Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Michael Gardner's avatar

I really enjoyed your writing and its dimensionality. I mean it’s a story about stories and the stories told within those stories. A metastory? I enjoyed the narrative setting, the characters and how their issues were continuations of patterns previously constructed and then replayed with different people and in different circumstances. I loved your framework approach for how Tom’s problems in particular could be addressed and ultimately how each would inevitably fail him. The deus ex machina of his wife transforming and giving him what he craved yet was afraid to consummate was a captivating way to end what could have become a much longer treatise on the desire for something different, the unwillingness to fully commit to its inevitably messy achievement and the strange but completely common compulsion to sabotage what is supposedly wanted. You have a broad understanding of literature from its earliest beginnings, its various historical transformations up to its most contemporary expressions. Yet you seem at unease and undecided on how to reimagine the human drama, its exterior trajectory, and its boundless interiority. What of all the multitude of approaches available should you use, or should you create one of your own, consciously and self-consciously eroding the very scaffolding through which it’s created. I don’t know but… I have a curious confidence that you will create something enchanting and I wish you great satisfaction in its public acknowledgement.

Expand full comment
Alison's avatar

I really enjoyed this story! It felt like reading a mix between a fairytale and a r/AmITheAsshole post (which are basically all modern fairytales anyway), which is to say gossipy and clear about the frailty of man and very relevant to the Real Moral Dilemmas of the time.

Reading your list of methods for the man to resolve his issues was also very fun, and then on the drive to work today I thought, "Wait a second, we have therapeutic, mythic, legendary, Romantic, and fairytale (he damsels his way into proof of love and a nice vacation), but what about, like... the practical?"

Like, Tom could talk to his wife. Obviously he doesn't want to because 1) it requires a level of emotional self-understanding that he maybe does not have at this point, and 2) it Feels Bad and vulnerable to lay yourself bare and ask for what you need, but to me the obvious solution would be: talk to your wife! Not in the mean way that's easy to dismiss, but like, actually talking.

He needs to open his mouth and tell her that he's feeling insecure in their relationship, and she'll be like, "okay, I really do love you and I don't want you to feel this way, let's have date nights, then." Or she'll open up and she'll be like, "I guess I'm really anxious about work because it's such a high-pressure environment, and I clear my calendar for Dad because he also makes me anxious, but it's not fair to you to keep shitting on our relationship just because it's safe." and she will clear a day or a week for him.

A very wise friend or an actually good therapist would probably listen to his story and say, "Wait a second, so you say mean things because you want your wife to love you more? That seems kind of dumb and counter-productive." And when the inevitable backslides happen even after the date nights and the lovely vacation, he can tell her that he knows he gets passive-aggressive and needles at her and sulks when he's insecure, and after he says a mean thing he can catch himself and go, "Wait, okay, I'm being a brat." or she can go, "OK, well, I still love you, though."

The practical solution would probably not make a very good story (outside of the mature relationship drama type of josei manga, which has somehow managed to make a whole genre out of subtle shifts in communication and emotional connection), so this is not to criticize the story at all! It's a very good story and also 100% absolutely more emotionally satisfying if you connect to Tom at all for him to get the fairytale. I guess I connected to Tom a little too much and now I want to sit him down and give him unsolicited advice.

Expand full comment
9 more comments...

No posts