The Lonely Voice

“Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” is considered to be one of the best stories by Richard Yates, a writer who perhaps didn’t enjoy a lot of accolades when he was alive and publishing his work.

One of the reasons this podcast even exists is precisely because of authors like Richard Yates.

Maybe most people would say, “never heard of him” about Yates and his novels and stories.

That’s the kind of response that’s become practically a cue for us on this podcast to get going on talking about a largely unsung writer we hold in very high esteem.

“Oh, Joseph, I’m so Tired” is an unusual title, but by that I mean it’s glorious. And you have to read the story to know why I’m saying this.

Or better yet just listen to what Peter Orner has to say about it. And he talks about a lot of other things that make him adore this story.

Richard Yates was the mentor of Peter Orner's mentor, Andre Dubus. So there’s a strong kinship there already.

Something Peter Orner recognizes about Yates is the way he can align beauty with the minor tragedies of our lives—our childhoods. And that makes for a kind of nostalgia that borders on something kind of wondrous.

Richard Russo wrote that “the reason we’re pulled to Yates’ stories so quickly has to do with our understanding of what his characters so desperately desire,” and “what often keeps us turning pages is the more gradual revelation of those same characters’ anxieties.”

And it’s not just simple resonance I’m talking about here. It’s just that we see whole worlds mirrored there. We see them and we recognize them. “The most primal of these,” writes Russo, “is loneliness, the fear of which causes the people in Yates’ stories to endure terrible humiliations.”

In our discussion, Peter Orner refers to the story as something delightful. But it’s so dark. Is delight incongruous with darkness? Oh, no.

This notion really lines up with what Richard Russo says about Yates’ stories: “The excitement one feels reading these dark stories, I believe, is the exhilaration of encountering, recognizing, and embracing the truth. It’s not a pretty truth? Too bad. That we recognize ourselves in the blindness, the neediness, the loneliness, even the cruelty of Yates’ people, will have to suffice.”

For story lovers and lonely voices, it’s more than enough.

Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides welcome the inimitable ZZ Packer—to discuss the sublime story by James Alan McPherson, “Gold Coast.”

ZZ Packer and Peter Orner were both students of James Alan McPherson during their time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

ZZ Packer has written about the profound influence that James Alan McPherson has had on her.

She considers him one of the smartest and wisest people she’s ever known and has said that “he cared so much, and so deeply,” and that he was “just so intent on finding what was, emotionally, the best and the most human and humane way to exist in the world.”

And we see irrefutable evidence of this humanity in the story “Gold Coast” by James Alan McPherson. The protagonist, Robert, is an assistant janitor. And while he draws a line before the idea of becoming any more full-fledged in that role, he still gives compassion and consideration over to James Sullivan–a man who is a janitor has always been one, it seems— and ever will be that—but for James Alan McPherson is never–could never be– just that.

Robert spends time listening to Sullivan, trying to see him as more than just whatever the tenants in the rest of the building see—someone in a lowly job, someone not deserving of their respect, someone whose very obvious issues—with alcohol, with his marriage, even with his pet dog—are considered only as repugnant—and are never taken into account with any amount of empathy.

ZZ Packer considers this working relationship between Robert and Sullivan as the heart of the story.

Robert is someone who is managing issues of race and class. He has aspirations and goals. He is Black and knows that this fact could set him apart from the complaining tenants—and from the world that exists beyond the building, including at Harvard. Instead, the tenants complain to Robert—about Sullivan. Spending so much time with Sullivan certainly can’t be helping matters. But Robert continues to listen to Sullivan, to spend time with him—even though these are never easy visits.

The one mainstay in these tensions and exchanges, as ZZ Packer points out, is Robert’s humanity.

Peter Orner has also written about James McPherson.

Above all, writes Peter Orner, he “was interested in what makes people human.” McPherson for Orner was someone who encouraged his students and proteges “not to follow anybody’s script”—not even their own. Another thing Orner has long admired about him is that he “loved to collect examples of human beings refusing to be typecast.”

