Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
by Maile Meloy (2009)
Riverhead Books (2010)
232 pp
I grew up in a very small town in Idaho. The nearest big city was Salt Lake City, 250 miles south — and even it’s not a big city. Now that I work in New York City, now that 25 miles is a big distance (it seems to take the same amount of time to go 25 miles here as it did 250 miles in Idaho), I find myself missing the open spaces and the mountains and plains landscape of the West. So one thing I loved about Maile Meloy’s recent collection of short stories, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, was the immediate familiarity with that vastness. Meloy grew up north of me in Montana, where many of these stories take place.
I’ll state it up front: this is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. From beginning to end, always just when I thought Meloy couldn’t pull it off again, I was fully engaged and drawn into the lives of her torn characters. Some of my admiration certainly comes from my relationship to the landscape and to the characters here — she portrays them so well — but that’s not really it. Meloy’s writing is direct and incisive. Within these eleven stories Meloy’s characters breathe and their depths are shown in strong and unique plotting.
Often, the stories are fairly simple and straightforward. My favorite, one I almost wish I hadn’t read so that I could still read it for the first time, was the book’s first, “Travis, B.” Immediately we get to know the central character, Chet Moran, and the small town he grew up in:
Chet Moran grew up in Logan, Montana, at a time when kids weren’t supposed to get polio anymore. In Logan, they still did, and he had it before he was two. He recovered, but his right hip never fit in the socket, and his mother always thought he would die young.
There’s no evasiveness here. In prose so direct as to appear simple when linked together with “and” and “but,” Meloy sets up a sad but matter-of-fact tone. Loneliness is just below the surface as the characters go about their lives. Quickly, Chet is around twenty years old and still walks “as though he were turning to himself to ask a question.” The direct prose continues as Meloy sets up the foundation for a story that is both sad and innocent and terrifying.
He left home at twenty and moved up north to the highline. He got a job outside Havre feeding cows through the winter, while the rancher’s family lived in town and the kids were in school. Whenever the roads were clear, he rode to the nearest neighbor’s for a game of pinochle, but mostly he was snowed in and alone. He had plenty of food, and good TV reception. He had some girlie magazines that he got to know better than he’d ever known an actual person. He spent his twenty-first birthday wearing long johns under two flannel and his winter coat, warming up soup on the stove. He got afraid of himself that winter; he sensed something dangerous that would break free if he kept so much alone.
In order to get out and meet people, Chet begins driving up and down the streets, looking for groups. One night he sees a bunch of people going into the school, so he parks the pickup and joins them in a classroom. These people, all teachers, have come together for the first of what will be a bi-weekly course on education law. The young, pretty, flustered instructor enters the room, and Chet decides to stay and enjoy the pleasant company, even if he doesn’t participate or even care about what everyone is talking about.
One night the instructor asks Chet where she can find some food quickly. It turns out that she is not from the area. In fact, she lives on the opposite side of the very long state of Montana. She signed up to teach the course because when she was finishing law school she was afraid of not having a job; she went for whatever she could find. Now she regrets it because she has a “real job” back where she’s from, and partly as a joke they have given her the license to complete her term in this miserable teaching job. I can’t imagine. In order to teach these Tuesday and Thursday night classes, she must drive for nine hours each way — thirty-six hours per week on the long winter roads. After a few weeks she is obviously exhausted.
On the other hand, Chet’s only solace in his lonely, empty week are those few hours with her. Waiting to see her on those nights is nearly more than Chet can stand. There are tender moments when Chet does his best to charm her and try to make her time there a bit more palatable. We know that Chet is incredibly lonely, has always been lonely, and we want him to find some happiness in this budding relationship. Still, he and the instructor are worlds apart, and we’re not sure, though he’s always been polite and good natured, what he might do to ensure those worlds come together. It’s a wonderfully crafted, lonely story, amplified by the vast, open distance in Montana.
Though this was my favorite story in the book, I was not disappointed by the rest. For the most part the premises continue to be fairly simple as we watch simple people struggling with their conflicting desires and sometimes getting into situations that make the reader’s throat go dry.
Two examples where I found myself physically affected by the story (short breath, dry throat, tensed muscles) are “Red from Green” and “The Girlfriend.” Both stories put older men in close proximity with younger girls. Though the initial motives are guilty but not sexual, the tension reminded me of the hotel scene in Roth’s American Pastoral (though what happens is very different).
