THE PARTY'S OVER

As I projected when I began this project, this Blog would have a finite life. It was a project originally designed to be a dialogue between two writers about the craft of the writer Jacob M. Appel. My partner referred to himself as the FIRE MAN. He did manage to collaborate through the first three stories of EINSTEIN'S BEACH HOUSE, a collection that, as you know by now, has eight stories.

The objective was to obtain some ideas about the craft of writing and story telling through discussion of our observations about the text, and examining techniques for narrating action and using dialogue to develop characters and plot, if there is a plot.

As in most things, what hasn't been noted in entries, are observations that exist, at deep levels, from the reading that don't get articulated, but still inform our perception perhaps at a subliminal level. Those kinds of observations usually don't surface in projects like this. But sometime later, maybe even years, they may surface in our own work. We may or may not connect such occurrences with past research.

Writing/Reading can be a circular process that generates its own energy. It can ripple across the imagination when you least expect it.

I regret that FIRE MAN chose not to participate. If for some reason, he comes to the party belatedly, I would so happy to interact with his observations.

If you are reading this entry, which is the most recent effort, it represents a culmination of the blog. If you want to follow the history of the entries, you need to go back in time to February 9th, and move forward (or up) the entry dates. This will align the blogs with the order of the stories in EINSTEIN'S BEACH HOUSE. 

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PARACOSMOS: A PARABLE OUT OF THIS WORLD

Eve is the daughter of Medical Researcher Hugh Malansky and naturally skeptical wife, Leslie. Evie, as she is called by the Malanskys, has a best friend, a classmate and redhead named Kim. Kim's explains that carrying an umbrella increases the chances of rain. Hugh snips this fuzzy thinking in the bud with a lecture on cause and effect, and using an example of of the scrotum of chimney sweeps grew tumors because of their contact with soot.

This explanation prompted Kim's Mother calling the Malansky's for an explanation and apology, which ultimately ostracizes Evie from her school friends by excluding her from Kim's birthday party, and all other events.

Evie comes home sobbing that no one loves her anymore. The only thing that will compensate her loss is to have a talking pet parakeet. "Not in a million years," is Hugh's response, citing parrot fever, ornithsosis, pneumonia and meningitis as probable outcomes of parakeet possession.

But when her parents enter her room to explain why a parakeet is out of the question, Evie explains that it is okay. Her friend Lauren had brought her macaw along with her for a sleepover. When they inquire about Lauren, Evie replies that she;s her new best friend, and she asks Lauren have her makaw say something. Evie listen's to the silence intently and then bursts out laughing. 

"Isn't she great?" Evie laughingly observes.

Leslie is terrified saying to Hugh that she's too old for imaginary friends, while Hugh assures her it is just a phase and jokes that he hopes Lauren's mother is not a bitch like Kim's mother.

Leslie remembered that she had a childhood imaginary friend named Sally Whiskers, part human, part cat. She had always wanted a cat. When her twin brother claimed Sally was also his best friend, she countered that she couldn't be because she didn't exist, promptly terminating her fantasy.

Lauren Dowdy consumed Evie's imagination and time. Lauren required a toothbrush and an extra seat for amusement rides or admissions to events. Leslie would question about details of Lauren's life and Evie would fill in details that Lauren's parents were divorced and she had brother that drowned.

As the fantasy grows, partially abetted by Leslie's tacit acceptance of Lauren as Evie's friend, Hugh put's his foot down and declares that Lauren doesn't exist. When he eats a portion of Salmon from Lauren's plate a dinner, Evie demands he put it back because it belongs to Lauren, he replies that Lauren doesn't exist. Evie retreats sobbing. But after that day, Evie did not mention Lauren again, and she gradually returned to a world of real friends.

After a few days, an intriguing, handsome man parks in front of their house, and inquires "Mrs. Malansky? He explains he is Lauren's father and that he came to inquire if Lauren had done anything wrong. He explains that Lauren means everything to him, and if she has done anything wrong, he wants to make things right.

