Years ago I read the phrase, ‘In Greece they had a word for it’, meaning I think that the richness of human experience was better parcelled out in the vocabulary of Ancient Greek.
I have no background whatsoever in the Classical languages but I was intrigued so used some book vouchers to buy an Ancient Greek lexicon. It translates in one direction only, from Greek to English, so my adventures inside the book are directed entirely by the Fates.
This morning, waiting for the coffee pot to boil, I took down this dictionary for the first time in many years. A few whimsical page flicks landed me on page 821, and to the following definition (the Greek rendered clumsily by my approximate understanding of the alphabet):
Tropaia - an alternating wind
The short definition cites just one use, and that metaphorically, to describe ‘a change in the spirit of one’s mind’.
I have been letting ‘An Incident’ roll around in my mind for a few days now, and this metaphor of the alternating wind struck me as deeply apt in my own appreciation of the craft used and also the character’s experience.
In fact it struck me that my love for many stories, and especially in the short story form, has something to do with this ‘change in the spirit of the mind’, both of the characters’ minds (Marya In The Cart, say) and of my own as a result.
And then, again, on hearing the many different readings of everyone here.
Like Tom below, I am thinking about the idea of "tropaia" as a metaphor for "a change in the spirit of one's mind" that you introduce here. I often think that the changes in human moods are so like changes in weather (it seems, sadly, that as the weather gets more violent, so do humans). I agree with your comment that the short story is the perfect form to register these changes in spirit. Such delicate calibrations might get lost in a novel and/or the novel might have to be very long, not of course impossible. "Tropaia" is a lovely word. We are the wiser for your "whimsical page flicks"! Thank you!
Very interesting, Niall. I’m in midst of sustained project of reading contemporary Irish short stories, courtesy of The Stinging Fly press, (if I can give them a plug), and I’m struck by wide variety of approaches to the form. But my impression so far is that they all demonstrate in some fashion this “alternating wind” metaphor. I’m eager to reread some of them now with this metaphor in mind. Thanks for sharing.
I've been thinking of this comment since I read it yesterday - thanks so much for it. "This change in the spirit of mind" - beautiful description of the potential of craft, and the always undercurrent goal of gaining empathy.
Like when i heard about Gilgamesh, how the fire actually branded the words deeper into the clay, instead of destroying it - produced for me, a metaphor of how emotional injuries become branded as scars on being repeatedly burned in the fire...
Just peeked in on Storyclub, found your delightful, provocative post, a very satisfying and lovey way to start the tone and content of my day. Thank you kindly.
Yes, our intrepid George, you damn well can! And the feeling is mutual. And it has something to do with the extraordinary persona you project -- your kindness, gentleness, deep insight, humor, flexibility, and openness. Not to mention that you write great stories which inspire authors of many a stripe.
Yes, it appears you have put to good use your remarkably grounded creativity, a cheerful goodwill, and the courage to just blast this thing into being, this safe and welcoming container. Story Club is both a delightful and challenging gathering spot for magnificents seeking a conscious creative path, thank you.
I can only be a free subscriber at the moment, and I appreciate this free posts which I learn a lot from each time. Thank you so much George for your work, you are making a bigger impact than you think
Inspired by George's lesson about unreliable narrator, this came out when I was writing about something else:
For the first 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years of your life, you just follow what the parents, elders, society wants of you to do.
You follow the formula laid out, you follow the drumbeat, but after a while, you separate, you listen to the birds and bees, it is like Saunders said the narrator and reader’s voice starts separating.
You do not entirely buy into what the society has laid out or what it is offering. You doubt the veracity of the society, and that is when the story gets interesting, because now the reader is awakened, he disbelieves the narrator, the reader is questioning his own beliefs and then that is when the reader comes alive, and questions everything about the story.
You come alive and question everything about life.
This is a tricky story for me. The man in a hurry is somewhat of a bad man, a bit selfish. The driver is a good man, one who can sleep at night.
At age 16, I was the victim of a hit and run where the driver veered off the country road at me, where I stood up above the culvert by a stone wall. I was still standing as he sped off, but the second I pivoted on my left leg, I crumpled into the ditch. As time went by, it became known who the driver was. Privately, I learned who he had just dropped off and who was still in the car with him. In 1974 the driver was fined $30- for going out of the lane of travel. Me, 3 months in traction and a body cast in the hospital. The leg will never be quite the same. I have noticed that the passengers who never ratted on him had problems with holding jobs, marriages and fought alcohol problems. The driver married one of the occupants, who 40 some years later was hit by a car and killed while running in a blizzard. I wondered was she held captive, having to keep that secret all her life?
No one can possibly judge another's pain, not even a doctor. I found that a very arrogant judgement by the man in a hurry.
I am glad that I lived to tell the tale. At 16, I hid the whole operation under the hospital sheet, then took to making and wearing long skirts in 1974. A rebuild at Brigham & Women's in 1991 corrected the early fix at the local hospital. By then, doctors realized that using ultraviolet light in the operating area would prevent bone infection. I had the best, nicest doctor in the world. He truly believed his patients.
LOTS of doctors in our lives since our daughter was born in 2003. As Wallace says in a breathtakingly harsh and brilliant story "Incarnations of Burned Children": "If you've haven't wept and want to....have a child."
My heart goes out to you, Rowena. So many 'moving parts' in your own 'incident.' As one who has also gotten 'up close and personal' with physical pain, I wholeheartedly agree. So much is judged based on how 'fine' and 'healthy' a person may appear. Thank you for sharing your life-changing experience. <3
I think I was avoiding how powerful the story was for me and I wanted to run from that influence. When I was a boy (16) I watched a fight between to kids my age. I watched the smaller kid get pummelled until this nothing-of-a-boy standing beside me stepped in, putting himself at great risk to stop the fight. I made that incident mean a lot of things about myself over the years. That same boy who put himself at risk ended up being a father to two boys who both made it into the NHL. One of them is a spokesperson for Big Brothers of Canada. My son is exactly like I was at 16. I still haven't quite articulated how my story relates to Hsun's story. I guess, simply: I was the passenger and the boy that intervened was the rickshaw driver.
I have made peace with the incident, mostly, and my tutelage has improved, but this story brought it all back. What more can you ask for in a story?
Honesty. Thank you for sharing such a candid personal memory and reflection Alan.
Fair exchange being no robbery I'm pleased to take this opportunity, occasioned by your post, to share the memory of how I solved a problem as I grew through my teenage years: I was big, and so targeted, for my age.
I wouldn't play the pecking order game of 'scrapping' to establish who was who ranked where in the fisticuffs table (fear of my, Irish, Mother's opprobrium at the sight of a torn collar or blood stained shirt simply countervailed the naked threats being 'given a good kicking' by the local bleached Levi's and shrunken to fit in the bath Skinheads).
So I placed myself as the honest broker, with hard hands, by becoming the 'referee' in fights scheduled to be fought 'in a particular bogs in a particular break'. Whether the bought was between 'contenders' or 'two who had some pathetic-in-hindsight 'serious' disagreement it did not matter to me . . . so long as I was able to arrive home much as I left it. I certainly was never, never mind postured to be 'invincible' but sure as hell I was what some would describe as a 'had to be* tough teenage cookie'.
'These are the things I still remember from so long ago' (i.e. Mayall lyric should anyone be interested) . . . and you are quite right Alan: what more can any of us expect from reading, be it a story or a reflective comment on a story?
