All language subtitles for Masterclass Joyce Carol Oates Teaches the Art of the Short Story - 12.Revision Workshop “Labor Day”

I think it's very important for writers,

whether young or older, to have an

audience, to have people who are

sympathetic and supportive, but also

fellow writers who have critical ideas

and constructive suggestions. It's very

good to have other people reading your

work. There are many many ways in which

it's uh very instructive and the most

obvious way is sometimes a reader just

doesn't know what's happening in a story

and doesn't understand what the writer

is trying to do. When we read a work of

fiction, we don't know the intention of

the writer. So editors receive material

all the time and we may reject material

that's potentially very good but we

don't understand it or something's been

left out or it's the wrong title or

something's wrong with it. But in a

workshop, the writer can be asked. We

can ask, "What did you mean by this? And

why is this title what it is? And why

did you end it this way?" And in a

discussion, the writer may learn that

his or her intention did not come

through at all. That people don't

understand what happened, that the main

part of the story has been sort of left

out. Sometimes a new writer will want to

not be too obvious or too explicit, and

so the story might be too subtle. So the

workshop is a way where you get feedback

from from interested and intelligent

readers. And I find the workshops

amazing because the young writers in my

workshops

often behave like editors. They're very

very sophisticated in the way they're

looking at the structure of work and I

think very supportive and warm and

really a friendly atmosphere and I think

very necessary for writers to feel that

their work is wanted and and it's

interesting and people will applaud it

and laugh at it when it's funny and so

it's part of just the experience of of

writing.

So, with our our reduced but exemplary

writing workshop, we're going to discuss

two stories today. First, we're going to

take up Lindsay's story, Labor Day. And

so, instead of there being like 10 other

people here to discuss it, there's

basically Corey. So, you're going to

have to stand in for a lot of other

people. So my best Corey and I will just

have a sort of a discussion about it and

you can listen but but we can ask you

questions also.

Okay. So I'm just going to ask uh Corey

what was your reading experience? U just

did you like the story?

Yeah, I I loved it. It um I think the

the best place to start on it is the

level of experience just because it's

the on affect level it's it's very funny

moment by moment. Um I laughed often

reading it and it it's also paced very

quickly.

Yes.

Um yes

to that to the point that um I mean it's

a page turner for a short story which is

which is quite a feat.

Um and then like as as I was reading it

and thinking oh this is a this is a

comedic sort of jaunt into almost like a

comedy of manners type situation. All of

a sudden it started to descend into

uh what I would pretty much describe as

a horror scene.

Yeah. it very quickly becomes traumatic

with details of like like almost like

Vizera and she's trapped in this house,

right? Um, so I think it almost has some

like gothic elements, maybe possibly not

gothic so much as horror elements. Um,

and then I was joking earlier about how

it's also sort of like a heist narrative

because you got to get in there, get

that drive jacket and escape with like

unscathed. Um, so I actually think

it's a very enjoyable read on the level

of affect and um and I had I had had a

wonderful experience reading it.

Now I like the I like your your

description of it being like a heist.

Yeah.

Because we come into the story in in the

consciousness of this protagonist and

she has her intention. She wants to

steal back her own jacket,

right?

But she almost forgets about it a little

bit and then she actually does it. So

there's a little feeling like of

satisfaction when she does that. That

that's a that's a good point. And then

the uh what do you think of the movie

Grizzly? The watching this movie.

Yeah. So that's one of the early there

are earlier cues but one of the earliest

cues that the the sort of interior

struggles of our main character or

protagonist are revolving around death.

I think um because there's this movie

Grizzly Man, which is that famous

Verarog movie about the the very

passionate filmmaker who's devoured by

bears and and um they're sort of

watching it kind of callously

um and the narrator seems the thing

about this narrator is

um she is astute um and observant and I

think even says explicitly I feain naive

rather than sort of like that too

share my thoughts on So that's one of

those moments where she

is like clearly observing the sort of

something sadistic about these people

sitting around watching like Grizzly

Bear, but she won't remark on that.

