Explorations and formulas
Each time we pick up a work of fiction, go to the theater, or turn on the television, we have a trace of the same magical expectation that can be heard in the voice of a child who begs, “Tell me a story.” Human beings have enjoyed stories ever since they learned to speak. Whatever the motive for creating stories — even if simply to delight or instruct — the basic human impulse to tell and hear stories existed long before the development of written language. Myths about the origins of the world and legends about the heroic exploits of demigods were among the earliest forms of storytelling to develop into oral traditions, which were eventually written down. These narratives are the ancestors of the stories we read on the printed page today. Unlike the early listeners to ancient myths and legends, we tend to read our stories silently, but the pleasure derived from the mysterious power of someone else’s artfully arranged words remains largely the same. Every one of us likes a good story.
The stories that appear in anthologies for college students are generally chosen for their high literary quality. Such stories can affect us at the deepest emotional level, reveal new insights into ourselves or the world, and stretch us to exercise our imaginations. They warrant careful reading and close study to appreciate the art that has gone into creating them. The following chapters on plot, character, setting, and the other elements of literature are designed to provide the terms and concepts that can help you understand how a work of fiction achieves its effects and meanings. It is worth acknowledging, however, that many people buy and read fiction that is quite different from the stories usually anthologized in college texts. What about all those paperbacks with exciting, colorful covers near the cash registers in shopping malls and airports?
These books, known as formula fiction, are the adventure, western, mystery, science fiction, horror, and romance novels that entertain millions of readers annually. What makes them so popular? What do their characters, plots, and themes offer readers that accounts for the tremendous sales of stories with titles like Caves of Doom, My Knight, My Lover, Range Riders, and Slay Ride? Many of the writers included in this book have enjoyed wide popularity and written best-sellers, but there are more readers of formula fiction than there are readers of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, or Joyce Carol Oates, to name only a few. Formula novels do provide entertainment, of course, but that makes them no different from serious stories, if entertainment means pleasure. Any of the stories in this or any other anthology can be read for pleasure.
Formula fiction, though, is usually characterized as escape literature. There are sensible reasons for this description. Adventure stories about soldiers of fortune are eagerly read by men who live pretty average lives doing ordinary jobs. Romance novels about attractive young women falling in love with tall, dark, handsome men are read mostly by women who dream themselves out of their familiar existences. The excitement, violence, and passion that such stories provide are a kind of reprieve from everyday experience.
And yet readers of serious fiction may also use it as a refuge, a liberation from monotony and boredom. Mark Twain’s humorous stories have, for example, given countless hours of pleasurable relief to readers who would rather spend time in Twain’s light and funny world than in their own. Others might prefer the terror of Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction or the painful predicament of two lovers in a Joyce Carol Oates story.
Thus, to get at some of the differences between formula fiction and serious literature, it is necessary to go beyond the motives of the reader to the motives of the writer and the qualities of the work itself.
Unlike serious fiction, the books displayed next to the cash registers (and their short story equivalents on the magazine racks) are written with essentially one goal: to be sold. They are aimed at specific consumer markets that can be counted on to buy them. This does not mean that all serious writers must live in cold garrets writing for audiences who have not yet discovered their work. No one writes to make a career of poverty. It does mean, however, that if a writer’s primary purpose is to anticipate readers’ generic expectations about when the next torrid love scene, bloody gunfight, or thrilling chase is due, there is little room to be original or to have something significant to say. There is little if any chance to explore seriously a character, idea, or incident if the major focus is not on the integrity of the work itself.
Although the specific elements of formula fiction differ depending on the type of story, some basic ingredients go into all westerns, mysteries, adventures, and romances. From the very start, a reader can anticipate a happy ending for the central character, with whom he or she will identify. There may be suspense, but no matter what or how many the obstacles, complications, or near defeats, the hero or heroine succeeds and reaffirms the values and attitudes the reader brings to the story. Virtue triumphs, love conquers all, honesty is the best policy, and hard work guarantees success. Hence, the villains are corralled, the wedding vows are exchanged, the butler confesses, and gold is discovered at the last moment. The visual equivalents of such formula stories are readily available at movie theaters and in television series. Some are better than others, but all are relatively limited by the writer’s goal of giving an audience what will sell.
While formula fiction may not offer many surprises, it provides pleasure to a wide variety of readers. College professors, for example, are just as likely to be charmed by formula stories as anyone else. Readers of serious fiction who revel in exploring more challenging imaginative worlds can also enjoy formulaic stories, which offer little more than an image of the world as a simple place in which our assumptions and desires are confirmed. The familiarity of a given formula is emotionally satisfying because we are secure in our expectations of it. We know at the start of a Sherlock Holmes story that the mystery will be solved by that famous detective’s relentless scientific analysis of the clues, but we take pleasure in seeing how Holmes unravels the mystery before us. Similarly, we know that James Bond’s wit, grace, charm, courage, and skill will ultimately prevail over the diabolic schemes of eccentric villains, but we volunteer for the mission anyway.