*FYI the words 'had to be' are edits into the original post. Just to add: I'm not any kind of a rough tough type by nature or nurture but neither have I ever been a meek turner of the cheek,
Write this story. Yours, I mean. It already feels so alive in just the short, factual summary you've given us. I want to know more about the person you were, the position in that childhood society you held. I'd read pages and pages of it, in fact.
Just to say I've noted your comment PW and welcome it.
Positive feedback indeed. I've been trying to put some of what George is offering to us in my practise (English verb spelling) in writing into these threads - so rich in ideas and insights - by just instinctively going with whatever flows from the ignition of a passing writing spark.
If what I've written above 'already feels so alive' then it gives me encouragement to write more out of memory of personal times past . . . which they never are, entirely, as they are the crucible in which we became who we have been as our lives have unfolded.
I check every day what people write in the comments and whether George has posted anything new!! So satisfying, and what a good company now that I’m grounded with Covid…
No pressure on referring to Lu in any particular way. I actually enjoy seeing the Hsuns in the comments, because it feels really sweet and intimate. In case you're interested (I think it's very interesting), Hsun/Hsün/Xun is his given name, while Lu is his family name. So when referring to Hsun, it's like saying Scott instead of Fitzgerald. In Chinese the family name comes first, then the given name. So Fitzgerald Scott, Lu Xun.
I’m learning so much, too, and that’s a lot of fun. I hadn’t known until looking him up that Lu Xun was his pen name (Lu was his mother’s maiden name).
Chinese names tend to be said all in one go, family name + given name, e.g. Lu Xun.
Familiarity can lead to using just one’s given name, but not necessarily. Even my own grandma calls me by my whole name (maiden name + given name).
It certainly helps with specificity, given that Chinese names, all put together, are usually just two or three syllables. And the monosyllabic family names are frequently wildly popular. (Two syllable family names exist, but I’ve never met anyone in person. My parents may have, once. They are popular in martial arts novels though.)
Delightful addition to the deepening depth of insight into a subject that, in my simple ignorance, I hadn't realised I was as one can say ignorant of.
So it's going to be 'Lee Bruce' and 'Fu Kung'; for me from here on Fei . . . am I right or, quite possibly. wrong? 😂 Genial exchange, much appreciated.
You make think Fei that, possibly, what a cat was to Schrodinger a panda could have been to Kung Fu had this been not a noun but the name of a person. Maybe Li Xiaolong would have enjoyed having a panda for a partner, but we'll never know since he had passed along the road and exited this life (perhaps via the S_____ Gate?) long before the animated Kung Fu Panda came along.
Which brings me back to a thought I've had since first reading 'An Incident': the story, its setting and set of just four characters and a rickshaw, has a rather surreal feel about it.
That's a beautiful way of putting it, "avid word/linguistics explorer"! I share your interest! I just wrote about the romanization of Chinese and its difficulties through the example: "Shi Shi Shi Shi Shi" means "The Story of Mr. Shi Eating Lions".
Fei, thx for sharing this, just read your comment and clicked over to"Shi shi....." what an ingeniously creative way to make a point, think you've possibly added something enlivening here to the world's store of odd and interesting perspectives on writing. Also clicked on to the original post and found a resonant passage I like a lot: 'Janosch A. Prufrock looked up. “What Wittgenstein means by the limits of his language being the limits of his world is that words are just sounds, not the actual world they limitedly describe. It’s so simple but so difficult at the same time. I myself only get it in flashes now and then, and most times it makes no sense to me. I can’t explain it at all, and he could only barely explain it himself. What do you think of it?” finished Mr. Smee with a question to the pirates.'
Like Nom (de Famille) preceding Prénom in French . . . the kind of knowledge nugget that could, conceivably, matter in writing a short story set in either China or France in which characters are named.
This discussion about An Incident has changed me from a lurker to a subscriber. Two comments: The first times I read the story I was most struck by the rider’s experience once he was “surprised”—that the rider “suddenly” saw the driver become bigger and bigger while he felt himself shrinking, and that this vision or hallucination changed him and has remained with him ever since. A few similar incidents have happened to me. Moments when our perspective is suddenly changed and never forgotten. Part of the beauty of Lu Hsun’s story is to remind us that there are wonders out there that will shake us out of everyday complacency.
And then, suddenly, I had a memory from childhood. I was an eleven year old white American living with my family in Taiwan in the mid-1950s. I was proud that I knew enough Mandarin Chinese to bargain with the pedicab men on our corner. For me, or for me and my younger brother, the appropriate fare was three Taiwanese dollars. If the driver asked for more, it was standard bargaining to walk away, and almost always the pedicab would come bicycling after us. When my full-sized old grandmother came to visit and wanted to go for a ride with my brother and me, I welcomed the chance to show off my expertise. I offered a three dollar fare to the pedicab man. When he demanded more, I turned my back and made my grandmother and brother walk away. It was a very hot day and a dusty road, and we walked much further than I had ever had to walk before, but at last the driver came up to us and all three of us crowded into the cab. It wasn’t until I related this triumph to my mother that I felt anything but pride. She told me that it was cruel to make my grandmother walk so far, or to expect the pedicab man to drive two children plus a heavy adult for the same fare as two children. Finally I felt shame.
Aw, I really felt this, Anne! My heart goes out to younger you. Those are the kinds of experiences that stay with us forever. That whiplash from pride to shame as a child, when we're still figuring out the world and its expectations, is tough, and you captured it so beautifully.
Just to weigh in on the 'what trouble might the rickshaw driver be in for in this era in China', while I was there people would claim (often via similar, probably apocryphal stories) that in China if you brought someone to hospital or helped them you were liable for their medical bills. There was always a story about some old woman hyperventilating by the side of the road, a green newcomer to the city helps her to the hospital, gives his details, a month later receives a bill for all her medical expenses which ruins him.
There was quite a lot of soul searching about this attitude in the media by the time I left thanks to some really nasty CCTV footage of people being run over and left on the road, then run over again, cars stopping to look at the body and driving on, over and over. I've no idea if things have actually changed.
Historically I believe that if you accidentally killed someone you took on their financial responsibilities (eg. had to now provide for their relations), and the law was a modern version of this, but this is all just from people's anecdotes.
So maybe this is what the rickshaw driver is potentially taking on, he's injured this woman, admitted culpability and now she could potential exaggerate her injuries to gouge some cash from him.
I didn't think of it when I read the story, but this makes the narrator's pennies for the journey seem more insulting. Like 'I engaged you for a ride, the rest is your responsibility', despite his epiphany.
Fascinating insight, albeit anecdotal, and in fact giving succour to one of the possible ways of reading the story which occurred to me early on in my readings of the story. I was attempting to look simply at the text on the page below the title, reading without consideration of who wrote it, when it was written or in what ways other previous readers, literary scholars or literature teachers may have comprehended and interpreted it.
These comments and anecdotes are all so helpful. They also suggest that context and time and the person the reader is when they come to a story all affect meaning. They also support the notion that there are no wrong interpretations; good art provokes what we need to hear or see when we come to the text. Or has the potential to.
How much does a writer need to spell out for the reader is my question. I recently submitted a story to my workshop feedback group. Half of the group didn't know about the place I was writing about and critiqued harshly an element of the story. The other half loved the very same element because they identified with the scene.
