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welcome to the first discussion thread for our short attention span version of byobook club! this time we're discussing, "Puppy," by George Saunders, suggested by cda. this is all kind of an experiment so there aren't any particular rules/guidelines for the thread other than keeping the focus on the story, more or less. so have you read the story? if not, read it, it's short and very good! I think this was a great choice by cda. I feel like there are a number of aspects worth discussing or at least noting about the story. here are a couple to kick things off, but don't feel obligated to stick to these topics if you'd rather post about something else. First, I was really interested in the pervasive theme of things being viewed as something other than what they "really" are. The cornfield that shows up at the opening and close of the story isn't thought of as a cornfield, a place to grow food, but instead a location for a mythical haunted house with a graveyard (for Marie) or a literal puppy graveyard (for Callie). It can't be a coincidence that Callie brought the puppy to die by starvation in a location literally surrounded by food. Then there's Josh's virtual baking game--not actually baking anything, not making real food--and the drugless drug experiences fantasized about both by Marie (the car trip is like a college road trip without pot!) and Callie as a child (the looking-through-the-holes-in-the-fence game is like a drug trip without drugs!). Obviously that carries through to weightier elements in the story: to what extent is the puppy viewed as, well, a puppy, an animal with its own personality and needs (it's not); to what extent are the children viewed as growing individual human beings instead of other things. Are we to take that even further to a concept of "loveless love"? Second, I wonder to what extent this was intended as a political story--and if so, whether it was intended as a specific/pointed one rather than something that touches on political themes. I am somewhat tempted to read a rather pointed topical political message into it, but that element isn't necessary to enjoy and be moved by the story and maybe I'm making too much out of that aspect.
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Jun 11, 2017 13:38
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 05:15 |
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I really like your comments, manifisto, and they expanded my understanding of the story. Also, I think I already said this but if not, a short story reading club is a really good idea. I have lots and lots to say about this story. Not gonna get it all out in one post, but here's a start. I want to start by recognizing that this story is essentially tragic. By the end of the story, both of the "puppies" (the literal one and puppy-boy Bo) are going to be starved*. Again, for the puppy it's literal. For Bo, he's going to be removed from the nurturing care of his mom, Callie**. Both are going to starve among plenty: the puppy, surrounded by food, and Bo, surrounded by the presumably Marie-like wealthier family who he will be fostered by. Let me be clear here that foster parents IRL are often amazing people who save kids' lives, but I think Saunders means us to see that Marie's family, for all its resources, is not a particularly happy or nurtured one, and I am going to assume you agree with me about that. Puppy is a tragedy of good intentions. Nobody in the story is a villain. In my reading, Marie and Callie are motivated by deep-seated but perhaps unexamined ideas of what care and love mean; these ideas are tied to traumatic experiences of domestic abuse (by Marie's mom in Marie's case, and Jimmy in Callie's case), and the way they defend themselves against these memories is by idealizing the present and suppressing the past. Life becomes for them, in effect, a beautiful field of golden wheat in which a wounded, helpless animal has been left to die. This domestic abuse is ongoing. In Callie's case, that's obvious, because she's still married to Jimmy. In Marie's case, it's less obvious and more complex because her abuser is her son, Josh. I'm including a bit more of these quotes than are strictly necessary because I think Saunders does such an amazing job of capturing the texture of Marie and Callie's shifting justifications for normalizing this abuse. Italics are mine for emphasis: quote:Josh was less withdrawn lately, and when she came up behind him now while he was playing and said, like, “Wow, honey, I didn’t know you could do Pumpernickel,” or “Sweetie, try Serrated Blade, it cuts quicker. Try it while doing Latch the Window,” he would reach back with his non-controlling hand and swat at her affectionately, and yesterday they’d shared a good laugh when he’d accidentally knocked off her glasses. Compare the description of Josh hitting his mom in the face with Callie "dancing" with Jimmy: quote:Then he’d cried in bed, saying how the kittens had mewed in the bag all the way to the pond, and how he wished he’d never been raised on a farm, and she’d almost said, “You mean near a farm” (his dad had run a car wash outside Cortland), but sometimes when she got too smart-assed he would do this hard pinching thing on her arm while waltzing her around the bedroom, as if the place where he was pinching were like her handle, going, “I’m not sure I totally heard what you just said to me.” I want to point out how closely tied both these descriptions of abuse are to discussions of love and care. Part of the engine of these defense mechanisms is the desire to protect others (kids, spouses) from the pain that they, themselves, experienced in the past and continue to be