Short not Sweet

Short Story: Cherry Soda

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9 months ago · 2 likes · Hayley Stone

On Sunday, she’ll make the next two drafts available, and Monday morning, I’ll publish my notes.

This editing pass is a little different than the ones I’ve done before. Haley is a genre writer from South Africa, and the original story had already been published on her Substack. I reached out to her and asked if she’d be interested in my editing notes, guiding her through a couple more drafts of the story, and that’s where this is different. In the past, I’ve offered my feedback, and that was it. This time, that feedback came in stages with Haley going back to work on the story each time.

God bless her. That took a lot of patience for a story that was supposed to be finished. It also took bravery, both because such a process can be painful but also because there’s no guarantee that my opinions would help improve the story. For me, that’s the bonus of this approach of offering feedback only in cases where I feel so inspired and believe that I have something to add. I come into this already certain I could help.

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I’ve shared my opinion on editorial and writing advice in the past. Some people are gifted and skilled editorial artists, and the man I’ve called “Substack’s Editor” is one of them. He and I may no longer be friends, but talent is talent.

The problem I have with most editorial feedback probably doesn’t apply to any of you, but you know people it does apply to. Some writers give bad writing advice, and they love telling everyone what to do. It’s one of the reasons I don’t support the idea of publicly giving advice on people’s fiction without consent.

Substack authors see the efforts being made to support other writers and think its masturbatory; the better use of our efforts, they say, would be to tell writers where their work could improve.

No matter what ideas we get from Notes, Substack isn’t just writers writing for writers. If we flood stories with unsolicited advice, that writer’s readers will see that, and they don’t know enough to understand when advice is warranted and good and when it’s not. I don’t see that being helpful.

Even if the advice is wonderful, it’s not always appropriate in that space.

So, do I think I’m an exception to the rule? No. I’m not offering unsolicited advice in a writer’s comments. Nor do I come to this believing I’m the answer to Substack’s problem.

I see a story with issues I believe I can address, and I offer to do so, if the author is interested. I ask to do it publicly (in my Substack not theirs) to make my time spent worthwhile, and that’s an option for anyone who’d like to do this. Offering thoughts privately is also a good option.

Check out Short not Sweet, and if editing notes interest you, watch for Monday’s post.

—Thaddeus Thomas

Short not Sweet

Not so sweet short fiction.

By Hayley Stone

Wonderland was not the first image to come to mind. Instead, I pictured the movie, Pan’s Labyrinth by director Guillermo Del Toro. Only, as the little girl descends into the earth, she finds not a fawn but herself. This is the memory Frida Kahlo shares in her illustrated diary.

“I ran with my secret and my joy to the farthest corner of the patio of my house, and always to the same place, under a cedron tree,” she wrote. “I would shout and laugh, amazed to be alone with my great happiness with the very vivid memory of the little girl.”

It’s her joy that astonishes me and holds my imagination—her sharp emotional response rather than the peculiarity of her journey. If I were to meet myself, my response could not possibly be so ecstatic.

This article is part of Literary Salon issue #5.

The Origin of the Two Fridas

From the Diary of Frida Kahlo

== Memory ==

I must have been six years old
when I had the intense experience of
an imaginary friendship
with a little girl… roughly my own age.
On the window of
my old room,
facing Allende Street,
I used to breathe on one of the top panes.
And with my finger I would draw
a “door”……
Through that “door”
I would come out, in my imagination,
and hurriedly, with immense happiness, I would
cross all the field I
could see until I reached
a dairy store
called PINZÓN… Through
the “O” in PINZÓN I entered
and descended impetuously
to the entrails
of the earth, where
“my imaginary friend”
always waited for me. I don’t
remember her appearance or her
color. But I do remember her
joyfulness — she laughed a lot.
Soundlessly. She was agile,
and danced as if she
were weightless. I
followed her in
every movement and while she
danced, I told her
my secret problems. Which
ones? I can’t remember. But
from my voice she knew all about my
Affairs. When I came
back to the window, I would enter
through the same door I had
drawn on the glass. When?
How long had I been
with “her”? I don’t know. It could
have been a second or thousand of
years… I was happy. I would erase
the “door” with my
hand and it would “disappear.” I ran
with my secret and my
joy to the farthest corner
of the patio of my house, and
always to the same place,
under a cedron
tree. I would shout and
laugh Amazed to be
Alone with my great happiness
with the very vivid memory of
the little girl. It has been 34 years
since I lived that magical
friendship and every time
I remember it it comes alive and
grows more and more inside
my world.
PINZON 1950. Frida Kahlo

LAS
DOS
FRI-
DAS

This particular entry is also available as a children’s book.

Columbus Museum Store: (The children’s book, The Two Fridas, is available wherever books are sold, but the Museum Store is where I discovered it.)

The Diary of Frida Kahlo is available on Amazon, but you can explore it for free at Internet Archive.

I Ran with My Secret and My Joy

I must have been six years old.

Frida was diagnosed with polio at age six and was confined to her bed for nine months. It crippled her right leg and left her with a limp.

It has been 34 years since…

While in preparatory school, hoping to study medicine, she was impaled in a horrific bus accident that killed many of the other passengers. Her injuries required over thirty surgeries across her lifetime and turned her life’s calling from medicine to painting.

Frida was famous for her introspection, and when, in her childhood, she climbed down into the bowels of the earth, the little girl she found was herself, something perhaps only adult Frida could recognize. The self she found was full of silent laughter and would dance as Frida told her all her secret problems. When she returned, she brought her secret self’s joy with her.

When we look back at ourselves as children, we’re looking through years of gain and loss, of horror and joy—all the many scarring emotions. All that experience and all its sadness stand on a foundation of innocence and wonder.

Perhaps, much of what we create is a conversation between those selves. Inside each of us are two Fridas, and only one of them is innocent and full of joy. In that juxtaposition, in that contrast, art is born.

— Thaddeus Thomas

Read my essays on Prose Style and Literary Theory here.
The book version is coming soon.

P.S.—I sent another accidental email last night. Subscribe anyway.

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I forced my way through Catcher in the Rye because I wanted to finally finish it, and I knew there would never be a circumstance under which I’d enjoy the experience.

My current struggle is with Absalom, Absalom! There are passages I hate and passages I love, and I’m going to read something else while on vacation because I’m currently close to resenting the book.

Reading All the Pretty Horses was a joy, but that doesn’t mean I like every choice McCarthy makes. Aspects of his signature style grow old, and yet this man remains my favorite author. The denouement of the novel (and by denouement, I include what we’d normally classify as the climax) is the perfect excuse to discuss the strange impact of McCarthy’s prose.

But first, let’s take care of some business—in 3 parts:

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2.a. Open Word deadline.

Deadline for first level stories (which are actually the climax of the tale(s)): May 15th.

2.b. The forum is now open to everyone.

…and…

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To the first ten people who join our reading group in the forum.

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Now, let’s discuss: Cormac McCarthy.

There’s far less agreement on the concepts of climax and denouement than we currently pretend, but that’s not what I mean. Not at all. When we get to John Grady reclaiming the horses and getting a little cathartic vengeance in the process, it felt obligatory. I didn’t want it. The story was over. I didn’t need it.

Now I did eventually get into that part of the tale, and after the captain is taken from him and we get into the actual denouement, I’m all for it. I need his wrestling with all that happened and his inability to return to the Shire. I loved it.

Why the difference? Part of it has to do with the style of the quote above. Don’t hate me, but that’s some boring prose. It’s not entirely ineffectual as there are delicious words within it. I don’t want to overstate my point, so I'll admit John Grady burning out the wound was riveting, and I enjoyed the setting of the captain’s shoulder. Still, it felt like all of that led me to the relief of this paragraph:

In his sleep he could hear the horses stepping among the rocks and he could hear them drink from the shallow pools in the dark where the rocks lay smooth and rectilinear as the stones of ancient ruins and the water from their muzzles dripped and rang like water dripping in a well and in his sleep he dreamt of horses and the horses in his dream moved gravely among the tilted stones like horses come upon an antique site where some ordering of the world had failed and if anything had been written on the stones the weathers had taken it away again and the horses were wary and moved with great circumspection carrying in their blood as they did the recollection of this and other places where horses once had been and would be again. Finally what he saw in his dream was that the order in the horse's heart was more durable for it was written in a place where no rain could erase it.

That’s beautiful and brilliant, and I think I appreciate it all the more because of the prolonged action it took to bring us here. I realize I like that he doesn’t keep up this flavor for an entire novel, but uses it wisely and sparingly, a moment to relax after all that action.

McCarthy’s action is clear. I understand exactly what happened, and when I get to this paragraph, I am reminded why it happened. The obligatory action is of character, not formula. It could have been no other way, not unless Alejandra’s answer had been different—and her answer was never going to be different. Then and only then could John Grady have abandoned the horses to those who wronged him.