Although it is useful to recognize the conventions of genre fiction and to know that they are in place for a certain kind of reader’s expectations, there are limitations to any classification system. A novel doesn’t have to have dragons and trolls to be considered “high fantasy,” for example. The emphasis on plot in adventure novels doesn’t mean that they can’t also have compelling characters. Also, literary fiction (as we’ve been calling it) is not necessarily free from conventions, although it might be said that the best literary fiction is comprised of the works that are willing to push those conventions to their limits, or to break them, or at least to reveal a keen awareness of how they provide the framework for a story that is distinctive and important. Literary fiction is an art as well as a craft, and its practitioners experience the freedom that excites artists even if they are somewhat aware of the marketplace that will provide them with readers — and a living.
As you read the following story, “Wants” by Grace Paley, consider the way it is both like and unlike other stories you have read, perhaps beginning with a comparison to Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” earlier in this chapter.
Wants 1994
I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library.
Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.
He said, What? What life? No life of mine.
I said, O.K. I don’t argue when there’s real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.
The librarian said $32 even and you’ve owed it for eighteen years. I didn’t deny anything. Because I don’t understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.
My ex-husband followed me to the Books Returned desk. He interrupted the librarian, who had more to tell. In many ways, he said, as I look back, I attribute the dissolution of our marriage to the fact that you never invited the Bertrams to dinner.
That’s possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began. Then we didn’t seem to know them any more. But you’re right. I should have had them to dinner.
I gave the librarian a check for $32. Immediately she trusted me, put my past behind her, wiped the record clean, which is just what most other municipal and/or state bureaucracies will not do.
I checked out the two Edith Wharton books I had just returned because I’d read them so long ago and they are more apropos now than ever. They were The House of Mirth and The Children, which is about how life in the United States in New York changed in twenty-seven years fifty years ago. A nice thing I do remember is breakfast, my ex-husband said. I was surprised. All we ever had was coffee. Then I remembered there was a hole in the back of the kitchen closet which opened into the apartment next door. There, they always ate sugar-cured smoked bacon. It gave us a very grand feeling about breakfast, but we never got stuffed and sluggish.
That was when we were poor, I said.
When were we ever rich? he asked.
Oh, as time went on, as our responsibilities increased, we didn’t go in need. You took adequate financial care, I reminded him. The children went to camp four weeks a year and in decent ponchos with sleeping bags and boots, just like everyone else. They looked very nice. Our place was warm in winter, and we had nice red pillows and things.
I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn’t want anything.
Don’t be bitter, I said. It’s never too late.
No, he said with a great deal of bitterness. I may get a sailboat. As a matter of fact I have money down on an eighteen-foot two-rigger. I’m doing well this year and can look forward to better. But as for you, it’s too late. You’ll always want nothing.
He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber’s snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, halfway to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. What I mean is, I sat down on the library steps and he went away.
I looked through The House of Mirth, but lost interest. I felt extremely accused. Now, it’s true, I’m short of requests and absolute requirements. But I do want something.
I want, for instance, to be a different person. I want to be the woman who brings these two books back in two weeks. I want to be the effective citizen who changes the school system and addresses the Board of Estimate on the troubles of this dear urban center.
I had promised my children to end the war before they grew up.
I wanted to have been married forever to one person, my ex-husband or my present one. Either has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn’t exhaust either man’s qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.
Just this morning I looked out the window to watch the street for a while and saw that the little sycamores the city had dreamily planted a couple of years before the kids were born had come that day to the prime of their lives.
Well! I decided to bring those two books back to the library. Which proves that when a person or an event comes along to jolt or appraise me I can take some appropriate action, although I am better known for my hospitable remarks.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Discussion
- FIRST RESPONSE. There are many details about the narrator’s past life included in a relatively short space. Which ones seem most significant to you?
- How would you describe your emotional connection to the narrator: sympathy, pity, indifference, affection, or something more complex than any of those words?
- Does the narrator present herself differently to her ex-husband, to the librarian, and to us, the reader? The librarian is said to trust the narrator after she pays her overdue fine; do you trust her?
- Consider the significance of the story’s title. Some wants are expressed explicitly in the story; are there some that aren’t?
- Note all references to time and money in the story. How do these two motifs frame what might be the story’s theme, or central focus and meaning?