Wow, you've taken it further than I did, Rosanne! I love it. Thinking about this idea of responsible/beholden roles in society feels pretty Confucian to me, so I would think this might colour the narrator's thinking even back then. Your comments made me think again about his view of his work (in the abstract, and as an irritation, rather than it mattering to the lives of people) while he might have, at least in theory, have been expected to act as a kind of 'father' to the little people like the old woman (who he also regards as an irritation and in the abstract - she is an impediment to him getting where he's going). Not sure if I'm pushing this too far; would be interested to hear from others with and without a China perspective to know if they see something similar too
I was not aligned with the narrator from the very beginning, because, and I say this with a heavy heart, the narrator is Chinese.
As a Chinese person who grew up largely not knowing he was Chinese, and then only learning about it through the lens of second generation immigrants who were, consciously or subconsciously, rejecting their Chinese-ness, I've only recently realised my inherent bias towards Chinese culture. It's something I've thought a lot about the last decade.
And here, in this simple story, it came up again.
I immediately was wary of this narrator, and his dedication to a job he didn't like, and then his uncaring and selfish attitude, and THEN his sudden change of heart, his road to Damascus moment. Ha! Ha, I thought.
That was my first, immediate reaction. But thanks to this reading method, and the cadence of Story Club, I revisited it, and then a third time, and now a fourth time, each time being asked to look at it from a different angle, with an eye to a different detail. And here, in a small way, I was able to let go of a bit more of that prejudice. And so if nothing else, I've gotten that from this story.
Perhaps, it's because I live in a rural area, among 'country' people that I made more of the opening couple of paragraphs than just a scene-setting, getting-to-know-your-narrator piece of exposition.
"Six years have slipped by since I came from the country to the capital," the narrator says in the opening line.
That he left the country for the capital suggests the narrator had ambitions to change his station in life. That the years "slipped by" suggests that things went well for him, but "to make a living, I had to be up and out early" suggests that he is nowhere near the movers and shakers that control "the affairs of state".
This reading led me to an understanding of why the incident with the rickshaw driver and the old woman had such an immense and shattering effect on him - something that puzzled me on the first reading.
This is a man who left behind the country and it's simple, "country" people to "better" himself. He is suddenly stunned to realize that, although he has risen only somewhat above his humble beginnings, he has become like the worst snobs of the city, that the tattered old woman could be his humble grandmother, the rickshaw man could be his poor, hardworking father. He feels not only shame in the face of the rickshaw driver's humanity, but also that he has disrespected and betrayed the people he left behind to satisfy his ambitions.
His giving the coins to the policeman for the driver is an act of penance and respect not merely a reflection of his shame and guilty conscience.
For me, at least, that is where the power of the story lies, and it was hinted at in the opening of the story along with the other "additions and embellishments" that create the story's impact.
I grew up in a very rural area and I had the same impression about the "country to capital" phrase. I too left for the city and made my way among the modern day urbanites. Still, I find that far distant country cousin, the "first me" still inside me, frowning a little at my affectations.
I'm not sure if someone has already posted this before, but I wanted to share a horrifically tragic real life story about a little girl called Wang Yue from around a decade ago, which has echoes of Lu Xun’s Incident story.
My wife went to school in Beijing in the 80s and told me An Incident was one of the set texts they studied in the class: the main lesson to be learnt was a sort of Marxist fable about the rickshaw driver being an upstanding member of the laobaixing/ordinary workers/proletariat who showed care for his fellow human being while the narrator is a decadent bourgeoise who needs to learn from the peasants. In the case of Wang Yue, it’s almost a flip of the narrative as most of the ordinary people ignored the little girl’s plight (except for the heroic Granny Chen the rubbish scavenger). Some took this to be a symbol of a loss of morality in modern China prompting lots of soul searching.
I was wondering if the story was linked to the phenomenon of pengci or ‘porcelain bumping’ where people fake traffic injuries to get compensation, but my wife says this wasn’t a thing in Lu Xun’s day.
I lived in Beijing myself for 7 years, and the story really brought back the freezing winds of winter and late nights/early mornings stumbling around the hutongs.
And thank you for this word string 'Fragrant' Robinson: 'the main lesson to be learnt was a sort of Marxist fable'. I offer thanks partly because it is a very well put phrasing but primarily because it highlights, to my mind at least, just why participating in Story Club is proving so rewarding: it is not school, it is a conversation. There are no pressures to place 'correct' constructions on the stories we are encountering. Being a former 'Dean of Indefinite Learning' I really appreciate the opportunities brought to us by being invited to journey into texts with fluid hope rather than rigid expectation.
Rob, '.. it is a not a school, it is a conversation.' invoked, in me, an image of a pond. George drops his 'offering' and our exchanges are the ripples... which sometimes become other 'offerings' creating more ripples. Thank you for this 'offering.'
I am no Marxist, but I was suspicious of the narrator's viewpoint almost from the beginning since he hired a rickshaw to take him to work, making the rickshaw man suffer in the bitter cold while he sat in the rickshaw in his fur-lined coat. Even before the collision with the woman, he struck me as someone who felt more important than others who were less well off. His attitude about the woman confirmed my feelings. And I found the last paragraph to be less than convincing about his conversion. Yes, he still feels shame when he thinks about the incident and has felt encouraged to reform his behavior, but has he actually done so?
Right on the money Janet. He's a faux, virtue signalling rather than actually behaviour changing sort in my book. His big stressor in life is, taking this tack on the story a little further, minor inconvenience.
Yue Yue, the update note to the article informs us, sadly did not survive the 'small' incident of her collisions with road traffic in modern China. Your post shows, I think, that Lu Hsun's story touches greatness through its quality of being both particular and universal. I also enjoy reading the version of the story published in the article. It differs from the version George has us working with in a number of interesting ways, not least in being shorter. It also, in my opinion, underscores the utility of the approach to reading, reflecting and recording aspects of our rich response to reading 'An Incident'.
First, I think by the narrator admitting he was misanthropic from the get-go, he was giving the reader space, which I took. So from the beginning, my dot wasn't overlapping with his dot, to use George's example above. It's like if the fellow train passenger in the above example admitted from the get-go that he couldn't hear out of one ear, or something. Whatever story he told, I'd be like well maybe you missed something because you can't hear out of one ear.
And I admire the narrator for his honesty about that. It reminds me of what George wrote about The Nose, how the narrator, just by addressing the illogical events in the story can get us back on his team. Here, the narrator did that up front.
Second: This story is set in a world where an expected form of transportation is a pulled rickshaw. This is a much bigger deal than the tricycle rickshaw I thought it was at first. A tricycle rickshaw has class implications, for sure. But it's still arguably more efficient. This pulled rickshaw on an empty road says a lot about the world the story is living in. Basically that able-bodied people of a certain status are allowed and expected to let others of lower status literally pull them along. This is as big of a deal, to me, as in George's Semplica Girl Diaries, where in that world, it's okay to have girls suffer brain damage to line up as lawn ornaments. That world is corrupting by nature. So anyone in it is likely to have been corrupted too, like what George wrote about Marya in In The Cart. That's why the rickshaw driver's taking the old woman at her world is so miraculous. And why the story is worth telling.