This echoes, too, Blevins’s theft of the horse he lost—the only part of his foolishness John Grady agreed to be a part of, the only part in which Blevins found the grace to succeed—and I’ve said previously that I see Blevins as the personification of John Grady’s infatuation with a time that’s spent and left without him. Alejandra was not that past. She was the reality of the present within the fantasy of this moment he desired, and he tried to have it all, past and present, too, and was rejected.

He doesn’t come out of this the way Lacey Rawlins does, shaken clean of his delusions and ready to return to the world as it is. John Grady renews his dedication to a time dead and buried, even if that decision leaves him with no place to call his own.

This is still good country.

Yeah. I know it is. But it aint my country.

He rose and turned and looked off toward the north where the lights of the city hung over the desert. Then he walked out and picked up the reins and mounted his horse and rode up and caught the Blevins horse by its halter.

Catch your horse, he said. Or else he'll follow me.

Rawlins walked out and caught the horse and stood holding it.

Where is your country? he said.

I dont know, said John Grady. I dont know where it is. I dont know what happens to country.

Rawlins didnt answer.

Perhaps, there is… no country for young men.

John Grady’s fantasy isn’t that of the outlaw. He goes out of his way to make a rightful claim to Blevins’s horse and to make his full and open confession before the judge. It’s a reminder that his was not the pursuit of ideals woven on cinema’s silver loom. He worked the land and its animals, and the work suited him. In another time, it would have been his birthright.

It’s easy to scoff at John Grady winning the hearts of the people—and the girl and her father—by being a natural with horses, beyond all others. I scoffed, seeing in it the trope of the preternaturally-gifted white man, but in context, the only country to need and recognize his gift has rejected him. In another time, he would have held onto the honor his talents deserve. In this present day, no honor awaits him, no honor but that which he holds within himself.

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Final Thoughts:

I didn’t finish this book the first time I approached it, attempting to listen to the audio book while doing yard work. I caught some passages and missed others, and when Blevins hid from the lightning, naked in a rut, I decided I’d had enough foolishness.

Since then, I’ve read Cities of the Plain, the final book in the border trilogy, and I’m pleased this effort gave me reason to return to Horses.

It’s too early for this to upset my favorite McCarthy books, each of which I’ve read at least twice. Suttree. Blood Meridian. No Country for Old Men. If there’s interest, I’m tempted to continue these readings, perhaps with a return to one of those three—and I’m most tempted by No Country for Old Men, mostly because in my last reading, I tried to understand the differences in the conversation with Ellis Bell as its portrayed in the book and the movie. I came away uncertain but feeling I preferred the movie, which is a position I’d very much like to challenge.

Besides, I’ve read No Country for Old Men more often than any other McCarthy book, and yet I don’t own a copy of my own. It would be a good excuse to remedy that.

Coda:

I’ve reached a point with this newsletter where I need private feedback. Reach out to me via email or DM and talk to me about the weaknesses in my work. Where do I need to improve? What habits do I need to cut? What works and needs protecting?

Six months ago, I committed to a major shift in how I approached the newsletter, and the difference between the two is stark. The quality is so much better, and the work is meaningful.

I’m attempting to make another shift, and I’ve announced a few initiatives that will take place in the coming months, but I long to take another step forward in quality, as well. It seems only right that the inspiration for that change would come from my readers.

— Thaddeus Thomas

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Flash Fiction for Paid Subscribers—I’m busy getting ready for a trip, so I’m pausing my effort to offer new flash fiction with every post, but this is a good opportunity to make sure you’ve read the first two chapters of my flash serial:

As Dueña Alfonsa made her final speech, I was reminded of Ellis Bell, the uncle whom Ed Tom visits at the end of No Country for Old Men. Her monologue and the conversation between Ellis and Ed Tom serve the same purpose. It contextualizes all that has come before it, which isn’t to say that it explains what we’ve read. In the case of Ellis Bell, it complicates what had been simple, but Alfonsa gives a declaration that comes dangerously close to being a peg I’d hang the whole story upon. To do so would be a mistake, but the temptation remains.

Courage is constancy.

But first, let’s take care of some business—in 3 parts:

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2.a. Paid subscribers—Open Word deadline.

I’ve presented a proposed deadline for the first flash stories. Check the Open World channel in our forum.

2.b. World Building—Open Word deadline.

is creating a Word Anvil Bible where we will track the lore as it grows. You can find out more at the forum.

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To the first ten people who join our reading group in the forum, and the forum is available to paid subscribers, only.

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Now, let’s discuss: Cormac McCarthy.

I don’t write today’s essay to explain the meaning of Alfonsa’s speech. Instead I see in it a challenge to literary theory.

In preparation for my last essay in the series, I read a feminist critique that spoke of Alfonsa and Alejandra as villains, and that if Alfonsa’s hardships were meant to redeem her, they did not. I fear that our intersectional approach to narrative suggests that fiction must speak to all cases equally. Yet, if fiction were to attempt to do so, it would struggle to say anything at all.

Alfonsa herself suggests that she and John Grady are enemies, but that doesn’t make her and Alejandra the villains of the tale. That would suggest that the story presumes, along with John Grady, that Alejandra is the prize to be won. The fact is that John Grady went south in search of the past and found himself thwarted by the new ideals of feminism. He was always destined to fail, and had he found the past, he would have thwarted by patriarchy. Perhaps here, he is frustrated by both, but it is feminism that is given the stage, not to make it the villain, but to make it the foil to John Grady’s foolish idolizing of a past that was partially lost and partially never existed. The prize of the story is a chance to come to terms with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Horses and Old Men are similar in this regard, and both require this shift of context to see the world of the story from beyond the presumptions of its central characters.

It is perhaps paradoxical that I say Alejandra is not the villain when now I suggest that she plays the role of Anton Chigurh in this tale, but Anton is the villain because of what he represents. Alejandra is a representation of humanity shaped and squeezed by the forces of the past that birthed her, both a dictatorial patriarchy and a rebellious feminism. We see the concepts suggested early on in another suggested villain, John Grady’s mother, who found in the death of her father a freedom from bondage to the ways of the past. She abandons the ranch, her dying ex-husband, and her son to pursue the life long denied her—and if she is seen as a villain, it’s only because this is her son’s story and not her own.

If Alajandra and Alfonsa are to be considered villains, it’s for the same reason—but to hold onto that presumption we must treat the story like any other western. To do so is to lie. It strips the McCarthy’s tale of everything true and replaces it with formula. We rewrite the story in order to condemn it.

The villain of the story isn’t either of these ladies nor even the various faces of Mexican (in)justice. Many of you will hate me for saying this, as many of you cried over him, and well you should, but even so, Jimmy Blevins is this story’s villain. He is the personification of the boys’ impulsive and immature pursuit of the past. He is the truth about themselves that John Grady and Rawlins refuse to see. He is that thing beyond John Grady’s control that strips from him all he dreamed of holding.

Discover all my essays on:

A novel need not, perhaps should not, convey all truths and represent all realities. The value-focused analyses have merit, but they also represent a danger for the author who would take them to heart. This doesn’t absolve McCarthy for his weakness in portraying women, but not every novel—

Stop right there. The purpose for literary criticism from a feminist perspective is to help correct a history of poorly represented women and poorly respected women authors. Highlighting the ways a book fails in this regard is important, and our argument cannot be that not every novel need to be a feminist manifesto, not when we’ve had such a bad showing.

As a whole, we need to strive to do better in so many areas, but it’s okay if a particular novel fails in some. Does All the Pretty Horses fail? I don’t think I’m the one to judge that, but I believe it earns its place as McCarthy’s most valiant effort to depict women. I appreciate, respect, and believe the character of Dueña Alfonsa.

What of Alejandra? As I’ve stated, she’s representational more than she is a full character. As for their romance, I believe in its beginning and end, but I feel like I missed something in the middle. It’s very possible that I literally did.

I also believe that a novel that focused on Alfonsa and Alejandra would be a feminist novel and that All the Pretty Horses uses feminist themes to its own end—telling the story of a boy coming to terms with the time in which he’s been born.

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Final Thoughts:

I believe its telling that without Blevins, John Grady would never have strayed into Alejandra’s world, but once there, without Blevins, he could have stayed. A foolish desire for the past brought them together, but the realities of their present day tore them apart.

Blevins died because he couldn’t leave the past behind. He thought he would die by lightning like those before him, and he thought he was owed all he lost to the storm, those things he promised John Grady he would leave behind. The gun he used so well and which once seemed to be his forever was stripped away, and he went back to reclaim what was already lost. Exchange the gun for the ranch, and now you have John Grady’s descent into Mexico. They are the same thing.