Volar 1 1993
At twelve I was an avid consumer of comic books — Supergirl being my favorite. I spent my allowance of a quarter a day on two twelve-cent comic books or a double issue for twenty-five. I had a stack of Legion of Super Heroes and Supergirl comic books in my bedroom closet that was as tall as I am. I had a recurring dream in those days: that I had long blond hair and could fly. In my dream I climbed the stairs to the top of our apartment building as myself, but as I went up each flight, changes would be taking place. Step by step I would fill out: My legs would grow long, my arms harden into steel, and my hair would magically go straight and turn a golden color. Of course I would add the bonus of breasts, but not too large; Supergirl had to be aerodynamic. Sleek and hard as a super-sonic missile. Once on the roof, my parents safely asleep in their beds, I would get on tiptoe, arms outstretched in the position for flight, and jump out my fifty-story-high window into the black lake of the sky. From up there, over the rooftops, I could see everything, even beyond the few blocks of our barrio;2 with my X-ray vision I could look inside the homes of people who interested me. Once I saw our landlord, whom I knew my parents feared, sitting in a treasure-room dressed in an ermine coat and a large gold crown. He sat on the floor counting his dollar bills. I played a trick on him. Going up to his building’s chimney, I blew a little puff of my superbreath into his fire-place, scattering his stacks of money so that he had to start counting all over again. I could more or less program my Supergirl dreams in those days by focusing on the object of my current obsession. This way I “saw” into the private lives of my neighbors, my teachers, and in the last days of my childish fantasy and the beginning of adolescence, into the secret room of the boys I liked. In the mornings I’d wake up in my tiny bedroom with the incongruous — at least in our tiny apartment — white “princess” furniture my mother had chosen for me, and find myself back in my body: my tight curls still clinging to my head, skinny arms and legs and flat chest unchanged.
In the kitchen my mother and father would be talking softly over a café con leche.3 She would come “wake me” exactly forty-five minutes after they had gotten up. It was their time together at the beginning of each day and even at an early age I could feel their disappointment if I interrupted them by getting up too early. So I would stay in my bed recalling my dreams of flight, perhaps planning my next flight. In the kitchen they would be discussing events in the barrio, Actually, he would be carrying that part of the conversation; when it was her turn to speak she would, more often than not, try shifting the topic toward her desire to see her familia on the Island: How about a vacation in Puerto Rico together this year, Querido? 4 We could rent a car, go to the beach. We could … And he would answer patiently, gently, Mi amor,5 do you know how much it would cost for all of us to fly there? It is not possible for me to take the time off … Mi vida,6 please understand. … And I knew that soon she would rise from the table. Not abruptly. She would light a cigarette and look out the kitchen window. The view was of a dismal alley that was littered with refuse thrown from windows. The space was too narrow for anyone larger than a skinny child to enter safely, so it was never cleaned. My mother would check the time on the clock over her sink, the one with a prayer for patience and grace written in Spanish. A birthday gift. She would see that it was time to wake me. She’d sigh deeply and say the same thing the view from her kitchen window always inspired her to say: Ay, si yo pudiera volar.7
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Discussion
- FIRST RESPONSE. Like Grace Paley’s “Wants,” this is a story told in the first person: that is, the narrator is a character in the story. Does the story seem to be more about her or her mother?
- The comic books the narrator reads are a version of the formula fiction we describe above. What role do they have in her life?
- The narrator’s superhero fantasies begin when she is twelve and end as she is entering adolescence. How does her understanding of her own body coincide with intellectual and emotional changes during those years?’
- What is the specific connection between the narrator’s desire to fly and her mother’s? What idea does the story advance through that implied connection?
Connections to Another Selection
- Compare “Volar” to Grace Paley’s “Wants” in questions 1–7. Neither story names any of its characters. Is that fact significant?
- Both stories are explicitly about desires: one is even titled “Wants.” Consider carefully the nature of those desires and the factors that impede those desires. Do the stories have the exact same message about the function of desire in the lives of humans? Put differently, is desire a foolish fantasy that leaves us feeling dissatisfied or is it the very thing that makes us work to improve our lives?
- How do both stories control the passage of time? How significant is time as a key thematic element within them? (A further comparison to “The Story of an Hour” might be interesting with regard to this question.)
- Both stories pay attention to money within the lives of their characters. How does money factor into the lives of both narrators?
- Are the stories essentially different because one describes the childish fantasies of a young teen and the other the lengthy marriage of an adult woman?
- How does reading influence the lives of both narrators?
- Discuss the idea of life changes in both stories. How much control do both narrators have over the changes in their lives? What factors limit their control over their lives?