That’s another important part about “Gold Coast” as we’ll see. It would be easy to see each character—Robert, Sullivan, Jean, Meg, and Miss O'Hara and the other tenants in the small world Robert inhabits— in some stereotypical way. But that was not what James Alan McPherson saw in humanity.

In fact, Peter Orner now considers moments when someone offers “a generous instinct” that “overcomes … an imposed identity” as a "McPherson moment.”

When you encounter those “McPherson moments” in “Gold Coast” you’re just kind of happy to have encountered a story like this one.

And to have ZZ Packer join us to guide us along? What could be better?

GUEST:
ZZ Packer is the author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2003). Her work is frequently published in such journals as The New Yorker and Granta, She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy in Berlin Prize and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship. She has taught at many institutions including Princeton, where she was a Hodder Fellow; the Michener Center at the University of Texas; Vassar College; and as a Jones Lecturer at Stanford. She received her education at Yale (BA), Johns Hopkins (MA), the University of Iowa (MFA), and Stanford as a Stegner Fellow.

Stay tuned for more episodes of The Lonely Voice with ZZ Packer–coming soon.

On this episode of The Lonely Voice podcast, hosts Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner welcome back guest Ricardo Siri—the internationally renowned cartoonist who is known professionally as Liniers.

In a past episode of The Lonely Voice, they discussed "Funes the Memorious" and "The South" by Jorge Luis Borges.

They join forces again this time to tackle—and celebrate—the beloved and enigmatic story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” by Herman Melville.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" by Herman Melville

Many of us encounter "Bartleby, the Scrivener" at some point in anthologies of classic stories or in literature classes in college.

The story was first published in 1853 and involves a lawyer and his office of scriveners whose idiosyncrasies he can manage. They have quirks and limitations—but predictable ones.

Bartleby joins the ranks of scriveners. And he’s a good worker. But then one day, he begins to refuse his work assignments. He utters the famous line, “I prefer not to” (or variations of that expression). He also refuses to leave the office and refuses to do anything else except stare at the wall or out a window just a few inches from where he stands and remains stationary.

The lawyer depends on predictability, on managing the proclivities of his workers who are more or less productive—and avoiding confrontation.

But Bartleby? What can he do about Bartleby? What reaction does the protracted impasse elicit for the lawyer—and for the rest of us?

And the tension builds as Bartleby ends up in a prison. We see the ways the unnamed lawyer must contend with his emotions about this development. The story becomes something of a commentary about the ways society responds to the plight of the individual in need. It is a timeless story with a lot of resonance for today.

Ricardo Siri (Liniers)

Liniers is an Argentine cartoonist whose work has been featured on the cover of The New Yorker. He has had a daily cartoon strip, Macanudo, featured in the Argentine newspaper La Nación for over 20 years and in U.S. newspapers since 2018.

Fantagraphics publishes Liners’ comic strips in new English-language collections.

While his legions of fans might know that Liniers has also collaborated musically—with Gustavo Santaolalla, Jorge Drexler, and Kevin Johansen, among others, (and his tributes to the late Gabo Ferro in 2020 are unforgettable) he’s also quite the reader of literary fiction. Authors like Jorge Luis Borges captured his imagination from a very young age.

He brings insight, intelligence, warmth and humor to our discussions of classic stories on The Lonely Voice.

More about Ricardo Siri (Liniers):

Born in Buenos Aires in 1973, Ricardo Siri became a daily cartoonist at the age of 28 almost by accident, when other Argentine newspaper cartoonists had decamped to Spain at the nadir of a recession. He saw his role on the last page of La Nación as offering a respite from dour news, but the strip’s whimsy and humanity quickly led Macanudo to expand to papers across Latin America, and eventually beyond to Europe and North America. Three of Liniers' children's books have been published in the US, with Good Night, Planet, winning the comics industry Eisner Award for Best Publication for Early Readers in 2018. He currently lives in Vermont.

