Chapter 3

My brother and I have returned from Austin. The new shows at the art galleries were fantastic. Lots of very good abstracts and some good, bright neo-impressionism and neo-post-impressionism, as well as some other works that would be difficult at best to describe. Same problems as the one I stated for not making Michel an artist.

But let's get back to Michel and his short story. It has quite a few problems, to be honest, that goes beyond making the women in it exclusively "others." For example, it switches point of view too often. Usually, it's best to keep a single point of view in a short story to avoid confusion, unless there is something else being accomplished that only changing points of view could accomplish, but I don't think that really qualifies here. It's bad writing. The dialogue is too formal, but that's something easily be solved by using contractions. The story itself is weak and stereotyped. Definitely a male fantasy like the woman accused him of writing. Clearly Michel has much to learn about writing. I think he may eventually become talented, but he has much to overcome first. But we didn't see this story by Michel to see if he was a talented writer, but to make obvious Michel's way of thinking - especially toward women.

I'm thinking Michel is probably misogynistic because he hadn't dated much, or perhaps he's been hurt by someone. How can you understand women if you haven't made an effort to be around them? He probably didn't have a very good mother, but let's try to avoid Freudian analysis here. Let's look at Michel now, as he is, and not look too far into his past to try to understand why he is the way he is. We never know the entire backgrounds of anyone, even our closest friends, so why should we know Michel any better? But I do think we should know that he's neither dating nor in love with anyone. That is current information anyone could know.

However, most stories do have some sort of love interest in them, even if they aren't meant to be a romance, and I don't see any reason why this story should be any different. I think we'll start with a name again. Susan? Michelle? No, too close to Michel. Sarah? I like Sarah. I think maybe Sarah should be the woman who gave Michel the opening line of the short story we read above. Michel is probably interested in her because she is also a writer, and because of her intelligence. She definitely has to be intelligent, or I doubt Michel would show any interest in her. He's a snob that way. But who can really blame him? You have to have intelligent, interesting conversation with whomever you're seeing or else you'll both get bored. Maybe Sarah has large breasts, because I can see Michel liking women with large breasts, though I don't think that would be a primary concern of his, so maybe she doesn't. Perhaps I won't worry about her description any more than I plan to worry about his, except to say she is probably above average in appearance, though neither beautiful nor plain. You can decide whether she has big breasts or not, or if that even matters to you.

I think maybe, in order to avoid a sudden surge of characters who won't have anything to do with the rest of this novel, I will have the writer's group they had joined to have broken up. Michel and Sarah decided to keep working together so each could help improve the other's work. Of course, the seeds of mutual attraction will have also played a factor, or else we'll have a novel of two people showing each other their stories, and that would get very boring very fast.

This means, of course, that I have to have a reason why Sarah would be interested in Michel, despite suspicions of his being misogynistic. But maybe not. How many times are we attracted to someone and we cannot think of any reason why we would or should be? I think this is one of those counter-intuitive attractions Sarah feels for Michel. It probably bothers her that she feels any attraction for him. She probably doesn't think he is her type. Maybe he isn't. If they were perfect for each other, we wouldn't have a story.

But I think I'm going to have to stop thinking about these two characters for the moment, since I have an errand to do. I hate to put it that way, since what I have to do is go get my girlfriend from our friend's apartment, but I don't know how else to put it. I told her I'd come pick her up late, and it's getting close to eleven, so I should go get her. An hour and a half of reading over "Reciprocation" and writing are plenty for now.