University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2011-01-01 Building Kites David Brian Anderson University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Anderson, David Brian, "Building Kites" (2011). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 2231. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/2231 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BUILDING KITES: STORIES DAVID BRIAN ANDERSON Department of Creative Writing APPROVED: Daniel Chacón, MFA, Chair Lex Williford, MFA Benjamin C. Flores, Ph.D. Acting Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by David Brian Anderson 2011 BUILDING KITES: STORIES by DAVID BRIAN ANDERSON, M.A. THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Department of Creative Writing THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO December 2011 Table of Contents Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... iv Preface and Explanation of Poetics .............................................................................................. 1 Part 1: A Little Knowledge ......................................................................................................... 23 At a Flea Market ......................................................................................................................... 23 The Man Goes to the Store ......................................................................................................... 26 If you could have any super-power, what would it be? .............................................................. 32 Bicycle Built for Two ................................................................................................................. 39 … To be invisible, of course....................................................................................................... 45 I will never be -- ......................................................................................................................... 51 Girl Watching ............................................................................................................................. 55 Letter, with suggestions .............................................................................................................. 61 Good Meat, Great Price .............................................................................................................. 62 Part 2: Lutefisk and Other Bicycles ............................................................................................ 78 The Pain of Tattoo Removal ....................................................................................................... 78 When Airplanes Return .............................................................................................................. 88 Credits Roll ................................................................................................................................. 91 Dark Ride, Suspended ................................................................................................................ 96 Don’t Forget To Have a Good Day .......................................................................................... 102 Part 3: Prime Lenses and Ideal Triangles ................................................................................. 110 Work Space ............................................................................................................................... 110 The Way I Thought It Worked ................................................................................................. 118 Release of the Butterflies .......................................................................................................... 119 Rats……………………………………………………………………………………………128 Anhedonia ................................................................................................................................. 130 iv No More Kings ......................................................................................................................... 139 Super Giant Tetrahedron ........................................................................................................... 141 Vita… ....................................................................................................................................... 152 v Preface and Explanation of Poetics Flannery O‘Connor once wrote that unless the creative writer ―has gone utterly out of his mind, his aim is still communication‖ (―The Regional Writer‖ 844). Because the word ―communication‖ suggests the kind of dry prose associated with technical writing and academic theory, creative writers rarely describe their work as communication. Communication implies sensibility and clarity, a well- defined purpose, a careful consideration of audience, and a striving for mutual understanding. By comparison, literature and creative fiction, particularly in the hands of modernists, may seem difficult and obtuse to the casual reader. Yet communication involves more than a simple transmission of literal meaning and succinctly packaged information. A dedicated reader knows that reading William Faulkner or T.S. Eliot in a serious way, for instance, will ultimately pay dividends far beyond an exact understanding of literal or intended meaning. The reader will come to understand deeper truths, ideas suggested but not stated, resonant meanings that cannot be expressed exactly through a literal translation or rigorous analysis, but only through the reading itself. As fiction writer David Foster Wallace has said of the dangers of passive entertainment, ―art requires you to work,‖ suggesting that the reader plays an active part in the way in which a piece is understood and processed (qtd. in Lipsky 174). In that sense, literary fiction does not aim to communicate through the channels of least resistance. It asks the reader to engage himself, to work on some level as an active participant in the communication exchange. The creative writer aims to communicate, but the communication will be more than intellectual, and it will reflect more than a business-like transaction of useful information. It will involve stirring primal feelings of compassion and human understanding within the reader, and it will use images to suggest ideas and emotions that are not readily expressed through straightforward language. While some forms of communication may be compared to neon billboards flashing crass messages to drivers whizzing by on a freeway, 1 communication through creative forms more often resembles a flickering candle on the forest trail — a subtle yet sublime light that helps us to see our way as we walk tentatively in the darkness. In general, I offer the collected stories of this thesis in the hopes that they will communicate something new and ―interesting,‖ as Henry James famously suggested all fiction ought to do. The writer cannot concern himself in a direct sense with what might be communicated by his fiction, for it remains the reader‘s job to complete a work of fiction and tell us what he has received. I do hope that readers will receive something worthwhile, I also understand, as Roland Barthes has written, ―the true locus of writing is reading‖ (―Death of the Author‖ 3). As writers, we can only push the language in new directions and hope, as a result of this act of faith, that our writing will live up to the sincerity with which we pursue our art. In a text meant for students of writing fiction, Janet Burroway comments on the many different writers who have discovered that ―words will never exactly capture what we mean or intend‖ (2). The problems of writing will always involve the limitations of language and the ways in which words can impede or even interfere with the underlying meanings and grasping for truth. As I have worked on this collection, I have done so with an awareness that learning to create interesting language for its own sake helps a writer to develop his craft, but at some point the writer must learn to listen to where the language is taking the story and to avoid imposing clever bits of ―language‖ on stories that do not require them. To be sure, crafting serious fiction (as opposed to writing genre-driven stories) must involve a serious dedication to and attention to the possibilities of language, but this focus on language should not overtake, as Wallace Stegner and others have noted, the need for concrete imagery and insights into the human condition (7). Even as we consider the possibilities of language, we must be aware of the ways in which language can be paradoxically limiting and confining to a creative work. Language itself can be interesting, but it emerges as most interesting when it reflects on shadowy realms that might otherwise escape notice. 2 With these general craft considerations in mind, I will attempt to define in more specific ways my personal poetics as they are reflected in this thesis, and more precisely, to reflect on how I approach the writing of fiction and how this