Steve Dowdy is magnetic and compelling. Leslie explains that the episode with Lauren was the fault of her husband. Steve remarks that Lauren was right about Leslie, You are more beautiful than I thought possible. They kiss and begin an affair, Steve visiting her every afternoon. As things develop, Leslie asks so see Lauren, but Steve continually makes excuses as to why that would be difficult.

Finally Leslie makes Steve commit to a date to see Lauren. She never meets Lauren, and Steve disappears from her life.

Paracosmos is that universe of the imagination that can be vivid and persuasive, intersecting with our lives with rich compelling narratives that can be more powerful than our daily pursuit of activities. 

What Appel demonstrates is how fluid and disarming the use of narrative story-telling can be in shifting our sensibilities from the "real" to an imaginary world, where anything is possible even if it conflicts with reality. He further illustrates how this imaginary life enriches experience and can rupture the membrane of our more or less tidy reality.

This is Appel at his best. The narrative is rich, and the characters are well delineated. What a way to end this collection of short stories. Paracosmos is "out of this world."

 

"SHARING THE HOSTAGE" HOLDING US HOSTAGE?

"Sharing the Hostage" is placed just right in this collection, as it is a piece of fluff that holds the reader hostage, away from the final story in the collection. We stay with it, hoping it has somewhere to go, but in the end, this story about "Flamingo Beach" on Long Island, and a divorced couple that shares the custody of a tortoise named "Fred" is caught in the web of its own rhetoric. 

We never learn the name of our hero, but we learn he has had some success as a ventriloquist with a homemade dummy named Dr. Whipple.

The hero of the story is courting a new girl-friend, Maddie, who has just gone through a divorce. Her ex-husband retains the house, and to avoid the turtle dying from removal from the comfort of his home, "Fred" remains with her ex-husband.

Our hero, who has ambitions to become a lawyer, is smitten with Maddie. But early in the relationship he warns her that schizophrenia is rampant in his family. He has vowed he will never have children. For most of his dates, this has been deal-breaker, and the relationship ends. 

But Maddie shrugs it off, and tells our 'hero" that she has a worse secret--sharing her story about joint custody of Fred the tortoise. She insists that he must take her every Saturday to visit Fred.

On this first visit, the ex-husband, Michael, warns our hero to stay in the car. Under no circumstances does he have permission to enter his house.

Suddenly he recognizes our hero as the ventriloquist he had taken his niece to see on her seventh birthday. Michael leaves for work as he shakes his head in wonder that his wife left him for a ventriloquist.

A few minutes later, Maddie comes out of the house holding a damask curtain which he learns is hiding the turtle. She buckles the seat belt and commands our hero to drive. Of course, he heads for Flamingo Beach. Maddie leaves the car to dig for earthworms for Fred, using our hero's prize coffee cup. This leaves our hero free to carry on a ventriloquist-style conversation with the turtle. He offers the turtle freedom and tries to get him to leave the car.

Maddie returns with an empty coffee cup.  She realizes they have made a mistake, and insists that they return to the house. She puts Fred back in Michael's house, and the weekly Saturday visitation will continue with everyone sharing the hostage "until something gives."

This is not Appel at his best. Appel often contrives his narratives with surprising shifts that can be jarring, lifting you out of the narrative and reminding you that this is just a trick, a device of language, like a magician pulling a dove from a hat, or a ventriloquist throwing a fake voice at a dummy, hoping you will not notice and will go along with the charade.

IS THE FIREMAN NOWHERE?

If this Blog had any readers, they might well ask, "Where's the Fireman?" But as this was a private learning venture, we are the only readers. For reasons known only to the Fire Man, he has abandoned this project...so I blunder on alone, left to my own devices, determined to come away a little bit wiser about the craft of writing through what I am discovering through Appel's short story narrative technique.

I understand that Appel has another set of stories, AMAZING THINGS ARE HAPPENING HERE, published in 2019. This is another set of eight short stories, and I gather that more than half are told in first person. The technique of entering into another identity to tell a story requires considerable skill, and Appel has been extremely prolific. Nothing beats learning about writing than writing itself. I'm happy Appel has brought forth these new stories. Reading is another way to unlock narrative awareness.

