Lorrie Moore and Other Writer's Compared
There are many different styles of writing that authors have. Some authors like James
Welch, Zora Neale Hurston, and Lorrie Moore use their own personal experiences when they
are writing a novel or short story. In Lorrie Moore's book of short stories Birds of
America, she shows a great deal of passion and emotion with each story so that the reader
has a clear vision of the text. The stories are so descriptive and clear that I can get a
visual of what she is talking about. I think that Moore likes to take risks in her writing
and this makes her an awesome writer. Also, the stories make the reader wonder if they are
related to her personal experiences. By having an autobiographical style of writing like
Welch, showing her point of view through characters like Hurston, and clearly expressing
her theme, Moore's talent will carry on with her in the future.
In the short story "People Like That Are The Only People Here," Moore uses
autobiographical material. The story is about a child dying of cancer in a pediatric
oncology ward. Vince Passaro, a journalist for Harper's Magazine, focused on
Moore's connection with the characters in an online review of Birds of America.
"Moore who has acknowledged that the piece fictionalizes something that did in fact
happen to her son, purposefully plays on the whole notion of a story's autobiographical
truth, making the narrator into a writer" (4). This shows the reader that Moore is
definitely relating her writing with her own life. An example of an author that shows the
same style of relation is James Welch's novel Fools Crow. In Fools Crow,
Welch tells of the Pikuni Indians and their journeys to stay in their homeland. Welch uses
the stories told by his father and grandmother to establish this novel of fiction. Like
Moore, Welch relates to his characters from his own background.
Moore fully shows her point of view through her characters. For example, in the story
"Real Estate," Ruth is the main character. She is dying of cancer and her
husband tends to cheat on her on a regular basis. Moore expresses Ruth's character to the
fullest by allowing her to become a strong person and wanting to die but the cancer is
taking its time. "Though she would have preferred long ago to have died, fled, gotten
it all over with, the body--Jesus, how the body!--took its time" (Moore, 211). By
reading this material in the text, I could see that Moore was expressing how the character
felt to the fullest. James Mcmanus, a journalist from The New York Times,
reviewed the story "Real Estate" as "one of the powerhouse trio that
concludes the collection, has the heft and ranginess, even the headlong story line, of a
compressed novel" (2).
Moore leaves you wanting more from this story because the characters seem so real. A
similarity to expressing an author's point of view through characters is show in Zora
Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston uses personal
experiences by telling about a young black woman who goes through life marrying three
different men and really loving only one of them. Hurston allows the main character to
come across as being her very own self. Hurston's characters are like Moore's because they
are going through changes in life.
Moore clearly expresses her theme in Birds of America. Each story's characters
are undergoing a mid-life crisis or a drastic change in their lives. Moore's past work has
been focused on make believe characters and many readers had seemed to loose interest. In
an article in The San Francisco Chronicle, Erika Milvy states, "Now, 12
years later, many of the characters in Moore's third story collection, "Birds of
America," are facing the real deaths and diseases of their real children" (1).
Almost all of the stories in Birds of America focus on real life situations. Moore's theme
includes her ability to bring each character and setting to real life. Another writer that
has a similar relation to Moore's ability to express the theme is Margaret Atwood.
Atwood shows this ability in the short story "The Man From Mars." This story
gives you a clue right in the beginning of what the theme is and how it relates to the
title. Atwood tells of a teenage girl who meets a guy from another culture and is afraid
of him. The style of writing that Atwood shows in this particular story is a lot like
Moore's style. The characters are very descriptive and the setting is fully described so
that the reader has a clear vision of the story.
Birds of America is not only described as Moore's best work so far, but she
has also been recognized and compared to other great authors around the world. Passaro
states, "This decade has seen the publication of remarkable volumes of short fiction
by such talents as the aforementioned Wallace, Johnson, and Moore as well as by writers of
equal talent, such as Lydia Davis, Steven Millhauser, Joanna Scott, and Mary
Gaitskill"(2). All of these authors share great talent of writing short fiction. It
takes a great deal of talent to write a novel or short story. I think that Moore really
shows her interest and capabilities of writing. I would refer Birds of America to
almost anyone who enjoys reading material that is so in depth and realistic.
In an article from September 11, 1998’s issue of The New York Times,
Michiko Kakutani, a journalist, gives his opinions and highlights of characters in Lorrie
Moore’s book of short stories “Birds of
America.” He describes the
characters as “lost, lonely people fumbling their way through life, banging their
heads against walls, their hearts against old sorrows, as they migrate from relationship
to relationship, home to home” (1). Kakutani
has a perfect way of describing Moore’s characters because that is exactly how they
are in “Birds of America”. Many of her other novels consist of younger
characters rather than middle-aged people in “Birds
of America”. Kakutani seems to focus
on comparing “Birds of America” with
past books or novels Moore has published in the future.
“As in Ms. Moore’s earlier stories and novels, many of the
characters in this volume are women trapped in – or abruptly ejected from –shopworn
relationships” (2). This lets you now
that in all of Moore’s work, she tends to use the same type of characters and their
mishaps. Kakutani ends his review with a few
highlights from some of the stories in the book. He
also tells about the feelings Moore has in the stories and how her skill as a writer is
“wise and beguiling work” (3).
In an article
from September 20, 1998’s issue of The San Francisco Chronicle, Erika
Milvy, a
journalist, gives a full description and her thoughts of Lorrie Moore’s book of short
stories “Birds of America”. Milvy tells you some issues from Moore’s
earlier work in the beginning of the article about her characters and how they are
different from her new work. She states,
“The tragedy of Moore’s first novel, “Anagrams,” was that a solitary
woman’s daughter turned out to be make-believe” (1). Therefore, in her most recent book “Birds of America,” the characters are
undergoing a more real type of lifestyle. If
the characters don’t reflect on their emotions and real life grief, it is somewhere
nearby. Milvy also gives some examples of
Moore’s stories in “Birds of America,”
and how the stories are similar because they either deal with death, or some type of
crisis. She tells how Moore is able to make
jokes in the stories to keep the reader from becoming depressed while reading them. “Moore’s fiction has always been full of
brain sex” (3). A quote from the first
story “Willing” is given to show an example.
“It was like brains having sex. It
was like every brain was a sex maniac” (3). Milvy
leaves you with concluding that “These are not people to envy, not people one would
want to be” (3). By reading this quote,
I think that it will make people want to read Moore’s books and help with the
understanding of each character.
|