Karen Russel's The Bad Graft from June 9/16 2014 New Yorker

I don't know why now of all times I want to start reviewing writing and for this of all stories to be the story with which I begin. So it is. Sometime I wake up at six for no reason at all and the morning is beautiful.

This story frustrated me greatly. It frustrated me like Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers: it's actually pretty good, but missing some little something that's hard to pin down and classify in limited terms, but turns out to be the only thing that gives literature any value at all. You might not realize what you really love about storytelling until you read something like Flamethrowers and you can see it clearly through its absence. Stories are driven by desire and the uncertainties that surround it. Does the desire run counter to some semblance of moral obligations, does it run opposite another desire, what actions does the desire merit, what obstacles are between the desire and its actuality? Any good storyteller will manipulate uncertainty such that you are exploring a dilapidated mansion under the silver light of the moon, and a flashlight of which you are not in control. You hear sounds in the darkness and you wonder and you cower and you ready to fight and then the light moves to the sounds and you see that it's the radiant heater clacking maniacally, which is to say, your best friend has been satisfying your wife in ways that you were never able. Though I do my little argument a little disservice by using Freedom's major plot pivot to talk about how uncertainty is at the center of all story. It is easy to see how uncertainty about a situation like this could drive a novel.

I think one of the major accomplishments of Karl Ove Knausgaard in My Struggle, is how he manages quotidian uncertainties to drive the narrative. I have only read the first half of the first volume, but it's clear that he is doing something unique if we can be excited to accompany a teenage-him to a party, that doesn't actually turn out to be a New Year's party, to then meet a girl he's interested in, in the street, and try to get invited to her party, but fail. The excitement of this plot is not readily apparent. But the ever-renewing desire throughout is palpable; the young Karl knows that anything is possible on a night like this. He's sixteen and has gone to great lengths to acquire and stash away beer. He's told there's a party and he gets to the party and it's a few people sitting around watching TV. He convinces himself that this woman's friendliness denotes interest. She explicitly says he's not invited to her party. He goes home with his friend.

But the entire time we remain convinced that anything can still happen, that the night can be redeemed. This is a literary experience I want to have. I want to feel that hope in all its folly and truth, and then the despair. That is a rich experience that momentarily puts you at the intersection of the fates and the will, which is a place I enjoy dwelling. It is a place I long for, that most times eludes me.

Returning to Russel's story, it starts off well. Two young people have eloped to California to bum around the desert. Sounds good.

"The night before, just outside Albuquerque, they parked behind a barbecue restaurant and slept inside a cloud of meat smells. The experience still has the sizzle of a recent hell in Angie's memory. Will they do this every night? She wants to believe her boyfriend when he tells her they are gypsies, two moths drunk on light, darting from the flower of one red sunset to the next; but several times she's dozed off in the passenger seat and awakened from traitorous dreams of her old bedroom, soft pillows."

Russel accomplishes so much in this paragraph. The challenged narrative of gypsies, the trust in her partner, the what's-at-stake of going home, the potential doom of when moths actually arrive at the light. It fits with the desert, and the "pulse event" of pollination that is about to begin among the moths and the Joshuas.

"Andy watches his girlfriend's lips move, mouthing the lyrics to a song Andy didn't realize he knew. My wife's lips, he thinks, and feels frightened by the onslaught of an unexpected happiness. Were they serious, coming out here? Were they kidding around? Are they getting more serious? Less? Perhaps they'll sort it out all out at the next rest stop."

This is all so good. This is a story I want to read. The narrative of young people leaving it all for love and adventure can be done again and again, as far as I'm concerned.

But then the story gets ridiculous and loses all emotional tension. A Joshua tree spirit leaps from a tree and enters the female character, Angie, causing her to become somewhat crazy and never want to leave the desert. Their relationship becomes ambiguously terrible, though still for some reason continues, as he gets a job and tries to take care of her who has become quiet and obstinate.

