[Transcribed discussion of "Amanuensis", by Stephen Tuttle, published in Hayden's Ferry Review.
This story is about Mr. Dumond. Mr. Dumond is one of his town’s most beloved residents, but one day he disappears into a snowstorm. Memories are, at first, fond: children who were enrolled in his eighth-grade earth science class recall that he would cancel class for the first snow of the year. But that fondness is thrown into doubt when some townspeople discover a scale-model replica of their town in Dumond's basement. Mr. Dumond was apparently using the model to keep track of his neighbors' personal lives. As a result, their opinion of Mr. Dumond – and of one another – begins to shift.
The students were asked why a respected man like Dumond would build such a model of his hometown.]
Adam: I don't think it was supposed to be explained. We don't know anything about his character except that he's a really good teacher who gets kids interested, and that he leaves a lot and isn't as involved in the town. But we don't know very much about his character, so the whole point of the story is that it's as much of a surprise to them who know him well as it is to us who don't know him at all. It's just out of place for him to be so intrusive.
Michelle: Maybe he does it to remember the things that he knows. If you teach, you like knowledge. So, I don't know, maybe he's craving for knowledge?
Elizabeth: He's almost like an omniscient figure.
Eva: But the people in the town were painting him as omniscient, before he even disappeared into the snow. The entire description of him is pretty much just –
Michelle: - how excellent he is –
Eva: - yeah, how much everyone believes he's perfect.
Elizabeth: And then there's suddenly this whole other side to him that they had no idea about.
Michelle: It's weird how everyone knows Dumond, but no one really knows him, and since no one actually knows him he can change. Very easily.
[The students were asked if they thought Mr. Dumond was trying to make a statement about the community, or if he just had a grossly invasive hobby.]
Eva: It seems like he's showing what it would do if everything everyone had all their secret things forced out into the open – how would that destroy a town?
Michelle: Or: who are you once you're not there anymore?
Eva: Yeah, what happens to you when, all of a sudden, you're gone and people have to then make their own impressions of you and you can't control that?
Elizabeth: Or even: how is a person's identity shaped by those around them? I mean, what is this guy really like? – we don't know. All we get is the perspective of the town.
Meeting 9/16/08 (San Francisco)
[Transcribed discussion of “Nowtrends,” by Karl Taro Greenfeld, published in American Short Fiction.
In this story a journalist goes to Chengdu, China to interview a young pop star named Xiu Xi. He carries with him money that he may need to bribe the pop star’s manager. “We are at the stage in our great socialist experiment when we are no longer sure who should pay whom,” he says. En route to the interview, however, he learns that an old friend has been arrested for subversive political activity. The journalist uses the bribe money to pay off one of his friend’s guards. The guard then allows the journalist to visit his friend in jail. The rest of the story follows two interwoven tracks, one public and the other private. These are, first, the journalist’s strange interview with a dolled up pop star and, second, his secret efforts to save his friend.]
Sophia: The writing is really good. I kept forgetting it was fiction. Is this writer a journalist in real life?
Joseph: He is. I looked it up. Apparently he’s a well-respected journalist who writes about Asia and especially China. This stuff is real for him.
Bora: For a while I wasn’t sure if it was non-fiction or fiction, either. I liked that. I liked that you could forget whether you were reading journalism or a story. To me that’s a sign of good writing. He made things so real I forgot the story was made up.
Yael: And it was interesting. The part about having to bribe Xiu Xi to get an interview with her was funny to me. It’s a whole different system there.
Sophia: The writer does a really good job of giving us a factual portrait of modern China. It’s written like good journalism: short sentences, statements of fact, not too much speculation.
[Near the end of the story, the journalist’s friend is convicted of associating with a radical political organization and sentenced to death. His organs are to be harvested by the Chinese government.]
Will: Do they really do that? Harvest organs of people they execute? That seemed a little far-fetched to me.
Eli: I’ve read about that elsewhere. It really happens. It is hard to believe, though.
Will: It didn’t seem possible to me. It made me doubt the rest of the story. But if you’ve heard of that happening…Wow. That’s pretty scary.
Eli: Yeah I don’t think he made that up. That happens. I thought overall it was a really well written story, and I thought the writer did his homework. He did good research. He made everything plausible.
In this story a journalist goes to Chengdu, China to interview a young pop star named Xiu Xi. He carries with him money that he may need to bribe the pop star’s manager. “We are at the stage in our great socialist experiment when we are no longer sure who should pay whom,” he says. En route to the interview, however, he learns that an old friend has been arrested for subversive political activity. The journalist uses the bribe money to pay off one of his friend’s guards. The guard then allows the journalist to visit his friend in jail. The rest of the story follows two interwoven tracks, one public and the other private. These are, first, the journalist’s strange interview with a dolled up pop star and, second, his secret efforts to save his friend.]
Sophia: The writing is really good. I kept forgetting it was fiction. Is this writer a journalist in real life?
Joseph: He is. I looked it up. Apparently he’s a well-respected journalist who writes about Asia and especially China. This stuff is real for him.
Bora: For a while I wasn’t sure if it was non-fiction or fiction, either. I liked that. I liked that you could forget whether you were reading journalism or a story. To me that’s a sign of good writing. He made things so real I forgot the story was made up.
Yael: And it was interesting. The part about having to bribe Xiu Xi to get an interview with her was funny to me. It’s a whole different system there.
Sophia: The writer does a really good job of giving us a factual portrait of modern China. It’s written like good journalism: short sentences, statements of fact, not too much speculation.
[Near the end of the story, the journalist’s friend is convicted of associating with a radical political organization and sentenced to death. His organs are to be harvested by the Chinese government.]
Will: Do they really do that? Harvest organs of people they execute? That seemed a little far-fetched to me.
Eli: I’ve read about that elsewhere. It really happens. It is hard to believe, though.
Will: It didn’t seem possible to me. It made me doubt the rest of the story. But if you’ve heard of that happening…Wow. That’s pretty scary.
Eli: Yeah I don’t think he made that up. That happens. I thought overall it was a really well written story, and I thought the writer did his homework. He did good research. He made everything plausible.
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