Short Story Collections and Recurring Characters
Junot Diaz's Drown is the third/fourth (of five) collection we've read so far this year with recurring characters throughout a collection (the first was The Things They Carried and the second was Going to Meet the Man, and the kinda third one was Nine Stories, but I'll talk about the weird nature of that one later). At the beginning of the semester, I thought these collections were very unique and was very surprised by Tim O'Brien's style of writing a short story collection. But as we progressed, I saw that these types of collections are quite common, though they have a lot of variation in how they approach the continuation of characters.
Tim O'Brien's I think surprised me so much because it seemed very similar to a novel to me, but with less of an overarching plot. All of the plot-based stories seemed to be continuing his experience in the war, and I though that if he wanted to, he could easily make it into a novel (he'd just have to add a few transitions). The one caveat was the way he had the "notes" sections of the collection, which weirdly reminded us that he was just writing a collection of stories (I don't know how this would have worked in a novel).
Going to Meet the Man just had two stories with connected characters, which I thought was really interesting. But, as we discussed in class, they seemed to go together, and having them both in the collection provided some meaningful background. This family, though, is a family Baldwin writes about a fair amount, just as Salinger does with the Glass family. In Nine Stories, he didn't exactly have continuous stories, but I thought the way he wrote about three of the siblings from the Glass family in separate stories was really interesting.
Junot Diaz writes his stories about Yunior and Rafa in a way I feel we haven't seen yet. Yes, the stories are continuous and don't overlap in terms of plot, but what's struck me is that for each story he still does some prefacing to Yunior's life, even though we already know about it. Maybe this is because the stories are interspersed with stories about others, or maybe it's just to reiterate our setting (because for this family we have two places wehre we see them). However, these stories seem more like you could take them out of the collection and they could easily be standalones, but putting them together makes for an interesting effect (for example I don't think Diaz could make the stories about Yunior into a novel that easily from what he has written so far in Drown).
Tim O'Brien's I think surprised me so much because it seemed very similar to a novel to me, but with less of an overarching plot. All of the plot-based stories seemed to be continuing his experience in the war, and I though that if he wanted to, he could easily make it into a novel (he'd just have to add a few transitions). The one caveat was the way he had the "notes" sections of the collection, which weirdly reminded us that he was just writing a collection of stories (I don't know how this would have worked in a novel).
Going to Meet the Man just had two stories with connected characters, which I thought was really interesting. But, as we discussed in class, they seemed to go together, and having them both in the collection provided some meaningful background. This family, though, is a family Baldwin writes about a fair amount, just as Salinger does with the Glass family. In Nine Stories, he didn't exactly have continuous stories, but I thought the way he wrote about three of the siblings from the Glass family in separate stories was really interesting.
Junot Diaz writes his stories about Yunior and Rafa in a way I feel we haven't seen yet. Yes, the stories are continuous and don't overlap in terms of plot, but what's struck me is that for each story he still does some prefacing to Yunior's life, even though we already know about it. Maybe this is because the stories are interspersed with stories about others, or maybe it's just to reiterate our setting (because for this family we have two places wehre we see them). However, these stories seem more like you could take them out of the collection and they could easily be standalones, but putting them together makes for an interesting effect (for example I don't think Diaz could make the stories about Yunior into a novel that easily from what he has written so far in Drown).
I too found the different ways in which reoccurring characters appear in our collections to be very interesting. I really enjoyed having Tim O'Brien as a consistent character throughout The Things They Carried, since it made keeping track of characters much easier. In many of the other collections, especially Salinger's Nine Stories, I struggled a little to connect the dots right away. Still, I thought it was really cool to see how the characters were all intertwined. In the collection Drown, I am really enjoying the fact that we keep coming back to Yunior and Rafa. I think the stories in the middle have an interesting effect, like a temporary intermission from their story before we get back to them. Also, I thought it was really cool that the character in "Drown" lives in the same area as Lucero so those two stories are also intertwined. It creates a sense of completion to the collection that makes it all the more engaging.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of recurring characters and families in the collections we’ve read so far, but each collection also seems to share a common set of recurring themes. Reading these as full collections rather than as individual stories with these recurring themes and characters has given class discussions the feeling of discussing a novel at times - the plot has to be outlined each day, but after that, since the themes are similar in most collective stories, we end up drawing back upon a lot of the themes talked about previously, much like in a novel class.
ReplyDeleteI think the differences in their writing styles is key to how they write about recurring characters. With Tim Obrien, it seemed natural that he have so many recurring characters because his book was so tightly wrapped around the war. But Baldwin, Salinger, and Diaz are much more fluid in going between different settings and experiences that I think some of those continuing storylines like Yunior's make a nice ribbon through the collections.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking while reading The Things They Carried how some of the stories would've been not entirely insufficient, but very fragmental if they were published individually. The incredible nature of short story collections (which is easy to forget) is that, like music albums, they are meant to be consumed simultaneously as one work of art, but also every component survives on its own out of context of the broader work. The ideal story in a collection is both its own cannonball-to-the-gut entire masterpiece, but also chain-reacts with other stories in the collection (not necessarily on a literal level, such as through recurring characters, but on a thematic, atmospheric level). I thought some of Tim O'Brien's stories were sparser than they ought to be on their own. But the collection as a whole was nonetheless strong.
ReplyDeleteI like how in short story collections, authors have more freedom to change up timelines and connect some stories and not others. Some of these stories do not necessarily go together, but they still support each other. I like your interpretation of characters that show up more than once. Strong Post!
ReplyDeleteThe continuation in short stories is very interesting. Personally I enjoy reading the stories as if they were standalone. The reason I enjoy this is because it allows you to imagine any backstory or draw your own assumptions. But if the author uses the same characters in multiple stories you learn more about them but also it can disprove your own imagination or conclusions. But Your blog post gives an interesting view on how different authors use continuation in multiple short stories.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, when I read 'Drown,' I think I'm reading chapters from a novel instead of a short story. But I really enjoy how Diaz keeps all of his stories focused on the experience of individuals from the Dominican Republic—it ties all of them together well, regardless of who the characters are or where the story takes place.
ReplyDeleteI love when the stories we read have overlapping/recurring characters. I love making connections between the stories, because I feel that it enhances them and the characters. We get to see how the character has stayed the same and/or changed. I also get more attached to the characters and find them more compelling when they appear more than once. I agree that the way Diaz puts Drown together with Yunior and Rafa appearing many times is very interesting to read.
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