Um, and I thought those were actually

very powerful moments in the story

because

you're getting an interiority that's

observing something sort of critically

and at a remove and it created a lot of

humor.

Right. Well, there's there's a whole

almost like an archetype or a tradition

of

undercutting the idea of man and nature

by showing like into the wild was

another film based on a memoir

or maybe a book about somebody who goes

into the wild

and he's not really prepared and he's

sort of naive. He's maybe a student at

Berkeley or somewhere. He decides just

to go backpacking and he's not he's not

prepared. But in that movie, he starves

to death, I think. Or he eats something,

he's desperate, and so he eats something

that's poisonous. And these these

movies, they seem to be movies, they

undermine the idea of that we can go

into nature or that if you go into

nature, you're so silly or you deserve

to die, you deserve to starve to death

or you deserve to be eaten by a bear.

You know, I'm making a lot of this

because the author, who's actually right

here,

the author puts this the movie in very

pointedly.

Yeah.

It's it's like your uh your demonized

pigs in your story from from the Bible.

They're these are inserts with a lot of

symbolic weight.

Okay.

There's actually film film references

throughout because it's a very sort of

LA story.

Yes. Um, and and all of them are, I

think, significant and well portrayed. I

mean, I would love to talk to you about

your relationship with the movie Grizzly

Man. And if if you were kind of drawing

on these same resonances that Joyce

pointed out.

Do you want to say just a few words why

why you put Grizzly Man?

Yeah, it's interesting to hear you guys

talk because I think sometimes I write a

little bit intuitively or associative

like associatively. Mhm.

So, I think I put that in there kind of

thinking that she was on this Goldilocks

and the Three Bears sort of,

you know, fairy tale.

Oh, yeah. That's good.

But, um, I like that. I feel like all of

that was in there as well. Like, I I

didn't really understand when I was

writing the relationship with Naive and

how that was playing back and forth. So,

yeah.

No, I like that that sort of connotation

of Goldilocks and with the three bears.

That's very That's very good, too. She's

coming into their their household and

she actually sleeps with them and yeah,

that's really good.

And the story starts there's a

possibility she's driving down there to

have a threesome, right? That's the

comedy of the story. And then it becomes

her hanging this dress. Uh, and it's

like the culminating moment of one of

the culminating moments of the story, I

would say. And she's hanging this dress

and she just talks about how she's good

at it, right? She's like, "I'm good at

it, and I know how to communicate with

the person I'm pinning this dress on,

and I'm like," she's like completely

confident in that moment. Um, and I

think to the more interiority you can

get from this character, the better

because it's just um

that might change the style a bit, but

it but it's just a strong she has a

strong personality, and the moments that

it does shine through are are

delightful. Could I Where's that section

that I'm talking about? You know what

I'm talking about.

So, 16.

Yes. realm.

Um,

she said, "I know that I'm good. I'm

good at it. I know that I'm good at it."

It's one of the few parts of the story

where she has a real um self assertion.

Um, yeah. Down here on 16. Um, do you

want to read it, Lindsay? Is that how we

should do this?

Oh, should I read it aloud?

Okay, good. Good idea. I knew I was good

at what I was doing. I'm good at draping

fabrics over people. I'm good at

determining whether people want to hide

or stand out or what parts of themselves

they want to hide and what parts of

themselves they want to stand out. I

started off by trying to conceal Elsa's

hips, the hips that gave away her age.

But then by the way her stance shifted,

I could tell she felt uncomfortable with

the way the dress was falling on her.

And I understood she liked this part of

herself, even loved it. And I switched

gears and bunched up a fist full of

fabric, pinned it, and marked it for

removal. After the adjustment, she

straightened her posture and I felt her

power in that moment coursing through

me. I always wanted softer angles, but

Elsa wanted everything sharp and

focused. I subtracted large swasts of

fabric until it was an entirely

different dress all together.

That's that's really a nice paragraph. I

thought it it shows the agency that she

has really beneath her naivity. She's

actually like a a serious craftswoman or

artist. Yeah, it was good.

Also her allegiance and sensitivity with

Ilsa is so much more than with Cliff.

Oh my gosh. Absolutely.