haunted by in the present. To me, this is such an understandable impulse: parents want kids to have a better life than they themselves had. In this way, how we understand love is intimately tied to the violence we have experienced, and the violence we have experienced shapes how we express that love, even to the point of constituting a different kind of violence. It's so easy to overcorrect in an attempt to correct the pain of the past. Like I said I have a lot more to say about this but that's probably plenty for now. Gonna close with a famous poem by Philip Larkin: This Be The Verse They gently caress you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were hosed up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. * Props to Manifisto, for pointing this aspect of the story out. I hadn't thought about the specific manner of the puppy's death, but now it seems obviously important. ** I think there's an important discussion to be had here about how Saunders portrays Callie as a mother, because the degree to which you think she's doing right by Bo is the degree to which the end of the story is fully tragic. In my mind it's pretty clear that he's validating Callie's impluses with regards to Bo, but I've been surprised by the reactions other people have had to this story when I've talked about it with them, so I recognize it's not a slam dunk. cda fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Jun 11, 2017 ---------------- |
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Jun 11, 2017 15:47
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At some point maybe we can also talk about the accompanying illustration by Tibor Kapati. I know that's actually not part of the story itself, but I've never in my life seen an illustration for a story that did a better job of illuminating some of the themes:
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Jun 11, 2017 15:54
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those are some great thoughtful comments. I'm tempted to just plunge in and respond, but I think I'm gonna hold back for a little bit (maybe only a very little bit) and let other people weigh in. |
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Jun 11, 2017 16:38
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i found, esp the first time i read it, that the narration switched so easily between the two mothers that i was often confused as to which mother/family was in focus at the moment. i'm assuming this is deliberate, and it really helped drive home how parallel the two mothers were despite being ostensibly opposites - one wealthy, would commonly be judged as a good suburban mom; other poor and would commonly outwardly be viewed as a bad hick mom. were any of the other readers similarly confused (in a good, effective way) or was i just a dummy? is there a word for when an author uses the writing style itself to add to the reader's immersion in the story, like another example would be using increasingly confusing and bewildering sentence structures when a character is coming up into a drug trip and then having easier to follow structure after the drugs subside. i agree with cda that it is a tragedy of good intentions and it ends with no easy answers, I find myself feeling very ambivalent about the prospect of Bo being taken away from Callie also i really like the discussion going on about starvation, not an element that I had thought of much before.
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Jun 11, 2017 16:51
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okay, couldn't help myself, here's a bit more a little bit about the possible political element of the story. I sort of see the two women as embodiments or caricatures of the conservative/liberal, or more specifically the Trump/Clinton voter, divide. Marie is the somewhat self-righteous, perhaps “smug,” wealthy-ish, idealistic, liberal elite; Callie is more from the working-class, economically disadvantaged, less educated, trying-to-make-ends-meet, hardscrabble, conservative ilk. but neither is really a driving force in these worldviews, they have been brought up into them and have internalized them. I suppose they are to an extent products or victims of particular views that have been politicized or politically weaponized. cda’s point about the abuse that both women suffer is an excellent one and perhaps we can extend it to say that the political system in our country has been deliberately leveraged and balkanized in a way that abuses these women and distorts their essentially caring, loving impulses. but as with the haunted house in the cornfield, it’s all not exactly real. Callie’s husband thinks of himself as having been raised on a farm, but that’s a myth of personal history; his dad ran a car wash. Callie mythologizes the decisions that her and her husband make about the animals as a form of “tough love,” things that are personally painful but necessary, but of course that’s actually stupid. There was no need to kill these “extra animals,” and probably they shouldn’t have been allowed to be born in the first place. killing the kittens “because you’re a bad parent if you don’t do what you say you’re going to do” is a myth and a stupid myth, and it makes as little sense politically (imo): calling out politicians as “flip floppers” when they change their views is entirely dumb, we should want our politicians to be flexible, respond to changing landscapes and new information, and not be beholden to a past decision simply for the sake of consistency. I agree with cda that Callie is portrayed as loving and motherly within the parameters of her knowledge and worldview. but I don’t think Saunders means to portray her as actually a good parent: she