Dialogue: At the Desk

“The Offensive coordinator position at Auburn is one of the best jobs in America.”- Jeff

“Really?”-Bob

“Yea. ‘It was a great conversation, he goes ‘Scott, you got one of the best jobs in America, but go be yourself, go be who you are and go keep being a team gay and you’ll help Auburn.’”

“Did he come from the patriots?”-Bob

“Nah he was a graduate assistant when Brady was in college.”- Jeff

“O,OK.”-Bob

“So what are ya’ll doing for spring break, New York?”- Wendy

“I’m probably not going to have the cash.”- Jeff

“You going Nick?”-Wendy

“Yea I mean, I’d like to go, I’ve never been to New York, but I don't want to take a spot for someone whose a journalism major.”- Bo

“Yea.”- Jeff

“There’s no point in me going to a conference like that, there’s was no point in me going last year.”-Bo

“Ehh, what are you gone do, it was fun.”- Jeff

“It was a bad ass time for sure.”- Bo

“Wait, where was it last?”-Wendy

“Orlando.”- Bo

“That night we just, that was so funny. We spent one night just in the front entrance drinkin’ beer, and umm, the next night there was a cop out there all night. That was funny.”-Jeff

“There was some weird kids at that conference.”-Jeff

“Hell yea, you didn’t go to the, ‘hey, come here and learn how to cover the gay community on your campus.’ You didn’t go to that. Now if you want to see some weird fuckin’ people, they were there.”-Bo

“Yea, I just, I don’t know, that whole conference was weird. I mean, i just assumed it was a professional conference, cause’ that’s what it is, it’s a professional journalism conference and there are people like that look like shit in cargo shorts and t-shirts. Like kids from the north are just...odd.”-Jeff

“Northern kids are really strange.”-Wendy

“Yea, I lived in Illinois for a few years and that was...Illinois. That’s all I have to say about that.”-Jeff

“I love Chicago.”-Wendy

“I didn’t.”- Jeff

“You didn’t love Chicago? O my god.”-Wendy

“My first impression of Chicago was when we came over this hill, cause’ I lived in Dekal, and umm, we come over this hill and there’s this domed city. I’m like wow, I didn’t know we had cities with domes, and, cause’ I’m a little kid at this point, and then I realize that it’s actually smog. I mean like, I don’t know if it’s still there, but Chicago had a fuckin’ dome of pollution around it.”-Jeff

“I love Chicago. Michigan Ave, it’s like every shopping on one street.”-Wendy

“Yea.”- Jeff

“No?”-Wendy

“Na, I’m OK.”-Jeff

“It means a lot, to a girl.”-Wendy

(Sigh) “Ugh I need to go to sleep, I’m fuckin’, I just want to go nap for the rest of the night.”-Bo

“Yea, I did not get a lot of sleep last night, so, I hate it.”-Jeff

“Umm, I fixed all the design issues on all the pages and I added to my story, but I still haven’t got the picture yet. He said he’d get it tomorrow.”-Sarah

“Alright.”- Bo

“Mmm k.”- Jeff

“Alright, bye ya’ll.”-Sarah

“See ya Haley.”-Jeff

Response to Richard Bausch's "1-900"

        Richard Bausch uses many literary devices in his short story, most of which I have seen before, but in a slightly different way. To begin, the entire story being posed as a dialogue between John and Sharon enforces this realness that I can appreciate, but at the same time, with John’s dialogue being farfetched at times and having nothing to do with actually phone sex, shows a contrast that I have not seen in most short stories. With his dialogue, the reader can really tell that he is having emotional issues as well as personal issues in his life. I think this is a great aspects to incorporate in stories, to have characters show emotion through dialogue, not just by simply saying it.

For example, the last paragraph on the bottom of page 54 tells me that John really does want someone to just talk to and get to know. He also may have a few odd qualities about him based on what he is saying, but his ultimate goal is to continue a fluid conversation. 

When he tells Sharon that he and his wife are separated, this also gives the reader tremendous insight, as divorces cause massive emotional issues. But again, this was not something that was simply stated, it was inferred by the text and the way John talks to Sharon. 

Another aspect that kept me reading was the proclivity that John had to say things that were completely unexpected to a phone sex operator. His idea of not wanting phone sex to begin with was strange, rather he simply wanted a conversation and believed that because he was paying for it, it was OK to talk about anything he wanted. The brief mention of his wife and him having a run at cocaine and some other substance threw me off at first, but after reading it again, I realized that it fit in well with the strangeness of the entire piece.

I found it interesting, and something I look forward to using in my future pieces, that Bausch could keep my attention with this awkwardly strange topic. Although the reason it did keep my attention was because the dialogue showed more than just words, it drew out the emotion in John and Sharon in a way that made me want to continue reading to figure out how this emotionally detached man would end up, although on the phone, with this random woman in Washington D.C.

Jenson's Day: fiction 1 short short

        I strapped on my pants. Cargos, full of love and wither. The girl laying in bed snored too loud and was inconsistent with her hair style. She slept in an awkward jumble that reminded me of a cat, she was fuzzy like one too.

       “Your toothbrush is on the sink." All I heard was a growl. "Under the knob. Toothpaste is around there too."

“Are you leaving?” 

“I work, so yes. Leaving. I’ll see you around.”

“Hold on. Jenson, no kiss?”

“Brush your teeth, I’ll call you sometime."