It's so like the two women are having a

rapport and the man. Cliff is sort of

borish

compared to the to the women and to the

to the animals. The animals are more

sensitive than than Cliff.

There's a lot of strong images in this

as well. The pineapple is something I

will not soon forget, I think.

Yes. Um,

lots of sort of disgusting things.

How do you pronounce that word? The food

that they eat.

Oh, the shashuka.

Shashuka. We don't want any of that. Uh,

we need to know how to pronounce that

because we don't want that.

And I love that line. I'm sorry. It's

just that there were ants and she's

following the ant trail and she's

cleaning that up. I thought that was

very funny. She's all this cleaning. I

really could identify with that. Then

after all that, there's still a trail of

ants. That was very, very funny.

The one of the strengths of the story is

it seems like somebody's opened a door

and we're just in this this room or this

this apartment and just seeing the way

people actually live.

There was a moment where she's basically

has to take a cold shower, which is hor

horrifying in itself. It's like the

first thing that happens. And it's also

a sort of a funny joke because the story

starts and you think it like it starts

on the promise of a threesome. That's

how it starts. I'm not the kind of woman

who would participate in a threesome,

which is exactly why I went and then it

by the time she gets into the house,

it's literally a cold shower

that starts this horrific weekend that

like obviously doesn't end that way. Um,

and that those are the kind of sort of

like embodied moments that that kind of

hit me on the level that gothic horror

does. the sort of a effect level of just

like I mean it's it's hard to imagine

something more horrible than just taking

a a cold shower and then having to get

out of it and put on your clothes

which cling to you and you're walking

around sping wet in some apartment.

Um so I think yeah you have a you have a

great strength in that area of of

creating a effect for your reader which

is very very hard to do I've found.

Yeah. And then this little sentence just

I neglected to bring my I didn't think I

had to bring my own towel. you know,

she's not even complaining. She'll say,

"I didn't really think I had to bring my

own towel. I thought that was very much

in character."

But I often ask a write a writer what

the story means to him or her. Like, is

this um an early draft of a work that

you think of working on? Is it something

you've already been working on for a

long time? Is it something that you care

a lot about? Is it maybe part of a

novel? So, is it something new to you or

is it more old?

Yes. No, it's very new. I think I wrote

it this month. So, yeah. So, it's the

most recent thing that I've been working

on. Um,

so it's kind of malleable.

Yes.

Good.

So, I can take a lot of feedback on it.

That's good because if you told me you

had been working on it for 5 years,

I would feel a little bit trepidacious

about being critical. Well, I think

Corey's remarks were really very

helpful, very nice. And as Corey said,

the voice is really wonderful. I'm not

the kind of woman who would participate

in a threesome, which is exactly why I

went. I'm lately trying to be a

different kind of woman who could pull

off an edgy haircut and I want to be the

kind of woman who's going to do this

threesome. So I thought the voice was

really very funny and immediately

winning

and I feel that the uh first person

which is Corey's uh perspective also I

feel the first person draws the reader

in much more swiftly than any other

technique. So that's very good.

I'm Jean Seabourg from Breathless in my

mind.

I I think that's okay.

I feel that

the story is best when it's sort of

moving along. And I think I noticed the

second time that I read it, maybe I read

it three times now, the second or third

time I read it, I thought it was sort of

lost some of its power at a certain

point. It had a certain momentum in the

beginning. So let's see. It starts to

lose its power. I think we feel that

Cliff

when she when is she's going to meet up

with Cliff again, we feel that something

is being prepared that's exciting or

dramatic or or or something maybe

repulsive. But then when they actually

meet, it's really sort of anticlimactic.

And we it would be a little better if

she cared about Cliff or she had some

feeling about Cliff that was maybe

ambivalent or she actually liked him

very much at one point and he he took

advantage of her or something. I didn't

feel that the stakes of the story were

maybe high enough to justify the length

of the story. So, we might feel that

that your character is moving into a

situation naively and gets out of her

depth, but we don't ever feel that she's

in much uh actual danger. I would like

to see Cliff be a little more of a

sinister person, though, though not a

villain or not, you know, just maybe

more uh sinister. Did you read that

story, Catwoman?

