The failure of the remedy: "The Home Visit" by Morris Collins

In the 2020 O.Henry anthology, one of my favorite stories was "Lagomorph" by Alexander Macleod, which I wrote about here. It was the story about a man and the family pet rabbit, which he still keeps with him after an amicable divorce. The rabbit is both a comfort to him and a source of bewilderment. Rabbits are hard to read, and in a sense, the rabbit becomes something of a symbol of the mystery of life itself. But a comforting mystery that likes its ears scratched. 

"The Home Visit" by Morris Collins has some overlaps with "Lagomorph." (If you're a student stuck with writing a paper, a compare/contrast of these two stories would be a great idea that, once you've read the two stories, almost writes itself.) In "The Home Visit," we have a couple that seems like it's headed toward divorce, rather than already being there. Their cat, Derek, which was a symbol of the togetherness of the narrator and his wife Alex way back when they got him, is now on the brink of death. In fact, the couple really probably should have put him down already, but then they'd have to deal with their own problems. Perhaps to prepare for the moment when it can't be put off any longer, they go to get a new cat, one that will allow them to continue avoiding their problems by focusing on the cat, and that's where they meet Sarah. Sarah is an eccentric shelter manager who thinks animals are naturally attracted to her and who can't quite remember the made-up Buddhist bullshit wisdom she tries to quote. 

Sarah is judgmental of the narrator and Alex during her home visit, obviously relishing her power. She also get progressively weirder. After taking Alex up on the offer to get drunk, they all head off together to put Derek down at a lovely country location Sarah says she knows about. Sarah calls a friend to drive them there, and when they arrive, we find out that the lovely spot in the country is her ex-father-in-law's ski lodge. The narrator decides he wants to call it all off, partly because he figures that once the cat leaves, Alex won't be far behind. 

In a lot of ways, it's familiar territory. "Detailed dissection of a slowly deteriorating marriage" is maybe the most oft-trodden path of 21st-Century literary fiction. But the story doesn't feel worn-out, because in the hands of an observant and wry author, you can make just about anything feel new. Part of the observation, in fact, is the circular nature of relationships, which somehow makes the frequent appearance of this type of story seem justified: it has to keep reoccurring, because the weaknesses of the characters are so baked into most humans, this story can't help but show up over and over. As a matter of fact, we kind of get a hint of recurrence, since Sarah, who judges the couple for their weaknesses, is herself divorced. Alex once tried to make a predilection for hats a distraction from her real issues, and we later see Sarah's ex-father-in-law and a boy who is with him both wearing porkpie hats, perhaps their own version of this same idiosyncrasy. 

What are the human weaknesses the narrator and Alex suffer from that doom their hopes and happiness? Things like a refusal to move past the way things were and be decisive about the future (narrator), the inability to pinpoint one's own restlessness and sense of unhappiness (Alex), and most importantly the way both parts of a couple look to one another to fix what's wrong with them and get disappointed when it doesn't work (both narrator and Alex). When they can't fill up what's missing for one another, they get a cat. When the cat is about to die, they get another. It repeats within marriages, and it repeats across marriages. 

Death by a thousand similes: "Orphan" by Brad Felver (O.Henry Anthology)

I've had strange moments of recognition while analyzing stories for this blog, before, but this one might have been the weirdest. As I was continuing on with my read-through of this year's O.Henry anthology,  I realized I was going to be critical of "Orphan" by Brad Felver, a story that's about an orphaned teen who makes friends with an old man who lost a young child, and that jogged something in my memory. Didn't I once go hard at another story about a young child who dies? Am I really this big an asshole I'm going to do this again? So I looked through my past posts, and yeah, I did attack a story before about a four-year-old who dies of a brain tumor. The story was "Queen Elizabeth.," and the author was...Brad Felver. 

I swear I have no idea who Brad Felver is, and I wish the man no ill. He's just written two stories I really don't like. In fact, as I looked back on that post from 2019, I realized that "Orphan" is actually a sequel to "Queen Elizabeth." I didn't remember "Queen Elizabeth" while reading "Orphan," but now that I've figured out the backstory, I guess it makes sense that I wouldn't like a sequel if I didn't like the original, even if I didn't know it was a sequel while reading it.  

Both stories focus on a furniture maker named Gus and his ex-wife Ruth who were once in love and then lost a young child and ended up, as many couples do who suffer a loss like that, divorced. Sort of a Manchester by the Sea sort of story, except that Gus isn't a volatile drunk. I suppose what I don't like is that it feels like the story is taking cheap advantage of the high level of sentimentality people attach to children who die--many think of it as the worst thing that can happen to someone--and providing a story that people will love because of the emotion they will supply, rather than because of a unique insight from the story itself. Put another way, both stories seem to me to be heavy on emotion and light on something original to say about either the emotion or the situation that caused it. They're both kind of Lifetime-channel stories.

In the case of "Orphan," I think a lot of that impression is caused by the rather ornate use of figurative language, which called to mind to me some of the excesses of Gothic fiction. I don't usually get hung up on what's called "craft" much, but in this case, there was something about the story that just yelled out to me throughout, something I couldn't get around, and it undid the whole feeling it wanted to create. The first line of the story has a simile in it about a kid "eager as a chipmunk." The last two lines are both similes. And in between are a ton more. I did a rough count and came up with a total of 70 similes in the story. That's just too many for them to be effective. It writes over the reserved feeling of loss the story wants to create with a mawkish and showy style. By and large, the similes are not terribly original, and  most of all, they're also all over the place in terms of the effect they create. As Writing Fiction by Burroway, et. al. advises writers on the use of simile and metaphor: "Separate metaphors or similes that are too close together, especially if they come from areas of reference very different in value or tone, disturb in the same way the mixed metaphor does. The mind doesn't leap; it staggers." 