I waved at her head leaning off my bed. Those curls still reminded me of a cat. Before I left, I checked the weather channel. A man named Prince was on waving at Arizona. I turned the channel to sports and a man named Jeff was calling me stupid. I turned the t.v. off.

        “Jenson, it’s noon, where the hell you been?”

“Stuck in the parking lot boss. You know that place gets stuffy, everyone drives a bus down there.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“But you do, and I’m here now. I’ll get back on the Howard case.”

“Slow down speedy, what do you mean?”

“It was a bad joke. I was hinting at your mode of transportation.”

“My van? It’s an Odyssey, there built to last Jenson. Consumer Report says 12 years till it’s junk, and it fits a crowd.”

“Good. I’ll go pull those files now.”

The office I worked in was wide, much like an empty floor of an office building, but with a few desks and cabinets to organize client information in. I work for a lawyer, but he’s somewhat of a constipated perfectionist whose days end with a harsh cocktail. 

“Wait, before you go...” he cleared his throat, pushing the nonsense to his lips. “Find me a table made of oak, a dark shade if you don’t mind.”

The only other object in the office was a t.v mounted in the corner toward the ceiling.

“One oak table, and where will we place it?”

“Under the television. Now, get to it. We have clients you know.”

My job description has changed over the years from assistant to carpenter. A dark-oak table to fill the space. 

Playing in the corner were two adults of a professional manner, laughing and throwing hand signals in the air. 

“By this time tomorrow, the DOW will be down 6 percent...”

“Microsoft hit an all-time high, up 9 percent from yesterday afternoon...”

Those men are comical. 

“Jenson, tell them to shut up. I’m reading a document.”

“I’ll need the remote, sir.”

The boss looked up with mystery.

“O, well then the table can wait. No need for something those fellows can put their coffee on then. My mistake.”

I returned home that night to the television. The cat was watching Snookey wear a revealing outfit with her butt hanging out. 

       “Are you seeing this? Her hair is out of control.”

I smiled at her and walked to my bed.

Response to Denis Johnson's Emergency

     I have always had this notation that working in an emergency room is weird, but this puts everything into a dynamically interesting perspective. Georgie thew me off a bit to start, but his characterization of being some weird, drug addict makes for a complimentary nurse, or whatever his official position may be. The conversation Georgia has with his shoes was the deciding factor for me in deciding his sanity, a great literary tool used in an effective way. Finding out that the narrator too was sharing the pills that Georgia would steal is an interesting contrast, as the main character initially seemed like a responsible ER worker. 

When the man with the knife in his eye came in I was expecting the first first emergency situation in the story, but instead it was more of a relaxed type of emergency, as the man describes himself casually walking in after having a knife stuck in his left eye. “ I just walked in. It’s only three blocks.” This conversation threw me off a bit, but made sense in context as a completely off-the-wall excerpt, as most of the story is. 

Ironically, the many emergencies within the story are not treated as such, a clever trick to give this short story a sense of humor. Something I would take from this story to use in my future pieces is the casual conversation among characters. Most notably between the narrator and Georgie, everything that was said seemed to reach out in a casual manner, despite sometimes having bad consequences, such as the rabbit incident. After saying that the narrator completely forgot about the baby rabbits taken from it’s mother, he states that, “They slid around behind me and got squashed..., Deceased.” One of the more gruesome moments, this bods well with the other crazy situations the narrator and Georgie put themselves in. 

The imagery was never explained too much, but was not a major concentration in this piece. The crazy night of two drug addicts makes for an interesting structure as well, with simply a few pages of background leading into an adventure of death and a drive-in movie. 

Hardee, the hitchhiker, never made much sense to me. I was unsure of his purpose, although he was in an emergency which also engages the theme of the story again. Johnson did a nice job of constructing a piece full of random events that were vaguely similar in a surprising way. 

Response to Lydia Davis: Television

     With the introductory paragraph involving the almost obvious view of watching a simple television set, I thought she did a good job at writing simple, yet meaningful sentences. The subject of television rings with familiarity, but by saying things like “If dead people walked outside our windows we would be no more excited,” Davis brings a realistic point to life. Watching T.V. is a means of passing time, any almost anything else could happen and we would still remain stagnant. The use of the simple passages to describe the “science” of the television is humorous as well, bringing out the irony in technology. Irony may be one of the hardest aspects for me to incorporate in my writings, so reading this piece and possibly others by Davis may help my feel for a better sense of Irony.

The first paragraph on page 210 makes the narrator sound as if they believe that all of the television material is true, and that the narrator expects real emotion and cooperation to happen between the televisions characters and her family, such as the anchorman and her mother. This narration also characterizes just how silly people really are when watching reality television, a somewhat dumb irresistible coating the t.v. slathers it’s viewers with. 

Davis’s language, although simple, stimulates the mind just enough to realize that she is making television sound just the way it really is, a sometimes stimulating, but always unnecessary object. Although they seem important in today’s lifestyle, we can do without, and this writing style helps tell the reader this by making each reference to the television seem at least somewhat dumb.

The reference to getting the next day’s weather is absolutely true, maybe it’s the urge to be able to tell your friends the next morning when they have no clue and you do. Then again, it was thanks to your television that you gained that knowledge. 

Davis also writes in a way that makes the scene realistic and practical, as I sometimes wonder where the pictures are coming from in the T.V., and how amazing it is that they are traveling from around the world. Her words portray this feeling, something I also wish to strive for and work on in my future pieces.