Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Spectators
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1967
WEBSITE: http://www.robdavidsonauthor.net/
CITY: Chico
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Office telephone 530-898-5124
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1967, in Duluth, MN.
EDUCATION:Beloit College, graduated; Purdue University, M.F.A., Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, educator, and radio host. California State University, Chico, professor, 2002—. Host of Sunday Papers radio show, KZFR, 2011—. Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, Woodstock, NY, artist-in-residence (twice).
AWARDS:Intro Journals Project Award, Association of Writers and Writing Programs, 1997; Camber Press Fiction Award, 2009; U.S. Senior Scholar Award, Fulbright Foundation, 2015-16.
WRITINGS
Contributor to publications, including New Delta Review, Indiana Review, Normal School, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and ZYZZYVA.
SIDELIGHTS
Rob Davidson is a writer, educator, and radio host, originally from Duluth, Minnesota. He holds degrees from Beloit College and Purdue University. Since 2002, he has taught at California State University, Chico. Davidson also hosts a bi-weekly radio program on the KZFR station. His writing has appeared in publications, including New Delta Review, Indiana Review, Normal School, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and ZYZZYVA. Davidson’s work has garnered recognition from organizations, including Camber Press and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.
Field Observations and The Master and the Dean
Field Observations: Stories is Davidson’s first book of short stories. The volume includes “The Hillside Slasher,” a humorous piece involving a husband-and-wife tire-slashing team, “What We Leave Behind,” about a failed professional golfer, and “A Private Life,” which finds a Peace Corps Volunteer falling for a local in Guyana. Writing on the Peace Corps Worldwide website, Mark Brazaitis commented: “Davidson’s stories don’t offer the psychological intrigue of, say, stories by Alice Munro or the lyricism of Amy Bloom’s fiction. But that’s not their intention. Davidson aims to tell the stories of regular people trying to find satisfaction and maybe even a little happiness in a rough world. And he does this well.”
Davidson’s following book is The Master and the Dean: Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells. In it, he analyzes the work of both authors.
The Farther Shore
In 2012, Davidson released another short story collection, The Farther Shore. In an interview with Kathleen McPartland, writer on the Inside Chico State website, Davidson stated: “My characters, like people, have layers. I’m always interested in the way we construct these exteriors that we present to other people. Sometimes it is a calculated act. We all have something hidden inside of ourselves—raw and vulnerable.” Davidson continued: “The governing metaphor of the book is tied into this idea of character. I’m trying to shape a story around a decision or event that ultimately makes change inevitable, whether it is for good or bad. In life, we come to these borderlines. Either by choice or circumstance we have to make a difficult decision; often there is no clear answer or predictable result.” In the same interview with McPartland, Davidson explained how his personal religious beliefs figured into the stories in the book. He remarked: “There are many Buddhist themes in my stories. For example, in ‘Terminations,’ it occurs to the main character that he’ll never be happy with what he’s got, he’ll always want more. This is a Buddhist question coming to the fore. His struggle is to come to terms with that.”
A reviewer on the Publishers Weekly website suggested: “The bulk of these nine pieces end prematurely, as if Davidson himself were too fearful to push beyond the farther shore.” In a more favorable assessment on the Peace Corps Worldwide website, Brazaitis compared Davidson’s work to that of the celebrated author, Raymond Carver. Brazaitis remarked: “Most of the stories in Rob Davidson’s new collection The Farther Shore share with Carver’s tales both elegance and compactness. Like Carver’s stories, they feature characters with obvious flaws. And as with Carver’s stories, they resist happy endings (as they should, given their protagonists’ circumstances and shortcomings).”
Spectators
Spectators, released in 2017, contains very short works of fiction. Titles include “The Best View,” “Failure,” and “Woman with No Hands.”
“By compacting each piece to less than a page, truly, each word is important and every line shines,” asserted Jer Xiong, contributor to the Watershed Review website. A Kirkus Reviews writer described Spectators as “a small but mighty collection of textual snapshots” and “flash fiction at its best that’s definitely worth a look.” D.W. Jefferson, reviewer on the Peace Corps Worldwide website, commented: “Spectators teaches writing and creative arts by example. Aspiring writers should read and re-read this collection of essays as they write their own essays, poems and chapters.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2017, review of Spectators.