Third, and finally: Even though the narrator is different from me, his honesty and mine, while reading, makes me able to find common ground with him. When I read that line "She must be pretending, which was disgusting"--I thought immediately, that is disgusting. If she's faking, that's disgusting. It's abhorrent. So maybe the narrator is wrong or rude or mean for jumping to that conclusion. But I like how me seeing myself in the narrator implicates me too. I really loved this story.
First, thanks for clarifying that I shouldn't do this during my "writing time." I needed to be reminded.
Second, thanks for properly positioning the comments usefulness. I'm moving into learning mode, since these wonderful people have filled me up with insight and inspirations enough to take me into August.
Learning a lot, here. So pleased to have this opportunity.
George, your graph is so powerful that it makes me re-think story writing. I've never seen that arc between writer and character before and I'm just blown away by it's power. I'm currently playing around with Free Indirect Speech which I now realise is a key part of that writer/character arc.
And in the short time I've been reading your stuff, something has happened to my writing. I've struggled with a particular short story for a few years now. I've stuffed it up, mangled it every which way and abandoned it many times although it always comes back to niggle at me. After reading your posts on 'The Incident' I was making the bed and suddenly one of the characters was standing on the dark, leaning on a fence post and said really clearly, 'She was a very large woman but she was crying like a baby.' And there it all was: the arc of the story, the depth of the characters, the details of the setting, the tension building and the resolution.
I'm still a bit afraid I'll stuff it up again but this time I've got some really good tips from you on how to manage my weaknesses in writing. I won't rush things through this time, won't just focus on the plot but stay in the moment when that arc moves away from the main character and helicopters above her. Fingers crossed, this story will finally be satisfied with how I handle it.
I don’t think I 100% agree with George (gasp!) when he says that the narrator makes a small and understandable error… or at least I disagree that the error is presented as small and understandable in the story. In my reading of this story, the narrator is framing his narrative (coaching) right from the beginning. He wants us to see him as an ambitious underdog (P1, he came from the country to the city) but that the city and the life therein has not been particularly favorable to him (P1, it’s influence had made him a misanthrope). He’s not in a good place emotionally, he’s had a hard time, so right off the bat, our narrator wants us to empathize with him and his plight. By P3, he’s taking it one step further and making us feel sorry for him. Poor guy has to go out in the bitter cold in order to make a living. “See! My life sucks,” he seems to say. What’s interesting to me about this introductory section is that it serves two purposes. On the one hand, it serves to get the reader to firmly align themselves with the narrator’s point of view, to see the incident from his perspective. But ultimately, once we have reached the culmination of his arc, in retrospect this section serves to tell the reader “Can you believe what kind of jerk I was back then?” So the framing of the narrative of this section changes as the story progresses. But at no point, at least in my reading, are we meant to view the narrator’s reaction to the incident (his feeling of inconvenience, his frustration with the driver for stopping, etc.) or the incident itself as a “come on, we’ve all been there” kind of moment. It is the narrator’s reaction that tears us from our allegiance to the narrator and our feelings of empathy for him. His reaction immediately makes us feel uncomfortable with the narrator’s character. He mentions that there are no witnesses, which implies that he’s trying to get away with something he knows isn’t kosher. He accuses the woman of fakery and calls her actions disgusting, which makes him look callous and heartless. He washes his hands of the driver and says he will have to find his own way out of this trouble. These are all the actions of a man who is selfish, and self-important, and a big jerk. He told us that he was a misanthrope and he’s laying it all bare for us. So rather than bonding with the reader by reassuring us that, hey, we’re all human, we’ve all done something like this… I think Hsu is telling us that this is not small and defensible at all, it is this type of incident that both reveals and defines our character. And when this beacon shines into the narrator’s soul, he doesn’t like what he sees.
I don’t think so, actually. I think he’s showing us how difficult it can be to stop and think of others when society is pressuring you to think of yourself. And he wants us to know that now he’s trying, although it’s unclear whether he’s succeeding.
My career investigating bodily injury and legal liability claims has caused me to see this story differently, perhaps, than others. My job was to always try to remain detached and objective while taking recorded interviews of both drivers' versions of the accident, along with receiving input from witnesses and police. I'd then make informed judgments in order to reach a fair settlement. What George calls coaching statements are all too familiar to me. In "An Incident", I only had the benefit of hearing one version of events. Lu Hsun gave us the Narrator's sole version of events, and the Narrator's tendency to tell us only what he wanted us to know was something I would hear, time after time, every working day. I'm going to use George's chart format and I expect to learn something about myself as a reader (rather than the judge who has had access to all the facts).
Melissa, I didn't find myself judging until I read the words "slowly fell" and "luckily it wasn't a bad fall." It raised questions for me. I thought, 'Is there ever a good fall for an old woman, slow or fast?' And how would he have known it wasn't bad, in truth? I began to understand WHERE the story was going and HOW the narrator was thinking in that moment, confirmed by his subsequent characterization of the woman's fall as "disgusting" because he felt she may have been "pretending." When the narrator looked around for witnesses, relieved to know that there were none, I began to understand WHO the narrator was thinking about, and I believe it was himself and his pressing need to get where he was going. I saw him as being so preoccupied with his own concerns that it temporarily reduced his capacity for mercy. These coaching phrases moved the story to its moral in the epilogue and the story was efficiently told through his eyes alone. The curious insurance investigator in me would've loved to have heard the rickshaw driver and the woman's version of events, but I realized it was never necessary or relevant because this was a story about the narrator's personal awakening.
This story made me think about how capitalism speeds up everyday life, and how this speed-up deprives us of certain social graces (i.e., helping a middle-aged woman get help when she's been crushed by your rickshaw/SUV/Uber).
It's significant that the man is commuting to work. And this is where the story reminded me of Tolstoy's "Master and Man" both the passenger and Vasili Andreich are possessed by an urgent need to fulfill their worldly duties -- to make money, do their job, fulfill their professional lives -- and this need is both a symptom and a cause of their failure to do and be good.
The answer to the narrator's moral failure (in "An Incident") is to throw money at it. But this response compounds rather than diminishes it.
Can I just say, not for the first time, what a magnificent group this is.
An Alternating Wind
Years ago I read the phrase, ‘In Greece they had a word for it’, meaning I think that the richness of human experience was better parcelled out in the vocabulary of Ancient Greek.
I have no background whatsoever in the Classical languages but I was intrigued so used some book vouchers to buy an Ancient Greek lexicon. It translates in one direction only, from Greek to English, so my adventures inside the book are directed entirely by the Fates.
This morning, waiting for the coffee pot to boil, I took down this dictionary for the first time in many years. A few whimsical page flicks landed me on page 821, and to the following definition (the Greek rendered clumsily by my approximate understanding of the alphabet):
Tropaia - an alternating wind
The short definition cites just one use, and that metaphorically, to describe ‘a change in the spirit of one’s mind’.
I have been letting ‘An Incident’ roll around in my mind for a few days now, and this metaphor of the alternating wind struck me as deeply apt in my own appreciation of the craft used and also the character’s experience.
In fact it struck me that my love for many stories, and especially in the short story form, has something to do with this ‘change in the spirit of the mind’, both of the characters’ minds (Marya In The Cart, say) and of my own as a result.
And then, again, on hearing the many different readings of everyone here.
Thank you George, thank you all.