Yeah. in

in the New York I'm sorry, Catman's

Catman, of course, he pretends he's a

Catman in sort of online, but when when

you actually meet him, there's something

about the Catman

man that is so

absolutely creepy without being a

cartoon. like he's in like an achingly

real man

who's sort of mysterious, but then you

see where he lives because the story

takes us into his living quarters and

get a different view of him and he turns

out at the end to be like a stalker and

he he actually could be a horrible

rapist or who knows he could be a serial

killer you know I think that when the

girl is riding with him in the car

doesn't she say you know you could be a

serial killer or some crazy thing like

that But with Cliff, we never really

feel that there's much probably that's

going to happen. So, I would I would

make that a little more uh

ambiguous.

For instance, on page four, you have a

lot of summary paragraphs.

His Ronnie making job. He worked at the

Jones with a a

Jones or spaghetti. It's sort of chatty,

you know, but it's not. You're on page

four. I think needs to accelerate a

little more. And then Ilsa sells

crystals. At least I think that's what

she does. She had an 8-year

relationship. Uh, all this is sort of

flat, you know. It's a little It's a

little um expository.

I never figured out how old Elsa was. It

didn't seem to matter. She could have

been 31 or 45. I think that there was

some sort of sexual rivalry or or

jealousy. Even though the Bianca doesn't

really care really about Cliff, she

still would feel some rivalry with her.

So, she could be 31 or 45. That seems a

little, you know, prefuncter. Like if

she doesn't care, like maybe the reader

the reader doesn't care either. I'd

rather see that old Elsa was of a

certain age, but she seems to be

behaving younger and the narrator could

very easily try to find out how old she

was just out of curiosity. You know, I'd

like her to be a little more curious. So

anyway, on page eight, when Cliff

finally

embraces Bianca, how are you? Threw his

arms around me, kissed my head. I I

didn't feel that that there was enough

emotion.

I I didn't really see him too well. I

think Cliff in a way is a little bit

vague, but I I like the idea that Cliff

might invite a a girl to stay with him

without even telling Elsa about it as a

kind of sly uh tormenting of Ilsa. You

know, having two women relating to him,

that might be something that he might

do.

What I was going to suggest is that that

raisin and poncho could be conjoined

somehow. There's so many animals.

Yeah, there's a lot. It's like a zoo in

there.

And then Cliff has his um his his

accident, you know, and there's the cat

outside and then the ants are, you know,

the story has a lot of what I would call

bits. I'm not sure that they're

integrated that well. Each of them is

sort of comic in a in a in a minor way.

You know, there's nothing really absurd

or monumentally absurd. uh a a Donald

Bartholomew story might turn upon one

image that's pretty absurd, you know,

but the stories tend to be pretty short,

like four or five pages at the most. So,

I would probably I hate to say it, but I

would probably get rid of that cat. The

cat doesn't do as Poncho is eating the

the uh pineapple with the blood on it.

Yeah.

But the cat probably wouldn't eat the

pineapple. The cat could lick the blood.

I mean, you want you want one animal

there to sort of react to the the blood.

So, it could actually be cat or the dog.

One is wheezing and snorting and

barking.

He snarled maliciously through congested

nostrils. So, you've sort of described

him. Raisin is a 20 pound cat sprawled

on a pile of Easter grass. Probably the

story isn't long enough to have two

weird animals or sort of fat animals and

wheezing and but I like this poncho

practice niceness,

you know, not not be nice but practice

niceness

and then the shakush

shashka.

Yes.

So you have bits. You have the Natalie

Wood. You have the Shashka with the

mystery meat in it. You have the older

actress. You have the trail of ants.

You have maybe something else here. I

would call these bits

and the pineapple that probably should

should stay in. But I think that you

have too many of these things. I didn't

feel that the the threesome was really a

probability. It didn't seem very real.

Wouldn't if that something was really

going to happen,

Bianca would be a little more tense or

they'd all be a little more nervous or

something about it or they'd have to

self-medicate or or something. It just

didn't seem that this was actually

anything that was really going to

happen. You know, it's more like they

might play cards together and that

didn't and that didn't happen.

