University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 January 2007 Invisibilities and Other Prayers Ryan M. Habermeyer University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses Habermeyer, Ryan M., "Invisibilities and Other Prayers" (2007). Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014. 7. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/7 This thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INVISIBILITIES AND OTHER PRAYERS A Thesis Presented by RYAN MATTHEW HABERMEYER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS May 2007 M.F.A. Program for Poets and Writers © Copyright by Ryan Matthew Habermeyer 2007 All Rights Reserved INVISIBILITIES AND OTHER PRAYERS A Thesis Presented by RYAN MATTHEW HABERMEYER Approved as to style and content by: ___________________________________ Chris Bachelder, Chair ___________________________________ Sam Michel, Member ____________________________________ Peggy Woods, Member _____________________________ Dara Wier, Director M.F.A. Program for Poets and Writers _____________________________ Joseph Bartolomeo, Chair Department of English ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following individuals for their guidance and support in my professional development over the years and without whose help this manuscript would not have been possible. To Margaret Young, for nurturing my writing skills and believing in my work when I had my doubts. To John Bennion, for showing me how and teaching me to trust my instincts. To the members of my thesis committee, Peggy Woods, Sam Michel, and Chris Bachelder, for their careful and thoughtful criticism of my manuscript. And a special thanks to Chris Bachelder for mentoring me with his insightful assistance. I wish to express my thanks to Aaron Hellem for his unique perspectives and always imaginative suggestions on how to improve my writing. For those many hours at the ABC: I’ll drink a beer with you yet. To my mother, for cultivating my obsession with literature and instilling in me a love for imaginative stories. And finally, I wish to express my love and gratitude to my wife for her endless support. iv For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow. Job 8:9 At the heart of all beauty, lies something inhuman. Albert Camus Won't somebody tell me, answer if you can! Want somebody tell me, what is the soul of a man. I've traveled in different countries, I've traveled foreign lands I've found nobody to tell me, what is the soul of a man. Blind Willie Johnson v CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................vi INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................1 VALDOSTA, GONE TO ASH........................................................................................................5 SCALES...............................................................................................................................................14 WITHOUT NEBRASKA ................................................................................................................28 ME AND MY MEXICAN, CHAMPAGNE................................................................................33 THE FERTILE YELLOW..............................................................................................................46 OUR FAMOUS SUNSHINES........................................................................................................59 YONDER RISE AN OCEAN........................................................................................................67 TRUCKEE RIVER BANDIT.........................................................................................................76 FISHING PENNY............................................................................................................................88 BURIAL POOL...............................................................................................................................102 FRUSTRATIONS OF A COYOTE ............................................................................................111 SLEEPING IN CANDELA..........................................................................................................134 INFANTILE ....................................................................................................................................142 A SIMPLE TWITCH......................................................................................................................150 WUNDERLING .............................................................................................................................163 AND THE WHOLE NEVER HEALED ..................................................................................169 WHAT GETS CAUGHT IN THE SAND.................................................................................179 vi INTRODUCTION The question of influence on a writer seems a nebulous undertaking. My academic background is divided between American and Spanish Literatures – specifically, my undergraduate work focused on Southern fiction from the modernist period, and 20th century Latin American fiction. Padgett Powell, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Barry Hannah, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende, Clarice Lispector, Juan Rulfo; these are writers I greatly admire and whose influence, I believe, can be felt stylistically, if not thematically, in this collection. And more recently there have been other, mostly European, writers: Bruno Schultz, Italo Calvino, Günter Grass, Mercé Rodoreda, Juan Marsé, and Franz Kafka, for example. By no means do I classify myself a “magical realist” or “surrealist” or even “southern” writer (I’ve spent a cumulative four days in the South; four days that gave rise to two stories in this collection – “Scales” and “Valdosta, Gone to Ash”). What I admire most in these writers is the scope and breadth of their imaginations: the dimensions they are 1 willing to explore, and what seeming absurdities and eccentricities of human nature they are compelled to portray. In reading these fictions, I’ve come to understand the greatest resource a writer has is his or her imagination and the necessity of moving fiction, pushing fiction, towards the unknown limits of the imagination while trying to balance writer indulgence with reader suspension of disbelief. Yet it would be foolish to say that the environment surrounding my first undertakings in fiction contributed nothing to the thematics and obsessions of this collection. I attended Brigham Young University; I was born and raised a Mormon and religion is a major influence on my writing. In workshops, I’ve been told my fiction is “abstract”, “esoteric”, “overly mysterious”, “confusing”, and my personal favorite from visiting writer Valerie Martin, as “having all the uselessness of a dream.” I agree with some of this criticism: I can be abstract; I can omit plenty in the narrative that leads to mystery and confusion. In part, this is a product of my religion. When you are raised to believe that there is absolute truth and any portrayal of the human condition must be extolled for its virtues and not its vices, mystery and abstraction become an asset. Too many Mormon writers fall victim to a strict moralistic approach in fiction. Though perhaps a generalization, it has been my experience that with Mormon writers, and at Brigham Young, the idea is that literary fiction must sell a particular moral didacticism. Fiction, like scripture, must convert the masses. I’ve attempted to push my fiction away from an authorial, religious voice and do what Hemingway cautioned: understand the characters, not judge them. To me, fiction isn’t about marketing conversion; it isn’t about writing thematiczed moral sagas, and it certainly doesn’t culminate in a singular epiphany. It is about the human experience – its nastiness and its loveliness, the violence and the tenderness, and the wondrous grey area of moral ambiguity. 2 I’m interested in negotiating the space between naturalism and the fantastic, the absurd and the utterly human; how to materialize the uncanny events of uncommon lives into something tangible, something believable – that’s what I’m after. Are my characters and situations extremes? Probably. Donald Barthelme said, “In order to achieve the impossible, you must be willing to attempt the absurd.” I believe that. My characters go through absurd and often horrific situations because I’m not interested in writing John Updike stories where doors are slammed and somebody pets a cat before walking out into the snow for the grand finale; good for John, but not for me. I’m interested in characters pushed to the limits and seeing not only how they survive, but how they respond when the stability of the environment is questioned. Like Flannery O’Connor, I find that it is in the extreme circumstances that people discover and reveal their identity. O’Connor utilized this principle of the “unreasonable use of the reasonable”