— Thaddeus Thomas

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Weekly Flash Fiction for Paid Subscribers—these won’t be emailed to you, but you’ll find the link in my regular posts. Here’s a fantasy flash fiction story for you:

Also, check the points of business after the introduction: I’m giving away paperback books. (Point 2.c.)

As I try to uncover the meaning of The Sisters, the opening story in Dubliners by James Joyce, I want to start with what I see the story itself saying, before we get into all the possible nuances. The story starts with old Cotter speaking ill of the dead Father Flynn, even if he can’t quite articulate what it is he means to say. There’s something queer, he says. He has a theory which he doesn’t give. The story ends with a discussion of Father Flynn’s last days. He’d suffered a couple of strokes, and before the third one which paralyzed and ultimately killed him, it had created in him a decline and a moroseness. The most worrying sign was when they found him in the dark chapel, in the confessional, laughing to himself.

Instead of assuming Joyce was hinting at something more sinister about Father Flynn, who was a friend of the boy who provides the story’s POV, I think it’s important to note that the queerness the boy shouldn’t have been around (in the story’s vernacular) is Father Flynn’s illness, or specifically, the behavior associated with it. The word “queer” isn’t used again until the women discuss the troubling behavior at the end of the book. This would indicate the judgment against the priest is less a critique on religion than on people’s attitude toward the sick.

But first, let’s take care of some business—in 3 parts:

1. Easily Manage Your Subscription

Every Section has a toggle. Toggle on the ones you want to receive and toggle off the ones you don't.

This is part of The Re:Read Series.

To choose which series come to your inbox, go to:
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2.a. Paid subscribers—Open Word deadline.

I’ve presented a proposed deadline for the first flash stories. Check the Open World channel in our forum.

2.b. World Building—Open Word deadline.

Haly, the Moonlight Bard ✒️

is creating a Word Anvil Bible where we will track the lore as it grows. You can find out more at the forum.

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To the first ten people who join our reading group in the forum, and the forum is available to paid subscribers, only.

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Now, let’s discuss: The Sisters.

Old Cotter has a strange feeling about Father Flynn because Flynn is ill, and there seems to be a connection between that illness and moral failure in the eyes of old Cotter. We see similar language in the boy’s thoughts where he says of the word paralysis, “But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.” Later, the dead father’s grey face follows him in a dream:

This last quote directly connects to two other parts of the story. First, the father is confessing in the dream, and in reality, he was found alone in a confessional, laughing to himself. Second, the boy says he felt as if he were absolving “the simoniac of his sin.” That concept was introduced earlier, as the word paralysis sounded strange to him, “like simony in the catechism.” Simony is the church selling that which is holy: pardons, offices, sacred items, etc. It was named after Simon Magus who tried to buy the power of the Holy Spirit from Peter. The other word offered was gnomon in the Euclid. It has the definition of the protruding part of a sundial, but here it is specifically referenced with the Euclid, the famous text on geometry. In this case, the gnomon is what is left when you remove from the corner of a parallelogram an identical but smaller parallelogram. I think the symbolism of the gnomon references the Father’s dementia. He has become what is left when that smaller part of himself is removed. This mental illness is equated to sin in the eyes of the characters and particularly, in the boy’s dream, the sin of simony. Why? Do they fear, in their ignorance, that the Father has sold some holy part of himself?

If there is merit to this understanding of the story, then the next question I have is what does the text have to say about this equating illness, and mental illness in particular, with sin. It would be easy to suppose a critique from a modern, progressive standpoint, especially personally, with my work in psychology-relevant fields.

After the old-Cotter segment, the boy goes to bed, puzzling over what Cotter suggested but could not bring himself outright to say. Supporting Cotter’s fear that an impressionable boy would be affected, he sees the old man’s grey face and cannot rid himself of the vision by hiding under the covers and thinking of Christmas.

Then he goes to the shop, behind which the old priest could usually be found. It was located on Great Britain street, which has to be important in an Irish story. The detail I know for certain was housing for the poor was located there. The store’s name was Drapery, which makes me think of the beginning of the book and the boy looking for signs in the window that the priest was dead. The store sold children’s bootees and umbrellas. A sign usually hung in the window but was hidden that day; it said umbrellas re-covered. (Recovered?) A mourning bouquet of silk or cloth flowers hangs on the knocker and a sign posted there makes real the man’s death for the boy.

He was annoyed with himself because he felt the priest’s death had freed him from something. This seemed unfair, for the priest had taught him so much.

One of these institutions he reflects upon is the secrecy of the confessional. Now, I’ve made an argument for the “queerness” about the priest to be related to his illness and not some greater trouble, but this consideration on lessons taught ends with a pointedly creepy touch: “When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip—a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.”

The boy remembers old Cotter’s words at this point, connecting this uncanny smile with the man’s unspoken fears, and he tries to remember more of his dream from the night before. He remembers curtains (Drapery?) and an antique, swinging lamp. He’s somewhere where customs are different, perhaps Persia.

Questions arise in the boy’s mind. In the context of the priest’s decline and death, his idiosyncrasies take on new meaning. He’s haunted by Cotter’s half-spoken accusations. He was old and different, but so far, without accusation. Where the story comes uncomfortably close is in the boy’s thoughts on the duties of the priest, in particular, the handling of the body of Christ and the secrecy of the confessional:

The boy and his aunt visit the house of mourning. There may be hard feelings between the aunt and Nannie, because it is only the soberness of the situation that has his aunt shaking her hand and not yelling. As nothing else is mentioned on this matter, this is more likely a case of deafness. The boy focuses on being silent. He walks on tiptoe and refuses the crackers because of the noise they’d make. He can’t focus to pray and makes note of how poorly Nannie is dressed. He has the false sense that the priest is smiling; his face is grey and he holds a chalice, a cup, like the one he broke in the episode that supposedly started his decline.

Downstairs, they join Eliza who is sitting in her brother’s chair. Eliza and Nannie are the sisters of the story’s title. Nannie serves and then sits behind Eliza on the sofa, nearly asleep while Eliza does the talking. Much of that talk is surface niceties, but then:

We are brought back again to old Cotter with that word, queer.

The story closes with the revelation of facts I’ve already given. The priest went into a mental decline and was found locked in the dark chapel, sitting in his confessional, laughing softly to himself.

What was Father Flynn’s disappointment? We know he attended the Irish College in Rome, which is impressive and especially so when we learn the family comes from Irishtown, which I’m told is a lower-class district in Dublin.

As part of the questioning, the aunt asks obliquely about last rights, which were given, we are told. It’s an interesting question, if the aunt had reason to doubt he could receive them for some great sin. (I say last rights under the assumption that’s the same as Extreme Unction, which may be the more proper term.)

Everyone talks about how peaceful and resigned the priest is in death, but when the boy looks, the word Joyce uses to describe the priest’s face is truculent: aggressively hostile or belligerent.

Part of the boy’s lessons were in understanding the different kinds of sin, and mortal sin requires absolution from a priest to receive salvation. Other lessons included Napoleon, who closed the Irish College in 1798, and the catacombs which were both a burial place for the dead and a hiding place from religious persecution.

Hemingway’s iceberg theory for fiction had him writing about a melodramatic topic but never directly mentioning it, whether it was suicide or abortion. I don’t think that’s what this is. There’s no definitive answer we can come to if we just collect enough clues. The priest’s face is belligerent but people talk about him being at peace because that’s what people do with death. He may have died angry with God but he may not have. The question to his last rights came from no particular insight, otherwise the family would have kept the boy away. His uncle mocked his interest in the church as it was.

We don’t know because they don’t know. Their suspicion is the key, and that suspicion seems rooted to me in the fear of mental illness.

Two Versions of One Story

A reference:

Joyce's "The Sisters": A Development
Florence L. Walzl
James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 1/2, JJQ 50 YEARS: JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY UNIVERSITY OF TULSA 1963–2013 (Fall 2012-Winter 2013), pp. 73-117 (45 pages)

Read it at JSTOR

In the first part of my analysis, I said it’s most likely Nannie is deaf. I’m probably the only person who first thought it was anything else, but the original version says it plainly. She’s deaf.

Great Britain Street. Here’s another thing I didn’t realize. The shop, Drapery, is located at the street level of the house where Father Flynn lives. It only struck me because the original version says the house is on Great Britain Street and both versions refers to the shop (on Great Britain Street) as a house.

Of all the stories in Dubliners, The Sisters is the most changed and, second only to The Dead, is one of the most important pieces of the collection.

The Sisters: A Comparison

The Homestead version has been called more akin to Romanticism than the final version’s Modernism. My first clue of why that might be is in the first line and repeated thereafter: Providence.

In Dubliners, gone is the suggestion the boy was guided by Providence and of his being a prophet for correctly guessing the priest’s death. This is the distinction critics make in calling the original (more) Romantic.