We’ve got a special Valentine’s Day episode for all the lovers and lonely voices out there. We’re talking about “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story” by Russell Banks.

Does everyone love a love story? How about the type of love story that might not be all hearts and flowers?

People are complicated. Love can be, too, then.

“Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story” is an unusual story in many ways. It is a “type”—a very peculiar kind of love story. It’s strange and even kind of difficult to read because it is so unlike what we might expect from a typical sort of love story.

And yet, it might be surprising to some of our listeners out there that the relationship depicted here in this very strange story can be relatable. Can it? Yes. That’s the way it is with stories. As Peter Orner surmises here, stories are very singular things. They can answer questions that we’ve been trying to answer for a long time–or didn’t even know we needed an answer for.

The narration in this story is another thing that sets it apart. We start in a first-person point of view. Then the narrator directly addresses the reader as “you,” as in a dramatic monologue. Then the narration shifts to third person and the narrator refers to a character named Ron. He then, however, shifts back to first-person and then things alternate some more.

This becomes then a very meta narrative and one where we can try to decipher what all the shifting perspectives can contribute to how we understand the story.

Why does the narrator do this shifting? Well, it could be that he is creating distance between himself and the rather difficult thing that ultimately occurs between Sarah Cole and Ron. It could be that Ron simply cannot face what he did. Maybe Sarah changed him.

And here’s this. Our narrator is extremely attractive. Sarah Cole is not.

But she approaches him one day in a bar. And he responds to her.

She sees him. That’s important. She sees him in the bar that day. And he has to look at her. And then, he sees her.

Maybe he lays eyes on her unattractive features, yes, but somehow, he also sees her. And is this openness and honesty a way into love? Maybe it's the only way.

In love, openness and honesty are tenuous, fragile things that can die. Love can die if we aren’t careful with it.

And what is it that makes love take hold to begin with?

And as for this shifting perspective and this unreliable narrator, what is the truth here? Who is being honest? Is Ron good looking? Probably. So why is he alone in the world? Why does it take the homeliest woman he has ever seen to make him look up from his newspaper and his routine and see someone else—someone who has lost at love before, too, but still has love to give?

At the end of the story, does Sarah Cole really turn into the most beautiful woman Ron has ever seen? Is it a love story? Give a listen and decide for yourself. We think you'll enjoy our deliberations.

Breece D’J Pancake’s story collection was first published in 1983. His death by suicide happened in 1979 after he experienced a spate of grievous losses in his life.

Much has been written about Breece D’J Pancake—the middle initials in his unusual name, his feeling like an outsider in university, for example. Some readers don’t consider his life and work without also considering his death.

But in life, he experienced a little bit of success, living to see his stories published in such reputable publications as The Atlantic Monthly. 

His stories were set in West Virginia and feature some focus on the natural world with hard-working characters in some sort of dire straits. Their lives are laid bare for readers bit by slow and thoughtful bit.

There’s a timelessness in Pancake’s stories. They are distilled, austere, compressed—and yet we find such a richness and complexity in them, in the interiority of the main characters, the conflicts they encounter, the losses they endure.

In this episode, Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss “First Day of Winter” by Breece D’J Pancake. And stay tuned for a bonus episode as Orner and Benavides discuss another story by Breece D’J Pancake, “Time and Again.”

Breece D’J Pancake’s stories can be found in a number of collections, including The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake. 

The essay “Winter in September” can be found in the memoir in essays Am I Alone Here: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live by Peter Orner.

We think you’ll find this article about Breece D’J Pancake by Jon Michaud interesting. Unearthing Breece D’J Pancake | The New Yorker

Read more about Peter Orner at Peter Orner

Read more about The Lonely Voice at tpr.org/thelonelyvoice

Send questions, comments or story recommendations for The Lonely Voice to [email protected]

New Year’s Eve. What is it about New Year’s Eve that makes it—for some of us—a little hard to take?

