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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Two fictional young Americans wondering what it’s all about

6/10/2017

6 Comments

 
If we leave home at eighteen, it’s often to a particular kind of institution. For me, as for Selin in The Idiot, that means university; for Billy Lynn, as for many young working-class adults who are less academically inclined, it’s the military. While, as Selin discovers, universities encourage questioning, not all questions are received with equal relish. On the other hand, as Billy learns, the army might discourage independent thought, it can’t prevent his wondering. Will these young people find the answers they’re looking for? Read on!

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The Idiot by Elif Batuman

Selin, a young American of Turkish heritage, arrives at Harvard in the mid-1990s with a mind and heart open to the experiences this will bring. A quirky character, as innocent as she is intelligent, she questions everything from why social life depends so much on alcohol to the causal relationship between language and thought. At her beginners’ Russian class – and, as an aside, I should point out that this British reader is continually confused by the smorgasbord that seems to characterise university education in the US, whereas in the UK, although there are options within the curriculum, we sign up for a degree in a particular subject – she’s paired with an older student, Ivan, for role-plays based on a stilted and simplified romantic story from their textbook. Soon, the pair takes their conversation out of the classroom into the new medium of email, where Selin analyses Ivan’s text as rigorously as those set by her tutors. Although Selin is the more smitten, and constantly battling the consequent humiliation, the friendship seems important to both. While Ivan remains loyal to his girlfriend, he’s delighted when he wangles a place for Selin at an English-language teaching programme in his native Hungary so that they can see each other during the summer.
 
With a lively wit and honesty, Selin is an engaging late-adolescent narrator as she shares her preoccupations across a year of her life, raising intellectual questions in an accessible and amusing manner. With events rather than a plot, and very few answers at the end of it, The Idiot is almost the antithesis of the coming-of-age novel and much truer to the mess of real life. Although for me, it could have been shorter, I did enjoy the journey even if, at the end, I find it hard to sum it up. Thanks to Jonathan Cape for my review copy. For another recently reviewed novel about an American university, see
The Devil and Webster.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

When he trashes the expensive car of the man who has dumped his sister, Billy faces a stark choice between jail and the war in Iraq. Plumping for the latter, he is awarded a Silver Star for gallantry and, along with half a dozen other Bravos, and the flag-draped coffin of the comrade who didn’t make it, is flown home for a two-week “victory tour”. It's not clear (or I don't remember) whether this is arranged by the military or the agent from the film industry who’s trying to find a Hollywood sponsor for a movie based on the soldiers’ heroics, but it includes meeting President Bush, public and TV appearances in various (electorally) marginal states, a couple of days back home with his family to the grand finale at the Texas Cowboys’ football game on an icy cold Thanksgiving, which is where this novel is set.
 
Billy isn’t stupid. He knows there’s something phoney about this war. But he’s learnt to compartmentalise and find a sense of safety in his lack of choice. As the tour trundles towards its climax, and it becomes increasingly clear that, even as a hero, he’s a pawn, there’s a perverse comfort amid the terror in knowing he’ll soon be going back. When not battling his headache, or gulletting the alcohol he’s officially still too young to buy, he uses his temporary association with the wealthy to try and figure out how the system works.
 
And yet. There’s an eleventh hour tension in Billy’s situation, and likewise it wasn’t until the eleventh hour of the novel that I felt its real emotional pull. The backdrop to the tour has been a hope that things might be different: a psychological or physical avoidance of the return, albeit with the odds of a lottery win. The film deal that will make their fortune; losing his virginity; meeting Destiny’s Child. Being whisked away from the stadium by the anti-war activists his sister has contacted. Is any of this is going to happen? The blatant cynicism of the soldiers’ conscription into the commercial-break porn-fest that is the half-time entertainment, complete with fireworks, noise and strobe lights (yeah, exactly what men who’ve been in a war zone are going to love), gives a clue. And yet these adolescents continue (more or less) to remain polite to the members of the public who want to shake their hands and thank them for their service, and then immediately turn around and forget.
 
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is an angry novel about capitalism, war and sacrifice (that spoke to me in such an unexpected way it actually had me dreaming anger, a very rare occurrence). But I think the dynamic it captures doesn’t only apply to military service: we distance ourselves from anyone forced to bear the unbearable by turning them into heroes, telling them they’re brave. First published in 2012, I wonder what Billy would think of my copy, courtesy of Canongate books, being a 2016 movie tie-in. My own short story
”Heroes”  is on a similar theme.
 

The Carrot Ranch is having a break from weekly 99-word stories, but that doesn’t mean we can relax. Quite the contrary, with two flash fiction contests a week during October (and I, fully immersed in another draft of my current WIP, was struggling to keep up before). The first, 100 words on when I grow up, set by Norah Colvin, runs until 10th October, and I’m honoured to be an assistant judge along with Robbie Cheadle.

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Alongside the eight contest prompts, flash-fiction queen and editor of the forthcoming Rough Writers’ anthology, Sarah Brentyn, is running
a flash fiction fundraiser for hurricane relief. I felt rather smug yesterday, finding inspiration in an extremely windy walk, but I failed on two counts: the word limit is 50 and I couldn’t manage to tell the story I wanted in that space; the prompt is help not hurricane (although I did manage to squeeze that in retrospectively). Given that Brits will recognise an impending thirty year anniversary, and a friend’s son (although not the one who joined the army) did develop a fear of wind after their roof was blown off in a storm, I thought I’d share my attempt anyway.

