The University of Maine DigitalCommons@UMaine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fogler Library Spring 5-8-2020 Square Dance Matthew T. Hammond University of Maine, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd Recommended Citation Hammond, Matthew T., "Square Dance" (2020). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3216. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/3216 This Open-Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SQUARE DANCE ​ ​ By Matthew Hammond B.A. English Literature A THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (In English) The Graduate School University of Maine May 2020 Advisory Committee: Hollie Adams, Thesis Advisor, Assistant Professor of English Gregory Howard, Associate Professor of English Ryan Dippre, Associate Professor of English, Director of College Composition 1 SQUARE DANCE By Matt Hammond Thesis Advisor: Dr. Hollie Adams An Abstract of the Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (In English) May 2020 SQUARE DANCE is a collection of nine short fiction stories. The first eight are connected thematically and the ninth story is intended to simulate a “bonus track” like one would find in a musical album. The collection follows mostly male characters as they each react to the curveballs life throws at them in their twenties, and explore the tests, formation, and bonds of friendship. This project is a commentary on modern society and incorporates elements of dark humor, science fiction, and absurdity as a means of expanding the scope of social commentary. The emphasis on humor and orchestrated arrangement of this project is a conscious rhetorical attempt at creating a lasting impression on the reader the way music and comedy impact its listeners. This project was most heavily influenced by the work of Kurt Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy, George Saunders, Raymond Carver, and Ernest Hemingway; who as a group taught me how to appreciate minimalism, respect the economy of language, and the importance of style. 2 Acknowledgements Professor Hollie Adams, Professor Greg Howard, Professor David Kress, Professor Steve Evans. Kurt Vonnegut, George Saunders, Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Heinrich Boll. Raymond Carver, Walter Abish, Stephen King, Thomas Pynchon, Flannery O’Connor. John Kennedy Toole, David Foster Wallace, Hunter S. Thompson, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Samuel Beckett, Martin McDonagh, Colin Barrett, Irving Welsh, Sam Shepard, Aaron Sorkin, Larry David, Robert B. Weide, Jerry Seinfeld, Louis CK, Mitchell Hurwitz, Lorne Michaels. Quentin Tarentino, Guy Ritchie, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Coen Brothers, Judd Apatow. Donald Glover, Tina Fey, Robert Carlock, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Rob McElhenney. Dave Attell, Doug Stanhope, Mitch Hedberg, Dave Chappelle, Steven Wright, Demetri Martin, Jerrod Carmichael, Bill Burr, Joe Rogan, Pete Holmes, Sarah Silverman, Bo Burnham, Hannibal Burress, Eddie Izzard, Jimmy Carr, Jim Jefferies, Tim Minchin, Robin Williams, George Carlin. Mitchell McCarthy, Patric Hamilton, John Brassil, John Emerson. Mom, Dad, Katie, Chris. 3 -------------------------------------(SQUARE DANCE)------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- …………………………………………………………………………………………………….... (INTRO): SO IT GOES...A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION…….……....…….…[4-24] ​ ​ …………………………………………………………………………………………………….... SIDE-A [SQUARE].......................................................................................................................... ​ (TRACK 1): MULLIGAN (2,886)...........................................................................[25-34] ​ ​ (TRACK 2): THE BUDDHIST (1,496)...................................................................[35-38] ​ ​ (TRACK 3): OUT OF ELDER (1,390)....................................................................[39-45] ​ ​ (TRACK 4): FIGURE IT OUT (6,245)...................................................................[45-66] ​ ​ ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… SIDE-B [DANCE] (INTERLUDE) ...........................................................................................[67] ​ (TRACK 5): FOR YOUR SERVICE (1,979)..........................................................[68-76] ​ ​ (TRACK 6) WANTED (3,096).................................................................................[77-88] ​ ​ (TRACK 7) HANDSOME ROB (2,461).................................................................[89-98] ​ ​ (TRACK 8) WHY MEN? (2,584)..........................................................................[99-107] ​ ​ …………………………………………………………………………………………………….... -------------------------------------(BONUS TRACKS)------------------------------------- (BONUS TRACK): FOURTH COURSE (1,339)...............................................[108-112] ​ ​ ​ (OUTRO) BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR…………………...…...……………[113] ​ ​ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 SO IT GOES: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO SQUARE DANCE ​ ​ Lucia DeFelice once told me, “You know, you should be a comedian.” What did she know? She was just another person in my first-grade class, albeit one with enough ambition to write to the sitting president at the time, George W. Bush, and actually get a written response. She brought it to show-and-tell. This was in 2001, and I remember going home to my mother after school and asking her the question, “What’s a comedian?” She told me a comedian’s a person who makes people laugh. That’s the bulk of my memories of 9/11. Though the nation I grew up in likes to tote they haven’t been in a war “since the big ones,” I fear I’ve been raised in a society that refuses to acknowledge when they’re participating in “Modern Warfare.” The definition appears to become so loose that it has created an uncertainty among me and my peers. We laugh at death because we’re used to it, we make jokes about atrocities because we see them constantly. Peter C. Kunze begins his essay “For the boys: masculinity, gray comedy, and the Vietnam War in Slaughterhouse-Five” with the following ​ ​ ​ ​ comment: “A noticeable trend in postwar American literature was black humor fiction, in which war, sexuality, death, and other traditionally serious topics received irreverent treatment as authors attempted to depict the irrationality of modern life” (Kunze 41). There may be truth in this sentiment by Kunze, that black humor provides a sort of comfort in the face of chaos. The sitcom family I befriended in afterschool reruns in these days was in Malcolm in the Middle, ​ ​ what I contest to be the first nihilistic-postmodern-post-pre-mid-war-time family. There is an unease in their household that mirrors the financial strain and trickle down-rage-enomics of the uncertain American family. 5 Writers have long asked similar questions of their own particular predicaments, and among the 9/11 writers, I think of George Saunders, a man who writes either from the perspective of or for the downtrodden. In his essay on Saunders, David P. Rando writes, “George Saunders peoples his stories with the losers of American history—the dispossessed, the oppressed, or merely those whom history’s winners have walked over on their paths to glory, fame, or terrific wealth. Among other forms of marginalization, Saunders’s subject is above all the American working class” (437). When I’m in the greatest of my own pity-parties, I consider myself to be one of those people. I was raised by two hard-working New Englanders: a father who hung drywall in skyscrapers in Boston and a mother who kept books for various insurance agencies and accounting offices in Southern New Hampshire. Protestant work ethic was a must, and it was best displayed with the utmost urgency, while my wheel of fortune ended up landing on funny. When I was a child I just thought people were funny. I’d listen to them and watch them and study what I thought was so funny about them. What I’d soon learn was that there is no going back once you fall in love with humor. The face the person makes when a person tries to hold back the laugh, like they really don’t want to give it up and concede. That’s my preferred form of domination. If I got any kinks, it’s comedy; it’s an animal impulse for me. It might be the only thing in my life I couldn’t live without. I would have to rewire my brain to avoid cracking the joke, taking the jab, or cutting one’s jib. A quote of Kurt Vonnegut’s from his essay collection A Man Without a Country that resonates with me considering this matter reads, “And I ​ ​ urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is’” (1). That’s how I feel when I tell a joke and see a chuckle, 6 or a smile, that’s what the smile on my own face says to me in big bright letters: “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” I made a conscious decision in my adolescence to consume as much television, film, music, and literature as possible so that I could increase my opportunities for jokes. I didn’t want to become intelligent or informed, I just wanted more material to make people laugh with. Jerome