All language subtitles for Masterclass Joyce Carol Oates Teaches the Art of the Short Story - 07.Form Study Miniature Narrative

One of the most exciting exercises for a

writer to do particularly an emerging

writer is not to try to write a whole

short story or a conventional story.

Write write a miniature narrative. This

can be one paragraph long be it could be

page long. So a miniature narrative

takes place very quickly.

It's like a poem.

Robert Frost defined lyric poetry as the

melting of ice on a hot stove. You have

the ice and the stove and the ice melts

and that's the poem and when it's over,

it's over. It's going to take place in

two minutes. If you can tell a story

briefly as possible, it's more dramatic.

If it's too long, then it has the

problems of pacing. It could get a

little slow, but the shorter you can

make a story, the better. If you don't

have time for characters, you have time

for an incident or an event or something

that happens. So I try to get my

students always to work in long in short

forms and work up the longer forms and

then not start on a longer form

immediately.

The use of force

takes place in about five minutes. It's

a brilliant and wonderful

memorable story. Probably the best thing

that William Carus Williams wrote in

pros. He was a distinguished poet. Now

William Carus Williams was a doctor. He

lived in Patterson, New Jersey. He was a

doctor who had many patients who were

very poor. Now in those days, a doctor

would go out to people's houses.

He didn't just wait in his office.

Dr. Williams would go out to many poor

people. He went out to people who didn't

speak English in Patterson, New Jersey.

So, this story is about something I'm

sure this happened. He would come back

from work at the end of a day totally

exhausted. He would go up to his attic.

He had a manual typewriter and he would

tap out maybe with two fingers he would

tap out as fast as he could write

something that happened to him. So this

brilliant story

obviously based on what happened to him

one day. Now, as a work of art, he may

have revised it, he may have added to

it, but basically the beginning, the

middle, what happens in the end is all

based on something that happened. So,

the use of force is the title he gives

this experience. So, he says, "They were

new patients to me. All I had was the

name Olsen. Please come as down as soon

as you can. My daughter is very sick."

There's no quotation marks. is the

dialogue is all very rapidly remembered.

When I arrived, I was met by the mother,

a big starter looking woman, very clean

and apologetic, who said, "Is this a

doctor?" And let me in. In the back, she

added, "You must excuse us, doctor. We

have her in the kitchen where it's warm,

very damp here sometimes." So, here we

have a child who's sitting in her

father's lap and there's something wrong

with her and she doesn't want to open

her mouth to have her throat examined

and the child sits there staring at the

doctor and the doctor tries to get her

to open her mouth so we can check her

throat. Well, I said suppose we have a

look at the throat. I smiled in my best

professional manner asked for the

child's first time. I said, "Come on,

Matilda. Open your mouth. Let's take a

look at your throat." Nothing doing.

Oh, come on. I said, "Open your mouth

and let me take a look." Uh, opening my

hands, I haven't got anything in my

hands. Such a nice man put in the

mother. Look how kind he is to you. Come

on, do what he tells you to you. He

won't hurt you, said the mother. At that

I ground my teeth in disgust. If only

they wouldn't use the word hurt, I might

be able to get somewhere. But I didn't

allow myself to be hurried or disturbed.

But speaking quietly and slowly, I

approached the child. He moves his chair

a little closer.

But then as she gets close to her, this

little girl

claws at his eye. She's going to attack

him. She doesn't want to be examined.

She knocks his glasses off. And the

mother says, "Oh, you bad girl." and

shaking her. For heaven's sake, I

broken. Don't call me a nice man. I'm

here to look on the throat on a chance

she might have dtheria and possibly die

of it. But look, I said to a child,

we're going to look at your throat.

You're old enough to understand what I'm

saying. Will you open it by yourself now

or shall we have to open it for you? So

now that's getting to be like the use of

force. The story starts where maybe the

child will cooperate but now the child's

not cooperating. Okay. The battle began.

I had to have a throat culture for her

protection.

I explained the danger

and the mother says if you don't do what

the doctor says you have to go to the

hospital.

