Jerome the fourth century historian captured a scene featuring John the gospel writer, who along with James, was one of the fiery-tempered sons of Zebedee, the Sons of Thunder. I found this in William Barclay’s “Introduction to the Fourth Gospel” in his book, The Gospel of John–Volume 1 , (The Westminster Press, 1956) and the quotations immediately below credit Barclay.
Now John was on his death bed surrounded by a group of his closest followers. Knowing he was about to die, “his disciples asked him if he had any last message to leave them. ‘Little children’ he [John] said, ‘love one another.’ Again, and again he repeated it; and they asked him if that was all he had to say. ‘It is enough,’ he said, ‘for it is the Lord’s command.’”
On reading that story I really liked it. As short as it is, it seems complete.
Now, taking some of my own liberties with Chapter 23, Verse 5 of the Gospel of Matthew, I don’t aspire to be a writer who styles himself as a Pharisee, where everything I do is for show. Where on my arm I wear an extra-wide prayer box [aka phylactery] with Scriptures inside, and robes with extra-long tassels. I just aspire to write complete stories.
Now, I ask you. Is Jerome’s scene a story? Or is it a vignette? Or is it a fragment?
I’m gaining a strong sense that most literary journals have their paid screeners trained to shit-can anything they receive that doesn’t have Stephen Spielberg’s pawprints all over it now.
In The Book Mechanic, Tantra Bensko handles this topic way better than I could ever attempt to cover it. In her Nov. 13, 2019 piece, “Poets and Short Story Writers, Are You Working Toward a Chapbook?” she states, “Editors expect conventional beginning, middle and endings…[with] a protagonist, with a goal thwarted by an antagonist, who is forced by their dynamics to change and overcome the obstacles by the end…[and]…each Act includes Plot Points that occur at the proper moments to fulfill the formula that readers expect.” And on and on about one POV, and using very little expository, and almost all narrative, and having the message rarely clear at the end. Yada, yada, yada.
Ok, I’m onto this now. We have adopted the argot of dramaturgy entirely.
In Flannery O’Connor’s words, “The story is not as extreme a form of drama as the play.” And, “I’ll call anything a story in which specific characters and events influence each other to form a meaningful narrative.”
Well now, the last story I just read by Andre Dubus, A Father’s Story (published in Narrative) doesn’t make the dramaturgical cut . Neither does the one I just read by Rick Bass, The History of Rodney (published in Ploughshares). And neither do a thousand other pieces that have been published (and anthologized) as short stories.
Richard Russo sticks up for Dubus in a June 15, 2018 article in The New Yorker. “Clear conflicts that that get established early – so that the reader feels oriented and the drama can be heightened – are key to conventional stories. Dubus’s conflicts, by contrast, are often revealed late, and sometimes resolved mere moments later. He doesn’t care much whether we feel oriented. He’s here to offer not comfort but truth.”
Now I am disoriented. But, damn it, I’m getting closer to the truth.