The Observations of Wallflowers, 3 Body Problem Cocktails, and Wild Donkeys
The sheer power of quiet observation, Chaotic Era alcohol 🍸 , and Nevada ghost towns 👻
Hello Writing Atlas community!
Much of our team is currently busy in Austin for SXSW, where we are helping with WikiPortraits Studio, a Wikimedia project to take Creative Commons images of … well, anyone and everyone who stops by the studio at SXSW. Since many photographs of famous, notable people are copyrighted, it can be hard to supply Wikipedia or other biographical sources with pictures of notable people (which is why @badwikiphotos exists on Instagram).
Our time in Austin so far has been jam-packed and filled with memorable experiences already. We were lucky to snag tickets to the premiere of 3 Body Problem, the long-awaited Netflix series adaptation of Liu Cixin’s novel by the same name which premieres on March 21. (Those of us who are Chinese speakers also appreciated how Netflix stylized it as 3 BODY PROBL三M, with the Chinese character 三 for 3.) Notably, the series itself was translated into English by Ken Liu, a friend of Writing Atlas who has many stories indexed. We also admired the series’ awesome 3D projection trailers, and celestial drinks menu designed for the premiere party at Eberly.
Just as we’re excited for the nine days of SXSW, we’re also excited for our next newsletter written by Melanie Ritzenthaler, an Assistant Professor at Doane University in Nebraska. Her curation below is about the (sometimes sole power) of observation, how a whole story can take place through mere witness.
Voyeurs, Weirdos, and Wallflowers: What Short Fiction's Watchers Can Teach Us, Curated by Melanie Ritzenthaler
You could say it springs from a place of fellow-feeling: as a kid who got driven to strange neighborhoods a time or two by the substitute bus driver, too afraid to speak up and say my stop was missed; as the middle child, as the introvert, as the chronic DD to every college party, I’ve gotten used to being, in many things, an observer.
Countless metrics for what makes a short story successful would say that the main character of any story is someone marked by their action, not their passiveness. They drive the narrative forward. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I like the interesting quirk that comes from these oft-sidelined perspectives: voyeurs, weirdos, wallflowers, losers, children, outsiders. It may seem to be an inherently disempowered point of view. There’s a subversive element to these narrators: what they notice, and how they notice it, but also what they do it. Sometimes it’s subtle, marking a change more internal than external. Sometimes it’s something that no one else—no one but us, the privileged reader, looking through their eyes—thought to expect. If writing is an inherently lonely, voyeuristic pursuit, I like these narrators who most embody that act of muscling oneself into a story, even if from the sidelines.
“The Shared Patio” by Miranda July
You can tell this narrator spends maybe just a little too much time watching her neighbors within just a few paragraphs, as she has told us nearly everything she knows about the married couple that shares the titular patio. This includes knowing the wife, Helena, has dyed roots—something our narrator has the birds-eye view to see best, apparently.
The narrator’s voyeuristic interest is intertwined with imagined conversations with her neighbors and excerpts of her written submissions to a journal that has summarily rejected her. This all works to tell us more about the world around her than anything else, the sense of near-access that isn’t quite granted, and as a reader, I get a stark sense of her loneliness, her disconnect. In the climactic scene, when the narrator is suddenly thrust into the potential role of “doer”—potentially helping save the husband’s life—she instead goes to sleep: “Why did I do this […]? I’d like to think I didn’t do it, that it was in fact done to me.” Words of a woman so used to being in a passive role, that she reframes the narrative to fit what she knows best.
“Beverly Home” by Denis Johnson
I remember reading this in a graduate Form and Theory class, and the requisite put-upon sigh from our classmates as I and the only other woman in the class pushed back against the idea this was a story about redemption.
As the last story of the collection Jesus’ Son, the narrator, Fuckhead, seems to find a sense of self and even stability in working at a hospital for the elderly, infirm, and disabled. He also spends a decent portion of the story looking through an unknowing woman’s window: “I had thoughts of breaking through the glass and raping her … I thought I might be able to do something like that if I were wearing a mask.”
I find this to be a discomfiting story, and yet I include it here. To be clear, I don’t think it’s an easy redemption, or that Johnson meant it to be read as such. Fuckhead has a choice between a life on the margins—as a criminal, a sexual offender—or someone on a path toward progress, in a community of other outsiders like himself. He could also be a watcher (through a window), or a doer (someone who breaks through the window). Johnson shows us that the distance between the two isn’t all that thick—maybe the width of a pane of glass.
“Brownies” by ZZ Packer
The first of several stories here narrated by a younger narrator, this story is so good, it’s apparent why Packer can take her time with getting a second collection out.
Our narrator, “Snot,” is part of an all-Black Brownies troop on a camping trip, but only nominally. She’s used to being quiet, unheard; when she does speak up, she’s told—several times over—to shut up. There are several unexpected veers this story takes—when I teach it, my students often describe it as “funny-until-it’s-not”—but the most profound is when, in the story’s final moments, she is finally given the room to tell her fellow Brownies a story, only for it to ultimately be misunderstood. There’s a beautifully understated epiphany in Packer’s final lines: “[I] suddenly knew there was something mean in the world that I couldn’t stop.” It’s a coming-of-age story, too, of a young and observant narrator coming to a realization about the world—power, difference, culpability—and feeling utterly alone in this understanding, even as she’s surrounded by her peers.