I'm not just applying some rule from a book here; I really do think all these tropes call attention to themselves in a flowery, too-writerly way. You just can't allow that when you're writing about the death of children, which is a subject so sensitive you have to be careful about abusing that sensitivity in order to get sympathy for your characters they haven't earned. Instead of being cautious, though, this Baroque style throws caution to the wind and is actually trying it damndest to win cheap tears from its readers. It really was distracting, and it also made me feel like the story didn't take itself seriously.

I've compiled a list of what I consider to be the similes in the story below to make my point about how many there are and how different they are in tone from one another. In one case, the same thing (memory) is compared both to heritable genetic traits and also to an embrace. The effect of all these similes is to dull the impact of the story's emotional center. 

In the list below, I realized I had to think a little bit about what a simile actually is, something I'd thought for a long time I understood cold. "A comparison between two things using 'like' or 'as'" would have been my knee-jerk definition. That's true, but it's also true that not every comparison between two things using "like" or "as" rises to the level of a simile. "This tastes like chicken" is being rather too literal for simile. It's saying this meat really is similar to chicken in flavor. "This tastes like a burnt boot," however, is a simile. I realized while making the list below that the line between a simile and a simple comparison can be in the eye of the beholder. I'm not really sure about cases like "I feel like I'm flying." That does compare my feeling to the giddiness one feels when flying, but it's not as concrete as a simile applied to an object. I decided to count examples like that, but I was a little conservative otherwise in making the list, and I left off some borderline cases. I also am not getting into metaphors, which there were also several of. 

Felver says he's writing a third installment of Gus and Ruth. Will the universe somehow conspire to put it in my path? Who knows, but I'm honestly perplexed about how both stories were chosen for publication by highly respected journals and then subsequently chosen for the O.Henry anthology. I feel like both are weak stories in an obvious way. This doesn't happen all that often. With about eighty percent of the stories I read in BASS or Pushcart or whatever anthology, I can see what made editors love them. When a case like this happens, it makes me question my own taste and skill as a reader. I'd love for someone to make an argument that they're deserving of the love they got. 

All the similes:

1.  A kid eager as a chipmunk
2. The impatience in these kids, visible as a tumor
3. Until this feels like a Siberian labor camp (in dialogue, so forgivable)
4. Rumors still spread like viruses
5. The old man was like the god of patience, like he had some extra organ
6. Ornery as a badger one minute...
7. The feeling of exhaustion earned, as if they'd just donated blood
8. A marriage like defiance of destiny
9. They'd crashed into each other like asteroids
10. They were like escaped convicts who were shackled together
11. Hearing his voice through the receiver left Ruth feeling like Moses hearing the voice of God.
12. Methodical as an orthopedist
13. Like watching an artist at work, one who was just a little bit crazy
14. A fourth leg was like a malignant growth
15. It was like saying an obvious thing at a party (about the same thing as #14)
16. His hands were gnarled and bent like an old boxer's (third sentence in a row with a simile)
17. The furniture they built existed as a sculpture of the old man's mind.
18. The kid running to the workshop, like a lost child running to his mother
19. He stared as a little boy seeing fireworks for the first time.
20. Mentors were a lot like dictators.
21. Can be spotted like weeds in the grass
22. The teacher drew in a breath that felt like a rebuke.
23. Sheepish as a bird dog
24. Gus could feel him coiling up, like a snake that was afraid it might need to strike.
25. Until this remarkable kid showed up like God's own apology.
26. It was like a time capsule.
27. Felt like he was on a ship's prow
28. The old man would dash off to his bedroom like he'd heard the smoke detector
29. The old man...seemed lighter, like he'd been out dancing
30. The boundary line around their relationship was as sturdy as a split-rail fence
31. Memories passed from one generation to the next, like hair color or gait
32. Hope like a lightning strike
33. Sunday came like discovering a new religion 
34. She walked and talked and felt like some young dancer.
35. The kid stayed drawn taut as a clothesline
36. Like the kid was perpetually seeking penance for some awful crime he wouldn't talk about.
37. It felt like he'd been caught shoplifting
38. As if two distinct worlds had just collided, two continent-sized icebergs
39. The kid's presence hung over them like rainclouds
40. Settling into memories like an embrace
41. They had memorized each other, like painters who could recall making each brushstroke. 
42. Took on moisture like a sponge.
43. Like the old house was alive, and it was talking.
44. Like he'd stumbled onto an old battlefield
45. Like a contract they'd both signed
46. Staring at the balance as if he were marveling at a new winter coat
47. Gus paced the barnyard like an old dog waiting on its owner
48. He glared at her suitcase like it was the real culprit.
49. Advancing and retreating like the tides
50. Quiet as an oak tree
51. She held onto him as if gripping a cliff face
52. Moody, like a dog sensing a storm
53. Quiet as an owl
54. Just held the doorknob in both hands and stared at it like it was the most precious thing he'd ever owned. Like he was holding the eucharist. 
55. Stared down the long lane as if it were a telescope
56. It felt true as gravity, and just as inexplicable
57. She held a bench plane under the light and studied it like a jeweler.
58. Held memories mutually like an old married couple
59. Clouds twisted together like dancers.
60. The last of the shadows leaned from the barnyard to the back porch, stretching like pulled taffy.
61. It was like that hollow in the barnyard from an old tree. There and not there.
62. He's pure as dew (in dialogue)
63. She'd started swinging on the door, like a carnival ride
64. She was laughing like a little sprite.
65. He held his body rigid as a totem.
66. Night had come on like a sigh.
67. It felt like they were sitting inside of a silence they'd made themselves. 
68. High green corn on all sides like a palisade.
69. People ordinary as dandelions.
70. It felt like the world had just taken a breath. It felt like they were dancing.