I would like you to write a simple story just once more,” he says, “the kind Maupassant wrote, or Chekhov, the kind you used to write. Just recognizable people and then write down what happened to them next.
-- Grace Paley, “A Conversation With My Father”
“There. There’s a story idea for you,” said my friend Sandy, proud that she had come up with it as we sipped upon our lattes with whipped cream, the latter of which neither of us should have ordered as we are both a bit chunky. Somehow, we had snagged the final window seat at the Paris Baguette, which hummed with conversations.
“That’s not a story,” I said. “That’s a little nothing.”
“You’re the writer. Wave your magic writer wand. Make it an amazing story.”
“There’s too many people writing up nothing stories,” I said, staring at the pastry topped with strawberry chunks, pineapple bits, blueberries and unnamable fruits beckoning me like the apple beckoned Eve. But I was unable to eat and talk at the same time. “Even if the writer tells them brilliantly, so what? People might think there’s something profound in them but it’s an illusion. Something real needs to happen or it’s not a story.” Finally, I lifted the pastry to my lips, licked it, and then sucked the fruity goodness down.
“Oh yeah, like that story where you ran over your own kid in a car.”
“Oh, you read that one. I thought you just glanced at my stories without reading them.” I often sent out my stories, when they were published in one of the obscure e-journals that would accept them, to a growing list of friends and acquaintances. However, I increasingly doubted that anyone did more than glance at them, as the age of reading has passed us by.
“Of course I read them. Some of the time.” She bit into her plump matcha donut.
“That thing about running over the kid. That wasn’t part of the original story. I just added that at the last second. You have to admit, it had impact.” The sun was shining in my eyes. This window seat might have been a mistake.
“So, you admit you just threw it in on a whim? Why is it any more of a story than my idea?” Sandy is a lawyer, which means she makes much better money than I do, and often treats me to food and drink, but she also wants to impress me. She is jealous, I think, that she is not in the creative arts.
“What I had was already a story. I just added that final event to make it even more powerful. Your idea, on the other hand, isn’t even a little anecdote.” To accentuate the point, I gobbled down the last piece of fruit tart then followed up with a sip of latte.
“You’ve just admitted that you added something completely superficial,” said Sandy. As a lawyer, she seemed to want to always want to win a discussion rather than just talking.
“I didn’t admit that at all. The father running over the kid is perfectly in line with the whole story. It fits like the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle. It was just waiting there to be discovered.” A cloud was now obscuring the sun, making my vision clearer.
“Are you saying it existed even before you thought of it?” Sandy asked, then licked her lips, lasciviously seeking the last few crumbs.
“Yes and no. That’s what storytelling is. Creating what’s already there. It’s like my dad used to say about mathematics, although kind of different, too. Sometimes the mathematician constructs something. But the truly beautiful proofs are just there, waiting to be discovered.”
“But math isn’t storytelling,” said Sandy, raising her voice, perhaps to make a point, perhaps to not be drowned out by the crowd that frequents the Paris Baguette. “People make up stories. Or things happen to them and they turn it into a story. But isn’t math just there, waiting to be discovered?”
“That’s true. I think.” The sun was bright again. That’s the way it always is in Maryland. The clouds come and go, even on a lovely day. “But maybe stories are just there waiting to be lived. Or recrafted by the storyteller. Storified. Maybe, like the ancient Greeks believed, the storyteller is only a vessel. And maybe, after thousands of years of stories, we’re running out of ideas and the teller has to take little wisps of nothing floating in the air and find a way turn them into stories.”
“But isn’t more happening right now than ever before? Artificial intelligence. Climate change. Pandemics. Conspiracy theories. Don’t you need to write about these?”
“You’re right,” I said. “You’re right. In a way, they’re all old stories in new guises, old wine in new bottles, the whole human past in accelerated form. But they’ve mutated so much that they’ve become something utterly new. Like a new species. And the storyteller needs to grab them and make them real. In fictional form, of course. But fiction can be as real as reality.”
“So perhaps the age of little nothings is coming to a close. Maybe we need real stories again.”
“Perhaps. Although maybe little nothings also have their place. Maybe one can and should make art out of everything. After all, there is a poetry to the most insignificant seeming event. Even in the tiniest detail.”
“Maybe you could write a whole book turning mundane conversations about the weather into art.”
“Hey, don’t overdo it. I’ve got to write about the big things, too. Especially nowadays. The big somethings.” After all, I thought late that evening while reconstructing this conversation perched before a glowing computer screen, the world is changing, rapidly, violently, and forever.
The “I” who is the narrator of this story is, perhaps, the same “I” who typed it, in several drafts, on his computer, remaining faithful to an actual conversation, more or less. Or perhaps it is the credited author, Ethan Goffman, although he made up the entire conversation, from first word to last. Or perhaps the narrator is a different “I” altogether, perhaps a woman, or someone nonbinary, named, say, Andi Perkowitz or Sarah LeBlanc.
It’s also possible that the character “Sandy” is based on an actual person named Sandy who is also a lawyer who engages in philosophical banter with the narrator and offers him, her, or they free legal advice from time to time. Perhaps this Sandy is really named Sandy or perhaps has a different name altogether.
For those who like back story, it’s possible that the two met many years ago at Earlham College in a philosophy class, each found the other compelling, but never quite developed a full friendship. Then, some 35 years later, quite by accident, they chanced upon each other in Rockville Town Center on a brilliant sunny day and “Sandy” immediately recognized the author and they’ve been friends ever since. Or perhaps they reconnected the way most do nowadays, on Facebook or some other social media site.
It's also possible they had a brief, tumultuous love affair at Earlham. Now they’ve reconnected after all these years, but neither has told their spouse about the long-ago affair.
It’s even conceivable that the Ethan Goffman credited as author here is a plagiarist who found the manuscript printed out, its pages blowing on a fiercely windy day, down North Horners Boulevard, the East Rockville street on which the author resides. Perhaps he rescued as many pages as he could, snatched them before they blew into eternity, dodging between cars at some risk to gather them in his arms, hug them like a baby, as though he had given birth. When he took them home, he realized some pages were missing, maybe most of them. The complete manuscript, he reconstructed as best he could.
Perhaps what you are reading is plagiarized, author unknown.
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