Reference & Research Book News, November, 2005, review of The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells.
ONLINE
California State University, Chico website, https://www.csuchico.edu/ (May 28, 2018), author faculty profile.
Inside Chico State, http://www.csuchico.edu/ (May 28, 2018), Kathleen McPartland, author interview.
Peace Corps Worldwide, http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/ (May, 2001), Mark Brazaitis, review of Field Observations; (April 25, 2012), Mark Brazaitis, review of The Farther Shore; (February 16, 2018), D.W. Jefferson, review of Spectators
Publishers Weekly, https://www.publishersweekly.com (March 12, 2012), review of The Farther Shore
Rob Davidson website, http://www.robdavidsonauthor.net/ (May 28, 2018).
Watershed Review, https://watershedcsuc.wordpress.com/ (October 16, 2017), Her Xiong, review of Spectators.
BIO
Rob Davidson was born in Duluth, Minnesota, and was educated at Beloit College and Purdue University. He is the author of Spectators: Flash Fictions (Five Oaks Press, 2017), The Farther Shore: Stories (Bear Star, 2012), The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells (University of Missouri Press, 2005), and Field Observations: Stories (University of Missouri Press, 2001).
Since 2011, Rob has hosted the bi-weekly music program “Sunday Papers” on KZFR 90.1 FM in Chico, California (every other Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., Pacific time). You can listen online anytime at kzfr.org.
Davidson’s honors include a Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholars Award to lecture in Taiwan, 2015-2016; winning the 2009 Camber Press Fiction Award, judged by Ron Carlson; a 1997 AWP Intro Journals Project Award; multiple Pushcart Prize nominations; and having twice been selected Artist-in-Residence at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, New York. His fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, The Normal School, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and American literature at California State University, Chico.
Robert Davidson
Creative Writing
ARTS 238
530-898-6372
rgdavidson@csuchico.edu
Photo of Rob Davidson
Rob Davidson is Professor of English at California State University, Chico, where he also serves as adviser for the Creative Writing Minor. He joined the faculty of Chico State in 2002, after earning his M.F.A. in creative writing (fiction) and his Ph.D. in American Literature at Purdue University. He was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar Award to lecture in Taiwan, 2015-2016.
Rob is the author of two collections of short fiction, The Farther Shore (2012) and Field Observations (2001), as well as a monograph, The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells (2005). A chapbook of lyric flash fiction, Spectators, is forthcoming in 2017. His fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in New Delta Review, The Normal School, REAL, Hayden's Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, ZYZZYVA and elsewhere.
QUOTED: "By compacting each piece to less than a page, truly, each word is important and every line shines."
Writer’s Voice Spotlight: Rob Davidson
by watershedcsuc
rob_davidson_author
Our next author for Writer’s Voice is our very own Rob Davidson, professor of creative writing and American literature at Chico State. Rob will be reading from his newest publication Spectators: Flash Fictions (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Kirkus Reviews has praised Spectators as “A small but mighty collection of textual snapshots… Flash fiction at its best that’s definitely worth a look.” Indeed, the collection of micro wonders has been nominated for Pulitzer Prize.
Rob talks about his writing process for Spectators in The Story Prize. The collection was inspired by photography and visual art of Stephani Schaefer, Sara G. Umemoto, and Tom Patton. He started off with ekphrastic exercises, simply literary responses to artistic production before trimming each piece down. This process, as I recalled Rob saying at his first reading at Arabica Café downtown Chico, allowed him to realize what was essential. By compacting each piece to less than a page, truly, each word is important and every line shines.
This work moves from the lyrical to the narrative and to the meta, reminding us that, just like memories, we may not remember moments in their entirety. We remember only certain instances or details. Rob expertly draws out those kinds of details to ground us in familiarity, something different, and gifts us with something we had not quite noticed before. After all, “We are spectators…We exist both to observe and be observed.”