Like Tom below, I am thinking about the idea of "tropaia" as a metaphor for "a change in the spirit of one's mind" that you introduce here. I often think that the changes in human moods are so like changes in weather (it seems, sadly, that as the weather gets more violent, so do humans). I agree with your comment that the short story is the perfect form to register these changes in spirit. Such delicate calibrations might get lost in a novel and/or the novel might have to be very long, not of course impossible. "Tropaia" is a lovely word. We are the wiser for your "whimsical page flicks"! Thank you!
Very interesting, Niall. I’m in midst of sustained project of reading contemporary Irish short stories, courtesy of The Stinging Fly press, (if I can give them a plug), and I’m struck by wide variety of approaches to the form. But my impression so far is that they all demonstrate in some fashion this “alternating wind” metaphor. I’m eager to reread some of them now with this metaphor in mind. Thanks for sharing.
I've been thinking of this comment since I read it yesterday - thanks so much for it. "This change in the spirit of mind" - beautiful description of the potential of craft, and the always undercurrent goal of gaining empathy.
Love how the word produced a metaphor connecting the word with the pivotal point of that story becoming a story.
Like when i heard about Gilgamesh, how the fire actually branded the words deeper into the clay, instead of destroying it - produced for me, a metaphor of how emotional injuries become branded as scars on being repeatedly burned in the fire...
Just peeked in on Storyclub, found your delightful, provocative post, a very satisfying and lovey way to start the tone and content of my day. Thank you kindly.
Yes, our intrepid George, you damn well can! And the feeling is mutual. And it has something to do with the extraordinary persona you project -- your kindness, gentleness, deep insight, humor, flexibility, and openness. Not to mention that you write great stories which inspire authors of many a stripe.
Can we start a commune? I'd like to be in this type of community more than just virtually. (sigh).
Yes, it appears you have put to good use your remarkably grounded creativity, a cheerful goodwill, and the courage to just blast this thing into being, this safe and welcoming container. Story Club is both a delightful and challenging gathering spot for magnificents seeking a conscious creative path, thank you.
I can only be a free subscriber at the moment, and I appreciate this free posts which I learn a lot from each time. Thank you so much George for your work, you are making a bigger impact than you think
The point where reader separates from the narrator
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Inspired by George's lesson about unreliable narrator, this came out when I was writing about something else:
For the first 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years of your life, you just follow what the parents, elders, society wants of you to do.
You follow the formula laid out, you follow the drumbeat, but after a while, you separate, you listen to the birds and bees, it is like Saunders said the narrator and reader’s voice starts separating.
You do not entirely buy into what the society has laid out or what it is offering. You doubt the veracity of the society, and that is when the story gets interesting, because now the reader is awakened, he disbelieves the narrator, the reader is questioning his own beliefs and then that is when the reader comes alive, and questions everything about the story.
You come alive and question everything about life.
This is a tricky story for me. The man in a hurry is somewhat of a bad man, a bit selfish. The driver is a good man, one who can sleep at night.
At age 16, I was the victim of a hit and run where the driver veered off the country road at me, where I stood up above the culvert by a stone wall. I was still standing as he sped off, but the second I pivoted on my left leg, I crumpled into the ditch. As time went by, it became known who the driver was. Privately, I learned who he had just dropped off and who was still in the car with him. In 1974 the driver was fined $30- for going out of the lane of travel. Me, 3 months in traction and a body cast in the hospital. The leg will never be quite the same. I have noticed that the passengers who never ratted on him had problems with holding jobs, marriages and fought alcohol problems. The driver married one of the occupants, who 40 some years later was hit by a car and killed while running in a blizzard. I wondered was she held captive, having to keep that secret all her life?
No one can possibly judge another's pain, not even a doctor. I found that a very arrogant judgement by the man in a hurry.
Good story!
Rowena, what a story yourself! Wow.
I am glad that I lived to tell the tale. At 16, I hid the whole operation under the hospital sheet, then took to making and wearing long skirts in 1974. A rebuild at Brigham & Women's in 1991 corrected the early fix at the local hospital. By then, doctors realized that using ultraviolet light in the operating area would prevent bone infection. I had the best, nicest doctor in the world. He truly believed his patients.
LOTS of doctors in our lives since our daughter was born in 2003. As Wallace says in a breathtakingly harsh and brilliant story "Incarnations of Burned Children": "If you've haven't wept and want to....have a child."
So fucking true!
My heart goes out to you, Rowena. So many 'moving parts' in your own 'incident.' As one who has also gotten 'up close and personal' with physical pain, I wholeheartedly agree. So much is judged based on how 'fine' and 'healthy' a person may appear. Thank you for sharing your life-changing experience. <3
Thx for sharing this story with it's 'morality tale' ending!
thank you, Rowena—can't imagine what reading "the Incident" was like for you. And interesting to think if and how justice plays out.
I think I was avoiding how powerful the story was for me and I wanted to run from that influence. When I was a boy (16) I watched a fight between to kids my age. I watched the smaller kid get pummelled until this nothing-of-a-boy standing beside me stepped in, putting himself at great risk to stop the fight. I made that incident mean a lot of things about myself over the years. That same boy who put himself at risk ended up being a father to two boys who both made it into the NHL. One of them is a spokesperson for Big Brothers of Canada. My son is exactly like I was at 16. I still haven't quite articulated how my story relates to Hsun's story. I guess, simply: I was the passenger and the boy that intervened was the rickshaw driver.
I have made peace with the incident, mostly, and my tutelage has improved, but this story brought it all back. What more can you ask for in a story?
Honesty. Thank you for sharing such a candid personal memory and reflection Alan.
Fair exchange being no robbery I'm pleased to take this opportunity, occasioned by your post, to share the memory of how I solved a problem as I grew through my teenage years: I was big, and so targeted, for my age.
I wouldn't play the pecking order game of 'scrapping' to establish who was who ranked where in the fisticuffs table (fear of my, Irish, Mother's opprobrium at the sight of a torn collar or blood stained shirt simply countervailed the naked threats being 'given a good kicking' by the local bleached Levi's and shrunken to fit in the bath Skinheads).
So I placed myself as the honest broker, with hard hands, by becoming the 'referee' in fights scheduled to be fought 'in a particular bogs in a particular break'. Whether the bought was between 'contenders' or 'two who had some pathetic-in-hindsight 'serious' disagreement it did not matter to me . . . so long as I was able to arrive home much as I left it. I certainly was never, never mind postured to be 'invincible' but sure as hell I was what some would describe as a 'had to be* tough teenage cookie'.
'These are the things I still remember from so long ago' (i.e. Mayall lyric should anyone be interested) . . . and you are quite right Alan: what more can any of us expect from reading, be it a story or a reflective comment on a story?
*FYI the words 'had to be' are edits into the original post. Just to add: I'm not any kind of a rough tough type by nature or nurture but neither have I ever been a meek turner of the cheek,
Write this story. Yours, I mean. It already feels so alive in just the short, factual summary you've given us. I want to know more about the person you were, the position in that childhood society you held. I'd read pages and pages of it, in fact.
Just to say I've noted your comment PW and welcome it.
Positive feedback indeed. I've been trying to put some of what George is offering to us in my practise (English verb spelling) in writing into these threads - so rich in ideas and insights - by just instinctively going with whatever flows from the ignition of a passing writing spark.
If what I've written above 'already feels so alive' then it gives me encouragement to write more out of memory of personal times past . . . which they never are, entirely, as they are the crucible in which we became who we have been as our lives have unfolded.
