This American Bizarre by Adam Sword A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL May 2019 Copyright 2019 by Adam Sword ii This American Bizarre by Adam Sword This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Professor Papatya Bucak, Department of English, and has been approved by all members of the supervisory committee. It was submitted to the facultyof the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: P��FA� Thesis Advisor Eric Berlatsky, Ph.D. Chair, English Department /2Michael Horsw¢h.D. #;_.-i� Dean, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters 111 Acknowledgments The author would like to sincerely thank all of the members of his thesis committee, for their guidance over the past three years, in and out of writing workshops. To Andrew Furman, your interdisciplinary workshop and in-class focuses have helped diversify my writing extensively. To Becka Mckay, your support and guidance as a teacher, and as the overseer of the writing program, have benefitted me and allowed me to grow as a student under your tutelage. Finally, to Papatya Bucak to whom I owe a great deal: thank you for countless moments of guidance, insight, and encouragement which have proved invaluable to me as a writer and teacher. iv Abstract Author: Adam Sword Title: This American Bizarre Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Ayşe Papatya Bucak, MFA Degree: Master of Fine Arts Year: 2019 This is a collection of fiction that draws on the author’s own experiences as a western foreigner in America, while also taking inspiration from many different art forms and their depictions of American life, as experienced by outsiders. The themes of this collection center around the discord and disparity prevalent between British and American life. The other key theme in this collection is how violence seems to be simmering, always near at hand, in a country like America. In this way, many of the stories allude to a kind of violence taken to be something unique to American society, which often goes unrealized or unacted upon, or sometimes unravels accordingly. The thesis project itself considers how these stories could only take place in America today, and how the aforementioned cultural discord, or disharmony, connects the narratives with a shared feeling of cultural commentary about the country as a whole. v This American Bizarre I-44 Remains Shut Outside of Joplin .................................................................................. 1 Suburban Nonsensical ....................................................................................................... 15 Nothing Here Can Hurt You ............................................................................................. 34 Giant Eyeball .................................................................................................................... 46 By Carousel 5 .................................................................................................................... 57 The Contrarian .................................................................................................................. 62 Jones County Lowlands .................................................................................................... 78 U.S Tour ............................................................................................................................ 90 Backboard Confessions ................................................................................................... 102 Ligature ........................................................................................................................... 107 Hallamite ......................................................................................................................... 110 vi I-44 Remains Shut Outside of Joplin If America has a beating heart, it might well be Joplin, Missouri (depending on who you ask in Joplin, Missouri). To Lana, there seemed a layer of comprehension—call it an inherent, hard-coded access to Americana, lifeblood—that she couldn’t fathom, only partly harvest. Joplin sprang to life after the discovery of lead sometime around 1870 before the Civil War, whereas Lana had sprung to life sometime during her Mother’s trip to Florida, circa Spring Break, 1989. Snow was falling in ribbons and rage, beautiful in the way you know will stymie you shortly. In the gift shop, center of town, Lana browsed aimlessly while taking refuge from the weather. At the rear of the store was a café serving hot drinks. To move further from the store front was to move deeper into the heat from a furnace. “Where you from honey?” asked the middle-aged woman behind the counter. Was it the look on her face, her appearance, the life spent outside of Missouri? Was she that obviously foreign? Yet it seemed welcoming, this lady’s tone, as she stood there holding a pot of water and grinning in spite of the blizzard outside. “Hi – I’m from England, the north of England,” Lana said. The woman looked confused, as if a foreign language were being spoken to her – must have been the Geordie accent. Lana slowed her diction in order to be comprehended. 1 Joplin was close enough to the Oklahoma state line to not seem as isolated as the middle of the state might. But the fact remained that the major ways in and out of town were barred so that Lana could have been anywhere sequestered. This woman, despite her confusion, seemed warm. Lana’s first experience of the people of Joplin, where she was until further notice, could therefore be called friendly. “Welcome honey – stranded here? Can’t help but think there’s something more going on than a radioactive spill myself. Coffee?” Lana didn’t know how radioactive materials were transported across America, or transported in any country really, but it seemed consequential somehow, as if some deadly harbinger that she and nuclear waste would encroach upon small-town Missouri from differing directions at the same time. Not usually one to overburden herself with such thoughts, it terrified her to have to be here. “Yeah, it’s bizarre – I was trying to make it to Arizona by way of Amarillo.” “Took the scenic route, huh? Where were you coming from?” “Good question, kind of from everywhere. I’ve been touring the country at random, hitting people up on the internet and going from there. Couchsurfing, mostly. Started in Atlanta.” The woman seemed to only be understanding parts of the conversation. Lana felt herself blushing, conscious of how foreign she must seem. “Over the holidays too? Have you no family here, honey? You’re a long way from England if you’re in Joplin, that’s for sure.” “My father is in Amarillo,” she said softly, for the first time aloud. It freaked her out to say it. 2 “Aw honey, let’s hope you make it outta here before Christmas then. Milk?” Bonnie and Clyde had once engaged in a police shootout in Joplin before fleeing once more into outlaw life. But now they were as long gone as the lead deposits that had birthed the town. Lana thought of her mother now, dreaming of her faded splendor, her youthful dalliances in America; a hard thing to fathom when you spent your subsequent adulthood in hand-to-mouth existence in a north-east England council house. Were you ever further from paradise than when you’d had just a minute taste of it? Back in the traffic jam on the edge of town, the heater in her rental car had ceased working. As if all of the bad luck were congealing together like wet sand in a jug, she had sworn loudly even as the Caution! signs came into view: “I-44 Shut W’Bound Beyond Joplin.” She’d tuned the radio, shivering. A smarmy American voice could be heard over the first local station she tuned to. “That’s right ladies, gentleman, good listeners of the tri-county area – all travel has come to a halt as I-44 is shut in both directions in and out of Joplin, some callers are saying for a rumored oil or nuclear waste spillage, but we will have more as soon as we hear it. Storm warning still in effect for Ottawa County, Oklahoma, essentially grounding you in Joplin if you happen to be anywhere within city limits. Stay with us here on TCR for traffic updates as and when then they arise. Traffic at a near standstill going north also. We recommend holing up out of the cold wherever you can in Joplin, good listeners!” The gridlocked section of the road, between standstill and U-turn back to Joplin, had allowed for Lana to research where she was likely to be for the foreseeable future. First, she’d found a local office of the budget rental car company she’d booked with, and so had aimed herself there, a short walk down Main Street from the center of town. She’d 3 learnt some basic knowledge of Joplin, Missouri from internet searches alone, before her phone signal had cut out altogether. ‘The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.’ That was the Missouri motto, and she saw it on a large sticker on the side of the large coffee machine that the woman now steamed milk at. It was odd to Lana, despite her familiarity with America, that each state seemed to swear by their own sovereign mottos (stranger, even, than adhering to their own laws). The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law. It seemed a little less rousing than New Hampshire’s