It’s a day weighed down by resolutions to make, promises to keep. It’s a day that carries the expectation of what the next year will bring to us.

And within that weight and pressure are the wishes for prosperous times ahead. Luck. Love. All good things.

If only it were that easy.

In Mavis Gallant’s story “New Year’s Eve” we see that the idea of this last day of the year plays a part in the lives of the characters in remarkable ways.

Mr. and Mrs. Plummer host a young woman named Amabel. Their daughter, Catherine, died years before and Amabel had once been her childhood friend.

Amabel is going through a divorce and wants to spend the holidays with the Plummers.

They go to the opera. They don’t know what it’s about, don’t know the players and don’t speak the language. That all seems emblematic of the ways in which they face their lives.

Mr. Plummer hasn’t necessarily been true to his wife. She has her own small secrets. They are finally at this stage in their marriage—well entrenched in routines. Amabel’s inviting herself is a nuisance—as is her insistence that the last day of the year and what occurs then is so supremely important.

“Whatever happens tonight happens every day for a year,” she says.

The Plummers have been through a lot over the years. The idea of a New Year’s Eve freighted with so much artificial importance will not be convincing for them as it is for the 22-year-old Amabel.

And yet … And yet … We see a glimmer of something. It happens in passing. It is something so quick and ineffable, almost imperceptible. It would be easy to miss it if we don’t pay attention. That’s kind of how it is with Mavis Gallant's stories.

In "New Year's Eve," we see the ways the characters enter and exit the rooms of memory, come to discover the ways doing so affects the present moments in that theater in Moscow on New Year’s Eve—and imagine (maybe still hope a little) about what the future can possibly bring.

If you’ve listened to this podcast before, you know that we love short stories and that we hold the stories of Gina Berriault in such high regard; they sort of set the standard.

“Stolen Pleasures” is a story about two sisters. Fleur is seven years older than Delia.

We meet them in childhood, but the story jumps to their adult lives and back again.

One sister survived being hit by a car. She has a lazy eye and grows up in a home without a piano— without many things that both sisters want.

The other sister survived scarlet fever and wants for more, too,

The sisters have a blind mother and a father who had been labeled the black sheep in his family.

These are some of the things we know about these characters—but we learn them incrementally, gradually. And it would seem there are many secrets about the “Stolen Pleasures” of each character about which we only know very little. We learn a little more as we continue to read the story.

As a story about siblings who know that they might not be able to ever have the things they want from this world, it would seem a very ordinary kind of story, but that is simply not so.

As Peter Orner surmises, Berriault has a talent for taking ordinary characters and situations and imbuing them with a fullness and a dignity that maybe all the rest of us want and deserve, too. There is something powerfully emotional in that.

This is the way that Berriault manages her characters—these outsiders, suffering the losses of coveted goals that they can’t quite name but that they hunger for just the same.

As with all of Berriault’s stories, discussing “Stolen Pleasures” for Peter Orner and me is simply not an easy thing. Our emotions are high and settle in our throats about this story that is the furthest thing from maudlin or mawkish. Not a bit of that here.

In fact, in our discussion, I conclude that it is knowing that Berriault may only want to depict truth and honesty in these stories—in a world where there is so little truth and honesty—that makes me admire it so much. Emotions are high in this one.

As Peter Orner says, Berriault can take “sensational” situations and make them “subtle.” It is in that subtlety that the poignancy can speak to us.

We like to say we geek out over stories on The Lonely Voice. Indeed.

First published in 1913, “The Judgment” is a story by Franz Kafka. Among critics, it’s considered something of a breakthrough story—and one Kafka himself was proud of, having written it in the span of one day.

The “judgment” of the title is a pronouncement made by the father of the main character, Georg Bendemann.