Davidson’s previous story collections are The Farther Shore (Bear Star, 2012) and Field Observations (Missouri, 2001). He is also the author of a monograph, The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells (Missouri, 2005). His fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in Zyzzyva, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, New Delta Review, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere. Davidson’s honors include a Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar award to lecture in Taiwan (2015-2016), the Camber Press fiction award, judged by Ron Carlson, and an AWP Intro Journals Project Award in fiction.
Please join us for an exciting evening with Rob Davidson, this Thursday at 7:30 pm Colusa 100B. Thanks to contributions made by the Department of English and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, Writer’s Voice readings are free and open to the public.
Written by Jer Xiong
QUOTED: "My characters, like people, have layers. I’m always interested in the way we construct these exteriors that we present to other people. Sometimes it is a calculated act. We all have something hidden inside of ourselves—raw and vulnerable."
"The governing metaphor of the book is tied into this idea of character. I’m trying to shape a story around a decision or event that ultimately makes change inevitable, whether it is for good or bad. In life, we come to these borderlines. Either by choice or circumstance we have to make a difficult decision; often there is no clear answer or predictable result."
"there are many Buddhist themes in my stories. For example, in “Terminations,” it occurs to the main character that he’ll never be happy with what he’s got, he’ll always want more. This is a Buddhist question coming to the fore. His struggle is to come to terms with that."
"The Farther Shore": A Conversation with Rob Davidson About His New Collection of Short Stories
Bear Star Press recently released The Farther Shore, a story collection by Rob Davidson, English. His first book, Field Observations: Stories (Missouri, 2001), won the 2002 Maria Thomas Fiction Award. His second book is The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells (Missouri, 2005). Davidson’s fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, the AWP Writer’s Chronicle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere.
Kathleen McPartland, Inside Chico State editor, recently talked with Davidson about his writing process, the construction of his characters, and the design of a story, among other things. Portions of their conversation are below.
Tell me about your characters. They seem so interestingly incomplete, but complex and good, all at the same time. Ros, for example, in “First Position,” is quirky and edgy—dark and intriguingly unique.
Epigraph Wanting nothing With all your heart Stop the stream. When the world dissolves Everything becomes clear. Go beyond This way or that way, To the farther shore Where the world dissolves And everything becomes clear. Beyond this shore And the farther shore, Beyond the beyond, Where there is no beginning, No end. Without fear, go. —The Dhammapada
My characters, like people, have layers. I’m always interested in the way we construct these exteriors that we present to other people. Sometimes it is a calculated act. We all have something hidden inside of ourselves—raw and vulnerable.
Both of the characters in “First Position” need help moving past the mask to the intimate self. Adam, the musician, is flippant and likes to play the eccentric role, because he’s actually insecure.
It is real pain that Ros struggles with [she believes she’s responsible for a friend’s death]. She and Adam, however, are both moving in the direction of having a real connection with someone else. More often though, the characters fail rather than succeed at making the connection.
This theme of not letting others know their more intimate selves runs through all of the stories. People are afraid of that; it’s dangerous.
In “Criminals,” a long story and the last story in the book, there are two storylines, present and past. In the past, the main character got burned when he tried to help someone; he reached out of his space to attempt intimacy and he paid a price. That partly explains why, in the present, he fails to help a friend. He asks, understandably, “Do you make yourself vulnerable; accessible?” Sometimes there is quite a cost when you do that.
Talk about the idea of “borderlines” as the theme of this book.
The governing metaphor of the book is tied into this idea of character. I’m trying to shape a story around a decision or event that ultimately makes change inevitable, whether it is for good or bad.
In life, we come to these borderlines. Either by choice or circumstance we have to make a difficult decision; often there is no clear answer or predictable result.
Some times characters are worse off after they make this decision. In “Tell Me Where You Are,” for example, a husband in a failing marriage makes a rash decision that has serious results, something that will surely spell the end of his marriage.
What about the many allusions to song in your stories?