I miss Fireman. I wish he would sort out his issues and join me again. His participation would surely deepen what we might learn about writing as a process.

As I write this, a late winter snow storm is raging past my studio windows. I'm on the edge of a forest reserve, and my windows are framed by stately firs exactly like those that populate the Blue Mountain Forest Reserve. The moment is one that I envisioned in my teens, writing furiously during a snowstorm...only it was in Vermont.

Existentially, is the Fire Man Nowhere...or maybe really, Now Here?

 

ASCEPLIUS AS APPEL'S ARROGANT AGONY--ALAS!

Maybe Jacob Appel hopes that language can manipulate our values, as clearly the tale told by the daughter of a charming ne'er-do-well seeks our collaboration in murdering innocent bystanders. 

Appel's "The Rod of Acsceplius" begins with "A FIRST PULSE OF MEMORY---" by a precocious daughter of an architect who pretends to be a doctor to punish relatives of doctors---a vendetta against the medical profession because some doctors botched the treatment of his wife's ruptured uterus, killing her on Thanksgiving, and leaving our narrator, Lauren, motherless while still in kindergarten.

That "first pulse of memory" included a visit to a hospital, where her father, in a white lab coat is waived past security, and together they take the elevator to the top floor. He mistakenly barges into the room of an elderly man who has had his leg amputated, and makes a retreat, entering the room of a woman in her thirties who is emaciated and asking for Dr. Hagerman. He assures her that her doctor has been delayed, but that he's prescribed a blood-thinner, as he fills his syringe and administers a dose of his usual fatal" cocktail.

"Papa" never calls his daughter by name. She is a princess, and he has her go along as part of the mission. "Who are we doing this for?" he asks. Lauren replies, "For Mama." 

Papa's sister, Henrietta, comes to live with them because of a court order issued when Lauren plays hooky from kindergarten and "Papa" must adhere to new custody requirements for his lack of oversight. 

Henrietta has many boyfriends coming and going. She is 27, five years younger than her brother. When she asks Lauren what she wants to be when she grows up, Lauren answers she wants to be a doctor. When asked why, she replies because "Papa is a doctor." She is told outright her father is not a doctor, information that Lauren had suspected, but now knows to be true.

The murders of doctors' relatives, and in one case, an actual doctor, continues, all in the cause of Lauren's mother---all administered as medical treatments by syringe. Presumably the syringe is the Rod of Aceplius.

Each episode is followed by a celebration such as ice cream, or meals at fun places. After one such treatment, Papa asks Lauren what she wants to be when she grows up. When she answers "a doctor," he slaps her with stunning force. He tells her doctors are the enemy. Never forget that.

When Papa meets an aspiring doctor after she bumps into his car and smashes the headlamp, he begins to date her. For a while she believes his story, but in time she sees through his masquerade. But she has fallen in love and wants to be part of his life, no matter who or what he is.

Her name is Suzanne, and through her we learn that "Papa" is Phil. Phil constantly stays at her place, some distance from his actual home. He never asks Suzanne to come to his home, not even for Christmas. Finally she issues an ultimatum that they celebrate Christmas at his home or their relationship is ended. 

He celebrates Christmas at home with Lauren, her aunt and future uncle, but without Suzanne. After the holiday dinner, Henrietta and her boyfriend leave for vacation at the Gulf Coast. 

Phil returns to heavy drinking and two days later he asks Lauren to practice being a doctor by administering a dose of "salt water" with a syringe. 

Amazingly, she cooperates, even though she knows it is the same lethal dose he has administered to his victims. The Rod of Asceplius administers justice one last time.

Appel's "Papa" is a socially adept, good-natured fellow, who wants everyone to have a good time. Seen through the eyes of a young girl, his daughter, she serves as his accomplice in medically administered ceremonies of death followed by celebrations of ice cream and dessert.  

Appel seems to rationalize Phil's motives as a reasonable reaction to medical malpractice. But there is also a tone of arrogance that is troubling because all sense of right and wrong is apparently abandoned.

