San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Spring 2015 Beasts of Flight Brian Wood San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Wood, Brian, "Beasts of Flight" (2015). Master's Theses. 4565. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.jzr5-uc4y https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/4565 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEASTS OF FLIGHT A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature San José State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts by Brian Wood May 2015 © 2015 Brian Wood ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves The Thesis Titled BEASTS OF FLIGHT by Brian Wood APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY MAY 2015 Prof. Nicholas Taylor Department of English and Comparative Literature Prof. Cathleen Miller Department of English and Comparative Literature Dr. Susan Shillinglaw Department of English and Comparative Literature ABSTRACT BEASTS OF FLIGHT by Brian Wood Beasts of Flight is a set of thirteen short stories connected by themes of personal impotence and the dysfunction of sexual relationships. Some stories are bizarre. The title piece, “Beasts of Flight,” explores systemic hatred and fear through the eyes of a talking parrot. In “I Should Exit My Home When the Costume Party Causes Paralysis of the Brain,” the host of a Halloween party is frozen by the mask of one of his guests. “The Joytime Killbox” details a city’s obsession with staring down the the barrel of a loaded gun. Crossing into sacrilege, “The Book of Smote,” is a subversive take on Old Testament storytelling. Other stories display the inherent strife of relationships using piercings, airplanes, a couple’s movie night, and an impromptu lunch at a fast food restaurant. “My Roberta,” “Rough Air,” “Walking Dogs,” and “Cheri,” all focus on sexual conflict and marital breakdown. The stories “Fallen Timbers,” “USS Flagg,” and “What to Say ff Anything to a Child in the Speedway Bathroom” examines the unexpected repercussions of doing a good deed. While “Homecoming” and “Coetzee Comes to Dinner” illustrate that even the best families have their problems. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My gratitude to Nick Taylor, Andrew Altschul, and Daniel Alarcón for their direction, wisdom, and inspiration. And thanks to Susan Shillinglaw and Cathleen Miller for always encouraging me to do better. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface...........................................................................................................................................vii Work Cited.....................................................................................................................................xv Beasts of Flight................................................................................................................................1 I Should Exit My Home When the Costume Party Causes Paralysis of the Brain........................24 My Roberta....................................................................................................................................28 Rough Air.......................................................................................................................................37 The Book of Smote........................................................................................................................49 What to Say, if Anything, to a Child in the Speedway Bathroom.................................................86 Chéri...............................................................................................................................................90 Fallen Timbers...............................................................................................................................98 Homecoming................................................................................................................................104 The Joytime Killbox....................................................................................................................108 Walking Dogs...............................................................................................................................133 USS Flagg....................................................................................................................................139 Coetzee Comes to Dinner.............................................................................................................146 vi PREFACE Beasts of Flight, a set of thirteen stories, melds the mundane with the peculiar, to subvert the readers expectations of literary minimalism. What exactly is literary minimalism? In his article, “A Few Words About Minimalism,” John Barth described (and perhaps better exemplified) it this way: “Minimalism (of one sort or another) is the principle (one of the principles, anyhow) underlying (what I and many another interested observer consider to be perhaps) the most impressive phenomenon on the current (North American, especially the United States) literary scene...” (1). Stylistically minimalistic stories are crafted to be economical and simple. However, many introduce hidden or bizarre elements that hint at a current of trouble beneath the surface of the writing. While a myriad of short story writers implement these techniques--Frederick Barthleme, Ann Beattie, and Bobbie Ann Mason come to mind--my admiration for the short stories of Earnest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, and Etgar Keret most heavily influenced this collection. Hemingway’s story collection, In our Time, serves as a prime example of minimalism. The stories are clean and simple. But like an iceberg, the majority of the substance is beneath the surface. Without tackling the difficulty of close reading, one would miss the true pleasure and fulfillment of Hemingway. In the story “Big Two-Hearted River,” the protagonist, Nick, returns stateside from war. He goes into the wild for a fishing trip. On the surface it is a nice story. Nick smells good smells. He feels good feelings. He eats good food. Great for Nick. In simple, quarried sentences, Hemingway allows the reader to see Nick’s world. But as he goes to the deep, dark parts of the river Nick grows hesitant. “Nick did not want to go in there now. ...In the vii swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any further today” (155). Why would Nick not want to land a big fish? This appears to be at odds for a war hero on a fishing trip. But beneath the surface, we sense Nick’s silent wrestling with the emotional trauma of combat. His unspoken pain and anguish are represented in the dark, still river water. Hemingway finishes the piece this way: “He looked back. The river just showed through the trees. There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp” (156). From a surface read, this ending is not entirely satisfactory. The take home is this: you live to fish another day. But with a deeper reading, taking into account the emotions beneath the story’s surface, the ending resonates with a haunting chord. Nick will live with this pain his whole life. This beast will always be lurking just beyond the good things. Like Hemingway, my sentences are often stylistically plain, tight, and clipped. In “What to Say, if Anything, to a Child in the Speedway Bathroom” the narrator becomes uncomfortable when he must share a public restroom with a child. He is clear with his emotions. “...Having him so close to me there, made me uneasy. And I did not like feeling that way in the bathroom.” On the surface his feelings are straightforward. However, beneath that veneer we sense deeper, more troubling emotions brewing. While waiting behind an inconsiderate shopper at the grocery, the narrator hints at his hidden anguish. “So I end up waiting, this vacant look on my face, as I watch her calculate which bag of sugar is the best deal. And as I gaze down the aisle I feel some strange kind of weight pressing in, like the world is too full for manners anymore.” The narrator is more than uneasy and uncomfortable. He his crippled with anxiety stemming from his social interactions. Taking a note from Hemingway's minimalism, this collection uses clear honest prose. But beneath the surface of the lines bigger fish hide in the darker depths. viii Along with Hemingway, Raymond Carver’s lean and muscular stories also influences my style. But Carver takes his bleak landscape past the trappings of realism and modernism. He dips his toe into the bizarre waters of the postmodern. Fragmented personal identities and commodified relationships texture his literary landscape. Take the story “Viewfinder,” from his collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The key elements of the plot are surreal and peculiar. The story begins when a stranger with hooks for hands tries to sell Polaroids of another man’s house. Somehow Carver ends this story with the homeowner climbing to his roof and hurling rocks in his yard. It is baffling to say the least. But Carver deftly uses this peculiar facade to coil conflict and history beneath the surface