is simply too ignorant to understand that her son needs to be given medication regularly even if the side effects are tough to deal with. her makeshift method of constraining her son may be creative but it’s not actually any way to raise a child; Marie is actually right to be horrified even if her reaction is somewhat automatic and unthinking and totally fails to percieve the nuances and good intentions behind Callie’s actions. Marie for her part is guilty of class-based disdain, viewing the journey to get the puppy as a field trip into the lives of the lower class. she won’t take the puppy, even for free, even though it’s clear that her kids are wild about it and she would be doing a good deed rescuing it from its environs—the fact that her refusal is dooming the puppy doesn’t even cross her mind. to some extent she and her husband embody or caricature a liberal mindset of “people as menagerie,” a condescending view in which people are adopted or cared for out of entertainment value and vague lofty principles rather than true compassion and understanding. Marie’s parenting embodies the liberal stereotype of being too tolerant of bad behavior, failing to recognize and police her son’s obvious entitled mindset, trying to treat her children as friends instead of children. conservatives would extend this to political views about coddling criminals, giving unearned entitlements to the lazy or stupid, etc, etc. I could go on about this. The point I was trying to make is that the story could be read as illustrating a real political divide based largely on myths and stereotypes, some of them deliberate and pernicious, and what ultimately suffers is most people/voters in the country. we’re the puppy (and our children are definitely the puppy), and we’re being starved amidst plenty. |
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Jun 11, 2017 17:11
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That's a good post and i esp like the part where I'm a puppy 
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Jun 11, 2017 17:15
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Manifisto posted:Marie for her part is guilty of class-based disdain, viewing the journey to get the puppy as a field trip into the lives of the lower class. she won’t take the puppy, even for free, even though it’s clear that her kids are wild about it and she would be doing a good deed rescuing it from its environs—the fact that her refusal is dooming the puppy doesn’t even cross her mind. to some extent she and her husband embody or caricature a liberal mindset of “people as menagerie,” a condescending view in which people are adopted or cared for out of entertainment value and vague lofty principles rather than true compassion and understanding. so much good stuff in your post but about this, I don't know if you've read Saunders' story "The Semplica Girl Diaries" but what you've identified here is clearly a theme in a number of Saunders' works. in The Semplica Girl Diaries, wealthy families have these lawn ornaments which are made of actual impoverished, living women strung up through a hole in their heads (the "Semplica pathway," which is apparently a way you can make a wire-thin hole right through someone's head without hurting them). The story is told in the form of a diary by a middle-class guy who aspires to be wealthy not so much for himself as for his three kids. I almost suggested it instead of "Puppy" because in addition to dealing with some similar themes, it's also laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it's a lot longer and I figured if I got anyone hooked with this story I could just rec that one as well. Here's part of an entry where he describes going to the birthday party of Leslie, one of his daughter's much-wealthier school friends. Thomas is the narrator's son and Pam is his wife. I think Leslie's mom here sounds a lot like Marie. quote:Just then father (Emmett) appears, says time for dinner, hopes we like sailfish flown in fresh from Guatemala, prepared with a rare spice found only in one tiny region of Burma, which had to be bribed out. cda fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jun 11, 2017 ---------------- |
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Jun 11, 2017 17:28
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woah, that's another really good one. you're right, it's really funny (although some of it hits uncomfortably close to home), but it also has an arc that tonally reminds me of "Puppy"--at first humorous and kind of breezy, then the wit gets a little sharper, then there's some foreshadowing/slightly uncomfortable stuff, then the pathos really digs in and you're no longer laughing although it's still funny in a very dark way. alnilam posted:i found, esp the first time i read it, that the narration switched so easily between the two mothers that i was often confused as to which mother/family was in focus at the moment. i'm assuming this is deliberate, and it really helped drive home how parallel the two mothers were despite being ostensibly opposites - one wealthy, would commonly be judged as a good suburban mom; other poor and would commonly outwardly be viewed as a bad hick mom. were any of the other readers similarly confused (in a good, effective way) or was i just a dummy? I definitely thought there was a level on which these women should in theory very much be able to relate to each other: their ambivalent views about their upbringings and their desire to do better by their children; their efforts to get closer to people they loved; their improbable optimism. they are both portrayed as bright, in their own way, with obvious blind spots. I really tend to agree that the differences between