JCO: Re: JCO short story "Running" in Where Is Here? PLOT DISCUSSED
Hi, Kim. You intrigued me, so I went back to the 1992 story collection Where
Is Here and re-read "Running."
I was surprised to see how much I'd forgotten about the story. First of
all there was a long descriptive passage of the nameless woman runner and her
life before she encounters the two menacing men on the path. I don't see it
as a story about a woman who turns herself into a victim, but rather as a
person who -- through a sense of overconfidence and strength -- makes a series of
choices that bring her into a highly dangerous situation. Fortunately,
"nothing" happens to her. Events work out in her favor.
"Running" is one of the longer stories in Where Is Here? The first
thing you notice as you look over the seven pages that it occupies in this book
of mainly very short stories is that "Running" is told in one paragraph. The
reader is "running" through the story in one swoop without a single paragraph
break. No rest stops. This headlong rush adds to the readers' discomfort and
sense of dread. Is it a good idea to "run" headlong in this manner? I believe
that's a question that "Running" asks the reader to consider.
The nameless woman's male companion -- also nameless -- is not her
husband but a lover with whom she has been sharing her life for such a long time
that casual acquaintances assume that they are married. Actually, the woman
chooses to be independent and not marry him. At the same time, she is terrified
of her growing emotional dependence upon him. She worries that she loves him a
lot more than he loves her. She fears putting herself into a dangerous
situation of emotional dependence. She remembers an abortion she had when she was
19. The father was a boy her age whom she never saw again after the abortion.
Her buried memory of that long-ago episode emerges as she runs. She has
hidden this important part of her life from her present companion -- and seldom
thinks about it.
She makes a couple of serious miscalculations as she runs. Thrilling in
her own strength and joy as she runs along the beautiful forest path, she
leaves her lover behind when he stops to fix his broken shoelace. Then, after
she has passed out of his sight, she comes to a crossroad and chooses to run on
the path that leads away from the lakeside running path. There is a chance
that her lover will select the wrong path when he comes to the crossroad a few
minutes later. Now she's running deeper into the forest along an abandoned
logging road. Enter the two men, who are a lot scarier than I remembered. They
see her coming down the hill and watch her with "frank, assessing gazes...one
of them had already stepped out into the road as if to block her way, how
quickly he moved, by instinct perhaps, by sheer masculine instinct, the predator's
instinct." JCO's description of the two men's rough, shaggy appearance is
quite frightening, but the woman continues to rush forward. -- "I cant stop, how
can I stop: I will not" she thinks to herself. If she abruptly turns back,
will they pursue her? Will she be "teasing" them into giving chase? That's
her option at that point in time.
At this point readers are faced with the ironic situation that in trying
to be strong and independent and avoid victimhood, the woman is rushing
headlong into a potentially more dangerous form of victimhood. If she marries her
lover, she will be more vulnerable to hurt-- that is true --but she will have
on her side the laws of civilization that govern any civil marriage in US
society. By continuing to run toward the two strangers, however, she is outside
the social contract. There is no "law" to protect her out in the middle of the
forest, unobserved by any wittnesses. The woman and the two strangers are
outside the law. What happens is entirely up to the three of them, and she's
outnumbered.
Fortunately, her lover appears on the trail behind her. Fortunately,
the two strangers don't decide to take him on too. Fortunately, the dangerous
situation turns into the routine situation of two runners passing two hikers
and exchanging casual greetings: "behind her she heard men exchange greetings,
the man who was not her husband and the two young men beside the road, the
ritual of murmured greetings common to joggers, hikers, bicyclists of our time -
H'lo. How's it going! -- and no replies expected, and so that was what
happened. Except what had happened?"
The story "Running" ends there. What happened? Readers may wonder
whether the woman has "learned" anything from this near-catastope which was avoided
by the sheer good luck of the woman's companion catching up with her -- he
may well have chosen the wrong path and left her to face the two strangers
alone. There is a flash-forward earlier in the story that the woman will "leave"
her lover when they return to the city. Is that good for her? Or dangerous?
JCO has written about this issue of overconfident independence since her
first short story book By the North Gate appeared in the early 1960s. In the
fall of 2004 the North Gate short story "Swamps" was discussed in some depth
on Tone Clusters. In that story, an elderly, reclusive man has too much
confidence in his own independent strength and attempts to "solve" a problem all by
himself without any "interference" from his well-intending family. His
overconfident choices lead to a genuine disaster. In "Running" by contrast the bad
choices lead to a near-disaster, but luck intervenes. So I don't see the
woman in "Running" choosing to be a victim. She's choosing solitude, however,
which is more likely to lead to victimhood.
Cyrano
In a message dated 1/30/2006 8:51:50 PM Eastern Standard Time,
kstarrett5@comcast.net writes:
<< Cyrano,
That's the one. I believe it appears in Where Is Here?
For me this is such a powerful story because of the woman's seeming
inability to alter the outcome of running toward those men. The story is a
wonderful example of something we see so often in JCO's writing, the woman
who participates in her own victimization -- in this case it is she who
turns herself into a victim.
Kim
>>
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