The first thing my creative writing teacher taught my class this year was a lesson about "collaborating with your chaos". The idea is that chaos is nature's medium for creativity and by working with chaos and confusion, rather than resisting it, you open up new creative pathways. Creativity should challenge the unknown. To be creative you should explore those unknown even when you don't know where they're going.
Thrillers, horrors and mysteries are probably some of my favorite genres. I love stories that delve into questions, secrets, the unknown. I love uncovering something when I read.
Which is why I think that other mystery books need to follow the in the footsteps of The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager.
The book follows Casey, she's a famous actress with a negative public image because of her alcohol problem after the death of her husband. She goes to this lake where a famous model, Katherine, and her husband, Tom, are staying across the lake. Casey starts to suspect that Tom is up to something and spies on the couple until Katherine mysteriously disappears.
I picked up this book last summer from my library as a fun, light mystery book that I could casually read. And, to be honest, that's mostly what it was. The book isn't phenomenal. There's a lot of exposition, some clunky writing, especially in the dialogue, and overall an interesting cast and plot, but nothing to ride home about. But the book stands out with its absolutely batshit crazy twist. I can confidently say I didn't see it coming at all.
Essentially (and spoilers ahead), Katherine was possessed by the ghost of Casey's late husband. On top of that, he was a serial killer and Casey had pushed him into the lake where he drowned after she found out. Tom had been keeping Katherine in the basement the whole time because he didn't know how to remedy the situation. But after saving Katherine, Casey finds out that Tom was also trying to poison Katherine and take her money the whole time as well.
It didn't entirely come out of no where. The plot did slowly build up to it and leave little clues, like Casey's neighbor describing a famous lake legend that hints towards the eventual possession of Katherine. But it's so chaotic that it was hard to predict. The story seemed like it was going to be a normal realistic fiction mystery, not something supernatural. But I think that's a strength of the story. It didn't feel like it came out of nowhere, but I was very surprised when the truth was revealed.
And I personally think that's something that more mystery stories should thrive for. I don't think enough stories have the confidence to do something that crazy with the ending. It honestly reminded me of The Murder on Orient Express by Agatha Christie which I think also ends in a jaw-dropping way.
It's like my creative writing teacher would preach, sometimes the craziest, most chaotic, most confusing idea is the best for a story. And I think that's especially true for mystery.
had to wait until i finished the fire side of the tree before I started on HiveWings (so I could use my Nightwing Design as an influence). In my AU/redesign, seawings can actually spit very hot water, but they have the either be INCREDIBLY WELL HYDRATED or at least mostly submerged in water, and the amount they spit is pretty limited. IceWings can switch between their frost and a cool mist, but the mist requires training and a LOT of control
The saddest thing I ever did see
Was a woodpecker peckin' at a plastic tree.
He looks at me, and "Friend," says he,
"Things ain't as sweet as they used to be."
“I was in my house, alone in the living room, anxious about you, watching the flashes of lightning. And a flash of lightning lit up this truth for me, right in front of my eye. That night I lost you, I lost something inside me. Or perhaps several things. Something central to my existence, the very support for who I am as a person.”
I read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger last summer on the recommendation from a friend. I would honestly rate it as one of my all time favorite books. Characters are my favorite part of storytelling, so I generally gravitate towards books that are more character focused/driven. The Catcher in the Rye really delivered that for me through Holden's journey which was incredibly well-executed and heart-wrenching.
I was at the library the other day and I saw a book of short stories by J.D. Salinger and I had heard a lot about "Perfect Day for Bananafish", so I decided to check it out. It's definitely a weird story. Unlike The Catcher in the Rye, I found this story a lot more complex and harder to understand. It gave me kind of an uneasy feeling and left me with a lot of questions at the end, so I thought I would go through and give my analysis of this story.