The mother admonished her severely. Oh

yeah. I had to smile to myself after

all. I had already fallen in love with a

savage brat. So, this is such a strange

thing for the doctor to say. He really

loves this little girl because she's so

rebellious. And the parents were

contemptable to me. In the ensuing

struggle, they go more and more abject

while she rose to magnificent heights of

insane fury of effort born of her terror

of me. So, they're trying to hold this

child and they hold her wrists and he's

got to get a culture of her throat. The

child's screaming and she's kicking and

the whole family now is holding her and

the doctor has this wooden tongue

depressor between her teeth. She fought

and fought and I had grown furious at a

child. I tried to hold myself down but I

couldn't. I know how to expose a throat

for inspection. I did my best. I finally

got the wooden spatula behind the last

teeth and at a point into the mouth

cavity. She opened up for an instant and

then she came down and gripped the

wooden blade between her mers. She

reduced it to splinters before I could

stop it. In other words, she broke she

sabotaged it. So the doctor says, "Get

me a smooth handled spoon of some kind.

We're going through with this." The

child's mouth was already bleeding. Her

tongue was cut. She was screaming

hysterically. Perhaps I should have

desisted and come back in an hour or

more. No doubt it might have been

better, but I'd seen at least two

children dying in bed of neglect in such

cases. And feeling that I must get a

diagnosis now or never, I went at it

again. But the worst of it was that I

too had gotten beyond reason. I could

have tr torn the child apart of my own

fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure

to attack her. My face was burning with

it, which today sounds like a rape or a

child abuse. It sounds like something

really pushing a taboo. And at the time

that he wrote it was also very very uh

revealing and shocking. The doctor is

trying to say that in the interest of

saving the the daughter and preventing

the dtheria which is contagious, he does

something that he finds

very disgusting to himself. But he felt

he had to do it.

The damn little brat must be protected

against her own idiocy. One says to

oneself at such times others must be

protected to her. All these things are

true. But a blind fury, a feeling of

adult shame, bread of longing for

muscular release are the operatives. One

goes on to the end. In the final

unreasoning assault, they overpowered

the child's neck and jaws, forced the

heavy spoon back of her teeth and down

her throat until she gagged.

And there it was, both tonsils covered

with membrane.

She had fought violently to keep her

from knowing her secret. She had been

hiding this sore throat for three days

and lying to her parents in order to

escape just an outcome of this. She

tried to get off her father's lap and

fly at me with tears of defeat lining

her eyes. That's the end of the story.

It's a story that is very surprising

because first of first it just seems

like he's telling a story of something

that happened with some patients, but

then it comes to be well that's like the

whole medical profession or a male

doctor forcing himself on a female

child. So it becomes something much more

dark and universal. with a miniature

narrative, if there's any dialogue, it's

probably just as well not to have

quotation marks and have everything in

the um in the text. In other words,

William Carlos Williams says, "They were

new patients to me, all I had was the

name Olen." Period. Please come down as

soon as you can. My daughter's very

sick. In other words, that's that's

dialogue, but it's it's not set off.

It's basically just part of the the

text. So it's rapid writing. It's as if

you were remembering something that you

that you dreamt that's very very rapid

and rather than putting it out and

making it very formal and sort of

diagrammatic hemming it almost blurred

and impressionistic to try for an

impressionistic

uh effect and using language that's

doesn't call attention to itself. just

very simple language.

The form of William Carlos Williams the

use of force it's almost like a sonnet

form. You have a beginning, you have a

middle and you have a powerful ending.

So it's like a form like you start off

you're in some position like point A

which you didn't know was going to be

provisional like you started off you're

going to have lunch with your friend you

know and by the end of the lunch and you

found out something you didn't know

before and your friend has opened up to

you or your friend is crying or there's

something by the end of the story that

you didn't effect with the beginning.

There are very short piano pieces by

Shopan for instance that the prelude

some of them only a page long and they

are so exquisite and when they come to

the final chord it's just such a

beautiful piece of music. If you're a

pianist you can sort of move toward that

ending. If the piano if it's a piano

sonata that's much longer it's

enormously much more difficult to

imagine but or a a symphony you know is

really very long and complicated but a

little prelude by shopan the slow ones

are you're just sort of you're going to

be moving toward that very delicate

ending that that is just the perfect

ending. It's not bombastic. It's not

pretentious. It's just this delicate

ending. And so too with a miniature

narrative, you don't have an ending

where there's an earthquake or the a

bomb falls or or somebody comes in with

a machine gun. You know, you're not

going to have an ending that's a violent

melodramatic event. It's probably just

some quiet little quiet thing.