HALL OF FAME by MARK EDWARD PEARSON (Under the Direction of Judith Ortiz Cofer) ABSTRACT “Hall of Fame” is a collection of nine short stories ranging in length from 3,500 words to 14,500 words. The stories include: “Self Defense With Out Weapons,” “Raft on Open Water,” “Crossing the Rio Grande,” “Hall of Fame,” “Ropes,” “Walking the Till,” “Demon Wrestling,” “Comrades,” and “Circling Over Ithaca.” The characters in general are rural as is the landscape. They are “outsiders” struggling to survive in the face of a world that is unreceptive to their dreams, goals and illusions. The struggle each character undertakes ultimately leads to a movement within each character that reflects a change from the character’s original situation. The characters in general are rural as is the landscape. They are “outsiders” struggling to survive in the face of a world that is unreceptive to their dreams, goals and illusions. The landscape the stories generally take place in is the middle Atlantic region, part of the Appalachian Mountains that runs up and down the east Coast. Characterized by low rolling green mountains, they are hilly yet steep and rugged. They rise above flat farm fields and valleys. The characters of the stories inhabit this landscape. It is an area strung between the rural, agrarian farm life and the urban one that is slowly invading, forcing a change – movement away from the old life. The characters are often at odds with change and they must cope with it. That is their struggle - dealing with the movement to a new lifestyle, or movement into adulthood and responsibility. It is a movement out of the self and into the greater world. The exception to the regional focus is “Raft on Open Water,” which occurs in the Caribbean, however, as the other stories it’s central character is also involved in a struggle, here it is against nature. Wrestling functions metaphorically in many of the stories as a representative of this struggle. Wrestling itself is a coping mechanism for many of the characters and as it becomes obsolete they must adapt themselves in order to survive, to learn to deal with the world in a different way. INDEX WORDS: Hall of Fame, Short Stories, Mark Pearson, Ph.D., The University of Georgia, Demon Wrestling, Self Defense Without Weapons, Circling Over Ithaca, Ropes, Raft on Open Water, Comrades, Crossing the Rio Grande HALL OF FAME by MARK EDWARD PEARSON B.G.S., University of Michigan, 1983 M.A., St. John’s College, 1995 M.A., University of California, Davis, 2002 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2005 © 2005 MARK EDWARD PEARSON All Rights Reserved HALL OF FAME by MARK EDWARD PEARSON Major Professor: Judith Ortiz Cofer Committee: Reginald McKnight Carl Rapp Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2005 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 2 SELF DEFENSE WITHOUT WEAPONS..................................................................16 3 RAFT ON OPEN WATER..........................................................................................38 4 CROSSING THE RIO GRANDE ...............................................................................54 5 HALL OF FAME.........................................................................................................82 6 ROPES .......................................................................................................................104 7 WALKING THE TILL..............................................................................................109 8 DEMON WRESTLING.............................................................................................120 9 COMRADES .............................................................................................................139 10 CIRCLING OVER ITHACA.....................................................................................161 11 THE FIRING LINE ...................................................................................................213 12 A VERY OLD STORY WITH ENORMOUS TEETH.............................................221 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Part I. Apologia These stories represent what has been for me a long apprenticeship in the short story. I almost said the culmination of a long apprenticeship, but did not because the process of learning about writing seems as if it will never end or culminate. I’ve learned that much over twenty-plus years of struggling with writing. The short story is a difficult form because of the precision it demands. With each story the process of creation begins again. There are no guarantees for success. The stories will reflect my experiences growing up in Pennsylvania, and the middle Atlantic region. But as the saying goes that anything committed to memory is fiction, so it is with these stories. This area has become an island in my imagination like one of those ancient maps of the world, oddly shaped and bearing little resemblance to the geography of the actual place, but rather, distorted, compressed, or enlarged accordingly to fit the needs of the story. It is a place more imaginary than real. The stories often begin here and move west (the American West). The movement West is an American motif, or perhaps cliché – traditionally the place where Americans go to seek their dreams, their fortunes, from Huck Finn to the present. I’m more interested in the reality of it than the mythology: what happens when the dream runs dry? Then we see the characters stuck and forced to fight for survival. I see the West functioning as a shaping force on human lives. The west to me symbolizes a mythical place where people go to seek their dreams. The harshness of the western landscape 1 and the fragility of human dreams make them at once partners and antagonists. The open spaces of the west create inspiration and illusion giving the impression of infinite possibilities, of escape; but the meanness of the land stands in harsh contrast to those illusions. The stories deal with characters coping with the end of those illusions when the real world has come crashing in on them, forcing a change. The stories essentially chronicle that change, illustrating a movement within each character, giving a sense of each characters’ ability to adapt, to move on. They illustrate a movement to a greater complexity within each character. I hope the characters in the stories demonstrate the capacity for greater complexity and greater humanity. I like to look at the movement toward resolution as a movement toward complexity. Stories or fictional narratives contain an inherent conflict. In literature, we are aware of the five-part structure of the story, which is commonly visualized as the inverted check mark: conflict, complication, crisis, falling action, and resolution. Consider a similar five-part sequence in terms of chaos and complexity: the conflict of chaos and order, its ensuing complications, the crisis or the temporary victory of chaos, the resurgence of order and the subsequent movement to a new order, and the resolution or complexity. The resolution of a story seems to readily ally itself with the idea of complexity, especially if we consider the change a main character undergoes throughout a story. When we read a story, we essentially follow the path a character takes as he or she strives to attain a goal. When faced with opposition to the goal the character must adjust his or her course. The subsequent adjustments create the nonlinear movement that can be equated with chaos. The adjustments lead to the character’s success or failure, the resolution. The resolution is a new point of stasis. It is different from the position the character began the story in. The experience the character has gained through the struggle makes him or 2 her a more complex personality in the end. I hope that this complexity is indicative of a greater capacity for the humanity of each character. The structure of most of the stories is fairly conventional in that they open with a conflict that needs resolution and they move toward crisis and resolution through a series of complications. I want to leave room in there for some experimentation as well, dealing with narrative structure and other elements of story construction. The stories are inevitably reflective of my growth as a writer, and the process of learning to write a complete story. The stories should be reflective of my struggles with character and plot development as well as resolution. Short stories are compact, precise works, in which all elements must contribute to the end. For me, the most difficult element of short story writing has been finding satisfactory resolutions to the conflicts in the stories in order to make them compete. Character development and plot development are difficult in their own right, and they hinge on and contribute to the resolution as well. Characters need to be created in full relief through the techniques such as internal and external dialogue, and carefully chosen descriptions of appearances and interaction with other characters and the external world. Likewise, plotting consists of selecting the right scenes to make the story efficient, believable and probably most importantly, enjoyable. These are the things I have worked on most consistently in my efforts to create