We find this change also in a less veiled style of writing. Joyce goes from, did it reveal the ceremonious candles in whose light the Christian must take his last sleep—to—for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. The writing presents the world as it is, clearly.

That doesn’t mean there’s no room for the symbolic, but even the symbolic becomes crisp.

It strikes me as odd to make such a distinction between one version speaking of Providence and the other of “some maleficent and sinful being,” but the latter is clearly a mental process and (I argue) a key for opening the symbolism of the work as a whole. It describes not the work of the supernatural, but the cruelties in the way we think about the sick and mentally ill.

As a writer, this encourages me to be clear in descriptions and the setting of facts. The 1914 version is better written and poetic, and important details aren’t lost within indirect sentences.

Let’s take a step back to compare the relative strength of these openings:

His revision is succinct, powerful, and clear. We know exactly where we are in the narrative, which is ironic, as the first version tells us what street we’re on but little else. The first version is passive. The final version is blunt and sure. His original doesn’t even mention death until the second paragraph; until then he dances around the subject, repeatedly referring to the character’s impending death as “it”. Then we’re given the new material, the rumination over the word paralysis, and we have room for his pondering because the situation is as clear in our minds as it is in the text.

As we move on to Old Cotter, I may contradict everything I just said. The first version is roundabout in setting up the death, and then plain in setting up Cotter. It tells plainly Cotter’s concerns, while the second gives us mystery with his inability to articulate. The opening clarity makes this mystery of speech possible and meaningful.

The first version gives us information but none of the momentum in the revision. Cotter’s speech becomes the question that propels the story forward. What was wrong with the priest? Why shouldn’t a child be around a man such as that? The lack of answers sends us searching for closure and informs us how to view the rest of the story. This, too, is a type of clarity and simplicity. The original is indirect, while the second guides the reader.

Opening (1914) paragraph: Sets the narrative and introduces us to the conflation of illness and sin.

Second (1914) paragraph and following (until the trip to the shop): immediate cut to his coming down to supper in the middle of Old Cotter’s opinion. There’s conflict in that opinion. The dialog in the original is lifeless by comparison, but here our emotions rise to the narrator’s defense while we also worry if there really was something dangerous about the priest. The offending suggestions and unanswered questions make for an engaging and meaningful interchange between the adult characters that propels the story forward.

Writers often talk about the scene and the sequel. In the original, there wasn’t enough conflict to warrant a sequel, a moment in the story that reflects on what happened in the scene. Now a sequel is demanded and given when the narrator tries to sleep but is haunted by Old Cotter’s words and visions of the dead priest’s face. None of that existed before.

The Drapery scene: up through the reading of the posted card, there are some minor editorial changes. Only in the second paragraph, do we resume with the meaningful changes. In the original, the boy is shocked to find the old man was really only sixty-five. Joyce replaces that with the more immediate and important emotion. The reality of the death sets in and the boy finds himself “in check.” The first version comments on the priest sitting in the room behind the shop, but this one presents us with the narrator wanting to complete this common ritual only to find himself blocked by the reality of death.

The second version narrows the action. The boy brings him the snuff (a present of his aunt) instead of the aunt bringing it herself. It keeps the relationship between the priest and the boy central. In the original, the sisters are introduced here (and we’re told Nannie is almost deaf), but they’re removed entirely from the scene in the revision. The details all switch to focus on the boy and priest, the subject of the mystery set forth by Old Cotter’s speech.

In the next paragraph, after the omitted line about not believing the priest dead which has now been contradicted, the boy lacks the courage to visit and walks away on the sunny side of the street, feeling like the death has freed him in some way. He chastises himself, remembering all the priest taught him, which brings us to details from the original version. Again, the specificity and the unanswered questions in the beginning give direction and focus to the narrative now. The guilty feeling of freedom is natural, but it takes on a sinister tint here, as does the priest’s strange smile.

These changes at the start guide the writer as well as the reader. He knows his own focus and what details stray from that focus.

Visiting the dead:

The change in description calls to mind the opening and looking to the windows for the candles set at the head of the corpse. Drawing the reader’s mind back to a detail would be meaningless unless that detail were clear and meaningful in the first place.

Details are increased here, giving Nannie more action before she fades into the background. This has become necessary as this is the sisters’ first introduction, but it also keeps the information about the sisters where its most important. Added to this, as well, is the action of the boy feeling the need to be silent. He tip-toes and rejects the crackers for fear they’d be too loud. None of these details appear in the original, and they speak to a natural instinct of respect for the dead. It also suggests he fears he may wake the dead, which carries the weight of the mystery that lies between the priest and the boy.

Joyce’s dialog carries the niceties of society. When reading The Dead, for example, every real and true utterance is a shock of rudeness. Polite conversation is shallow. We have that here but the final version chooses its polite conversation more carefully. The details of the story may be the same, but now they reflect the climax of the mystery Joyce has been building. The dialog heightens the mystery as much as it sheds light upon it.

Every change in The Sisters hearkens back to that stronger opening and the mystery set in Old Cotters speech. Joyce found that mystery within the series of events he’d already written, with the only wholly new section being the attempts to sleep and the dream. However, that change early on inspired change throughout the piece, giving new meaning and focus to the moments Joyce had previously imagined.

— Thaddeus Thomas

Additional Notes:

In 1904, Joyce wrote to his friend, Constantine R Curran:

The use of the word epicleti has inspired thousands of words of explanation. In brief, it refers to the Eucharist and the transubstantiation of the bread into the body of Christ.

Hemiplegia is a paralysis of one side of the body.

(Quote from Joyce’s note taken from the reference noted at the top.)

Walzl goes on to detail changes in the wake. After letters seeking the practice of burying priests, Flynn went from wearing his habit to wearing vestments. In the original, he’s holding a rosary. In an intermediate draft, he holds a cross, as was standard practice. In Dubliners, he holds the chalice which forgoes realism for symbolism.

Of the story’s title, she writes:

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America doesn't read and you can't talk about books on television.

Oprah Winfrey

LARRY KING: What do you make of your influence with books? That you can ...

OPRAH WINFREY: Well, it just started as a fluke. I was saying that I started out with a young intern who started the exact same day that I did, Alice McGee. …and then she moved up and became an associate producer, producer. And Alice and I used to exchange books all the time and we would say what are you reading now?

And one day she said, why don't we do this on TV? And I go, it'll never work on television, you know. America doesn't read and you can't talk about books on television. And she said, what if we had a club. So that's how it all started. And I am surprised every time.

KING: And then you stopped it for a while.

WINFREY: I stopped it because I was overwhelmed trying to… because somebody just said -- an audience member just said to me the other day as I handed out the latest book, "The Road," by Cormac McCarthy. Have you read this book?

KING: No.

WINFREY: I should have brought you that for your anniversary. You should read that book.

KING: "The Road."

WINFREY: Yes, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. You know why? Because it's about a father and son at the end of time and fathers love this book.

… [Material cut because the interview strays in a dozen directions. I thought they’d never wind they’re way back around to McCarthy.] …

KING: We had that -- an incident. James Frey came on our show. He'd written a book called "A Million Little Pieces." It was one of the books you selected as your book of the month. Later, people complained that it was fraud or he didn't do the things he said he did. At the end of the show when he was on, being contrite, you called in, his mother was on with him. You said, I stand by you.

WINFREY: I stand by you.

KING: The mother started to cry, they grabbed his hands. It was one of the great moments on television. Headlines next day, "Oprah Stands By."

WINFREY: Yes.

KING: Next week, "Oprah Annihilates James Frey."

WINFREY: I didn't annihilate him. You can even ask him. I didn't annihilate. At the end of that conversation on my show, I said, look, I know I was tough on you but I had to be tough on you because you really disappointed me and so he understood that. And actually I called him a couple days later to see how he was doing.

KING: What's your -- now, in looking back.

WINFREY: Well, it made me very wary of doing memoirs and so you will notice that since that time I've only chosen two memoirs. First of all, I went a whole year because I had chosen Elie Wiesel's book.

KING: Great book.

WINFREY: Yes. And I chose "Night" because I so believe in Elie Wiesel and I know that everything that he had said in that book was true and you knew that was true. So I felt that that was really -- not only did I love that book or wanted other people to experience it the way I had experienced it, but also I could trust that it was the truth.

And so -- and then I went a year and didn't choose a book because I was working for the school and just honestly didn't have time to read any other books. And then the next book I chose that I could trust was the truth was Sidney Poitier's book. And so ...

KING: Which was the next number one paperback?

WINFREY: Yes, number one. So now I've moved on from memoirs because I don't know -- you know, because a lot of publishers -- I was surprised to find, that the publishers do not vet the stories or vet the books. And in the case of James Frey, it hadn't been. So I was trusting the publisher, you know.

KING: When you get a major publisher that's logical.

WINFREY: That's right.

KING: We all in this business trust the publisher.