Pretty powerful anecdote Alan. Thanks.
Hi, I just came here to say that I'm obsessed with this newsletter. That's all!
Me too.
I’m with you! Isn’t it fun?
I check every day what people write in the comments and whether George has posted anything new!! So satisfying, and what a good company now that I’m grounded with Covid…
What a fun and comforting thing for you to have in the time of Covid...get well soon!
Indeed! Thanks a lot Melanie
It's making such a huge impact. I totally agree.
Same!
No pressure on referring to Lu in any particular way. I actually enjoy seeing the Hsuns in the comments, because it feels really sweet and intimate. In case you're interested (I think it's very interesting), Hsun/Hsün/Xun is his given name, while Lu is his family name. So when referring to Hsun, it's like saying Scott instead of Fitzgerald. In Chinese the family name comes first, then the given name. So Fitzgerald Scott, Lu Xun.
I’m learning so much, too, and that’s a lot of fun. I hadn’t known until looking him up that Lu Xun was his pen name (Lu was his mother’s maiden name).
Chinese names tend to be said all in one go, family name + given name, e.g. Lu Xun.
Familiarity can lead to using just one’s given name, but not necessarily. Even my own grandma calls me by my whole name (maiden name + given name).
It certainly helps with specificity, given that Chinese names, all put together, are usually just two or three syllables. And the monosyllabic family names are frequently wildly popular. (Two syllable family names exist, but I’ve never met anyone in person. My parents may have, once. They are popular in martial arts novels though.)
Delightful addition to the deepening depth of insight into a subject that, in my simple ignorance, I hadn't realised I was as one can say ignorant of.
So it's going to be 'Lee Bruce' and 'Fu Kung'; for me from here on Fei . . . am I right or, quite possibly. wrong? 😂 Genial exchange, much appreciated.
You’re not wrong on Bruce Lee! His name in Chinese is Li Xiaolong (Lee Siu-long in a different romanization).
“Kung Fu” isn’t a name, but a noun meaning martial skill, except I guess if used by a panda. So, maybe you’re not wrong there either! 😉
Ah!
You make think Fei that, possibly, what a cat was to Schrodinger a panda could have been to Kung Fu had this been not a noun but the name of a person. Maybe Li Xiaolong would have enjoyed having a panda for a partner, but we'll never know since he had passed along the road and exited this life (perhaps via the S_____ Gate?) long before the animated Kung Fu Panda came along.
Which brings me back to a thought I've had since first reading 'An Incident': the story, its setting and set of just four characters and a rickshaw, has a rather surreal feel about it.
Well that is so interesting to know, as I am an avid word/linguistics explorer. Thank you kindly for sharing.
That's a beautiful way of putting it, "avid word/linguistics explorer"! I share your interest! I just wrote about the romanization of Chinese and its difficulties through the example: "Shi Shi Shi Shi Shi" means "The Story of Mr. Shi Eating Lions".
If you're interested: https://feikayser.substack.com/p/shi-shi-shi-shi-shi-the-story-of
Fei, thx for sharing this, just read your comment and clicked over to"Shi shi....." what an ingeniously creative way to make a point, think you've possibly added something enlivening here to the world's store of odd and interesting perspectives on writing. Also clicked on to the original post and found a resonant passage I like a lot: 'Janosch A. Prufrock looked up. “What Wittgenstein means by the limits of his language being the limits of his world is that words are just sounds, not the actual world they limitedly describe. It’s so simple but so difficult at the same time. I myself only get it in flashes now and then, and most times it makes no sense to me. I can’t explain it at all, and he could only barely explain it himself. What do you think of it?” finished Mr. Smee with a question to the pirates.'
Thank you so much for your very kind message, Melanie!!
There are interesting revelations in every comment in Story Club. Thank you Fei
Thanks. This is one of those things I know but neglect out of (bad) habit. Always good to be reminded of mindfulness.
Like Nom (de Famille) preceding Prénom in French . . . the kind of knowledge nugget that could, conceivably, matter in writing a short story set in either China or France in which characters are named.
This discussion about An Incident has changed me from a lurker to a subscriber. Two comments: The first times I read the story I was most struck by the rider’s experience once he was “surprised”—that the rider “suddenly” saw the driver become bigger and bigger while he felt himself shrinking, and that this vision or hallucination changed him and has remained with him ever since. A few similar incidents have happened to me. Moments when our perspective is suddenly changed and never forgotten. Part of the beauty of Lu Hsun’s story is to remind us that there are wonders out there that will shake us out of everyday complacency.
And then, suddenly, I had a memory from childhood. I was an eleven year old white American living with my family in Taiwan in the mid-1950s. I was proud that I knew enough Mandarin Chinese to bargain with the pedicab men on our corner. For me, or for me and my younger brother, the appropriate fare was three Taiwanese dollars. If the driver asked for more, it was standard bargaining to walk away, and almost always the pedicab would come bicycling after us. When my full-sized old grandmother came to visit and wanted to go for a ride with my brother and me, I welcomed the chance to show off my expertise. I offered a three dollar fare to the pedicab man. When he demanded more, I turned my back and made my grandmother and brother walk away. It was a very hot day and a dusty road, and we walked much further than I had ever had to walk before, but at last the driver came up to us and all three of us crowded into the cab. It wasn’t until I related this triumph to my mother that I felt anything but pride. She told me that it was cruel to make my grandmother walk so far, or to expect the pedicab man to drive two children plus a heavy adult for the same fare as two children. Finally I felt shame.
Lovely story, Anne. I hope you have or will write this out in more detail.
Aw, I really felt this, Anne! My heart goes out to younger you. Those are the kinds of experiences that stay with us forever. That whiplash from pride to shame as a child, when we're still figuring out the world and its expectations, is tough, and you captured it so beautifully.
Thank you for this confessional story. I agree with George; I hope you take time to flesh it out.
Just to weigh in on the 'what trouble might the rickshaw driver be in for in this era in China', while I was there people would claim (often via similar, probably apocryphal stories) that in China if you brought someone to hospital or helped them you were liable for their medical bills. There was always a story about some old woman hyperventilating by the side of the road, a green newcomer to the city helps her to the hospital, gives his details, a month later receives a bill for all her medical expenses which ruins him.
There was quite a lot of soul searching about this attitude in the media by the time I left thanks to some really nasty CCTV footage of people being run over and left on the road, then run over again, cars stopping to look at the body and driving on, over and over. I've no idea if things have actually changed.
Historically I believe that if you accidentally killed someone you took on their financial responsibilities (eg. had to now provide for their relations), and the law was a modern version of this, but this is all just from people's anecdotes.
So maybe this is what the rickshaw driver is potentially taking on, he's injured this woman, admitted culpability and now she could potential exaggerate her injuries to gouge some cash from him.
I didn't think of it when I read the story, but this makes the narrator's pennies for the journey seem more insulting. Like 'I engaged you for a ride, the rest is your responsibility', despite his epiphany.
Thanks, this is really interesting. This side raises the stakes of the story quite a lot.
Fascinating insight, albeit anecdotal, and in fact giving succour to one of the possible ways of reading the story which occurred to me early on in my readings of the story. I was attempting to look simply at the text on the page below the title, reading without consideration of who wrote it, when it was written or in what ways other previous readers, literary scholars or literature teachers may have comprehended and interpreted it.
Thank you Gareth.
