The story’s tension comes from the reader’s gradual awakening to its real theme, its true tension
Confession: I like fiction without obvious tension, that privileges ideas, that tells intriguingly rather than showing in predictable ways. For example, the Japanese/Korean/Chinese form, Kishotenketsu is a four-part form that’s unlike what Edgar Allen Poe envisioned as the rules of the short story in his famous review of Nathaniel Hawthorne. One of the big differences, according to author Kim Yoon Mi, is that the Western model privileges tension while the Kishotenketsu relies on the “twist.” While we might automatically assume that tension in a story derives from a character’s conflict with something interior or exterior, there are plenty of stories that defy these sometimes boring expectations. For instance, Michael Martone and I included Brazilian author, Clarice Lispector’s short story, “The Fifth Story” in our early 2000s anthology, EXTREME FICTION, FABULISTS AND FORMALISTS. While there’s tension, I suppose, in that it’s about someone’s attempt to kill cockroaches, the story constantly undermines the tension in a metafictional way and ironic manner. Here’s the opening.
This story could be called “The Statues.” Another possible title would be “The Killing.” Or even “How to Kill Cockroaches.” So I shall tell at least three stories, all of them true, because none of the three will contradict the others. Although they constitute one story, they could become a thousand and one, were I to be granted a thousand and one nights.
The first story, “How To Kill Cockroaches,” begins like this:
I was complaining about the cockroaches. A woman heard me complain. She gave me a recipe for killing them. I was to mix together equal quantities of sugar, flour and gypsum. The flour and sugar would attract the cockroaches, the gypsum would dry up their insides. I followed her advice. The cockroaches died.
This seems to follow some of the tenets of the kishotenketsu, which besides lacking tension, begins with an introduction. But is it Kishotenketsu? If you can make a case for it, then maybe so. Was Clarice Lispector aware that she might be writing a Kishotenketsu? I don’t know, but the wonderful thing about forms is that you don’t have to be aware of them in order to write them. That’s why we can anoint certain writers who never knew the term “autoficion,” autofictionists. I’m not being facetious here. No one makes the argument that terms only apply to authors after the term was created. That would mean that no one was writing autofiction before Sergre Doubrovsky arrived at the term in 1977. In this way, I consider Marcel Proust an autofictionist. To paraphrase Lispector and Scheherazade, If I had a thousand and one nights, I would give you a thousand and one definitions of autofiction, as there’s a tendency to want to reduce autofiction to “blurred genre boundaries,” but it’s more than that.
Some of my favorite stories from the craft book I wrote with Xu Xi, THE ART AND CRAFT OF ASIAN STORIES, are indeed the ones that lack tension the most. Yoshimoto Banana’s story “Bee Honey” follows some of the tenets of a Kishotenketsu. Perhaps it’s also autofiction. Perhaps not. Like Lispector, the story undermines tension from the start and focuses much of its attention on constructing a scene that seems at least to me, “authentic.” But perhaps Yoshimoto Banana is simply employing what the Australian critic, KK Ruthven terms “authenticity effects,” a device that fiction writers have been employing since fiction’s beginnings to make you think that an untrue story is true. The story takes place in Buenos Aires in front of La Casa Gobierno, the spot where once a week, the mothers of the “Disappeared,” march to commemorate and seek justice for their sons and daughters who were killed by the Argentinian military junta. Like Lispector, Yoshimoto does not name her narrator, and that in itself is a kind of authenticity effect. Without a clear protagonist, we might be inclined to default to the author’s name and assume autobiography.
Here’s the opening:
I was sitting in the plaza in front of La Casa Gobierno, not feeling much of anything. There were a few men standing around, acting so suspiciously that it was obvious at a glance that they were pickpockets. To my surprise, once I had indicated that I was on to them, giving each man a look that said, “Yes, I can see that you’re a pickpocket,” they kept their distance. Now whenever my gaze met one of theirs, he looked right back at me, as if we were acquainted. Was it that hard to make ends meet here, or were people just very laid back? I didn’t get it . . . an odd city Buenos Aires.
The story’s tension comes from the reader’s gradual awakening to its real theme, its true tension: the tension between one’s personal sorrow in the face of much greater sorrows. And if for some reason, this doesn’t click for you, Yoshimoto comes right out and tells you what she’s writing about:
Sorrow never heals. We simply take comfort in the fact that our pain seems to fade. How flimsy my own sorrow is, compared with what these parents feel. It has no real basis, none of this outrageous justice to support it. It just keeps drifting on in its indistinct way. And yet that doesn’t mean one is more valuable than the other, or deeper. We are all in this plaza together. I let myself imagine.
Some of my professors in my MFA program would have told Yoshimoto to strike that paragraph forever from her story. Telling not showing. Heaven forbid! The worst sin for a short story writer. One of my profs would have deemed this “an idea story,” not a compliment. But I quite idea stories, and whether you want to call this fiction, memoir, autofiction, or kishotenketsu matter not at all to me. What matters is the tension of shared sorrow that visits us all. We are all in this plaza together. I let myself imagine.
For paid subscribers: I’m going to hold a weekend Zoom workshop for twelve of you, first come/first serve in late March on Kishotenketsu and other forms that subvert Western models of fiction. Your paid subscription entitles you to a seat at the table and at future workshops. I’ll announce the date of the workshop soon!