“They Told Us Not to Say This” by Jenn Alandy Trahan
What can a whole group of outsiders teach us? In this story, it’s apparent from the first line—“The few white boys in our town could ball”—that the narrative is primarily driven by a communal, “we” voice that is particularly invested in the relationship between the school’s white basketball star, Brent Zalesky, and Marorie, elevated from the chorus-voice of Filipino girls primarily by her status as the chosen one.
As with “The Shared Patio,” the fixation, the extensive and specific knowledge, tells us just as much about the particular status afforded Brent Zalesky as it does about the limiting options available to the speakers. However, there’s a beautiful fracture in the writing, in that the story becomes less and less about him and more about these girls who, by playing basketball too, willfully take the mantle upon themselves.
But it’s not a story just about basketball, not really: “We were… brown like me love you long time, brown like I need to apologize for offending you, brown like may I take your plate, brown like you think I need your charity, and brown like how can I help you, sir?” It’s a story of girls marginalized by race, class, gender, by the expectations put upon them by their families and the world at large. For our speakers, theirs is a hard-fought contest against a future they know will try its best to silence and stifle them—reduce them to roles on the margins—and the satisfaction that they won’t easily let themselves be sidelined.
“We Love You Crispina” by Jenny Zhang
This is very much a case of the circumstances being the reason for our narrator’s observational role. There’s a tight focus here on the narrator, a young girl, and her parents, immigrants from China now living in New York. The narrator is well aware of the many sacrifices her parents make for her, and, although theirs is not always a harmonious family unit, it is one incredibly committed to one another.
There’s a catalogue effect at play throughout the story—the jobs her parents have worked, the many apartments and neighborhoods of New York they’ve relocated to—that works to show just how much the narrator wants to be part of “this amazing, intricate machine” that is her family unit, to give back in return, but is unable to. She can only watch and log these observations for later. By the final pages, it’s her refusal to leave her parents that marks the most profound shift in the story: nothing will change for them, at least not immediately. If anything, they are worse off than before. But the narrator has at last been given a chance to be the decisive voice in her future, the driver of her narrative, even if she can’t control anything that follows. Given the family’s habit of nicknaming the narrator after sour foods, I’d call it bittersweet.
Melanie’s Site to Visit: Rhyolite, Nevada
We wanted to go to the Goldwell Open Air Museum (the ghost and Venus statue pics below) and didn’t realize it’s inside the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada. This mining town, which has curious ties to Charles M. Schwab of finance fame, hit its peak around 1907-08, when it had its own opera house and stock exchange, but was basically abandoned by 1920.
If you like ghost towns of the West, weird and spooky outdoor art, and a greater-than-normal chance to run into wild donkeys, this is the place. It was a worthy day-trip from Vegas with the inimitable Jenn Alandy Trahan (mentioned above) and family.
Melanie’s Favorite Emoji: 👯♀️
My favorite emoji by far is 👯♀️. I like to use it when I’m texting someone who has just shared good news. I find it so powerful because it’s all-purpose—celebration, but also solidarity, well-wishes, good vibes, support for major milestones—and shows that I am “twinning” with the person I’m texting. Their good news is my good news. Even if we can’t celebrate together IRL, our emojis can power-stance together.
Melanie Ritzenthaler is an Assistant Professor at Doane University in Nebraska. She has been published in Guernica, Gettysburg Review, Mississippi Review, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. She is working on a novel-in-progress about estranged twin sisters who were raised in extreme isolation, focusing on themes of memory, familial bonds, and the limits of language.
Other Items That Surprised Us This Week at Writing Atlas
3 Body Problem
At the afterparty of the 3 Body Problem, we were delighted to experience a DJ set from none other than Benedict Wong! (You might recognize him from appearances in the Doctor Strange franchise or Marco Polo, another Netflix Original. He’ll be starring as Da Shi in 3 Body Problem).
Austin Cuisine
One of the things we love about Austin (not only its BBQ), but how it has interesting combinations of southern and everything else fusion. One of our favorites has been a kimchi mac and cheese from The Peached Tortilla, an item that’s been on their menu for around 2 years now. In case you are wondering, the order of ingredients is roux, then cheese, then the kimchi. Then they throw in cilantro stems and green onions.
We even found a pickle beer brewed by Martin House in Fort Worth. They’ve also concocted other creative beer flavors in the past, like Salsa Verde Beer and Pecan Pie Stout. Our review: this briny brew is a delightful dance of dill and draft. (Disclosure, ChatGPT helped our engineer come up with that).
As always, if you would like to curate stories, or share quirky photos, foods, cool places to visit or roaming stuffed animals with the community, please let us know by leaving a comment or otherwise reaching out to us! You’re a part of us too. As always, keep visiting our Writing Atlas homepage as we keep rolling out exciting changes and updates!
Sincerely,
Your Writing Atlas team