Wow. Illuminating. And glad to hear you note that things are changing.
These comments and anecdotes are all so helpful. They also suggest that context and time and the person the reader is when they come to a story all affect meaning. They also support the notion that there are no wrong interpretations; good art provokes what we need to hear or see when we come to the text. Or has the potential to.
How much does a writer need to spell out for the reader is my question. I recently submitted a story to my workshop feedback group. Half of the group didn't know about the place I was writing about and critiqued harshly an element of the story. The other half loved the very same element because they identified with the scene.
Wow, you've taken it further than I did, Rosanne! I love it. Thinking about this idea of responsible/beholden roles in society feels pretty Confucian to me, so I would think this might colour the narrator's thinking even back then. Your comments made me think again about his view of his work (in the abstract, and as an irritation, rather than it mattering to the lives of people) while he might have, at least in theory, have been expected to act as a kind of 'father' to the little people like the old woman (who he also regards as an irritation and in the abstract - she is an impediment to him getting where he's going). Not sure if I'm pushing this too far; would be interested to hear from others with and without a China perspective to know if they see something similar too
I was not aligned with the narrator from the very beginning, because, and I say this with a heavy heart, the narrator is Chinese.
As a Chinese person who grew up largely not knowing he was Chinese, and then only learning about it through the lens of second generation immigrants who were, consciously or subconsciously, rejecting their Chinese-ness, I've only recently realised my inherent bias towards Chinese culture. It's something I've thought a lot about the last decade.
And here, in this simple story, it came up again.
I immediately was wary of this narrator, and his dedication to a job he didn't like, and then his uncaring and selfish attitude, and THEN his sudden change of heart, his road to Damascus moment. Ha! Ha, I thought.
That was my first, immediate reaction. But thanks to this reading method, and the cadence of Story Club, I revisited it, and then a third time, and now a fourth time, each time being asked to look at it from a different angle, with an eye to a different detail. And here, in a small way, I was able to let go of a bit more of that prejudice. And so if nothing else, I've gotten that from this story.
I am impressed, thanks for sharing this personal and I would expect, somewhat uncomfortable places which you've found yourself at times in life.
Perhaps, it's because I live in a rural area, among 'country' people that I made more of the opening couple of paragraphs than just a scene-setting, getting-to-know-your-narrator piece of exposition.
"Six years have slipped by since I came from the country to the capital," the narrator says in the opening line.
That he left the country for the capital suggests the narrator had ambitions to change his station in life. That the years "slipped by" suggests that things went well for him, but "to make a living, I had to be up and out early" suggests that he is nowhere near the movers and shakers that control "the affairs of state".
This reading led me to an understanding of why the incident with the rickshaw driver and the old woman had such an immense and shattering effect on him - something that puzzled me on the first reading.
This is a man who left behind the country and it's simple, "country" people to "better" himself. He is suddenly stunned to realize that, although he has risen only somewhat above his humble beginnings, he has become like the worst snobs of the city, that the tattered old woman could be his humble grandmother, the rickshaw man could be his poor, hardworking father. He feels not only shame in the face of the rickshaw driver's humanity, but also that he has disrespected and betrayed the people he left behind to satisfy his ambitions.
His giving the coins to the policeman for the driver is an act of penance and respect not merely a reflection of his shame and guilty conscience.
For me, at least, that is where the power of the story lies, and it was hinted at in the opening of the story along with the other "additions and embellishments" that create the story's impact.
I grew up in a very rural area and I had the same impression about the "country to capital" phrase. I too left for the city and made my way among the modern day urbanites. Still, I find that far distant country cousin, the "first me" still inside me, frowning a little at my affectations.
So interesting - I had missed the country reference.
I'm not sure if someone has already posted this before, but I wanted to share a horrifically tragic real life story about a little girl called Wang Yue from around a decade ago, which has echoes of Lu Xun’s Incident story.
“A Small Incident”: Echoes of China’s Tragic Yue Yue Case from Almost a Century Ago https://world.time.com/?p=11109
My wife went to school in Beijing in the 80s and told me An Incident was one of the set texts they studied in the class: the main lesson to be learnt was a sort of Marxist fable about the rickshaw driver being an upstanding member of the laobaixing/ordinary workers/proletariat who showed care for his fellow human being while the narrator is a decadent bourgeoise who needs to learn from the peasants. In the case of Wang Yue, it’s almost a flip of the narrative as most of the ordinary people ignored the little girl’s plight (except for the heroic Granny Chen the rubbish scavenger). Some took this to be a symbol of a loss of morality in modern China prompting lots of soul searching.
I was wondering if the story was linked to the phenomenon of pengci or ‘porcelain bumping’ where people fake traffic injuries to get compensation, but my wife says this wasn’t a thing in Lu Xun’s day.
I lived in Beijing myself for 7 years, and the story really brought back the freezing winds of winter and late nights/early mornings stumbling around the hutongs.
And thank you for this word string 'Fragrant' Robinson: 'the main lesson to be learnt was a sort of Marxist fable'. I offer thanks partly because it is a very well put phrasing but primarily because it highlights, to my mind at least, just why participating in Story Club is proving so rewarding: it is not school, it is a conversation. There are no pressures to place 'correct' constructions on the stories we are encountering. Being a former 'Dean of Indefinite Learning' I really appreciate the opportunities brought to us by being invited to journey into texts with fluid hope rather than rigid expectation.
A big foot stomping and hand waving thank you for this sentiment, 100%!
Rob, '.. it is a not a school, it is a conversation.' invoked, in me, an image of a pond. George drops his 'offering' and our exchanges are the ripples... which sometimes become other 'offerings' creating more ripples. Thank you for this 'offering.'
I am no Marxist, but I was suspicious of the narrator's viewpoint almost from the beginning since he hired a rickshaw to take him to work, making the rickshaw man suffer in the bitter cold while he sat in the rickshaw in his fur-lined coat. Even before the collision with the woman, he struck me as someone who felt more important than others who were less well off. His attitude about the woman confirmed my feelings. And I found the last paragraph to be less than convincing about his conversion. Yes, he still feels shame when he thinks about the incident and has felt encouraged to reform his behavior, but has he actually done so?
Right on the money Janet. He's a faux, virtue signalling rather than actually behaviour changing sort in my book. His big stressor in life is, taking this tack on the story a little further, minor inconvenience.
Yue Yue, the update note to the article informs us, sadly did not survive the 'small' incident of her collisions with road traffic in modern China. Your post shows, I think, that Lu Hsun's story touches greatness through its quality of being both particular and universal. I also enjoy reading the version of the story published in the article. It differs from the version George has us working with in a number of interesting ways, not least in being shorter. It also, in my opinion, underscores the utility of the approach to reading, reflecting and recording aspects of our rich response to reading 'An Incident'.
Three things:
First, I think by the narrator admitting he was misanthropic from the get-go, he was giving the reader space, which I took. So from the beginning, my dot wasn't overlapping with his dot, to use George's example above. It's like if the fellow train passenger in the above example admitted from the get-go that he couldn't hear out of one ear, or something. Whatever story he told, I'd be like well maybe you missed something because you can't hear out of one ear.
And I admire the narrator for his honesty about that. It reminds me of what George wrote about The Nose, how the narrator, just by addressing the illogical events in the story can get us back on his team. Here, the narrator did that up front.