In “Red from Green” a young girl accompanies her father on a boating trip. Their companions on the trip are her uncle, a private attorney, and the central plaintiff in a class action law suit her uncle is litigating. The trip is meant to smooze the plaintiff who is thinking of dropping the suit and moving away; if he leaves, the case dries up. Throughout the day the girl watches as her father (who is a district judge) allows the man to take advantage of his desirability. The plaintiff catches fish that are too small but keeps them anyway, something her father usually has no tolerance for. Later the plaintiff takes the girl out to practice shooting, using illegal hollow point bullets. Late in the evening, after the uncle has already retired to his tent, the father also gets up from the fire and goes to his tent. Before entering it he looks back at his daughter whom he has now left alone with this strange plaintiff, who has just asked if she could please kneel on his back to help him loosen up some tight muscles. It’s horrifying to read and wonder just what is going to happen. Worse, why? Did the father expect nothing to happen? Why would he leave it to chance? Did he actually expect something to happen? We have no reason to disrespect this judge. From all accounts, he’s a fine man who runs a disciplined life and courtroom. He’s a protector. But what is that moment of ambiguity about? It’s a great story.
“The Girlfriend” begins when Leo, a man in his fifties, shows up at a hotel room to meet a teenage girl. The air is tense. We soon find out that the girl is the girlfriend of the man who murdered Leo’s only daughter. The case has just ended with a guilty verdict, but this girlfriend lied on the stand to protect this boy who raped and killed another woman. It’s more than Leo can stomach, so he’s asked her to explain it. The tension in the prose makes it feel like we’re in the room with them, and it’s very uncomfortable to witness the discussion between these two broken and desperate people interact. Leo learns more about himself than he’d hoped.
There are other male-female struggles, like in “Lovely Rita” when a young man is killed in an accident at a construction site and his girlfriend comes to his best friend for help: she’d like him to set up a raffle at the construction site for a night with her. In “Two Step,” a wife who suspects her husband is unfaithful discusses the matter with the very woman he is being unfaithful with — and then he arrives, and we feel sorry for both women.
There is also the quirky “Liliana,” which begins with a sentence that echos Kafka’s Metamorphosis:
On a hazy summer afternoon in Los Angeles, while my wife was at work and our children were napping, I answered the ringing doorbell to find my grandmother, two months dead, standing on a stoop.
Liliana, the grandmother, was a very rich woman with a past in war-time Germany cinema. She and her grandson never saw eye-to-eye. She seemed to think him unworthy and never shared much, if anything, with him, forcing him to make his own modest way through the world. He despised her. He doesn’t want anything from her — has resigned himself to that fate, actually — but he certainly resents her. And here she seems to have returned from the dead.
While I stripped the master bed and carried the sheets to the wash, I thought about Jesus and Elvis. People had wanted them back, badly, and still did. But who would have willed Liliana back.
There’s some nice comedy when Mina, the wife, arrives home:
“Mina, dear,” Liliana said, standing to take my wife’s hand. “I haven’t seen you with this Sapphic haircut. Your children are lovely.”
Mina’s hair was cut short because she had no time to deal with it, and I thought of it as gamine-like and sexy. “Thank you,” Mina said. “You look great. Especially under the circumstances.”
As quirky as this story may seem, it actually — and it’s incredible how Meloy always succeeded in doing this — is a subtle look at this man, his insecurities and his strengths and his final devastating revelation.
I was so pleased with this collection I immediately marked Meloy as one of my favorite authors. She’s written one other collection of short stories, which one the PEN/Malamud, and two novels. I believe I have all three waiting for me in the mail today. And I can’t wait to see what she produces in the future.
By the way, Maile Meloy is Colin Meloy’s older sister. He is the founder, lead singer, song-writer of one of my favorite bands, The Decemberists. A very talented family! If you haven’t checked them out yet, I also recommend The Decemberists, with their long story cycle songs.
I loved this collection as much as you did Trevor and for much the same reasons. I am an Alberta boy (so just north of Meloy, who is just north of you) and I thought her stories did an incredible job of portraying people in this prairie/foothills/mountain landscape, which you know well. The Travis, B story with the nine-hour commute was also my favorite — there is quite a bit more “space” out here than people realize and I had tears in my eyes throughout reading this story. Mrs. KfC is in England now and people were amazed that she made a six-hour trip from the Lake Country to Devon for a three-day stay — contrast that with a 36-hour weekly commute. And if people think that those kinds of “commutes” don’t happen in the West, they are wrong.