them are more superficial/circumstantial than essential. cda posted:At some point maybe we can also talk about the accompanying illustration by Tibor Kapati. I know that's actually not part of the story itself, but I've never in my life seen an illustration for a story that did a better job of illuminating some of the themes: thanks for pointing this out, I just sort of skimmed over it but it's really worthy of more study. a lot of effort clearly went into it. what's the thing at the bottom to the right of the loaf-knives? is it an IV needle, or a tire pump, or what? there is a subtle but unmistakable thread of religion running through the story. I sort of suspect there are religious themes to be found in there if you look hard enough. eden, eve's sin and the fall, jesus' miracle of the loaves & fishes, that sort of thing. e: uh, and definitely likening the human condition to the plight of Mary: daughter and somewhat unwilling bride of an immensely powerful and purportedly benevolent force; mother to a child that is both incomprehensibly special but also fragile and to some extent doomed Manifisto fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jun 11, 2017 |
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Jun 11, 2017 18:51
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the end twist shook my faith in dog
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Jun 11, 2017 19:01
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alnilam posted:i found, esp the first time i read it, that the narration switched so easily between the two mothers that i was often confused as to which mother/family was in focus at the moment. i'm assuming this is deliberate, Yeah. I definitely think it is deliberate. Check this out: Marie: quote:so that they could all experience it together, like friends, like college friends on a road trip, sans pot, ha ha ha! Callie: quote:Why that laugh/snort meant so much to her she had no freaking idea. It was just one of the weird things about the Wonder That Was Her, ha ha ha. Marie: quote:Well, wow, what a super field trip for the kids, Marie thought, ha ha (the filth, the mildew smell, the dry aquarium holding the single encyclopedia volume, the pasta pot on the bookshelf with an inflatable candy cane inexplicably sticking out of it) quote:O.K., then, all right, they would adopt a white-trash dog. Ha ha. quote:Ha ha, wow, the mind was amazing, always cranking out these— Callie: quote:Ha ha! She wasn’t stupid. She just made bad choices. She remembered Sister Carol saying, “Callie, you are bright enough but you incline toward that which does not benefit you.” ---------------- |
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Jun 11, 2017 19:55
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Ha ha |
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Jun 11, 2017 20:24
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pupy good, people bad, story confusing...  !!!!!
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Jun 12, 2017 02:23
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 05:15 |
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cda posted:I want to start by recognizing that this story is essentially tragic. By the end of the story, both of the "puppies" (the literal one and puppy-boy Bo) are going to be starved*. Again, for the puppy it's literal. For Bo, he's going to be removed from the nurturing care of his mom, Callie**. Both are going to starve among plenty: the puppy, surrounded by food, and Bo, surrounded by the presumably Marie-like wealthier family who he will be fostered by. you know, on first read it wasn't totally obvious to me that Marie was going to follow through on her impulse to call child welfare. but honestly it seems probable. Marie saw herself in Bo: "If only she could have said to him, with a single look, Life will not necessarily always be like this. Your life could suddenly blossom into something wonderful. It can happen. It happened to me." her desire to rescue him is rooted in her self-narrative, her own version of her life and her history. and that again is part of the problem: she doesn't see Bo or Callie, she sees herself and her mother and is acting in response to those patterns. for all that Callie's dogchain solution is imperfect, she has an admirably pragmatic streak that Marie seems to lack: "When Bo got older, it would be different. Then he’d need his freedom. But now he just needed not to get killed." yes it's wonderful and noble to think of Bo blossoming and thriving, but that can't happen without the predicate of survival, and for a needs-challenged child that's actually pretty important. Marie fails, for example, to foresee that the ferret and the iguana are not going to get along, that these pets are scaly and bitey. so those are maybe longwinded ways of agreeing with what cda already said. it is a tragic story. an interesting question though might be to ask: tragic for whom? who exactly is not a victim of the cycle that cda mentions? maybe only Robert with his santa clause largesse and laugh ("Ho HO!"). but even Robert has issues--they may not impact him personally, but he seems content to let Marie buy whatever she wants and bring home whatever she wants, and to dote on Josh however she wants, without much concern for the consequences beyond the interest/entertainment factor. going back to my point about religion, I do think he has sort of a "distant god"/old testament god-like aspect, an entity who has blessed mankind with creation but then sort of skeedaddled, leaving mankind to sort out what to do with these gifts. |
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Jun 12, 2017 03:01
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