It might be interesting if Cliff as an

actor actually was a promising actor and

was actually had a bit part in the movie

or something and he was somebody who

could become a real actor but pro

probably he won't. I just think Cliff

has to be heightened a little so that we

care more about him. Now I like the idea

of we're getting the jacket. I think

that's very important. Now she gets the

jacket but then the trail of ants come

after that. I think it'd be better to

get the jacket a little later and well

end the story when you she gets the

jacket now. The older actress I I think

Corey is quite right. I think she should

just stay in the apartment and not get

out at all. I I thought that was a real

um slump. The older actress, it's like a

koi suggestion that we're supposed to

know who this is, but we don't we don't

really know who it is and she's not in

the narrative. So, I think it drags a

bit.

And then on page 17, her insight about

the clothing,

I thought that was very good, but it

needed something more after that, that

Elsa has to acknowledge that she's Elsa

has to acknowledge that Bianca knows

what she's doing and that she Elsa has

been improved and and this is really uh

it's really wonderful. So right here on

page 17, you need some reaction to that.

That's a nice paragraph, but then it

goes too fast. Okay. Then he cuts

himself.

I'm wondering if he could be cut

accidentally by somebody else.

Where then just cutting himself?

Just an accident. You know, as Freud

said, there are no accidents. They're

cutting something. Whoops.

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Here, Bianca, you cut it. You know, Ilsa

Elsa is cutting it. She says, "Well, you

could do this." And

someone's like,

"So, it's like the two women are cutting

the man and they want him gone. Then

when he's gone, they don't want to go

visit him." And like he's he's his blood

is on the floor.

Now, if this were a Gothic story, they'd

both be licking the blood, you know, but

it's not a Gothic story, so you don't

want to do that. But I like the idea of

the pineapple with the blood on it and

the the cat or the dog licking it. So,

Corey, what did you think about the um

Terara deck and page 20?

Oh, yeah. Um

that section

I I think it's an opportunity. It's like

a humanizing moment that Elsa hasn't had

yet. Now that Cliff has left the scene,

I think I think that's this moment that

this kind of oppressive borish guy has

now gone. There can be a more shared

moment between the women. Um so, there's

certainly opportunity there. I don't I I

don't know a ton about tarot or like how

it's supposed to go or like um

there's actually a lot of references to

ter like knowing references to tarot

that went over my head. Uh so I wonder

if they could be possibly explained

better. If you put um our main character

in a situation where she also doesn't

understand tarot, then then Elsa can

explain it and you learn more about

about Elsa and

Oh, that'd be a good point.

And the reader gets those details. Um,

but there's obvious I mean it's an it's

an enchanted object, right? Like the

possibility that's inherent in a tarot

deck for a story is very high. Like the

possibility of predicting death or

foreseeing the future or the past is

very high. So as an object, I think it's

a good one. Um, I think like all many

points in this story like ratcheting way

up like even just as an experiment might

might take you somewhere interesting

even if you have to scale back a little

bit.

Yeah. Well, you could write a whole

story with the tarot being the title,

you know, or one of the figures of one

of the cards being the title.

I think that in this story comes in the

wrong place and maybe maybe it should be

another story

because a certain amount of magic and

power and it seems that it's not given

enough attention, you know. So, also

once she gets the jacket, I think the

story should start to end. So, you want

to be careful about that positioning. I

would cut the terra deck from this

story, but I would I would keep it

because writers are like cooks. They

they keep everything in in the

refrigerator and put it all in the

casserole. Like what doesn't go in for

dinner tonight? Well, it's going to show

up next Sunday. So, just put it because

your story has a few too many bits in

it. You know, like then she's sleeping

upside down in the bed with them. That's

another bit. You know, you have like

seven of these little things. But

stealing the jacket and him cutting or

somebody cutting him, those are the main

points, you know. So anyway, it was

really interesting story and we got a

lot out of it. The stru the strength of

the story is the narrative voice and and

the character. It's really a story about

a very interesting character.