The legacy of October 1987

Winds high enough to rattle the windows, to shake him from sleep. He slakes his fear with a beer from the fridge. A soldier more spooked by storms than snipers? Galled less by guerrillas than by gales? Cleaning up after Harvey, he’s bugged by the breeze that blew the roof off his childhood. “Britain doesn’t get hurricanes,” scoffed the weatherman. Seems he got his forecast wrong.


Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
6 Comments
Norah Colvin link
7/10/2017 05:50:12 am

Never mind the novels, Anne. Your short story is a coming of age if ever I read one. What a tragic situation that, while fiction (I hope) has some rings of truth to peel back. The story was well paced and had me confused and curious from the beginning. It was only at the end that the story's truth became clear. Masterful storytelling.
I can understand developing a fear of wind after experiencing a hurricane. It's interesting that your hurricane of thirty years ago bears the same name as the one (one of the ones) devastating the US recently.
Thanks for sharing the Flash Fiction contest. It's going to be fun being co-judges. I hope we agree!

Reply
Annecdotist
9/10/2017 04:42:30 pm

Thanks, Norah, and apologies for the delayed response. Thanks for reading my horrible short story and glad it worked for you. I think the opening can be too confusing if you don’t realise it speculative fiction, so thanks for persevering with that.
It’s good to see the entries are coming in for the contest. I’m looking forward to the judging and I’d be surprised if all three of us agree, but that might be part of the fun of it.

Reply
Charli Mills
10/10/2017 08:24:27 pm

I agree with Norah. You write even sharper with fewer words! So many issues expertly expressed in your flash. I find myself carefully reading your reviews, too, marveling at your choice of words and clarity of thought. I'd call your reviews an active part of earning your "Masters." I love knowing a writer well enough to catch her breakthroughs in the literary art form. Hope you don't mind the peeking! :-)

Reply
Annecdotist
12/10/2017 03:32:35 pm

Thank you, Charli. Well if this is my Creative Writing Masters then you are part of my support/critique group with your helpful feedback. And I love how you read between the lines and making observations I might not have noticed myself.

Charli Mills
10/10/2017 08:20:29 pm

What has American capitalism done to her people? Good lord, the two noteworthy commonalities between both books seem to be: Americans need to "entertain" their minds with porn, alcohol and other adrenaline stimulants; and don't question the status quo (universities, wars and celebrity). We don't have a gun control problem; we have a mental problem. Have we grown so captive to capitalism that we no longer ask why only foreigners and privileged white elitists can afford to go to Universities (thus international students take the opportunity seriously, but American trust-fund babies party away the advantage)? The rage in an act that sends a young man to war (and by the way, let me point out if this had been a black man he would not been afforded the choice and likely forced to plea bargain sans lawyer and get fast-tracked to the prison pipeline) is a rage many people feel in this nation because they see their opportunities dwindling. Rather than do something intelligent or productive about such sorry circumstances, they happily shop for deals at Wal-Mart, online and stare endlessly at their cell phones, drinking 4-buck wine and popping "pain" meds because, ouch, life hurts.

Your review of these two books strikes a nerve as I ponder what the eff is wrong with my Trumpian nation where bump-stocks were invented to make automatic rifles shoot even faster because automatic isn't fast enough, and politicians decry it's because we didn't ban silencers, and I feel like Alice in Wonderland every time I make the mistake of looking at the New York Times, or glancing beyond writing promos on FB. We are under a bad spell and I point my finger to the capitalism cronies and say, "See! this is our heritage: a Nation under a controlled God's boot-heel founded on freedom of profit on the back of slaves and indentured women who believe they are to blame when raped." Where does it end? We shoot ourselves to death?

On a side note, you have a typo in your introduction, one that led me on a happier journey: "Selin discoverers." I was seriously pondering who these discoverers were, if they were adventurers or scientists, then realized you meant discovers. Alas, I want there to be a Selin group of Discoverers who uncover the cure for my nation. I hold out hope in my shrinking meliorist heart that not all of us are so tainted by entertainment and shopping and can still know the joy of a Rocky Mountain high over opiods swept under the rug.

Thanks for listening to a pained American who finds both books cringe-worthy, therefore important to read.

Reply
Annecdotist
12/10/2017 03:42:55 pm

Thank you, Charli, and you’re very welcome to sound off here. I have to say that in the UK we do tend to have an “oh, those Americans!” attitude, so I’m heartened to know people like you through the blogosphere who have a bit more thought and heart. But I think our tendency to scapegoat is only because we ourselves are only one step behind in our willing enslavement to capital. People vote for lower taxes and increasing privatisation and then complain about companies putting their shareholders before customers, as if that wasn’t actually what they were about. Meanwhile, we are happy to make ourselves by separation from our European allies on the delusion that gives us a degree of independence. Ah well!
Thanks for pointing out the typo which I have now corrected – though of course was tempted to leave it after your beautiful definition of a new word.

Reply



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