First French Kiss and Other Traumas by Adam Bagdasarian

11th November, 2009 3 Comments

I am wild about short stories.  I know some people aren’t, but for me an excellent collection of short stories is like drinking whiskey neat on a cold night–pleasing to all the senses.  To me, the most successful short stories are like the landscape of an anal retentive neighbor–shrubs are neatly pruned, flowers are planted in line with the pathway.  You can’t overindulge in a short story; if you do, it becomes a sopping mess.

The short story, for whatever reason, also lends itself to strange, sometimes dark humor, and quirky, unconventional plots and characters and literary experimentation.  Perhaps this is because maintaining a novel on such plots and characters would be like asking a reader to play board games for three days–a board game is a fine distraction for a few hours, but it’s not like these custom-made wooden jigsaw puzzles that can be any shape and number of pieces,* leading to days of delicious obsession.**

I am weird, so I like weird characters.  Flannery O’Connor, Borges, and Lydia Davis (can’t wait to own her collected!) are some of my favorite short story writers, but I also love Wharton, and as I mentioned previously, Margaret Atwood and Ray Bradbury, whose short stories are highly underrated.  In recent memory, I particularly enjoyed Hannah Tinti’s Animal Crackers, and if I may take a moment to recommend Kevin Wilson’s Tunneling to the Center of the Earth as a most excellent, contemporary collection of stories with all the delightfully twisted, peculiar characters one can ask for from a short story.

I admit I haven’t really thought about the short story form in YA literature–I suppose I always considered the short story to be a more “adult” genre, perhaps in particular as I consider the blurring of form between short story and prose poem.  Though now that I put my mind to it, I suppose the Wayside School series are short stories, though they might be technically catalogued as chapter books, and there are other chapter books like that.  Roald Dahl wrote short stories (though I don’t know if they’re considered children’s), as does David Levithan. There is, of course, J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which brings us to one of the earliest short story forms:  the fairy/folk tale.

Adam Bagdasarian’s First French Kiss and Other Traumas is a collection of short stories exhibiting the warmth, humor, and unique narrative perspective that I like in “adult” short story collection.  The collection follows one boy, Will, through his boyhood and adolescence.  Will is bluster and bravado hiding sensitivity and confusion, oddly self-aware and yet completely out of touch.  We experience Will’s defeats and small triumphs as a boy–the betrayals by an older brother, the awkward carelessness in breaking up with a girlfriend, the childhood luxury of believing one is destined for greatness, the fear and sadness of seeing the older brother going off to college, confronting the truth that change is uncontrollable, and loss is unforeseeable.

The collection achieves poignancy through its matter-of-fact, unassuming storytelling.  Will takes himself very seriously, and you, as a reader, can’t help but to do it too.  It’s a smart book that doesn’t underestimate its reader.  Will reminds us how when we remember, we are reremembering–our memories, like ourselves, are fallible, and each time we look upon the past, it becomes something different.  While Will is writing his past he is, in a way, writing his present as well.  This is a very adult thing for me to say; perhaps Will would’ve been smart enough to think this at fourteen, but I am certain I was too concerned over how I could afford the knee-high Doc Martens I wanted at the mall.  But I do believe that my fourteen-year-old self would’ve fallen a little in love with Will’s almost-impossible, over-analytical voice and his unintentional misadventures while just living a life.  Here is Will explaining his “life and times” at age ten:

I am a decade old and cannot win a game of Monopoly to save my life…I have lots of baby fat, which my brother sometimes grabs.  My mother assures me that sometime soon I will lose my baby fat and grow into my ears, which are large by most standards.  My brother calls me Dumbo.  I laugh because I have absolutely no vanity.  As proof of this, I continue to have my hair cut at Dan’s Snip and Curl…Although gregarious and extroverted, I have a very definite private world.  In this world I am a secret agent, a star athlete, a ladies’ man.  I move like a cat and have catlike reflexes.  However, after watching Damn Yankeeseight times in one week…I develop a crush on Gwen Verdon and begin to move less like a cat and more like a dancer.

How can you not love a boy like that?  A boy who becomes an adult who writes his memoirs in his twenties and opens it with a letter to the reader explaining why, after being urged by his mother and brother to write a collection based on his childhood, instead:

I sat down and began writing a very serious and consequential novel about a bartender in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce.  The writing of this novel was such a trying and laborious process that I was convinced I was creating a masterpiece.

Will decides to write the collection because it was freeing, and easier, and enjoyable.  I thank Bagdasarian for reminding me that some things in life are hard, yes, but not everything in life has to be, and life’s doleful moments are steps away from joyful ones.

*Thanks to Jen for alerting me to these!

**OMG, I AM A BIG DORK.

Welcome to Stacked! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the StackedBlog RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and come back soon!

Related posts:

1. Five Short Stories You Can Read Right Now Marcelo is posting here on Stacked regularly.  We’re working on...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.