characters in favor of tidy, superficial truths. As Flannery O’Connor wisely observes in Mystery and Manners, surface-level truths hardly ever suffice the fiction writer who truly seeks to understand: “[W]hat he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go 1 through it into an experience of mystery itself” (41). Thus, it is through capturing the “experience of mystery” that we most closely approach the truth. As Munro demonstrates in her work, the truth is never simple. However, by rendering the “experience of mystery,” she provides insight into human character that could not be accessed otherwise. Munro’s work gave me license to explore new forms and chronologies and to embrace complexity and mystery as a step towards understanding. My intention with each story in this project was to compel–—to create characters who demand attention and conjure experiences of mystery that have the power to permanently shift the axis of perspective for my readers. I wanted my stories to communicate such urgency that my readers could not help but lean in and listen. Realism The short stories and many of the flash fictions in this collection are firmly footed in the genre of literary realism. So many of my stories take up the subject of relationship dysfunction and attempt to discover what motivates interpersonal conflict. In order to invoke sympathy in my readers, I wanted to portray these stories as realistically as I could. My intention was to create stories realistic enough that readers could easily relate to and experience the conflict along with the characters. Although I utilized several craft strategies to achieve this effect, the following discussion addresses three craft aspects of realism that are prominent in my work: details, characterization, and subtext. Details are a major craft device I utilize to give my fiction a realistic quality. As John Gardner asserts in The Art of Fiction, in order to successfully ground a story in reality and convince the reader of its truth, realist writers must give the characters and events of the story the 2 appearance of being real, a degree of verisimilitude (22). Gardner argues that this verisimilitude is achieved through a careful attention to details: “[The realist] must present, moment by moment, concrete images drawn from a careful observation of how people behave, and he must render the connections between moments, exact gestures, facial expressions, or turns of speech that, within any given scene, move human beings from emotion to emotion, from one instant in time to the next” (24). Thus, successful realist fiction mirrors reality as a result of the writer’s scrupulous attention to detail and the real world. One realist writer who does this especially well is Lucia Berlin. For example, in “Angel’s Laundromat,” an autofiction short story that appears in A Manual for Cleaning Women, Berlin describes a woman’s trips to the laundromat. Berlin firmly grounds the events of the story in the physical world. The reader experiences the story through concrete imagery and sensory detail. We can easily picture the “[s]uds overflowing onto the floor” and “the dirty mirror, between yellowing IRONING $150 A DUZ and orange Day-Glo serenity prayers” (3-4). We can hear the sound of the “sloshy water, rhythmic as ocean waves” (6). By embedding the story in physical details from the real world, Berlin gives the story the appearance of truth. Berlin is attentive not only to imagery and details of the physical world, but also to human behavior, gestures, and speech. For example, Berlin describes the narrator’s sense of vulnerability when she catches another laundromat visitor, Tony, staring at her hands in the mirror: “There