For me, there is always a connection between the larger felt experience of a song—most of the music referenced in the stories is rock and roll—and what is happening in the story. Rock and roll is so good at finding a quick way, a crystallized way of conveying emotion—bubble-gum happiness, anger, heartbreak—music has that emotive power. I love to bring that quality into the stories, and song titles provide a quick context. Also, particular musicians or groups. Jonathan Richman, for example, [started recording in the 1970s] is kind of like the idiot savant of rock and roll. A whole set of ideas that surround him. My conception of my fictional character Adam, in “First Position,” is very Richman-like, there’s a connection that can deepen the understanding of the story.
Adam says, “A song is a way of gathering in the loose bits and fragments of your life and making something beautiful out of it,” and he really believes that.
Davidson in BarcelonaTalk about the role of the American commodity culture and writing today.
If you are an American writer today, you have to come to grips with materialism in our culture. We put so much weight and value in what we buy and own—clothes, cars, the music we listen to. These are cultural signs and signifiers, but sometimes we can misread a situation. For example, when I was in the Peace Corps in Grenada in the West Indies, I saw a local kid wearing a RUSH (Canadian Rock Band) T-shirt. I love RUSH. I started going on about the band with this kid, but he didn’t even know who they were; his shirt wasn’t a statement. It was just some shirt his cousin, an émigré in Canada, had sent back to his relative in the Caribbean. I was all worked up about some band, and to this kid, it was just a shirt. That taught me something.
We place so much value in things and believe what we own sends a message. Even choosing music is a kind of positioning of yourself in the culture. “I’m like this, not that.” In “First Position,” Adam, for example, walks around looking at people’s music, making little judgments. Music is a knick-knack we collect that we think defines us. As a writer, I am fascinated with this idea of consumer culture.
In “Object Lessons” (in which a man’s wife becomes pregnant with their first child), the guy is obsessed with shopping, especially for clothes. He’s very materialistic. Part of what he has to come to grips with is the selfishness of that. He has to clear out his room of his stuff to get ready for the baby. It becomes a question of selfishness or clinginess; he’s not ready to make room for another person.
(I ask about Raymond Carver, who seems to be writing from another point of view—someone who has never known material comfort.)
Raymond Carver was writing from a different angle about the working class. But it is still about materialism and consumer culture. In his short story “Neighbors,” where a couple is asked to apartment sit for their neighbors, they become increasingly interested in their neighbor’s possessions. They imagine that their friends lead more interesting lives because of what they own. Carver talks about our envy of others’ possessions and how we think things make people happier, richer, funnier.
Carver’s stories are drenched in awareness of our material culture. Class (and people who suffer from it) is one of his great topics.
Who are some other writers who deal with materialism?
George Saunders is super smart about materialism. Acute.
Tony Hoagland is really aware of pop culture and material culture; for instance, he brings rap culture into his poems. Lorrie Moore—one of her short story collections is “Self Help”—is keenly tuned in to consumer culture. Jonathan Franzen [The Corrections and Freedom] is also steeped in consumer culture.
How has your practice of Buddhism influenced your writing?
The epigraph to the book comes from the The Dhammapada (according to tradition, verses spoken by Buddha). I don’t write about Buddhism explicitly, although it is on my mind as I’m writing. And there are many Buddhist themes in my stories. For example, in “Terminations,” it occurs to the main character that he’ll never be happy with what he’s got, he’ll always want more. This is a Buddhist question coming to the fore. His struggle is to come to terms with that.
Other characters also struggle with that question and sometimes come to terms with it successfully, and sometimes not. Characters who fare well come to some moment of awareness about whatever the issue is and can step outside of their selfish desires and act for the benefit of others.
Do you design your stories, or do they design themselves?
I subscribe to the organic theory of composition developed by Henry James and others. You start with an idea of a story; you push it here and there; you let the story tell you what it wants to become. A lot of my stories have a more or less traditional shape [mentions Freytag’s Triangle]. I arrive at that by letting the story develop on its own terms; the story has to have a sort of life to it. I only know one way to do it and that is to write from the inside out. I’m not a particularly fast writer.
