Form Follows .. well .. Form

A recent New Yorker fiction podcast of Salmon Rushdie reading Donald Bartholme’s story ‘Concerning the Bodyguard’ got me thinking again about form vs. content.  It’s a brilliant short story written almost entirely in the form of a series of questions.  There is a plot, but you have to read carefully to get it.  And you constantly ask yourself as you read why it’s written that way.  The story questions itself continuously as it unfolds.  Why is it written that way?  What does the form say about the meaning?  It is and it asks itself why it is all at the same time.  Unsettling,

I guess every story is in part about itself.  But I do miss the ability to take certain stylistic norms for granted.  Jennifer Egan’s latest story ‘Black Box’ in the sci-fi issue of The New Yorker is written as a series of tweets.  The New Yorker even tweeted it one tweet at a time.  (How else can one tweet?)  Cute.  Fun.  Self-referential.  Also very self-conscious and I guess that’s the part that I’d like to do without in the long run.  I’d like to think that there will be a consensus about what we’re doing here.  But that’s not the nature of our time.

Feeling old.  I can always read Cheever and Trevor stories for reassurance about form.  Not that their ideas and feelings aren’t troublesome at time.  They can be downright devastating, but they at least don’t seem to have questions about how to tell a story.  That they take for granted.

Well, I know how to prepare an entrée in the kitchen.  But then I go to WD-50 in NYC and I realize that if you’re willing to reshuffle the deck there’s a lot of fun to be had.  But when we go there we sacrifice the security of known conventions and forms.  When we create and make fun of ourselves at the same time we almost seem to be apologizing as we express.  Maybe I’m just a little old to be apologizing.

Sorry.