WINFREY: I was trusting that the publisher knew that it was true or not and so that's why I felt so comfortable, you know, calling up at the end of the show. I couldn't find the number. What's the number, what's Larry's number? How do we get through and there's only a minute left. So I called up and then later regretted that I had made that call. And I made it because I'm thinking, well, if it wasn't true, the publisher would have said it wasn't true. They would have said it was fiction but that is not always the case.

KING: What's your barometer for picking the book? What does it have to do?

WINFREY: I just have to -- it's the same thing as anybody else who reads a book and says, you know, God, I love that book.

KING: Don't you love five, six books a month? I do. I love a lot of books.

WINFREY: I don't get a chance to read five or six that I love because I have read so many things that are -- that I have to read for this show.

And so in terms of like a good book that I feel I love it and at least a million other people love it, I don't run into that very often.

KING: Do you. What ...

WINFREY: And I have to read every book. That's why I was saying the other day on my show, a woman said to me, did you read the book? How insulting is that? Did I read the book?

KING: So I've got to get "The Road."

WINFREY: "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.

Let’s talk about Cormac McCarthy.

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Now, let’s discuss: Cormac McCarthy.

The biggest shocker in McCarthy’s interview with Oprah was his explanation about his approach to punctuation. He mentions James Joyce as a good model, but then he talked about being hired by a professor to re-punctuate essays from the 18th century. When the professor was pleased with the first essay, Cormac though, “Yeah, punctuation is important. It’s important to punctuate so that it’s easy for people to read.”

To all those people who feel they can’t get into a McCarthy book because of a lack of punctuation, he says he was just trying to make it easy for you.

“Simple declarative sentences. I believe in periods and capitals and the occasional comma, and that’s it. Well, you can use a colon if you’re getting ready to give a list that follows something just said.”

McCarthy’s Greatest Failure as a Writer

As a writer, I say, although life plays into fiction.

In the 1992 interview with the New York Times, McCarthy says, "I will never be competent enough to write about a woman. But at some point you have to try."1

There exists a certain kind of pedestal on which a woman can stand, a pedestal that seems to elevate her for her mystery, a bewilderment beyond the capacity of man to understand, and that pedestal belongs to the misogynist. Other people adopt and use this pedestal because it seems like a place of honor, and McCarthy’s use of it here isn’t sufficient to declare him a misogynist. It certainly doesn’t exclude him from the accusation, and such accusations abound—with much evidence to support it, from both his life and his fiction.

From all his works, when someone wants to defend him from such an accusation, they turn to All The Pretty Horses, with John Grady being the heroic figure standing in opposition to McCarthy’s usual cast of godless men. One reason I believe this difference exists is because John Grady is both an idealist and an ideal. He believes in the promise of a west that never was, and we know it never was because we’ve read McCarthy’s other books.

Usually, it’s McCarthy’s interest to show us the worst of our nature, and this becomes another defense until we look back at All The Pretty Horses where the idealist chases the dream. So, what does All The Pretty Horses say about women?

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To Write About a Woman

Some women in the book exist to serve, others to foil the desires of the main character. His mother is in the latter category, and some have cast Alejandra there was well. In Cormac’s idealized west, the hero isn’t a bastard, but the women still fill stereotypical roles, and maybe that’s the point of the idealist—it reduces people to their ideal and places them on that pedestal.

If there’s an aspect to the book that critics say is lacking, its in the romance, which isn’t a point of misogyny, perhaps, but certainly of McCarthy’s discomfort with women. We’re given a reason for Alejandra to be interested in John Grady. He’s a competent horse tamer, and…

Okay, hold on. I was researching what people said about women in the book—not race—so it’s not strange that I didn’t come across this, but part of the western ideal is that a white man can show up anywhere in the world and outperform the locals in their own expertise and livelihood. This breaks with the tradition in that John Grady doesn’t show up as a novice and become the greatest, he’s special the moment he arrives. People come for miles to see him break horses, and it’s that skill that attracts the attention of Alejandra.

Alejandra’s qualifications are beauty and her father’s position. However, this can be seen as the shallowness of the western ideal that McCarthy is portraying. If so, one would have to depend on Alejandra’s speeches about her mistreatment for any signs of McCarthy rising above that shallowness.2

I haven’t brought all this up to argue the point one way or the other. The argument exists, and we’re going to take is as granted—for the moment—that the books are misogynistic. Like many others, I love his work. Why and what does this say about me?

I ignore all the talk about men not reading any more and about how (literary) books have lost their masculinity, but if there’s any truth to that, McCarthy would be the antidote. Perhaps I love him for the masculine mystique. Perhaps it’s true what he says about his books being easy to understand, despite the lack of punctuation (or maybe because of it.) Maybe, his is a manly sort of poetry, and we’re all enjoying that difference from our normal reading. Maybe it’s none of that.

Okay, it’s definitely, partially, that he’s not hard to follow or understand, along with the punctuated moments of violence and the proverbial wisdom that spill from mundane moments.

Do I Have a McCarthy Book in Me?

I took a book away from my friend’s small publisher because it didn’t meet my standards, and that choice was the final of several blows that turned me away from publishing for several years. A character from that book has haunted me ever since. He was meant to be a minor character, but then the character made a choice that I didn’t make for him and took over the book.

If I were every to write a book inspired by love for McCarthy’s westerns in particular, it would be about that character. It’s a scary thought, because I’ve tried again since—but the failure there was in not letting go of the story completely. This time, I’d keep the heart of the character and place him a McCarthy story.

Maybe it doesn’t need to be a novel. I have enough big ideas ahead of me. Maybe in a short story, he could finally live.

[Edit: see update after the essay.]

That’s not a conclusion to the discussion on misogyny is it? Or maybe it is. I try to do better in my own writing, but I embrace McCarthy because of what he does right, not because of where he fails. If I write this story, it will be my attempt at the masculine mystique. No intentional misogyny, but neither will it have the characters I often write that are born out of struggle with such failures.

If you want to read a story about my struggling characters, I’ve recently published a well-received story called Such was the Epiphany of Theodore Beasley.

— Thaddeus Thomas

1 I remember the teasers from the Oprah interview where he says basically the same thing, although I seemed to have missed it while watching the interview for this article.

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The dream and the draw to Mexico is work, the kind of work he did on the ranch his grandfather lost by dying and which his mother doesn’t care to save.

The first turn of adventure comes when a storm hits as he and Rawlins are drunk on something unidentifiable, perhaps fermented cactus juice. Blevins flees the family fate of dying by lightning and loses everything but his underwear.

The boys grow sick, and the horses are bemused by the sound of their bodies expelling the poisons that so pleased them only hours ago:

The paragraph ends with a simile described by another simile, something I can’t remember ever seeing before—and what I’m made most to think of is Gollum from Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It’s a fitting image. A fitting sound.

One of McCarthy’s tics is the vague simile, and on days when I’m impatient and not particularly bright, I could describe it as lazy. I would be wrong. He uses this vagueness on two occasions that I’ve noticed, and he uses them with meaning.

First, it’s part of his habit of contrasting violent or otherwise bombastic content with a mundane simile. (He then contrasts mundane events with violent or otherwise bombastic similes.)

Second, and this is the use here, he makes comparisons to creatures drawn up from the beginnings of the world, creatures without a name, and in doing so, he points out those primal and primeval parts of ourselves. In an interview (perhaps the one with Oprah?) he speaks of the unconscious as being older than language. That’s not a one-off idea for McCarthy; he’s obsessed with these ancient aspects of ourselves.

It’s an obsession that’s at the heart of this novel, for John Grady doesn’t see the ghosts of cowboys and ranch hands. He sees the spirit of the Comanches walking the old Comanche road, and that’s not a past he lost. What he mourns is the life which was made possible by stripping theirs away. The Comanche represent themselves but also all things lost and ancient. They are of the First Nations, the first people, and anything that came before them came without witness. Without names.

Let’s talk about Cormac McCarthy.

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Now let’s read All The Pretty Horses.

Cormac McCarthy’s style is to some degree a solution for conveying his story with his desired lack of punctuation. The missing quotation marks is the most obvious choice, but if he could, he’d be rid of everything but the period. Even so, occasionally he finds use for a comma:

The horses stepped archly among the shadows that fell over the road, the bracken steamed.

I find the example ironic, as it’s a comma slice. Normally, McCarthy would combine the two independent clauses with an and while omitting the customary comma. I yearn to find the purpose in reversing his normal stylistic proclivities here.

It almost feels like an oversight rather than a choice, especially since it’s immediately followed by the phrase “bye and bye”. I’ve tried to look up that spelling as an alternative to “by and by”, but I’m finding nothing to support it. The comma, however, shows its intentionality in the context of the full paragraph.