I think Meloy has already joined the ranks of leading writers of the West, with her own special tone. On the Canadian side, I would include W.O.Mitchell, Guy Vanderhaege and Sheila Watson, just for a start. Wallace Stegner amply holds up the part of America where you grew up (with ties to William Maxwell and John Williams, whom I know you also love). And then, of course, we have Cormac McCarthy a little further south. I don’t suggest they write the same — because they don’t — but they all capture a setting and the people who live in it. And Meloy deserves to be ranked with all those authors.
OK Trevor. I won’t send my copy to the charity shop as planned tomorrow. It must now wait until I’ve read it.
Lizzy, I’m glad I got this post up today! Hopefully you’ll thank me later :)
Kevin, I have you to thank for recommending Meloy. Had I known she was Colin Meloy’s older sister, I would have read her earlier, but I didn’t, so it was all through your recommendation.
I can now confirm that I have the rest of Meloy’s books waiting for me at home. Not sure when I’ll get to them, but probably fairly soon. I’m anxious to try out your Canadian recommendations. Their names keep popping up in our conversations, but I still haven’t looked into them much. Not for lack of desire as much as for abundance of things to look up and books to read. There is also the problem that I still have a few unread Stegners waiting for me, as well as several more unread Williams and Maxwell. I look forward to some happy reading!
The Travis, B story, as mentioned, and in particular, is so wonderful that it’s difficult to know what to add to existing comments, other than: it should be immediately inducted into the ‘greatest short story’ collections that emerge now and then. A fine writer and a great book that deserves a much wider audience.
been meaning toi get to her since heard of her link to the decemberist a while ago but her book out of local library every time I go ,all the best stu
Good luck getting it, Stu. I think you’ll find it’s worth the wait.
Stu: What if Winston installed himself by the return desk? That would be quite consistent with some of Meloy’s thoughts. And he could growl if anybody tried to loan the volume.
I’m happy Kevin mentioned Guy Vandehaege, because he wrote a great collection of short stories called Man Descending in the Eighties. Since then he has written several great novels, and I’m really looking forward to his next one.
Tony: It has been eight years since Guy’s The Last Crossing and some of us scan the catalogues every spring and fall looking for the next work. As I am sure you know, he isn’t prolific, but was averaging a book every five years or so. I’ll see if my contacts can produce any data.
And I meant to note earlier, that it was Tony S’s review of Meloy that convinced me I should pick up the book. Another example that the blogging world is the best place to track down “new” writers (and they often come with an attractive backlist, as Meloy illustrates).
Oh, this sounds lovely. I have a hard time with short story collections, most of the time they tend to be underwhelming.
I’ll have to look up Meloy next time I’m in a bookstore :)
This won’t be underwhelming, Selena. Meloy is a fine writer thoughout, and she knows her genre.
I wonder if the reason so many short story collections are underwhelming is that they often are apprentice pieces, something a novelist wrote in some MFA program somewhere. This, I think, tends to give short stories a bad reputation.
There are treasures out there, though. Some writers are short story writers, they know what they’re doing, and they create stories better than most novels. In my review of Tobias Wolff’s Our Story Begins a few of us spoke about our favorite short story writers. I certainly recommend checking them out!
But, if nothing else, definitely look up Meloy!
Sounds great. I reviewed the online version of Liliana last year, just a few months into my blogging life. I liked it a lot. As I wrote in the review, it seemed simple at first but as I thought about it, I realised there was a lot going on there. I had never heard of Meloy before.
[…] a winning endorsement from Trevor: “This is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever […]
Here’s an interview with Maile Meloy that was sent to me today. (click here).
Made me excited just thinking about these stories again.
And, we hear she just finished her new novel, The Apothecary, and it will be for kids. I will read it anyway.
I’ve been pacing these out. I usually struggle to do that with short story collections, but they’re so good I’ve made the effort. The first two I almost gulped down after which I let a couple of weeks pass.
Today I read Lovely Rita. These really are just excellent aren’t they? An absolute pleasure.
“Lovely Rita” is one of the stories I think about most, Max, the other being “Travis, B.” I’m glad you are enjoying them so much — I knew it!
[…] review is here. Trevor’s is here. I strongly recommend […]
I’m happy to see this collection reviewed here. I only recently discovered Maile Meloy (through this book) and hope to read more from her in the near-future. I think “Travis, B.” belongs in the pantheon of great contemporary short stories–a quietly devastating portrayal of those short-term encounters that can mean dramatically different things to two different people, as if seen from different sides of a prism. I was reminded somewhat of Alice Munro’s “Simon’s Luck,” although the specifics in the two stories are a bit different. My only complaint about the book is that I think the two best stories are the ones that appear in the very beginning. The rest was solid, but a bit of a comedown after “Red from Green.”