Instructor’s Manual to accompany The Sincerest Form

Part II: An Anthology

John Cheever “Reunion”

“I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss—you can't do it alone.” —John Cheever

Biography

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1912, to a family that was rather prosperous until the stock market crash of 1929. At that point his father left the family, and Cheever was expelled from prep school for misbehavior. He began writing short stories, soon publishing his first story (“Expelled”) in The New Republic and going on to become a frequent and famous contributor to The New Yorker. In 1942 he published his first collection of short stories, The Way Some People Live, while he was serving in the military during World War II. Cheever is best known for his portraits of affluent characters struggling with the seeming emptiness of their lives in urban and suburban New England. A master of the short story form, he published hundreds of stories and articles during his lifetime, as well as several novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle (1958) received the National Book Award. His collection, The Stories of John Cheever (1979) won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Cheever struggled with alcoholism for many years, and died in 1982.

Notes for Discussion

This story begins and ends with the same emphasis: “the last time I saw my father,” yet for readers encountering the story for the first time, that line may carry quite different meanings at the beginning and the end of the story. Really the story covers what has since become something of a standard in contemporary realist fiction: the coming of age moment defined not by some physical rite of passage but by the child’s first major emotional disappointment with the parent (or the adult world in general). The first paragraph—despite or perhaps even because of—that opening declaration that this is the last time the narrator saw his father, sets up Charlie’s desire to see and know his father, and the rest of the story relates the father’s increasingly embarrassing and obnoxious behavior.

It’s a heartbreaking, cringe-inducing account, yet at the same time, a very funny story. How does Cheever maintain the balance between humor and bleakness? This is probably at least partly a function of his emphasis on dialogue and action rather than introspection. If Cheever allowed the narrator to comment more freely on the events or the emotions involved here, the father’s dialogue lines would stand out as merely disturbing rather than silly and disturbing. The story could become unbearably bleak. There is a quiet stoicism to Cheever’s narrative style here that recollects Hemingway’s “manly” narrators.

In truth, the story doesn’t require much introspection. Everything Charlie must feel is easy to imagine, because we can see and hear the scene unfold. Cheever gives little hints along the way: the repeated phrase in the first and last sentences speaks volumes, as does his modulation between “my father” and “Daddy,” and “Charlie” and “sonny.” As with other brands of minimalism, each detail floating along the surface has roots deep below the water.

Questions for Discussion

· How much can we tell about the relationship between father and son within the first paragraph of the story? How does Cheever reveal the nature of Charlie’s feelings for his father without coming right out and stating them directly?

· At any point does the narrator criticize his father or note his embarrassment? Why not? What is the effect of this on the story and on our understanding of and sympathy for Charlie?

· What don’t we know about the father’s character and life? Is it possible that the father’s behavior is determined not just by his drinking problem but by other pressures? What might they be?

· From what temporal distance do you suppose Charlie narrates this tale? One week later, or three decades?

· What do lines like “Vada all’ inferno” reveal about the father?

· How does the last line of the first paragraph, “I wanted some record of our having been together” inform or shape the telling and tone of this story? How can it be read as the story’s narrative occasion?

In-Class Activities and Exercises

· Ask students to rewrite this story as a one-act play (called “The Last Time I Saw My Father”) and perform it in class. What is the effect of hearing this dialogue acted out? Does the story become more humorous, or more sad?

· Ask students to rewrite the father’s dialogue lines so that they contain absolutely no traces of humor. Read the story aloud. How is it different?

Creating New Stories

· Write a story based on the idea contained in these lines: “...he was my father, my flesh and blood, my future and my doom. I knew that when I was grown I would be something like him; I would have to plan my campaigns within his limitations.” (p. 275)

· Write the father’s account of this episode, but begin it 24 hours before the reunion and end it at least an hour later.

· Write a story set thirty years later, charting a critical moment in the relationship between Charlie and his son. Remember the line, “when I was grown I would be something like him,” but do not be limited too predictably by it.

Developing Critical Essays

· The critic John Leonard called Cheever “the Chekhov of the suburbs.” Read one or some of Chekhov’s early short stories, such as “Oysters,” “Vanka,” or “Sleepy,” or one of his later stories, such as “The Lady With the Dog” or “In the Ravine” and try to discern what traces of Chekhov’s influence on Cheever might have caused Leonard to make this comment.

· Although the stories differ dramatically in style and structure, compare the father-son relationship revealed in this story with the mother-daughter one explored in Jamaica Kincaid’s “My Mother.” Are there any similarities?

· Like the Hemingway stories earlier in this anthology, this story exists primarily in a “man’s world,” where emotions remain mainly unexpressed and men behave according to set standards. Are the standards of Cheever’s “man’s world” the same as Hemingway’s? Are there similarities between the narrative styles or voices in these stories?

Complementary and Supplemental Readings

· “The Swimmer” by John Cheever

· “Goodbye, My Brother” by John Cheever

· “The Year of Getting to Know Us” by Ethan Canin (collected in Emperor of the Air, 1988). Discuss the association between disappointment or betrayal and coming of age, as well as the possible influence of Cheever on this younger American short story writer.


Peter Ho Davies “Relief”

“When I hear people give the write-every-day advice I like to offer a caveat: We don't have to be monks to be writers.” —Peter Ho Davies, Interview with Katie Bolick in Atlantic Unbound (Dec. 16, 1998).