This might be the most complex narrative of this collection of short stories. It clearly is fueled by Jacob Appel's study of medicine and his actual practice as a doctor. He propels the story through the use of dialogue. It is a chilling final scene when he forces Lauren to administer his lethal concoction in an act of assisted suicide.

TRAVELOGUE THROUGH APPEL'S SHORT STORIES

We have passed the midpoint of this collection, so about three weeks remain before we try to glean what we might have learned from this experiment. I proposed to my young writer friend that we examine Appel's collection of stories, EINSTEIN'S BEACH HOUSE, together, and blog about our observations of his narrative techniques, and perhaps detect elements that comprise his style. All of the stories in the collection were printed earlier in various journals. 

It seemed clear to me that these were among Appel's first published attempts at story telling. What made these stories effective enough to be accepted for publication in journals? Do these stories hang together as a collection?

What can we learn from reading and discussing the stories? What is the "languaging" of the author Appel? Is it distinctive? What is the relationship of plot to character development? In this small group of stories, is there enough coherence to say Appel has a particular style?

Maybe there are better questions to be asked. I'm sure there must be. But I'm a strong believer that it can be fun to just dive in and start looking at what is before you. 

Looking ahead to "The Rod of Asclepius."

IT'S ALL ABOUT RELATIVITY: EINSTEIN'S BEACH HOUSE

This beach house story is a tale told by an eleven year-old girl, Natalie Scragg, who lived with her parents and younger sister Nadine at 2467 South Ocean Avenue in Hagers Head, New Jersey. The American Automobile Association posts that Albert Einstein spent his summers at that address. Even though at the outset, the first sentence indicates (with no authority) that Einstein spent his summers at 2647 South Ocean Avenue. Appel's opening paragraph is a succinct setting for the entire story as seen through the eyes of the older daughter.  Natalie speculates as to whether this statement by AAA was a typographical error, or that maybe the editors had some basis to think it was the correct address. 

Right away, we learn through Natalie that her parents, Bryce and Delia, are mismatched. Her father is a dreamer, and her mother is an unrepentant realist. When strangers appear asking for a tour of Einstein's summer cottage, the mother angrily tells them to get lost, but Bryce sees it as a cash cow to alleviate their dismal financial circumstances. As the consummate dreamer, he had been laid off work at Bell Labs working on a translation device to understand cats and dogs that had no traction with his employers. 

Bryce devises a plan to hold tours of Einstein's Beach House for twenty-five dollars a head. Delia will have no part of it, and spends her time fuming at what she regards as Bryce's ineptness and fuzzy thinking.

The Scraggs believed the house had been in the family as a summer home, and then the crash of 1929, forced Bryce's grandfather to give up his townhouse in Washington Square Village and move to the beach house as a permanent residence. It had been in the family for years.

Bryce bumbles along with the tours, inventing stories about Einstein and enjoying revenue growing to the amount of $2200 a week. It was enough to warm the cold heart of Delia, causing her to admit that the money had made it possible to pay their taxes on time for the first time in their life. Natalie sees her parents kiss "passionately" and remembers this as their happiest moment.

Of course, paradise unravels when Einstein's niece from Germany, Dora Winterer, visits them at the Beach House to claim her inheritance from uncle Albert: the beach house that Bryce thought had been in his family for years. Checking his safe deposit box, he fails to find a deed to the property.

We last see the Scraggs with Bryce changing a flat tire as they are on the road, without a home, on their way to live with Aunt Claire in her Virginia row house.

Here is a story of a relative of Albert Einstein, evicting the relatives of the Scraggs from Einstein's Beach House, a house they believed had been in the Scraggs family for generations. 

Maybe the real story is how did Grandpa Scraggs end up in the wrong house?

Appel writes a tight narrative, but there are a lot of loose ends. What is convincing is his sharp delineation of many characters that appear in the story: family members, boarders renting the lower floor, many visitors to the museum, and finally the dagger in the heart: Einstein's niece, Dora Winterer, sporting her memory of visiting uncle Albert in that very home and clutching the official deed to the property.

Whatever. This story has lots of relatives. Clearly adhering to a theory of relativity.