These descriptions come just after the rain, when Blevins is left with nothing but his hat and his underwear:

Rawlins turned his horse and set off slowly down the road. They followed. No one spoke. After a while John Grady heard something drop into the road and he looked back and saw Blevins' boot lying there. He turned and looked at Blevins but Blevins was peering steadily ahead from under the brim of his hat and they rode on. The horses stepped archly among the shadows that fell over the road, the bracken steamed. Bye and bye they passed a stand of roadside cholla against which small birds had been driven by the storm and there impaled. Gray nameless birds espaliered in attitudes of stillborn flight or hanging loosely in their feathers. Some of them were still alive and they twisted on their spines as the horses passed and raised their heads and cried out but the horsemen rode on. The sun rose up in the sky and the country took on new color, green fire in the acacia and paloverde and green in the roadside run-off grass and fire in the ocotillo. As if the rain were electric, had grounded circuits that the electric might be.

The paragraph ends with another interesting comma choice, and with it I find my best argument for both being intentional. Neither are traditionally grammatically correct, nor in keeping with the McCarthy tradition. This latter example is entirely nonsensical on its own and requires the context of what came before it for the brain to construct meaning: with the sun rising after the night’s rain, fresh and vibrant colors burst upon the landscape, as if the rain were electric and the flowers and leaves were themselves colored lights.

It’s twisted to please his poetic ear.

We find here, too, an example of the partial repetition he’s so fond of with “green fire” then “green” and then “fire”, each describing colors of the trees, grass, and flowers.

We return to the nameless with the birds impaled upon the cactus, and McCarthy creates a metaphor with his verb choice. To espalier is to train a tree or shrub to grow flat against a wall, and these birds have been trained to grow against the cactus, frozen in a dead mimicry of flight.

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The irony of style is that given the full breadth of the language’s possibilities, we tend toward what we’ve comfortably used before. By artificially restricting her choices, an author can force herself to see new possibilities.

One function of the comma is to replace a conjunction. Without it, McCarthy turns to other solutions:

John Grady started to reach in his pocket for a match and then he rose and walked over to the workers and squatted and asked for a light. Two of them produced esclarajos from their clothes and one struck him a light and he leaned and lit the cigarette and nodded. He asked about the boiler and the loads of candelilla still tied on the burros and the workers told them about the wax and one of them rose and walked off and came back with a small gray cake of it and handed it to him. It looked like a bar of laundrysoap. He scraped it with his fingernail and sniffed it. He held it up and looked at it.

The heavy use of the conjunction, and, within the sentences is called polysyndeton. Ironically, a Hemingway-like lack of connection between the sentences has been noted, which would be parataxis. I never would have thought the two techniques could be used together and so missed the parataxis and had to have it pointed out to me.

These men see the young Blevins riding with them in his underwear, and they ask to buy him. It’s a stark contrast to the hospitality that’s met them otherwise and a reminder of the dangers they face in this adventure. On the heels of that reminder, they ride into town and quickly spot Blevin’s missing revolver and soon after find his horse. Blevins, young and impulsive, steals the horse back, and the boys escape separately, parting ways with Blevins for now, just before finding both the ranch where they’ll work and the girl who captures John Grady’s heart.

We get into John Grady’s head more than we do the kid from Blood Meridian, but that interiority doesn’t extend far. It enables us to share in his vision of the Comanche, but for the most part, Rawlins serves as the foil whose character highlights John Grady’s by contrast.

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The End of Chapter One

I believe these are some pretty good old boys, whispered Rawlins.

Yeah, I believe they are too.

You see them old highback centerfire rigs?

Yeah.

You reckon they think we're on the run down here?

Aint we?

Rawlins didnt answer. After a while he said: I like hearin the cattle out there.

Yeah. I do too.

He didnt say much about Rocha, did he?

Not a lot.

You reckon that was his daughter?

I'd say it was.

This is some country, aint it?

Yeah. It is. Go to sleep.

Bud?

Yeah.

This is how it was with the old waddies, aint it?

Yeah.

How long do you think you'd like to stay here?

About a hundred years. Go to sleep.

They’ve come hunting for the life that was lost, and this conversation confirms they’ve found it. This is their idol and ideal.

To clarify who is speaking, little of which is clarified, McCarthy graces us with a colon, but otherwise the closing dialog is simple and uninterrupted.

The contrast between the narrator’s diction and that of the characters is another regular trait, and I argue that it’s his contrasts which make McCarthy so readable. As a writer, it’s the main lesson I’ve taken from him because so much else that we might borrow, we’d be in danger of using in shallow imitation, but that sense of contrast highlights and reveals opposing styles, much in the way that Rawlins reveals John Grady. It keeps the story interesting and the reader engaged, acting the way colors do in art, guiding our eye and ear, teaching us what’s important and tending our challenged attention spans.

The masculinity and violence of his works are certainly a draw for many of his readers, but while McCarthy has a reputation for being inaccessible because of his punctuation, I believe the accessibility created by his dedication to contrasts helps readers find and embrace those aspects of his writing they love so dearly.

— Thaddeus Thomas

New! Weekly Flash Fiction for Paid Subscribers—these won’t be emailed to you, but you’ll find the link in my regular posts. Here’s a tiny piece of horror: No One to Blame.

The Pretty Horses Thus Far:

1. Philip Meyer and Cormac McCarthy: The Son and All the Pretty Horses—the first literary analysis essay compares the work of Philipp Meyer and Cormac McCarthy and chooses one for the first read along.

2. The Secret of Style: Part 2 — from the prose style series, I take a look at how Cormac McCarthy teaches us the secret to a successful prose style.

3. The First Pretty Horse Ain’t So Pretty — a critical examination of the book’s first sentence.

4. The Second Pretty Horse Rides an Alien Shore — an introduction to me as a reader. Plus, John Grady and the others enter Mexico.

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1. Philip Meyer and Cormac McCarthy: The Son and All the Pretty Horses—the first literary analysis essay compares the work of Philipp Meyer and Cormac McCarthy and chooses one for the first read along.

2. The Secret of Style: Part 2 — from the prose style series, I take a look at how Cormac McCarthy teaches us the secret to a successful prose style.

3. The First Pretty Horse Ain’t So Pretty — a critical examination of the book’s first sentence.

A picture of my desk with my copy of All the Pretty Horses which I picked up at a used books store. Also seen: I love that bookend. He’s holding up The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth, Ulysses by James Joyce, Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford with Robert J Seidman, and Hellboy in Hell by Mike Mignola.

Behind them in a Father’s Day card from my daughter that’s several years old now but I always keep it on my desk. Behind that is the laptop I use to format eBooks. To the right you see my treasured Qwerky keyboard—and on the computer you can see Substack’s back-end homepage for Literary Salon, declaring 15.8k views in the last 30 days.

The big surprise, though, has been the number of views my last Pretty Horses essay received from email subscribers:

That essay received my largest number of email opens. In total, it’s had 1.04k views, which I think is my third most viewed essay ever. I almost said “third most popular,” but not everyone appreciated me finding fault with that first sentence. Reading it now, I know exactly what it means and see nothing but beauty. but I did stumble out of the gate. Such is the life of a reader.

(And a writer.)

I want to get back to that picture for a moment before we move on. Not pictured, on the right side of the desk, is a collection of The Selected Works of Samuel Beckett. Like Ulysses, it’s there because it’s something I aspire to. I’ve been tackling Ulysses off and on for years and still haven’t conquered it. Beckett’s prose fiction, with its lack of paragraph structure, is a bit intimidating. I’ve set it aside for now.

I say all this to wipe aside any pretense of literary genius. I’m a struggler. I think it’s why I can teach prose style. I can speak to others who struggle, too.

Let’s get back to that list of books I keep on my desk. The one mentioned that’s hardest to see is Hellboy in Hell by Mike Mignola.

It’s a comic book, and it’s one of my greatest obsessions. This is the hardback Library Edition. I also own it in the paperback omnibus, along with all the omnibus collections in the main Hellboy series. Finally, I own that same Hellboy in Hell collection in digital format. I haven’t been a comic book reader in decades, but this I love.

I share all this to keep things real between us. Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author, but I have a favorite comic book author, too. This is who I am.

For my wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks, we’re going to the symphony where they will accompany the James Bond movie, Casino Royale—one of my favorite films.

This is me.

Now, if you’re still willing to come along, let’s dig into All the Pretty Horses.

But let’s take care of some business first—in 3 parts:

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And now let’s talk about All the Pretty Horses

John Grady has just left the funeral and is taking his horse for a ride.

Contrasts define McCarthy’s work in so many ways. I studied his use of similes in Blood Meridian with the essay, Simile and Cormac McCarthy Similes with You, and discovered that he uses mundane similes with the most provocative images and provocative similes with mundane ones.

Earlier, during the funeral, the wind had been chaotic and cruel, now it “was much abated and it was very cold.” Abated is a nice choice, but otherwise, we have a simply-worded beginning to the sentence which quickly becomes something different.

