Seasonal Roads Lynn K
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Northern Michigan University NMU Commons All NMU Master's Theses Student Works 8-2014 Seasonal Roads Lynn K. Fay Northern Michigan University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.nmu.edu/theses Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Fay, Lynn K., "Seasonal Roads" (2014). All NMU Master's Theses. 34. https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/34 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at NMU Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in All NMU Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of NMU Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. SEASONAL ROADS By Lynn Kimball Fay THESIS Submitted To Northern Michigan University In partial fulfillment of the Requirements For the degree Of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Office of Graduate Education and Research 2014 SIGNATURE APPROVAL FORM Title of Thesis: Seasonal Roads This thesis by Lynn Kimball Fay is recommended for approval by the student’s Thesis Committee and Department Head in the Department of English and by the Assistant Provost of Graduate Education and Research. Committee Chair: Associate Professor Jennifer A. Howard Date First Reader: Professor John Smolens Date Second Reader: Assistant Professor Matthew Bell Date Department Head: Dr. Ray Ventre Date Dr. Brian D. Cherry Date Assistant Provost of Graduate Education and Research ABSTRACT SEASONAL ROADS By Lynn Kimball Fay (L. E. Kimball) Lynn Kimball Fay has been publishing for twenty-five years under the pen-name L. E. Kimball. As a writer, I’m interested in the way Truth seems to me—intuitively—nonlinea. I’m interested in story cycles that examine Truth from different points of view, usually nonlinearly; and I’m interested in the way setting reveals Truth and how it reveals character. I’m interested in Faith—a kind that is not irreconcilable with science, the kind it takes to put that foot in front of the other. The kind we have in one another. I have always, therefore, been fascinated with layers of Time, the nonlinear and synchronistic way in which we experience it. How the people and events in our lives float up to us periodically, much like those Halloween apples we bobbed for in our childhood, seemingly randomly, yet never quite that, informing and forever changing the direction of our lives, so that at times we don’t understand the significance of things until we’re “meant to.” The past, present and even implied future become part of an Einsteinian reality in ways we can never anticipate. My linked stories reflect these ideas. I write as I live. i Copyright by LYNN KIMBALL FAY (L. E. KIMBALL) 2014 ii DEDICATION For my family iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you Jen Howard for not only for sharing your incredible talent but for extending to me your inexhaustible patience and generosity of spirit. Without you, this work would not be possible. I’d like to thank my readers: John Smolens and Matt Bell for the fine tuning that changes noise to music. I would like to thank the faculty members I worked with who mentored me along the way: Thank you Stephen Burn for your “tortuous” mind that sorely tried mine and David Wood for your overwhelming confidence in me. Thank you Matt Frank for your attention to detail and language. Thank you Ray Ventre and Laura Soldner for your help and willingness to make my unconventional life work. Thank you to my fellow graduate students and my friends who made the journey fun and much much less lonely. Thank you to Jack Driscoll for your input on earlier stories, and, as ever, for your support and friendship. Thank you to my family without whom, nothing else-- This thesis follows the format prescribed by the MLA Style Manual and the Department of English. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 Prologue ............................................................................................................................ 17 Seasonal Roads ................................................................................................................. 20 Deadfall ............................................................................................................................. 39 The Things They Ate .......................................................................................................... 60 Spinner Falls ...................................................................................................................... 92 Three Fires ...................................................................................................................... 108 To Give Thanks ................................................................................................................ 128 Tuesday ........................................................................................................................... 142 June Bugs and Prayers .................................................................................................... 160 Nothing He Can Put a Finger On ..................................................................................... 192 Genitals ........................................................................................................................... 213 Norna’s House ................................................................................................................. 227 The Love-Charr ................................................................................................................ 241 Freedom .......................................................................................................................... 255 Death Notes .................................................................................................................... 271 Epilogue ........................................................................................................................... 284 v INTRODUCTION The Time/Space Continuum: Narrative Truth in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine According to an episode of Nova aired in November 2011 on PBS, Albert Einstein believed that the past, present, and future all exist at the same time. His position (which was an expansion of his original Theory of Relativity and is still current thought in physics) is that if a person sitting on a bench in a park gets on a bicycle and, theoretically, pedals his way straight into space far enough, he would then be able to look back at the earth and observe “slices of time.” If he were to pedal slightly one way, he would be able to observe the past; fast enough the other way, the future. NASA has confirmed that the future does exist simultaneously with the present, so it is possible to travel forward; physics cannot prove nor can it rule out travel into the past (Greene). Einstein’s most descriptive testimony to this faith came when his lifelong friend Besso died. Einstein wrote a letter to Besso's family, saying that although Besso had preceded him in death it really didn’t matter as he said, ". .for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one" (New Yorker). Disciplines overlap. As a writer, I’m interested in the way Truth seems to me—intuitively—nonlinear. I’m also interested in story cycles that examine Truth from different points of view, usually nonlinearly, and I’m interested in the way setting reveals Truth and in turn reveals character. 1 Several story cycles influenced my work for different reasons. Olive Kittredge by Elizabeth Strout, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, Circus in Winter by Cathy Day and Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich influenced me in that they were constructed as stand-alone linked stories and were, as well, told nonlinearly. Olive Kittredge first grabbed my attention with the possibilities for my own character development since so many stories were told from the points of view of peripheral characters. Circus in Winter was clearly inspired by Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio with elements of the fantastic added to the multiple points of view. As I read other story cycles (such as Jesus’s Son by Denis Johnson or The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan), I realized that no matter how well-written, I was drawn to narratives that were: nonlinear in form, told from multiple points of view and those that contained elements of the fantastic. Love Medicine, then, merited a closer study in that there were real complexities in the way Erdrich handled point of view and aspects of Time (and the way in which point of view revealed perspective), and how they, in turn, revealed the author’s narrative Truth. The narrative point of view an author chooses reveals clues about the author’s Narrative Truth and her unique perspective—at least as far as the fictional world she chooses to create for her reader is concerned. In an article titled “Telling Stories: Narrative Approaches in Qualitative Research,” Margaret Sandelowski fashions a cross-disciplined definition of “Narrative Truth” as a story in which a narrator (and I’ll add a reliable one) strives to tell a story with “narrative probability or fidelity.” So my working definition for this essay is that “Narrative Truth” is simply the basic “truth” of the novel, or how the world “wags” in 2 this fictional world. Wayne Booth’s ideas of Truth were pertinent in my thought. Though I disagree with Booth in his essay “Distance and Point of View” that a narrator’s reliability (or lack of one) relates