It took me four or five years to write this book. I write everyday. It just takes me a long time to iron things out. I admire writers who are faster or more prolific, but I just have to write at my own rate. It takes me awhile to figure out what a story needs; once I figure that out, things start to click and fall in place. Drafting is exploration to me, testing things out.
I don’t start out by knowing what a story needs; I have to tinker with it until things fall into place. I’m very patient, maybe patient to a fault.
Read more about Rob Davidson’s ideas on writing in a guest essay he wrote for Psychology Today’s “One True Thing: Life’s questions, big and small,” a column by Jennifer Haupt.■
Kathleen McPartland, Public Affairs and Publications
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Print Marked Items
The master and the dean; the literary
criticism of Henry James and William
Dean Howells
Reference & Research Book News.
20.4 (Nov. 2005):
COPYRIGHT 2005 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
0826215793
The master and the dean; the literary criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells.
Davidson, Rob.
U. of Missouri Press
2005
298 pages
$44.95
Hardcover
PS2127
They were close friends for over fifty years, read and criticized each other's work, debated over theory and
literary history, celebrated together, mourned together. Davidson (English, California State U., Chico) not
only takes advantage of recent efforts to make James's large and scattered body of criticism more available
in a study of the lifetime of work, but reads it intertextually with the criticism written by Howells, his great
friend, editor and publisher. Davidson works largely chronologically, focusing on the development of James
as a critic but making Howells's contributions and concerns clear as, in essence, they created the foundation
of American realism based on concepts both European and home-grown, and influenced generations in their
perceptions of the social and moral influences of fiction.
([c] 2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
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Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A138493273
QUOTED: "a small but mighty collection of textual snapshots" "flash fiction at its best that's definitely worth a look."
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Davidson, Rob: SPECTATORS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Davidson, Rob SPECTATORS Five Oaks Press (Indie Fiction) $15.98 7, 1 ISBN: 978-1-944355-31-9
A small but mighty collection of textual snapshots.
Inspired by the photographic and artistic works of Tom Patton, Stephani Schaefer, and Sara Umemoto,
Davidson (The Farther Shore, 2012, etc.) offers a set of short works that he divides into three sections:
"Spectators," "Signals & Marches," and "Fog & Woodsmoke." Often, we think of photographs as
repositories of past actions, but the author uses the present tense to lend immediacy and movement to the
images that he creates. From the very first text, "Clean Pilgrim," he draws readers in and leaves them
breathless. Referring to Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park, Davidson captures the cycles of nature and
history as well as the musical qualities of water, highlighting its power to nourish, cleanse, transform, and
destroy: "Water is the ceaseless murmur of language, an inky stream beckoning all to begin again." In a
similar vein, he depicts geographical features of Utah's Monument Valley as "sculpted slabs licked clean by
God's weary tongue." "Ode to a Selfie" finds a kind of sympathetic logic behind ubiquitous smartphone
self-portraits, without which no modern take on photography would be complete, showing how we all
attempt to cling to memories and preserve them for the future. Thus, Davidson considers internal landscapes
as well, as in "Woman with No Hands," which bears witness to the role reversal that occurs between a
mother and a daughter as part of the aging process. One standout in the second section is "Failure," which
compares humans' precarious existence to the sport of beach volleyball: "Memory grabs at our lives, like a
losing player's fingers thrust into the sand. We throw it all to the wind, praying it won't spit back." Many
readers will find themselves returning to these short, meditative texts as they would to cherished
photographs, searching for one's own interpretations and discovering new details, nuances, or shadings that
they may have overlooked. As Davidson notes in "The Best View": "Perhaps an artist is nothing more than
a parent learning to let go, releasing images into a disorderly world."
Flash fiction at its best that's definitely worth a look.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Davidson, Rob: SPECTATORS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2017. General OneFile,
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Accessed 17 May 2018.
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QUOTED: "Spectators teaches writing and creative arts by example. Aspiring writers should read and re-read this collection of essays as they write their own essays, poems and chapters."