It’s likely that “The Judgment” is one of the most analyzed of Kafa’s stories. It’s often described as being chaotic and full of paradoxes.

The story is divided into two main sections. The first one makes the reader privy to Georg’s thoughts as he writes a letter to an unnamed friend. It is a friend who lives in Russia and is not faring well there.

Georg feels guilty about telling this friend how well his own life is going—that he continues to work for his father, that he is engaged to a lovely young woman.

In the second part of the story, Georg checks on his father. Since the death of Georg’s mother, his father has slowed down. Georg’s relationship with his father is fraught. His father is sharp in his tone and critical of Georg.

When Georg tells his father about his friend and how he has not been sure about how to tell him all about how great his own life is going, the father’s reaction is quite strange.

When Georg promises to take better care of him, his father reacts harshly, even forming a stark judgment against his son.

What will happen after this rough pronouncement? What will happen next between the father and son? What will Georg do next?

The story is one that is full of the mysteries that can imbue the most ordinary situations—and the most dramatic and unthinkable ones.

Alice Munro passed away on May 13. She was 92. The beloved Canadian author dedicated her long career to creating stories that were both psychologically complex and accessible. She never failed to both mystify and dazzle legions of readers all over the world.

The Swedish Academy that awarded her the Nobel in 2013 referred to her as “a master of contemporary short story.

We’ve been reluctant to join the chorus of tributes that have come forth this week, feeling both bemused and bereft.

But there is plenty to say. Perhaps in time we will share those thoughts. For now, for this week, we’ve instead immersed ourselves in reading Alice Munro’s stories. We’ve been celebrating her life for a very long time.

One reason we created The Lonely Voice podcast is to celebrate the work of writers like Alice Munro—the ones who celebrate stories, the ones who want to write stories first (and not as a warm-up for the novel—dear no—never that.) It’s the story.

In one interview cited in the biography by Robert Thacker, Alice Munro was quoted as saying, “Oh, writing makes my life possible, it always has.”

And that dear life made many other things possible for us—and the many ways we can enter the stories of Alice Munro, these women and girls, these fathers and brothers, the lovers and friends—in situations created to depict the richness of experience every human being understands in small and large ways—but can really come to know by reading the stories of Alice Munro.

In this episode, Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss the story “Illinois.” It is a story from the book The View from Castle Rock, a collection of stories that are more personal than any that Alice Munro ever wrote before. In this one, while one family journeys from a homestead in Illinois to the Canadian border, a baby is lost—but then magically reappears.

The narrative voice in “Death in the Woods” by Sherwood Anderson is an important element of this classic story. From it, we receive the strange, sad story of a woman he describes as rather typical and common—the type of person who is “nothing special” and whom we all know in our own lives.

And yet, the story itself is told in such a close way, brimming with details that go beyond some kind of mere distant familiarity we have with someone random.

The woman had lived in extremely difficult and bleak circumstances for her entire life. We learn this from what the narrator shares. And yet, we wonder how he could possibly know the intimate details of her life—or even of the way she dies.

That becomes one of the most important things to talk about—and admire—in this story.

The story has been so often anthologized. Perhaps we receive the story in brand new ways with each new reading. And this is how it is with a story such as this one. That is, that it is one—as the narrator reminds us—that must be told slowly and with care—over time.

We receive a story in brand new ways with each rereading. Maybe we need to read this one again when we are older and when we can examine the motives of the two young brothers in the story and the ways they retell the story at the exact same time that we are receiving the story from the narrator (one of the brothers) when he is older, and some time and distance have passed.

As we read the final of the story’s five sections, we come to realize that the story is about storytelling. It parses the idea of narrative, breaks it apart, puts it back together. It’s fragmented, but it is a composite whole.

It’s reconstructed—and rooted in imagining what could have happened. So some of this comes from the narrator’s imagining. And yet, as he tells us, he is trying to tell us a “real” story—one about the woman, one about himself as a storyteller—one for us all.