Let's Discuss! STORY Issue #14

LIT MAG READING CLUB discussion of Story

Welcome to our Lit Mag Reading Club discussion about Story Magazine!

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Story Issue #14

This issue of STORY contains twelve stories by eleven writers. Most of the contributors boast impressive credentials, with previous work appearing in prestigious journals, commercial magazines and/or full-length books. The one exception to this is Laura Venita Green whose story “Stuck” was the winner of the 2021 Story Foundation Prize. Quite remarkably, this is her first publication.

Stylistically, I’d say the magazine favors realistic, character-driven pieces with elements of wry humor. In several instances this humor derives from the characters’ own self-awareness as they grapple with their messy pasts. The reader watches along wondering when, how, or if they will overcome what haunts them.

Instances where this plays out include a young mother confronting an abusive family member in Alan Rossi’s “Until all That Was Left Was the Present”— “What happened was she was sitting in her car having another ridiculous fantasy—she would wait until he went to the gym, follow him there, wait until he finished with his workout…and again, the fillet knife out of the steam, across his neck…and again she was laughing…How embarrassing, she thought…”

In Jared Lemus’s “So Long to the Rearview” the unnamed narrator visits his ex- and an amusing power-play ensues:

“‘Fuck no,’ she says and tries to slam [the door] shut. But your hand is like a mongoose—in through the crack before she knows it’s you.

‘It’s not what you think,’ you say.

‘Drugs,’ she says.

‘Okay,’ you say. It is what she thinks.

And in Green’s “Stuck,” the young heroine, Tess, is told by her neighbor, “‘No, I see you…I know that you are a woman of your word.’” To which Tess “couldn’t help but laugh. A woman. This kid telling her she was a woman of her word. Uh, nope. And what was everyone’s obsession with one’s word?”

Two stories here refer to the pandemic, but obliquely, with the inciting incident in Rossi’s story a disturbing family reunion over Zoom and Rachel Swearingen’s tight and gripping story all taking place in a subway car while “Every day the headlines were more unbelievable…There was talk of a virus overseas…” and a pitch-perfect last line that captures all the danger to come.

As an aside, I’ve been wondering how the pandemic would begin to appear in fiction, and Rossi’s piece makes interesting use of masks, both as a fact in this character’s world and also as a symbol. By the end, once Allison has confronted the man from her past, her mask is also removed, her true face exposed.

I could write a full article covering each and every one of these stories. Surely they are all worthy of attention. In particular, “Stuck” is a masterful convergence of character, humor, suspense and real heart. It’s the kind of story featuring a train-wreck character that has you reading with your fingers over your eyes. Green does a great job setting the stage with her heroine and having us enjoy Tess’s company, even as we can barely stand to see what will happen next. Fun fact: Reading about babysitters who like to get drunk on the job is absolutely terrifying.

The voice here is what pulls the whole piece together—sad, smart and glib in a way that lands at every turn. Of a visiting neighbor Tess observes, “Everyone knew that Gail’s family lived somewhere in the woods with well water and no electricity and were the most Jesus-y people in their entire small town full of Jesus-y people.” Meanwhile, of herself, Tess notes that she had been “voted class favorite each year, always fun and easygoing in a way that people had appreciated then but for some reason did not appreciate now.”

The imagery here is also worth a mention. We begin with the sale of walnut trees that have left nothing but stumps behind—those “big sad stumps [spoiling] the backyard.” By the end, after a shocking yet wholly gratifying confrontation with the “Jesus-y” neighbor, it’s no longer the stumps Tess is noticing, but “the tangle of trees.”

A story I find myself thinking about again and again is Ciera Horton McElroy’s “The Faith Healer.”

Let me tell you: I inhaled this story. From the first moment of interaction between one of the story’s protagonists and the curious stranger who’s come to town— “We don’t know why he came.”—I was engrossed.

As the story developed, I was swept away by the group of women at its heart. “We,” says the collective narrator, “are women past our prime. We are mothers done mothering…”

I love stories about motherhood, especially its thornier, more wrenching parts. McElroy captures it all exquisitely.

