15 Treating People Like Things. "So much water so close to home" and The Hollow

Update: 

Episode 15 is up. It turned out to be about "So much water so close to home" and Agatha Christie's novel The Hollow.  

Previous post below:

***** 

I'm going to work on a short story I hate called "So much water so close to home" by Raymond Carver. 

Here's why I hate it: it gets under your skin. And because it's a male writer writing from a female POV about a deeply upsetting topic with a powerful gender divide to it. But even that is different now from how it used to be, or else I think about it differently. The future! It's more nuanced than the past! I also hate how realistic it is. I hate how she goes back to him at the end. I hate the drive with the green pickup. I hate so very many things about it.

Sometimes you're supposed to hate things about a story. That's the point of the story sometimes. 

How can I get mad that Carver thought about the man's wife's point of view more than the man's? What is up with my brain that I would even think that?

Anyway I recommend reading this story before listening to the podcast. 

Not that I've recorded it yet. Here is why:

The power company trimming back trees and chipping them.

The landlord building his house bang bang bang.

The road out front getting repaved.

Barky barky barky.

And the eternal road noise.

Also my innards were trying to kill me for the past few weeks but I have prevailed by way of Austerity and Not Being An Idiot. And Bloodwork. And next week a CT scan. Whee. They had another good go at me today, though, boy oh boy. 

The enemy within. Or something. The call is coming from inside the house. Inter arma enim silent leges? 

I feel like rewatching DS9 but the pacing is EXCRUCIATING now. Oh, olden times. So slow!

Goddamn, I hate this story. 

Want a quick synopsis?

Some guys go on a fishing trip and find a dead woman in the creek. But rather than lose their vacation, they just tie her to a tree and LEAVE HER THERE and spend the next two days or so fishing and drinking and washing their dishes in the creek RIGHT NEAR HER. They come back home and everyone finds out what monsters they are and the narrator silently freaks out, smashes some dishes, goes to the woman's funeral, gets chased and bothered en route, comes home, and for whatever earthly reason forgives her husband. WHY.

I mean, people do.

But that's horrifying to me. You're married to someone who cares so little for women that he'd leave a dead woman in a creek TIED TO A TREE so she won't float away for several days so he can GO FISHING.

If this were a class, I'd ask: would they have done that if it were a man? Obviously not. No way. To me that's what this story is about: how callous men are toward women. Pay any attention at all to true crime and this is the entire theme of it. Women's bodies are nothing but objects to be treated any old way these men want to treat them, then disposed of as garbage, not like they were ever people at all. They don't see women as people, alive or dead.

It happens CONSTANTLY. If that doesn't make you enraged, I can't begin to fathom why not. 

In the story, the narrator character sees this about her husband, is furious and repulsed by him, and then accepts him again by the end. Now granted it would be a very different story otherwise, but even within the story it's nauseating to have that juxtaposition of events. It's framed in terms of sex, refusing him, pushing him away, then inviting him back. That's super gross juxtaposed with the dumped naked corpse. Again with the true crime, but if a body is dumped naked, that's sexual assault.

I think it's okay to break up with someone when you find out that they don't think people like you are people. Put it that way. It's not everyone. (Not all men.) So if you find out he's one of the ones who doesn't think women are people, then get gone. 

I feel pretty strongly about this. Someone who doesn't think people like you are people--stay with me here--doesn't think people like you are people. And they will do whatever they want to you, because you're not people. Maybe it doesn't really become a problem until they're crossed or cranky or humiliated, but then there it is.

But there are a lot of ways to read this story. Maybe it's about forgiveness, or redemption (what has he done to deserve to be redeemed?) or gender imbalance, or eighteen million other things.

It would be a good story to teach because it's not clear what it's saying, so readers have to interpret for themselves, which also brings out biases and excuses and why some people get to behave certain ways and others don't. It would be a nightmare to teach because 18 year olds haven't articulated their assumptions yet or identified them as such and believe they're just truths. It would be easier to teach now than say 20-30 years ago because modern kids are infinitely more capable of talking calmly about sex and murder and violence and know infinitely more about it.

I'm just saying though, imagine four women on a camping trip alone with a naked dead man in the creek, tied to a tree by his hand. You can't see that to begin with. But also you can't see them fishing and drinking and hanging out like that. It's impossible. Because they would see that murder victim as a person.

Well anyway. That should be a fun podcast, between the nail gun and the wood chipper and the road paver. And the rage.

The road paver machines are fascinating and terrifying. They shoot orange flames out from underneath and cook the pavement as it goes down. The men working around them are in heavy gray clouds of choking fumes and incredible heat. Even driving by, I roll up all the windows and try not to breathe. How are they surviving that?

Nail guns and wood chippers of course feature in murder stories. There was a nail gun in a Bones episode. And the wood chipper is in Fargo as well as Bones. Want to talk about how the procedural-industrial complex treats women's bodies as objects and fodder for their machines? That's a mixed metaphor or three but so what. Also Bones tended to have gender parity for victims AND treated everyone like a person. I love Bones. 

If I were writing a Bones spec right now, I'd want to use that road paver. Imagine the terrible things it would do to a body for the geniuses at the Jeffersonian to figure out. But see the bones would have to be chopped up and mixed in with the asphalt, maybe using a cremation bone grinder. A challenge for Brennan and her team. It would make a great spec. 

Bones is always, always, always careful to humanize their victims and show grieving families and their current friends and relationships and so on. It's a good show to talk about in this context. Maybe I'll talk more about it in the future.

I keep coming back to Kaylee in Firefly, ship invader Jubal Early threatening her with rape, saying to her, "Ain't nothing but a body to me. And I can find all unseemly manner of use for it." Horrifying. "Objects in Space." Extremely good episode, though. One of the best.

The moral is don't treat people as objects, even when they're dead, OBVIOUSLY, stupid fishing guys in this story I hate. 

The wife is so astonished and horrified. But we know these guys, she thinks. Their kids are in school with our kids. And they could just do this. Just treat her that way. It's what you hear over and over about people who do horrible things to people. But he's a nice guy! Yeah, that's who does those things. Just other people. It's not some distant monster who does it. It's the guy next door. 

The moral is do the right thing or you're the monster. It's that easy. It's just a matter of doing the right thing or the wrong thing. There aren't actually good people and bad people, just people doing good things and bad things. Don't do the bad thing and excuse it by saying you're a good person so it must be okay. Maybe that's why I hate the story so much, because it comes down on that exact comforting exonerating cop-out at the end.

Really hate this story. Doesn't mean it's not good! Obviously it's a good one. But I still really hate it. Maybe I can record my episode tomorrow, inner rebellion and external cacophony allowing. 

Raymond Carver has another excellent story I hate called "Cathedral" about an utter asshole who gradually figures out how to stop being so prejudiced against a blind friend of his wife.

The thing is, I don't enjoy spending time with utter asshole characters. Tricky, huh?

Also: don't treat people like objects. 

Up next: Firefly in general and "Objects in Space" in particular.