"Did you hear me? I said I'm leaving, Angie."

That afternoon, Andy gets a job at the Joshue Tree Saloon.

Then there is a period of peace, coinciding with the Joshua tree's dormancy inside of Angie, which last from April to mid-May. In the park, the Joshuas' blossoms have all dropped off, leaving dried stalks. Andy does not even suggest "moving on" anymore, so thrilled is he to laugh with Angie again. He comes home with fistfuls of tourist cash, reeking of Fireball and Pine Sol. OK, he thinks. Oh, thank God. We're getting back to normal.

Then one day, after a spectacular thundershower, Angie tells him that he needs to go home. Or away. Elsewhere, a bedroom other than the motel.

She feels terrible, she doesn't know what she is saying.

Get me out of it, the plant keeps throbbing like a muscle in Angie's mind A rustling sound in her inner ear, the plant's footsteps. A throaty appetite makes her imagine stuffing herself with hot mouthfuls of desert sand. Once andy leaves her, she'll have a chance to inspect her interior, figure out what's gone haywire.

End quotation. None of this makes any sense to me. This opposition between the plant and Angie seems like the only potential place for an interesting conflict. It's not explored at all, though. Angie is basically taken over by the Joshua but it just makes incommunicative and somewhat insane.

This quasi-mysticism plant-in-woman is the meat of the story, which is then resolved at the end by the memory of their love's genesis, while making love in the desert, which causes the plant to leave her, which makes the couple happy again. Or maybe the plant has only gone dormant, it's suggested in the last sentence.

What's so frustrating is just how sloppy it all is. It reminds me of my writing and I expect better from people getting paid at least something to produce better stories that are being published in the eminent organ of contemporary literature. Interesting themes are brought up, undercut, or  discarded seemingly at random. Characters make sense, and then not. The mystical does not lend a new perspective on the human.

I want so much more from my generation. If my experience is representative, it will be the focus and rigor necessary for creating tight stories, that is the main challenge to art and thought in this age of dissipation.

Letter From The Farm. Non-fiction.

Preface.  This short-short appeared in a four-hundred word version in the Summer 2010 issue of Meatpaper.  I submitted it to them at about that length, they waited seven weeks, during which time I increased it to one thousand--not necessarily improving it--and then they printed the original submission.  So, if you didn't read it in Meatpaper--as if anyone doesn't read Meatpaper--this is it, with all the trimmings. (This is the only thing I have submitted for publication.)  (Also, reading this as a personal update would be misleading.  I haven't worked on the farm since last November, and so was only visiting when this slaughter took place, January 2010.  Explaining the particular whereabouts and whyabouts of a peripatetic twenty-something's "emerging adulthood" (haha!) is punishingly cumbersome, and sometimes, seemingly no matter how many qualifications you add, still a bit of a lie.) 

Two Pigs

I would start right in with the first pig’s death if the story didn’t gain something with the questions that gave it context.

We farm in California’s Sierra foothills, amidst the diggins where the gold miners loosed water cannons upon the hillside, at the climatic juncture where the oaks of the valley reach up to meet the pines lumbering down.  Three years in, our best efforts were no longer yielding limp fences and flooded animal housing, but plumb gates and effective french drains.  We had wheat and lard for biscuits, and the goat’s milk to down them with.  Racks of lamb came out for special occasions, jars and buckets brimmed with seed, and we boasted enough cider and wine to help pretty girls smooch our bearded faces.  I want to say we were on the threshold of real beauty.  

Getting to this state, however, this state not just oriented towards “sustainability” but actually semi-sustainably productive, took causing real harm.  For example, we held notions about bloat, but couldn’t imagine that five minutes on wet, cold clover would kill Greta, our caprine matriarch.  We killed another goat—cleanly with a long knife—when her milk never tasted good, but the sour taste was probably caused by a curable mastitis.  We let piles of manure accumulate and putrefy, and then heavy rains connect them to the nearby stream.  We sowed more than we could reap.