“…and the sun sat blood red and elliptic under the reefs of bloodred cloud before him.”

The image of reefs of clouds is so wonderful, I missed the hypnotic duplication of “blood red” and “bloodred.” The contrast with that earlier simplicity allows the imagery to stand out.

What follows is a long sentence broken into two. He rode where he would always choose to ride (begins one sentence) at the hour he'd always choose (begins the next “sentence.”) The first part provides the basic facts, setting our understanding for the Comanche road, and the grammatically-odd break distinguishes that from the imagery to come.

It’s a thematically vital moment in demonstrating the mind and motivation of John Grady. He longs for a time that no longer exists.

In introducing the choice of this book, I set it against The Son by Philip Meyer, and this moment demonstrates a wonderful cross-pollination between them. The Son chronicles times changing and lost. This particular image in Ponies reminds me of my favorite sections from The Son, which follow a settler’s kidnapping by the Comanches.

His “and the young boys naked on wild horses jaunty as circus riders” makes me think of his famous description from Blood Meridian:

McCarthy clearly isn’t afraid of a long sentence, tied together with polysyndeton1 and no commas, but he could have tied these three sentences together. The first two even belong together, but he chose to present them otherwise. He presents the road. He presents the memory of the Comanche (seen in the mind’s eye of one who dreams of a people and a time he’s too young to remember.) Then finally, he presents the sound of that memory, marching them again down that road as they’ve repeatedly done in John Grady’s imaginings.

This is what he’s chasing. This is why he goes to Mexico.

The Second Pretty Horse Rides an Alien Shore

They crossed the river under a white quartermoon naked and pale and thin atop their horses. They'd stuffed their boots upside down into their jeans and stuffed their shirts and jackets after along with their warbags of shaving gear and ammunition and they belted the jeans shut at the waist and tied the legs loosely about their necks and dressed only in their hats they led the horses out onto the gravel spit and loosed the girthstraps and mounted and put the horses into the water with their naked heels.

Midriver the horses were swimming, snorting and stretching their necks out of the water, their tails afloat behind. They quartered downstream with the current, the naked riders leaning forward and talking to the horses, Rawlins holding the rifle aloft in one hand, lined out behind one another and making for the alien shore like a party of marauders.

They rode up out of the river among the willows and rode singlefile upstream through the shallows onto a long gravel beach where they took off their hats and turned and looked back at the country they'd left. No one spoke. Then suddenly they put their horses to a gallop up the beach and turned and came back, fanning with their hats and laughing and pulling up and patting the horses on the shoulder.

Goddamn, said Rawlins. You know where we're at?

All the Pretty Horsess — Cormac McCarthy

From San Angelo to Mexico is somewhere between 150 to 200 miles, depending on where the crossing took place, and they traveled by horse at a time when such things weren’t done. It’s enough to make you (want to) believe they’ll survive the adventure that awaits them.

McCarthy tells us the whole crossing in the first sentence: They crossed the river under a white quartermoon naked and pale and thin atop their horses. Then he pulls back to tell it again.

Warbags of shaving gear and ammunition turns my mind back to the Comanches who were “each armed for war which was their life.”

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Goddamn, said Rawlins. You know where we're at?

John Grady discovers that the life he started with, the life he knew and wanted, didn’t belong to him. It belonged to his mother, and she didn’t want it. No one did. It’s worth was bled dry.

He’d only ever known two worlds, and one of those worlds was a ghost. He chases that ghost across the border, hoping some aspect may still live on in the flesh.

This is the play performed upon our stage, the one we watch with great intensity, holding onto the notion that there will be something in the story itself to tell us about the way the world is or is becoming.

What it was didn’t belong to us.

—Thaddeus Thomas

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End Notes

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And now let’s talk about All the Pretty Horses

Now that I’ve moved The Last Temptation of Winnie the Pooh to Literary Salon, it’s being rediscovered, and I’m once again struck and honored by the comments saying I’ve captured the style of A. A. Milne and the original stories. The striking part is that no caveat is given for those aspects inspired by or paying homage to Cormac McCarthy—particularly Blood Meridian.

The opening line of the story—Behold the bear—echoes the opening of Blood Meridian—See the child. There are times when the inspirations flow back and forth, and while the wording is clearly outside of the normal Pooh tale, the voice isn’t lost.

Later in the book, perhaps the reader notices this pastiche:

McCarthy’s rhythmic quality of the writing and the stretches of short sentences, create similarities with Milne’s classics for children, and this is where my thoughts lie as I approach the prose of All the Pretty Horses.

The First Pretty Horse Ain’t So Pretty

The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboards creaked under his boots. In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their waisted cutglass vase. Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting. He looked down at the guttered candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.

This does not sound like Winnie-the-Pooh, nor was that my point. Instead I had in mind Brooks Landon’s notion that there isn’t much an author can do with a short sentence, stylistically, and I’ve prickled at the idea, certain that authors can and must impose their style upon writing that embraces the shorter sentence. Milne does it, as does Hemingway. The question is only in how.

The answer isn’t that much different from the long sentence, where Landon’s beloved cumulative sentence creates its style one clause or phrase at a time, so must it be for every Hemingway—one sentence at a time. Punctuation is never a hard stop on style, if one chooses to use punctuation much at all.

McCarthy begins the novel with complex imagery and then follows that up with a simple and easy: He took off his hat and came slowly forward. In fact, the entire paragraph is written in brief sentences punctuated by three longer ones at the beginning, middle, and end, like signposts of the paragraph’s structure.

McCarthy begins with something Landon would warn against, a compound subject which does nothing to help the sentence move forward. That subject is: The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass.

A pierglass is a tall mirror that’s usually placed between to windows, which was a definition and a word unknown to me. I’d just finished work on a story that takes place upon a ship, where the lanterns are fashioned to remain upright as the ship rocks, and I had this in mind as I read the sentence, not understanding that the air pressure of the door’s movement bent the flame of the candle and of the candle’s reflection.

Because I couldn’t ground myself in that first sentence, I was still trying to catch up for the next several and missed the point that the hall is decorated with portraits of the boy’s ancestors. This isn’t a funeral home but the his grandfather’s ranch house. I did at least understand that the man was dead.

I’ve taken Blood Meridian, The Road, and Cities of the Plain down from my shelves. All three have opening sentences that are easy to understand.

It may be that Pretty Horses confused no one else, and I’m just a fool. For the moment, I’ll assume otherwise.

It’s the compound subject that creates my confusion, as I could easily deal with not knowing what a pierglass was. I thought the pierflass was a window set in the door, and as the door opened, the angle of the glass twisted its image, which it wouldn’t do, nor would it affect the actual candle flame even if it did—no matter. No, the confusion is in the subject, in trying to capture within that subject its reflection in the mirror.

With the subject simplified, the sentence reads like this:

The candleflame twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door.

It’s a fool’s errand to find fault with a classic writer like McCarthy, especially one whose work you love, but this isn’t a good sentence, let alone a good opening. The subject isn’t confusing merely because it’s comprised of twelve words;—I initially assumed caught was the verb, not merely part of the ongoing subject. 1

I can’t remember ever running into a complex subject in any of McCarthy’s other books, at any point, not that I’ve gone back and looked, except for these three opening lines.

Complex sentences are good, but I’m going to have to agree with Brooks Landan on this one; extreme versions of a complex subject are not.2

Let’s take our definition and examples from Snap Language. 3

Articles, adjectives, phrasal verbs, and even embedded clauses can be added to the simple subject. The resulting construction is called a complex subject.

• “Learning takes a great deal of commitment.”

• “Learning a new language takes a great deal of commitment.”

• “The most common online learning taking place around the country today takes a great deal of commitment.”4

The second example, the first to demonstrate a complex subject is fine enough, but the third example is eleven words long, and the sentence still isn’t moving. This is what makes people think they hate long sentences and why so much professional writing is impossible to decipher.

Is there something lost in its removal? Yes, the image McCarthy is trying to create is evocative of the type of house we’re entering into. We learn later that the ranch has fallen on hard times, but there’s a history of prosperity here and an attempt at class. That’s irrelevant if readers don’t understand what they’re reading. McCarthy gets away with it. If I try to start a book this way (and I pray to to God I haven’t), the reader wouldn’t bother attempting to pry lose its meaning. Confusion in the first sentence is the kiss of death for an author—unless that author already has our trust. We trust McCarthy, so we work through our confusion and move on.

Where the long sentence seeks to avoid tripping itself up with confusing clauses or phrases, for the paragraph, the importance is placed upon the whole sentence as well. In this first paragraph, we find a pattern to the sentences, none of them repeating the mistake of confusing the reader:

1 long sentence-2 short sentences-2 long setences-2 short sentences-1 long sentences-2 short sentences5

In structure, it feels like poem, even ending with the coda: This was not sleeping. This was not sleeping.