Biography

Peter Ho Davies was born in 1966 to Chinese and Welsh parents, and raised in Great Britain, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in physics from the University of Manchester and in English from Cambridge. He moved to the United States and received an MA in creative writing at Boston University. His short stories have won the O. Henry Award and have been published several times in The Best American Short Stories. “Relief” was included in his first collection, The Ugliest House in the World (1997), which won the John Llewelyn Rhys and PEN/Macmillan Prizes. His second collection, Equal Love (2000), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2003 Granta magazine honored his first novel, The Bad Shepherd, by including Davies among its Best Young British Novelists. Davies teaches at the University of Michigan, where he has succeeded Nicholas Delbanco as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Notes for Discussion

This rich and tightly crafted story takes as its starting point a real and very serious historic event—the battle at Rourke’s Drift—but transforms that raw material into an occasion for humor and insight into the nature of courage and honor. The story fluctuates wonderfully between moments of intense formality, when each point of etiquette must be properly obeyed, and outbursts of coarse humor and gruesome detail. The juxtaposition of formality and flatulence creates humor, of course, but the third element—the grizzly facts of this terrible battle—lends gravity to the story and provides thematic resonance. What should we make of the fact that mere months after this terrible battle only yards away, men can laugh over multi-course meals and discuss the notions of courage, honor, and heroism between stories of flatulence and disembowelment?

By contrasting these various elements Davies pulls off a sly critique of the “glorious tales” of honor and courage under fire, revealing that every such story neglects to mention the horrible and absurd aspects of battle. The soldier who seems bravest in this account—Private Williams—is memorable not just for his haunting warm leg but for the absurd graciousness with which he receives Bromhead’s apologies for letting him go.

Not for nothing does Davies mention Private Williams once more just before the story ends, and his transition to Bromhead’s point of view for the story’s final scene is likewise a meaningful choice. Ninety percent of the story is told in Wilby’s point of view, and instinctively we might expect the story to end with the point of view that began it. But Davies prepares us for the transition by periodically inserting scraps of Bromhead’s point of view in the narrative. How would the story be different if it ended in Wilby’s POV? What does Davies achieve through Bromhead’s POV at this critical point in the story? Are there similarities between Davies’ strategy here and O’Connor’s use of POV at the end of “A Good Man is Hard to Find”?

Questions for Discussion

· Compare the responses of Chard and Bromhead to Wilby’s question, “how does it feel to be heroes?” How do Chard and Bromhead differ? How do they seem to feel about each other? Which character does Davies seem to find more sympathetic? Why?

· Why does Davies lavish so much attention on the food and drink of the soldiers in this story? Why does he include the extended scene showing Wilby and Ferguson preparing themselves for the dinner?

· In discussing his impulse to write stories based on real historical events, Peter Ho Davies once explained, “I can hide behind facts. I can smuggle in among facts things that aren’t facts but that could be read that way. [...] It spurs my imagination.” (Atlantic Unbound, Dec. 16, 1998.) What elements of this story do you suppose Davies invented and inserted into the real historical accounts?

· Why does Davies choose to structure this story out of chronological sequence, using flashbacks and flash-forwards? What does he gain or lose by using this structure? How does he connect the sections so as not to confuse the reader?

· Why does Davies take time to include the page from the Gazette that Wilby keeps in his pocket, like a “love letter,” which details the “glorious tale” of Rourke’s drift? How does Davies’ story as a whole, and the stories these soldiers tell one another, compare with that “glorious tale”?

In-Class Activities and Exercises

· Watch Cy Endfield’s film depiction of the Rourke’s Drift battle, Zulu (1964, starring Michael Caine) to give students a visual sense of another representation of this battle. Discuss different modes of representing history in art.

· Read aloud in class one section of this story, then one section of Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” Are there any similarities between the ways these very different groups of soldiers are presented?

Creating New Stories

· Thoroughly research some historic event that fascinates you, then write a story involving the event, but incorporating fictional material as well.

· Write a story in the omniscient third-person point of view that ends in a POV different from the one that began it.

Developing Critical Essays

· In an interview with Katie Bolick in Atlantic Unbound (Dec. 16, 1998) Peter Ho Davies discussed some of the influences on this story:
My story “Relief,” for instance, owes its roots, in part, to the voice of Joseph Conrad. I decided to write a traditional story about men sitting around a table telling yarns and giving long speeches, and I thought, Who have I read who's done that well? It was a very short journey to Marlow in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. And then it turned out that Conrad was writing about characters from the same period that I was writing about in that story, so I looked to him for rhythms, vocabulary, and phrases.
Read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and discuss any similarities or traces of influence from Conrad to Davies.

· In comedy it is said that “if nothing’s funny, nothing’s serious.” The reverse is equally true. Analyze Davies’ use of humor in this story. How does he create comic moments by contrasting serious and silly elements? How would this story function if it were only funny or only serious?

· Analyze Davies’ presentation of these soldiers primping and feasting. Is there an argument for or against colonialist expansion in this story?

· Based on this story, can you tell whether Davies believes there is such a thing as genuine heroism? If so, what does it consist of, and which characters in this story exhibit it? If not, what is Davies suggesting about war and soldiering?

Complementary and Supplemental Readings

· “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and “In Another Country” by Ernest Hemingway. Discuss the treatment of bravery in these stories.