{"id":17006,"date":"2015-11-16T13:32:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T17:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=17006"},"modified":"2015-11-16T17:36:10","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T21:36:10","slug":"ann-beattie-save-a-horse-ride-a-cowgirl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/11\/16\/ann-beattie-save-a-horse-ride-a-cowgirl\/","title":{"rendered":"Ann Beattie: “Save a Horse Ride a Cowgirl”"},"content":{"rendered":"
Click here<\/a>\u00a0to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker<\/em> webpage. Ann Beattie's \"Save a Horse Ride a Cowgirl\" was originally published in the November 23, 2015 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/pre>\n
\"November<\/a>Ann Beattie has been publishing stories in the magazine since 1974. She is much acclaimed, though I personally have never quite connected. Indeed, I was pretty harsh in my initial thoughts on her last to appear in the pages of The New Yorker<\/em>, “Major Maybe,” so harsh I took some time to revisit the piece and temper myself and then never cared enough to follow through with that. You can see those thoughts, and the ensuing discussion, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
While I’m not particularly enthusiastic going in, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the story and on Ann Beattie’s work in general.\u00a0Join in the discussion below!<\/p>\n
\n
Here are Adrienne’s initial thoughts to get the ball rolling:<\/em><\/p>\n
Bradley Clough is coming to terms with what his life has become after the death of his wife, Donna.<\/p>\n
That’s it.<\/p>\n
Well, also his time in Vietnam . . .<\/p>\n
Yet Ann Beattie takes us on a rambling, fabricated journey of “telling” (not “showing”), marking the path with senseless brand name-dropping — Puma, Newman’s Own, Coke.\u00a0It seems as if she is cataloging evidences of the characters’ lives to convince us of their reality.\u00a0Instead, this story feels like a meandering gossip reel.\u00a0Characters and their connections to each other are dropped in so quick and hard in the beginning that I thought: who cares? Who was there to connect to and follow?<\/p>\n
About a third of the way in, Beattie focuses solely on her main guy.\u00a0And it makes sense that she is taking an artistic route, and fleshing out his existence for us. I can almost see what she is intending to do for us as readers.\u00a0There is a lot of potential here, but . . .\u00a0Is she trying to sound like the younger writers of the day?\u00a0I don’t even like when they do this kicking realities around and making them squeal for the reader.<\/p>\n
The dialogue is heavy and unnatural. Beattie’s “telling” flows better than what we overhear the characters say. There are attempts at wry humor, but it feels forced, for show.\u00a0Not only am I lacking any concern for Bradley (I cared more about his brother Sterne!), but the participants of this tale seem made up, static, except for well-placed details in order to create spontaneous life on the page.\u00a0A lot of attributes or quirks, or even life events, seem random. Sudden.\u00a0Oh!\u00a0I need to tell them this part, too!<\/em><\/p>\n
Readers are pretty brilliant.\u00a0“He finished his seltzer, peed, and undressed, draping his clothes on the bedpost.\u00a0The next day was Saturday<\/span>, so he’d wear them a second day.”\u00a0One, readers understand that the clothes on the bedpost assumes a second wear, otherwise they would have gone to the laundry basket or even the floor.\u00a0And two, how many times can one use the word “day” in a sentence?<\/p>\n
The concept of starting with one character and bumping around until we get to the protagonist and how they connect to the first is fascinating. There were just too many loose ends here.\u00a0This story felt like the kitchen “junk drawer” — many great pieces taken out on their own, but put together, they create a mess not to be dealt with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker<\/em> fiction is Ann Beattie’s “Save a Horse Ride a Cowgirl.” Read the full post and join the conversation<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[237,800,94],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505,812],"class_list":["post-17006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ann-beattie","category-book-reviews","category-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Beattie-Horse.jpg?fit=690%2C940&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-4qi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17006"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17016,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17006\/revisions\/17016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17006"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}