Review — SPECTATORS by Rob Davidson (Grenada)
Feb 26 2018
0
Spectators (Flash Fiction)
by Rob Davidson (Eastern Caribbean—Grenada, West Indies 1990-92)
Five Oaks Press
May 2016
56 pages
$15.79 (paperback)
Reviewed by D.W. Jefferson
•
This is a slender volume of only 56 pages, but, unlike a novel of similar length, it should not be a quick read. These essays deserve re-reading and study. Ultimately this book is about the compulsion to write or engage in other artistic endeavor, the need to give meaning to life by expressing oneself.
For that which one cannot help but do becomes that which one must do.
(from “Clean Pilgrim,” p. 7)
Author Rob Davidson teaches creative writing. Spectators teaches writing and creative arts by example. Aspiring writers should read and re-read this collection of essays as they write their own essays, poems and chapters. Davidson’s essays are free verse poems, focusing on meaning rather than meter and rhyme, or portraits executed in words instead of paints. Many of the essays were inspired by the works of visual artists, and a number were exhibited together with photographs by Tom Patton at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka, California.
The appropriate use of this book is as a resource for writers and other artists. In attempting to describe it further, I find myself re-reading the essays and quoting from them.
“The world without words is the world unmade; it is not life that gives shape to art, but art that gives shape to life.”
(from “Walter: Six Meditations” p. 5; “Fog and Woodsmoke,” p. 49)
You don’t need me to quote passages from the book to you, get your own copy and read and re-read it often! Let it inspire you to exercise your own creativity.
•
D.W. Jefferson was a Peace Corps agriculture volunteer in El Salvador (1974-6) and Costa Rica (1976-77). A blog about his Peace Corps years is at dwjefferson.blogspot.com. He is currently retired from a career in computer software engineering.
QUOTED: "The bulk of these nine pieces end prematurely, as if Davidson himself were too fearful to push beyond the farther shore."
The Farther Shore: Stories%E2%80%A8
Rob Davidson. Bear Star (SPD, dist.), $16 trade paper (164p) ISBN 978-0-9793745-9-3
Given that Davidson begins his second story collection (after Field Observations) with a passage from The Dhammapada as an epigraph—summed up in the lines, "Go beyond / This way or that way, / To the farther shore… // Without fear, go."—one might reasonably expect the characters in the stories that follow to do just that—fearlessly cross into unknown territory. While many of them seem poised to do so, the bulk of these nine pieces end prematurely, as if Davidson himself were too fearful to push beyond the farther shore: the narrative curtain of "First Position" closes on aspiring musician Adam Penn's climactic on-stage moment before a single word is sung; and "Object Lessons"—a meditation on an expectant couple's sex-life and parenting through consumer choices—leaves readers expecting when the story's dénouement sidesteps the birth, reverting instead to an overly sentimental recapitulation of conception. The combination of avoidance and heavy-handed metaphor (e.g., a rat infestation in "Tell Me Where You Are" destroying the protagonist's house as his marriage falls apart) on which these stories are built is frustrating. As a result, these pieces come across less as emissaries to a distant frontier of the human condition, and more as lovingly built and ornately decorated ships that never manage to make landfall. (Mar.)
QUOTED: "Most of the stories in Rob Davidson’s new collection The Farther Shore share with Carver’s tales both elegance and compactness. Like Carver’s stories, they feature characters with obvious flaws. And as with Carver’s stories, they resist happy endings (as they should, given their protagonists’ circumstances and shortcomings)."
Review of Rob Davidson's The Farther Shore
Apr 25 2012
0
farther-shore-1401The Farther Shore
by Rob Davidson (Eastern Caribbean 1990–92)
Bear Star Press
158 pages
$16.00 (paperback)
2012
Reviewed by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93)
IF YOU ASK UNDERGRADUATES to name a modern short story writer they like, they might say (if they don’t say “Stephen King” or, forgetting what “modern” means, “Edgar Allan Poe”) “Raymond Carver,” although Carver died in 1988. There’s a good reason why: Carver’s stories about working class men and women in crisis are as elegant as they are spare. To compress so much emotion, so much complex psychology, so much life into such narrow borders is a wonder. So it’s no wonder Carver continues to have devotees — and imitators. If you’re an American short story writer and you haven’t been influenced, at least a little, by Carver, well, poor you.