Second: This story is set in a world where an expected form of transportation is a pulled rickshaw. This is a much bigger deal than the tricycle rickshaw I thought it was at first. A tricycle rickshaw has class implications, for sure. But it's still arguably more efficient. This pulled rickshaw on an empty road says a lot about the world the story is living in. Basically that able-bodied people of a certain status are allowed and expected to let others of lower status literally pull them along. This is as big of a deal, to me, as in George's Semplica Girl Diaries, where in that world, it's okay to have girls suffer brain damage to line up as lawn ornaments. That world is corrupting by nature. So anyone in it is likely to have been corrupted too, like what George wrote about Marya in In The Cart. That's why the rickshaw driver's taking the old woman at her world is so miraculous. And why the story is worth telling.
Third, and finally: Even though the narrator is different from me, his honesty and mine, while reading, makes me able to find common ground with him. When I read that line "She must be pretending, which was disgusting"--I thought immediately, that is disgusting. If she's faking, that's disgusting. It's abhorrent. So maybe the narrator is wrong or rude or mean for jumping to that conclusion. But I like how me seeing myself in the narrator implicates me too. I really loved this story.
Same here, I felt a separation from the narrator from the first paragraph.
First, thanks for clarifying that I shouldn't do this during my "writing time." I needed to be reminded.
Second, thanks for properly positioning the comments usefulness. I'm moving into learning mode, since these wonderful people have filled me up with insight and inspirations enough to take me into August.
Learning a lot, here. So pleased to have this opportunity.
Only if you want to do it during your writing time. :)
Perfect addendum. :)
George, your graph is so powerful that it makes me re-think story writing. I've never seen that arc between writer and character before and I'm just blown away by it's power. I'm currently playing around with Free Indirect Speech which I now realise is a key part of that writer/character arc.
And in the short time I've been reading your stuff, something has happened to my writing. I've struggled with a particular short story for a few years now. I've stuffed it up, mangled it every which way and abandoned it many times although it always comes back to niggle at me. After reading your posts on 'The Incident' I was making the bed and suddenly one of the characters was standing on the dark, leaning on a fence post and said really clearly, 'She was a very large woman but she was crying like a baby.' And there it all was: the arc of the story, the depth of the characters, the details of the setting, the tension building and the resolution.
I'm still a bit afraid I'll stuff it up again but this time I've got some really good tips from you on how to manage my weaknesses in writing. I won't rush things through this time, won't just focus on the plot but stay in the moment when that arc moves away from the main character and helicopters above her. Fingers crossed, this story will finally be satisfied with how I handle it.
Wonderful to hear all of this, Christine.
I don’t think I 100% agree with George (gasp!) when he says that the narrator makes a small and understandable error… or at least I disagree that the error is presented as small and understandable in the story. In my reading of this story, the narrator is framing his narrative (coaching) right from the beginning. He wants us to see him as an ambitious underdog (P1, he came from the country to the city) but that the city and the life therein has not been particularly favorable to him (P1, it’s influence had made him a misanthrope). He’s not in a good place emotionally, he’s had a hard time, so right off the bat, our narrator wants us to empathize with him and his plight. By P3, he’s taking it one step further and making us feel sorry for him. Poor guy has to go out in the bitter cold in order to make a living. “See! My life sucks,” he seems to say. What’s interesting to me about this introductory section is that it serves two purposes. On the one hand, it serves to get the reader to firmly align themselves with the narrator’s point of view, to see the incident from his perspective. But ultimately, once we have reached the culmination of his arc, in retrospect this section serves to tell the reader “Can you believe what kind of jerk I was back then?” So the framing of the narrative of this section changes as the story progresses. But at no point, at least in my reading, are we meant to view the narrator’s reaction to the incident (his feeling of inconvenience, his frustration with the driver for stopping, etc.) or the incident itself as a “come on, we’ve all been there” kind of moment. It is the narrator’s reaction that tears us from our allegiance to the narrator and our feelings of empathy for him. His reaction immediately makes us feel uncomfortable with the narrator’s character. He mentions that there are no witnesses, which implies that he’s trying to get away with something he knows isn’t kosher. He accuses the woman of fakery and calls her actions disgusting, which makes him look callous and heartless. He washes his hands of the driver and says he will have to find his own way out of this trouble. These are all the actions of a man who is selfish, and self-important, and a big jerk. He told us that he was a misanthrope and he’s laying it all bare for us. So rather than bonding with the reader by reassuring us that, hey, we’re all human, we’ve all done something like this… I think Hsu is telling us that this is not small and defensible at all, it is this type of incident that both reveals and defines our character. And when this beacon shines into the narrator’s soul, he doesn’t like what he sees.
Confession for forgiveness?^^
I don’t think so, actually. I think he’s showing us how difficult it can be to stop and think of others when society is pressuring you to think of yourself. And he wants us to know that now he’s trying, although it’s unclear whether he’s succeeding.
My career investigating bodily injury and legal liability claims has caused me to see this story differently, perhaps, than others. My job was to always try to remain detached and objective while taking recorded interviews of both drivers' versions of the accident, along with receiving input from witnesses and police. I'd then make informed judgments in order to reach a fair settlement. What George calls coaching statements are all too familiar to me. In "An Incident", I only had the benefit of hearing one version of events. Lu Hsun gave us the Narrator's sole version of events, and the Narrator's tendency to tell us only what he wanted us to know was something I would hear, time after time, every working day. I'm going to use George's chart format and I expect to learn something about myself as a reader (rather than the judge who has had access to all the facts).
@jude were you on to the narrator right away?
Melissa, I didn't find myself judging until I read the words "slowly fell" and "luckily it wasn't a bad fall." It raised questions for me. I thought, 'Is there ever a good fall for an old woman, slow or fast?' And how would he have known it wasn't bad, in truth? I began to understand WHERE the story was going and HOW the narrator was thinking in that moment, confirmed by his subsequent characterization of the woman's fall as "disgusting" because he felt she may have been "pretending." When the narrator looked around for witnesses, relieved to know that there were none, I began to understand WHO the narrator was thinking about, and I believe it was himself and his pressing need to get where he was going. I saw him as being so preoccupied with his own concerns that it temporarily reduced his capacity for mercy. These coaching phrases moved the story to its moral in the epilogue and the story was efficiently told through his eyes alone. The curious insurance investigator in me would've loved to have heard the rickshaw driver and the woman's version of events, but I realized it was never necessary or relevant because this was a story about the narrator's personal awakening.
Reports can differ from vantage point....It does not mean they are false^^
True. We see things through our own lens. I posted more about this on a prior comment. https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/an-incident/comment/4632995
ANACHRONISTIC READING ALERT:
This story made me think about how capitalism speeds up everyday life, and how this speed-up deprives us of certain social graces (i.e., helping a middle-aged woman get help when she's been crushed by your rickshaw/SUV/Uber).
It's significant that the man is commuting to work. And this is where the story reminded me of Tolstoy's "Master and Man" both the passenger and Vasili Andreich are possessed by an urgent need to fulfill their worldly duties -- to make money, do their job, fulfill their professional lives -- and this need is both a symptom and a cause of their failure to do and be good.
The answer to the narrator's moral failure (in "An Incident") is to throw money at it. But this response compounds rather than diminishes it.
As an aside, I wonder what sounds an 'ANACHRONISTIC READING ALERT' siren would actually make?
hand-struck xylophone tone