We never caused harm intentionally, obviously, so, after the fact, we would take consolation in the faith that our knowledge was growing and the damage and harm was becoming less frequent.  We asserted that the sacrifices were necessary, no matter how lamentable, to bridge the chasm between our suburban upbringing and the competencies of our agrarian grandparents.  

This is the context within which Tim—the hub of our farm operation—and I invited twenty of our San Francisco friends up to the farm for a weekend of killing pigs, drinking whiskey and rendering lard.  Our experience with slaughtering counted twenty lambs, dozens of chickens, and the six or so male goats born to our milking does that we didn’t have the pasture for.  It was to be our fourth time sticking a pig, and our first unassisted by anyone with more experience or by anyone older than twenty-five. 

The morning of the slaughter a soaking January rain came down.  We would have postponed it if the arrival of our friends didn’t commit us.  We got the fire going to heat the scalding barrel, gathered tables, knives and heaters into the barn, and then all circled up dripping and expectant around the squirrelly, suspicious pigs.

With the first pig, the span of time from roaring indignance to silence was not more than a minute, so we felt good.  We rinsed and scalded her, and got her out of the rain and into the barn for scraping, and then set out to kill a second pig.  Our goal was two.

Like for the first, Tim took his eight-foot rope and made a slip-knot loop and cast it in the pen.  I sussed the pigs from their corner and after a couple missed passes, the now-fattest pig placed a foot directly in Tim's loop and he yanked it tight.  We moved to her and flipped her like the first and Tim stuck her like the first and we held her pinned to the ground as she cried to be leaving her life.  She cried and kept crying and five minutes later she was still crying—not that deafening human-like squeal, but a quiet, snorting lament.  

As the minutes passed, we looked to each other and felt awful as she persisted, head resting on her forelegs.  Our friends hesitantly asked, “Tim, did you get the main artery?”  “Tim, is there nothing we can do?”  “Tim, should we get a gun?”

We didn’t have a gun, so he went back in to make sure he had severed the main artery.  He extended her gash deeper and wider, and seeing nothing more to cut, concluded he must have severed it.  He stepped away at a loss for what else to do.  The pig also stood up.  She stumbled around before falling again, breathing heavily—she didn't want to die.  

Fifteen minutes on, we were stuck in the mud, still watching—she was quieting.  Someone suggested that maybe each pig suffered--was suffering--the same amount of pain in leaving their bodies: the first, sudden and complete like shattered ceramic, the second, gradual like evaporation.  It seemed plausible, given the burst of blood and terrified squeal of the first, and then, the almost patient, if still reluctant, subdued exit of the second.  

Eventually she fell silent completing the ordeal at twenty or thirty minutes.

We were ashamed in front of her, the uninvited profession of skilled slaughterers, and the confidences of our friends.  We couldn’t make head from tail, until later, when we had her chest open and we saw in her an anatomical anomaly doctors call situs inversus dextrocardia: her heart was on the wrong side.

People talk of small-scale production and process in various ways, and sometimes under the banner of “humane” treatment.  I do too, with conviction.  Was this a humane slaughter?  Surely not by its normal definition of minimal suffering and a quick death, sometimes conceived in a way as if all the pain could be lifted from killing and dying.  But were we not compassionate, given our understanding?  Should we have hired it out?  Scheduled it around an expert’s availability?  We’ll have a gun on hand next time.

“Humane” wants us in our perfection, but what of the limits to fully knowing and our need to learn by doing?  When is it proper to begin?   When is it proper to cease to defer and take the matter into your own hands, known-risks accounted for and the infinitude of contingencies be damned?  Could humane merely mean characteristically human?   That we pursue perfection, but embrace our suburban past and our current means, and presume the good will of a teacher faced with honest students?  Inadvertently but honestly bleeding a pig to death in front of all one’s friends is a terribly human-like thing to do.