Most of the stories in Rob Davidson’s new collection The Farther Shore share with Carver’s tales both elegance and compactness. Like Carver’s stories, they feature characters with obvious flaws. And as with Carver’s stories, they resist happy endings (as they should, given their protagonists’ circumstances and shortcomings).
Davidson is obviously aware of Carver’s influence on short fiction in general and his own aesthetic in particular. The opening of his story “Tell Me Where You Are” pays subtle tribute to Carver’s story “Are These Actual Miles?” The stories are both about marriages on the point of collapse. In the Carver story, Leo sends his wife, Toni, out to sell their convertible. As part of the deal, she may have to sell her body. In Davidson’s story, Peterson watches as his wife, Lori, prepares for an evening with her classmate, Michael Munro, with whom she will be giving a presentation (and maybe doing more). Both wives spend the opening of the story primping in front of the mirror for their encounters with men who aren’t their husbands.
Carver’s story:
“You’re making me nervous,” she says. “I wish you wouldn’t just stand,” she says. “So tell me how I look.”
“You look fine,” he says. “You look great. I’d buy a car from you anytime.”
“But you don’t have money,” she says, peering into the mirror. She pats her hair, frowns. “And your credit’s lousy. You’re nothing,” she says. “Teasing.”
Davidson’s story:
“It’ll go fine, you know that.” She turned to him, one hand planted on a curvy hip. “Tell me how I look.”
Peterson gave her a quick once-over . . .
He said, “You look like a million bucks.”
“Do I look like I want to make a million bucks? Not that an English professor knows about making money.” She smiled facetiously. “Kidding!”
The middles of both stories are also similar, featuring husbands drinking too much (Leo prefers Scotch, Peterson favors bourbon) and worrying about what their wives are doing without them.
It is the endings, however, that differ. Carver, in a rare move, offers his characters the possibility of reconciliation. In Davidson’s story, however, Peterson proves vengeful to the point of violence and violation.
Is Davidson’s bleak ending a comment on Carver’s story? And if so, what might the comment be? That we live in a darker age than Carver’s characters did? That Carver didn’t go far enough in his portraits of how husbands and wives can betray each other?
I suspect it’s nothing so much as this: Davidson found himself creating a character who was far more malicious than Carver’s Leo. He couldn’t write reconciliation into a story that was headed fast in the opposite direction.
A last observation about “Tell Me Where You Are”: One can’t help but wonder if Lori’s date, Michael Munro, might be a sly reference to another modern master of the short story, Alice Munro, who has also been known to write about betrayals in marriage.
Reading a Rob Davidson story is always a pleasure, never more so than (in this reviewer’s opinion, anyway) when his stories are set overseas. In his first collection, Field Observations, I was drawn most to his overseas tales (“A Private Life” and “Barnstorming”). Likewise in The Farther Shore, I found myself marveling at the final story, “Criminals,” which is set on the island of Carriacou. It is a long, intricate story about a father and a son and the foreigner (the story’s narrator) who might be able to save them both from terrible fates. In its restraint and mystery — the narrator tells us only so much about his past to leave us wondering whether he’s a criminal himself or only the victim of suspicion and prejudice — the story recalls another master storyteller, Henry James, with whom Davidson is familiar. (See his scholarly book The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells.)
I haven’t mentioned the other seven stories in The Farther Shore, all of which are worth reading. Davidson does a standout job writing about music in “First Position,” perhaps the sweetest story in the collection. And for additional nuanced portraits of troubled marriages, see “Party Lines.” And . . . well, just read the book.
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Reviewer Mark Brazaitis’ latest collection of short fiction, The Incurables, won the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize and will be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in the fall. He is also the author of two other short fiction collections, The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, and An American Affair as well as a novel, Steal My Heart, and a book of poems, The Other Language. He is a professor of English and directs the Creative Writing Program at West Virginia University.