“Our children—our world—live states away and call when they remember…They complain about the president and the news, spout opinions on stories we’ve never heard. We nod along. We do not say how sad FaceTime makes us. How we can tell that they type while they talk. We take what we can get…[O]ur children have surpassed us. We cannot keep up with the people we created.

And there’s this gutting line: “We hate this, the feeling small. We hate this more than anything.”

Thus the women, aging, out of the world’s fast-paced loop, off the career track, distant from their children, estranged from their husbands, become increasingly seduced by a faith healer who has appeared in their town. “It happens quickly, the way he takes over our lives.”

I came to adore these women, their friendship, their humor, and most of all their vulnerability.

Imagine my shock and horror, then, to realize halfway through this piece that they are…[gasp]…REPUBLICANS.

Yes, it’s true. These nice women, whose text messages are so funny, whose chocolate martinis sound so delicious, whose book club seems so trashy and gossipy and fun, are also viewers of Tucker Carlson, do not know what Proposition 8 is, and in at least one instance support their state’s Republican governor. In fact, this just might be why their children are so frustrated with them. (“Naomi’s daughter called her ‘ignorant’ for not knowing about Proposition 8;” “Lisa’s son said he hated her for supporting the Republican governor—how could her own baby hate her?”)

My shock and horror are not real, of course. I don’t actually mind reading about Republicans.

It’s just, somehow, I felt that this story wanted me to mind. And this is where I had questions.

By the time it becomes clear that these women aren’t just any women but a particular voting block, it is hard to read the faith healer as anything other than a stand-in for Donald Trump. (Though one is also reminded of the wooden-leg-stealing Bible salesman of Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People.”) Here, the faith healer is a charlatan who “leaves with $10,000 cash…takes an Uber to Orlando, from where he buses to Amelia Island to heal rich white people on holiday.”

In turn, I wondered, are we really meant to sympathize with these women? Or are they being held up as specimens to explain a particular political phenomenon? Or both?

What I do know is that I didn’t want these women to serve as an explanation for anything, and certainly not voting trends. I didn’t want the story to be a treatise on Why Good People Make Bad Political Choices. I didn’t want the story to tell me what is, or is not, a good political choice at all.

But most importantly, I did not want these women to be used as pawns in order to further the author’s own political agenda, in just the way they were used for cash by the faith healer.

What helps to clarify matters, in my mind at least, is that by the end of the story, these women actually do feel that they have been healed on some level. Indeed, they have been. The mere airing of their suffering has allowed the bond between them to deepen. “Ache is like hunger,” the narrator tells us. “Always bound to return.” But for now, that ache is staved off.

It is this ending, in my view, that keeps the story honed in on the humanity of these women. That the writer chose for them to be strong, ultimately, that they confronted something difficult but are more clear-eyed because of it, is precisely what keeps the story from becoming the sort of reductive political tract I worried it might be.

The women are not broken. And while they might reveal something about certain voting trends, what they reveal even more poignantly is the vulnerability and need for healing that we all feel, at one time or another. They are fully dimensional people. This is precisely who I, so invested in them from the very start, want them to be.

I have faith that the story delivered on that promise.

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And now, I shall turn it all over to you.

What did you think?

What stories captivated you? Why?

What excited you about this magazine?

What surprised you?

What moved you?

What are your thoughts?

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Please share your responses freely. As you do, please be respectful.

Thoughtful criticism is welcome. Please keep it constructive. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to a writer in a workshop with you.

Keep in mind that for many people, this is their very first publication. Some of the contributors to these magazines may even be participating in the Lit Mag Club and will read your comments!

I will be monitoring and participating in all journal discussions.

Thanks for being the thoughtful, engaged, understanding and passionate readers and writers you are!

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We will be speaking with Editor Michael Nye and STORY #14 contributors on October 28th at 1:30 pm est. If you haven’t yet registered, you can do that here.

The conversation will be recorded and made available afterward. If you can’t attend but have questions you’d like me to ask Michael, drop me a line!

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