"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" can be divided into three main parts: Muriel's phone call with her mother, Sybil at the beach with Seymour, and Seymour's suicide. The story starts with Muriel, which is pretty interesting choice, in my opinion. The focus of the story is definitely Seymour; he's mentioned repeatedly throughout Muriel's conversation, Sybil is infatuated him and he's one who dies at the end. So, it's significant that the setting and backstory along with Seymour himself are all introduced through the lens of Muriel and her mother, especially considering why Seymour ultimately kills himself. We learn that Muriel is on vacation in Florida with her husband, Seymour, who is a war veteran. Muriel is kind of an all-American girl. She's on this fancy vacation, she's married, she paints her nails and reads magazines while waiting to call her mom. Her mother only solidifies this for me, as she seems very traditional. During the conversation with her mother, her mother is constantly freaking out about Muriel's safety with Seymour. She doesn't like Seymour because he isn't her idea of a husband for her daughter and she is wary about the fact that he has psychiatric issues from his time in the war. Muriel on the other hand seems indifferent and even amused towards Seymour and his instability. While her mother freaks out about Seymour calling Muriel "Miss Spiritual Tramp 1948", Muriel just laughs. It implies a sort of naivety as she completely unconcerned about herself or Seymour. She's young and finds it kind of rebellious and fun. One detail about this section that I find really interesting is that the narration never refers to Muriel by her name. It always calls her "the girl". The readers only learn her name through her mother's dialogue. I find that literature usually veers away from referring to a character through a disconnected noun unless its done for a reason. Words like "the brunette" or "the girl" are usually never used as a substitute for a character's name because it creates a disconnect between the reader and the character. It usually creates a feeling that the character is a stranger or somehow unreal. The narration does not do this for Sybil or Seymour. I think Salinger wanted to reader to feel unfamiliar with Muriel as she is supposed to be superficial and unable to understand Seymour on a deeper level. In the same way that Seymour feels disconnected from Muriel and her world, so does the reader.
The next section of the story follows Sybil on the beach. Sybil is an innocent child, implied to be around the ages of 3 or 4. Sometime on her trip Sybil befriended Seymour on the beach and she is excited to go play with him when her mother leaves her to go drink with her friend. The interaction between Sybil and her mother is pretty significant to me. Although brief, it establishes another character who feels superficial and uninterested in the world of Sybil and Seymour. Her mother seems excited to be rid of Sybil and go enjoy her lazy day drinking at the beach, she doesn't even care enough to understand what her preschool-aged child means by "See more glass". When Sybil finally find Seymour, there is an immediate difference to the way Seymour interacts with her. He plays along with what she says, goes to the water with her and tells her imaginary stories about Bananafish- which is where the story gets its name. Seymour tells Sybil that it is a perfect day to spot Bananafish, he explains that they are fish that are so greedy for bananas that they eat until they are too fat to get out of their holes and then die of banana fever. Even though they aren't real, Sybil says she sees one with six bananas in its mouth. You could choose to see this as her pretending to see it to please Seymour, but I choose to see it as a vivid imagination that allows her to engage with the things that Seymour tells her. It may not be real, but to them, it is. The Bananafish are obviously very important to the main message of the story or else it wouldn't be named after them. I think it comes down to greed and materialism. The Bananafish devour bananas despite the fact it will kill them. They get fat and stuck in their holes. The people of the resort are materialistic and are fully enraptured in their superficial world. It's something that Seymour feels alien to, presumably because of the trauma he experience during the war. Seymour is different here than he is implied to be in the phone call between Muriel and her mother. He's not as erratic as they implied, he's more calm and a little quirky, as one might seem when interacting with a child.
In the last part, the reader follows Seymour after Sybil runs off the beach. This part is the weirdest and most surreal for me. It all happens kind of fast and you have to look back at the other parts to truly understand what's going on. Seymour is going up the elevator to return to his room when he accuses a woman of staring at his feet and then yells at her when she doesn't admit that she was. This is the Seymour that we heard about in the phone call. His is irrational and erratic. He gets upset at some random woman when she doesn't admit to staring at his feet. He is not the playful man engaging with a child's innocence anymore. When he finally gets back to his room, he sees Muriel sleeping. He then pulls out a gun and shoots himself. And that's where the story ends. It's kind of abrupt, but it makes sense in context. Seymour is a man who has experienced trauma during his time in the war. As implied in the phone call, he went under psychiatric evaluations. He can't engage in the vapid world of his wife like he might have been able to before after seeing everything that he's seen. He appreciates the innocence of a child like Sybil, but he's haunted by a feeling of being trapped in world of superficial people who don't understand people like him or Sybil.
Overall, I really appreciated this short story. My creative writing class has been studying short fiction the past few weeks and examining the way writers craft characters in a short amount of time and how writers slowly convey information for maximum impact. I think Salinger beautifully crafted this story, through introducing Seymour through a phone call conversation to the ultimate climax of the story.