QUOTED: "Davidson’s stories don’t offer the psychological intrigue of, say, stories by Alice Munro or the lyricism of Amy Bloom’s fiction. But that’s not their intention. Davidson aims to tell the stories of regular people trying to find satisfaction and maybe even a little happiness in a rough world. And he does this well."
Field Observations
Buy Field Observations
Field Observations
by Rob Davidson (Grenada 1990–92)
University of Missouri Press
$17.95
200 pages
May 2001
Reviewed by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991–93)
PERHAPS IT'S SELF-SERVING TO SAY SO, but material a writer finds as a Peace Corps Volunteer tends to be rich in dramaticPrinter friendly version possibility. This is certainly true of Field Observations, Rob Davidson’s fine debut collection of short stories. The two best stories in this nine-story collection both touch on the Peace Corps experience.
In “A Private Life,” a Volunteer on Carriacou finds herself romantically involved with a doctor from Guyana. They are drawn to each other because of the similarity of their circumstances: both are foreigners in a place that isn’t particularly welcoming. But if they are strangers in a strange land, they are also, despite their sexual intimacy, mostly strangers to each other. This changes when Jo confronts Ravi about whether the rumor about him — that he has left a wife and family back in Guyana — is true. “A Private Life” isn’t particularly uplifting — Jo’s house is robbed, dashing her latest effort to reach out to her community — but the story is realistic in its portrayal of a Volunteer’s feelings of alienation and longing.
In “Barnstorming,” the narrator is more of an observer than a participant in life. Appropriately, he’s a bird-watcher: “He hid in thickets, under big trees, on rock outcrops or under them. Just about anywhere he could go where he could comfortably sit still and go unnoticed for long periods of time.” But his cousin, an RPCV, takes him up in a biplane, then subtly proposes another kind of adventure. What Laurie, the cousin, says about the narrator’s mother applies to her as well: “That woman’s got it where it counts. She does what she wants, and she doesn’t care who gets pissed off.”
Of Mice and Men The other seven stories here offer their own surprises and satisfactions. As in “Barnstorming,” the central characters often find themselves overshadowed, sometimes pleasantly, sometimes disturbingly, by others. In the collection’s opening tale, “Inventory,” the narrator, a warehouse manager, tries to keep Harold, a volatile employee, in check. But Harold, like Lenny in Of Mice and Men, is destined to have an encounter with rabbits. It’s up to the narrator to do what he can to prevent disaster. In “You Have to Say Something,” Fran, the story’s central character, meets Sam at a coffeehouse. Sam is “a woman with a history” Fran concludes, and when Sam begins giving regular gifts to Fran — even gifts she seemingly can’t afford — Fran grows suspicious of her motivations. Their confrontation over Sam’s generosity could make or break their friendship.
The collection’s funniest piece is “The Hillside Slasher,” in which the narrator writes a letter, delivered posthumously, to one of his — or, rather, his and his wife’s — victims. There is nothing macabre about the story. Murder isn’t the crime, slashing tires is. And the motivation isn’t madness, but politics.
Several of Davidson’s protagonists are down on their luck, and under a heavier hand, their stories might have been saccharine. But Davidson doesn’t shy from finding small triumphs in otherwise victory-less lives: the comfort a neighbor offers, the promise of a borrowed automobile.
In “What We Leave Behind,” a former NCAA champion college golfer finds himself selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. But he doesn’t feel sorry for himself; neither does Davidson feel sorry for him. His voice, like Davidson’s throughout the collection, is straightforward, plain and observant. His small triumph comes about through circumstance, but if you ring enough doorbells, you’re bound to hit gold: “He took the beer from the mantle of the fireplace, and that’s when he saw the golf club sticking out of the umbrella stand next to the patio door. He picked up the club. It was ancient iron, with a worn, slightly tarnished head and a blonde, wooden shaft.”
Davidson’s stories don’t offer the psychological intrigue of, say, stories by Alice Munro or the lyricism of Amy Bloom’s fiction. But that’s not their intention. Davidson aims to tell the stories of regular people trying to find satisfaction and maybe even a little happiness in a rough world. And he does this well.
Mark Brazaitis is the author of The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award, and Steal My Heart, a novel.