(continued below)

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This is not an argument for the dumbing down of literature.

There’s a sentence from later in the book that was highlighted by an English teacher trying to puzzle out its grammar:

Leading the horses by hand out through the gate into the road and mounting up and riding the horses side by side up the ciénaga road with the moon in the west and some dogs barking over toward the shearingsheds and the greyhounds answering back from their pens and him closing the gate and turning and holding his cupped hands for her to step into and lifting her onto the black horse's naked back and then untying the stallion from the gate and stepping once onto the gateslat and mounting up all in one motion and turning the horse and them riding side by side up the ciénaga road with the moon in the west like a moon of white linen hung from the wires and some dogs barking.

There’s nothing to puzzle out here. Normal grammar isn’t used but rather the same mentality as when I text my wife: kissing you.

The sentence has neither subject nor verb but is entirely made up of verb phrases, like a cumulative sentence with its head cut off. That’s a long sentence that lacks proper grammar—but the reader can follow its movement. In a The Secret of Style: Part II, which also builds off of this study of All the Pretty Horses, I talk about how McCarthy’s polysyndeton slows the action down, but I’d argue this run of verb phrases has the opposite effect. It’s a cascade of moments washing over him in the presence of the woman he loves.

The rules matter only as far as they improve communication, and it’s not even a grammatical rule to avoid cumbersome complex subjects. It’s a matter of better communication through style.

—Thaddeus Thomas

Looking for more fiction writers on Substack? I’ve started a list of recommendations:

End Notes

This essay is the first in the Re: Write section.

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This is part of the Literary Analysis series and is a free essay.

The Son and All the Pretty Horses

I intended this as the first of my line-focused literary analysis essays, and my first instinct was to begin with No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy because I’ve read it so many times. Trouble is, I don’t own a copy, and if I bought one, it would be physical, and that wouldn’t help soon enough. Instead I turned to Philip Meyer’s The Son, which I’d read last year and really enjoyed. The trouble there was that it has a straightforward style, written in what I’ve called balanced prose, and I wasn’t sure I know how to do a line analysis of that sort of book. Not every story is written to be scrutinized on a sentence level, even really well written books.

I picked a paragraph to see what could be done with it.

Then we reached the village. The tipis went on out of sight, swirling designs of warriors and horses, soldiers stuck with arrows, soldiers without heads, mountains and rising suns. The air smelled like green hides and drying flesh; there were racks standing everywhere with the flayed meat hanging in the sun like old clothes.

The Son by Philip Meyer

Then we reached—simple telling statement to ground the reader.

The tipis went—I love this clause now but didn’t think much of it when first going through the paragraph. It doesn’t sound like much, with the weak verb went, but it’s an understatement of the impact of the sight (and site) before him. The village is huge, and he’s reached the limits of his vision before hitting its end.

Swirling designs—this begins with the expected. The tipis are painted with images of the world they know and care about: their warriors and horses..mountains and rising suns; but what comes between those pairs heightens the tension, reminds the reader of the danger, and demonstrates the violence of their world, a threat of violence directed at our protagonist’s hope of rescue. To cap all this off with a return to nature confirms the normality of death as part of the landscape. This is important to the immediate story as the family of a fallen warrior has been denied a trophy from the raid—and their attention and anger are turned toward our young protagonist.

The air smelled—I used to have a problem with authors telling us that the air smelled like a thing. I’d clung to this notion that we had to describe the smell itself, and this was just telling us the green hides and drying flesh were there (and that they had a scent, whatever that was). I was young. What can I say? It works. It’s fine.

Like old clothes—the simile here at the end is appropriate to our character and easy enough to relate to—even if the practice is before your time. The general description of the village is productivity and purpose, only the designs on the tipis portend danger.

The power if this paragraph is in its mixed focus. It’s a description of the sights and sounds he encounters upon coming to the village for the first time, but the reality of the violent conflict hauntingly remains.

The novel has three narrators: Eli McCullough, his disapproving son, Peter, and Peter’s granddaughter, Jeanne, who inherits much of Eli’s vision and ruthlessness. It’s a family story across generations from the 1840s to the 21st century. If you were to say it’s a contemporary classic about Texas and the brutal truths about America’s growing pangs, I’d believe you.

The most powerful part of the story, in my view, is Eli’s in the first half of the book, and the most emotional is Peter’s over roughly that same period. The second half is carried by our interest in these characters and in the ramifications that follow after them—even across generations.

All the Pretty Horses

He pulled the horse around and they rode out of the camp and into the road south. Rawlins looked back and put his horse into a trot and John Grady came up and they rode side by side down the narrow rutted track. No one spoke. When they were clear of the camp a mile or so Blevins asked what it was that the man in the vest had wanted but John Grady didn’t answer. When Blevins asked again Rawlins looked back at him.

He wanted to buy you, he said. That’s what he wanted.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Both passages were chosen fairly at random, saving that I was avoiding dialogue as much as possible. This is a minimalistic passage with a modest taste of his characteristic polysyndeton,1 used (perhaps) to help avoid punctuation.

He pulled the horse around—this first sentences combines two independent clauses without a comma; the second sentence combines three, but there’s a nice rhythm to the clauses between the conjunctions. It puts you in the mind of trotting horses, or I just like McCarthy and am willing to see what’s not there.

That rhythm demands completion, and McCarthy provides that with an short sentence—no one spoke—which separates the two main actions of the paragraph. The next line has a different rhythm, one that flows quickly, like Blevins pulling forward to pester John Grady with his innocent questions.

The paragraphs from both books emphasize the danger our protagonists find themselves in, but in this random comparison, Meyer provides the more subtle reminder.

All the Pretty Horses is set in the 1940s among characters who long for the old west and travel to Mexico to try to capture some of that adventure. In The Son, during the same period, we see the family trying to make a cultured woman out of a young Jeanne who has too much of Eli in her for such a life.

As I approach the books for these essays, how will I find the passages to analyze?

My goodness, said Perez. My goodness. You think there are no crimes without owners? It is not a matter of finding. It is a matter of choosing. Like picking the proper suit in a store.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

What I need to do is organize the series as a read-along, and as much as I recommend The Son—I’m not ready to jump back in after only a year. Read it, but not for this. Our first book will be All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.

To give you time to secure your copy and read chapter one (about a hundred pages), I’ll release the next essay on 2/18/2025.

Blevins went to sleep as well. He sat watching the firmament unscroll up from behind the blackened palisades of the mountains to the east. Toward the village all was darkness. Not even a dog barked. He looked at Rawlins rolled asleep in his soogan and he knew that he was right in all he’d said and there was no help for it and the dipper standing at the northern edge of the world turned and the night was a long time passing.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

— Thaddeus Thomas

You don’t have to wait two weeks to dig into All the Pretty Horses and the techniques McCarthy uses. Following the publishing of this essay, I followed it up with The Secret of Style: Part II, in my Prose Style series, and it picks up where we left off here.

Check out all my essays:

I enjoy Carl Jung more as an idea than a reality, and that attitude reflects my issues with literary analysis as well. Ima…

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Our narrator lives on a dead-end street in a house where a priest died. The street is quiet except when the school lets out, and in the wa…

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NORTH RICHMOND STREET being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown im…

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Read or listen to the story here.

My analysis of the story.

Digging Deeper:

I went looking, and to my relief, I’m not the only one who saw commonalities between The Tell-Tale Heart and A Haunted House. In the analysis, I note a link between The Tell-Tale Heart and Macbeth, a link suggested only by the shared phrase “damned spot” and which could entirely be…

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A number of different approaches present themselves when we analyze a ghost story. Are the ghosts literal or a projection of the mind? If the ghosts are literal, is their meaning literal? This is not the same question but rather asks if the meaning of the story pertains to persistence of the soul. Either way, the ghosts can also have a metaphorical mean…

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Whatever hour you woke there was a door shunting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.

“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!” “It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in the garden,” he whispered “Quietly,” they said, “or we shall wake them.”

But it wasn’t …

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Mahony said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance under my eyes.

—James Joyce, “An Encounter”

A “Digging Deeper” Episode of Deeper Stories

An Encounter presents us with a taste of Dubl…

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In teasing the analysis of An Encounter (by James Joyce, Dubliners, 1914), I’ve taken to calling it the Stephen King of James Joyce stories. School boys skip school to go on their first great adventure and find something disturbing waiting for them at journey’s end. All the motifs of a proto-Step…

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It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening after school we met in his back garden and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by stor…

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A reference:

Joyce's "The Sisters": A Development
Florence L. Walzl
James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 1/2, JJQ 50 YEARS: JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY UNIVERSITY OF TULSA 1963–2013 (Fall 2012-Winter 2013), pp. 73-117 (45 pages)

Read it at JSTOR

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