It's about Boys. Entering the House.
April 2, 2017 8:15 PM Subscribe
Sunday evening fiction: Boys by Rick Moody. If you are/were a boy, if you know or knew a boy, you'd know all about this. "BOYS ENTER THE HOUSE, boys enter the house. Boys, and with them the ideas of boys (ideas leaden, reductive, inflexible), enter the house. Boys, two of them, wound into hospital
packaging, boys with infant-pattern baldness, slung in the arms of parents, boys dreaming of
breasts, enter the house. Twin boys, kettles on the boil, boys in hideous vinyl knapsacks that
young couples from Edison, NJ., wear on their shirt fronts, knapsacks coated with baby saliva
and staphylococcus and milk vomit, enter the house. Two boys, one striking the other with a
rubberized hot dog, enter the house... "
Seems a shame not to mention the Meredith Monk audio version, which I think I first heard in a Jace Clayton mix? Oh, here it is.
posted by with hidden noise at 8:42 PM on April 2, 2017
posted by with hidden noise at 8:42 PM on April 2, 2017
For those interested, the story is in his short story collection "Demonology" (2001) It was first published in Elle magazine.
posted by gwint at 8:42 PM on April 2, 2017
posted by gwint at 8:42 PM on April 2, 2017
Oh right. The "worst writer of his generation."
posted by gingerbeer at 9:15 PM on April 2, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by gingerbeer at 9:15 PM on April 2, 2017 [5 favorites]
Good God, what kind of chip does Dale fucking Peck have on his shoulder? Rick Moody was one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in the 90s and quite coincidentally I recommended The Black Veil to someone on Goodreads just yesterday, saying that I think he is overlooked far too much.
posted by janey47 at 9:32 PM on April 2, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by janey47 at 9:32 PM on April 2, 2017 [5 favorites]
Dale Peck has had a chip on his shoulder for the past 20 years at least.
posted by blucevalo at 10:01 PM on April 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by blucevalo at 10:01 PM on April 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Man. Not a fun read when you're already feeling a little depressed about mortality. Also, PDF warning.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:46 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:46 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
Countess Elena: yeah, they're down at Dino's Bar and Grill, same as last time. Haven't changed that much to say... but man, I still think them cats are crazy.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:19 AM on April 3, 2017 [9 favorites]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:19 AM on April 3, 2017 [9 favorites]
Good God, what kind of chip does Dale fucking Peck have on his shoulder?
The kind that compels you to say really stupid things in your critique-cum-rant. Such as, for example, "I mean, wasn't there a single person to point out that 'the murder of innocents' is a redundancy on a par with 'wet water'?" So, anyone who's murdered must be innocent of anything? I don't think so.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:38 AM on April 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
The kind that compels you to say really stupid things in your critique-cum-rant. Such as, for example, "I mean, wasn't there a single person to point out that 'the murder of innocents' is a redundancy on a par with 'wet water'?" So, anyone who's murdered must be innocent of anything? I don't think so.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:38 AM on April 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
If I wanted to nitpick, I'd rather start with how you rubberize a hotdog.
posted by thelonius at 4:50 AM on April 3, 2017
posted by thelonius at 4:50 AM on April 3, 2017
I'd rather start with how you rubberize a hotdog.
The wurst writer of his generation.
posted by octobersurprise at 5:51 AM on April 3, 2017 [15 favorites]
The wurst writer of his generation.
posted by octobersurprise at 5:51 AM on April 3, 2017 [15 favorites]
I feel bad for the sister.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:33 AM on April 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:33 AM on April 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
"look, cut to the chase: are they back in town, or not?"
The greatest trick the boys ever played was persuading the world that they were out of town.
[bonus joke]
posted by komara at 6:58 AM on April 3, 2017 [8 favorites]
The greatest trick the boys ever played was persuading the world that they were out of town.
[bonus joke]
posted by komara at 6:58 AM on April 3, 2017 [8 favorites]
I've read two of his novels - The Ice Storm and Garden State. I saw Ang Lee's film first, and that may have influenced my perception, but I think that's a rare case where a film adaptation of a novel is better than the novel.
Peck's rant seems hyperbolic to me, but I did find a little too much odor of the MFA workshop in Moody's writing, for my taste. I'm not sure I could give an example or justify that, but it's how it struck me.
posted by thelonius at 6:59 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
Peck's rant seems hyperbolic to me, but I did find a little too much odor of the MFA workshop in Moody's writing, for my taste. I'm not sure I could give an example or justify that, but it's how it struck me.
posted by thelonius at 6:59 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
As recently featured (again!) on Selected Shorts (page includes link to Soundcloud audio). BD Wong's reading of this makes me tear up every time.
posted by Fuego at 8:23 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Fuego at 8:23 AM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
PhoBWanKenobi: "I feel bad for the sister."
And the mother.
Only the boys, not boys, matter.
posted by chavenet at 9:13 AM on April 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
And the mother.
Only the boys, not boys, matter.
posted by chavenet at 9:13 AM on April 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
I love this story; I used to teach it all the time way back when when I used to do this sort of thing, and I found it hard to make it all the way through when I tried a few years ago when my father was dying.
Only the boys matter is not at all how I read it.
posted by thursdaystoo at 11:26 AM on April 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
Only the boys matter is not at all how I read it.
posted by thursdaystoo at 11:26 AM on April 3, 2017 [2 favorites]
And the mother.
Only the boys, not boys, matter.
This is how I read it, too, but maybe it's just because I am utterly burnt out on narratives where women are only discussed if they are being seduced, tortured, masturbated to, or dying.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:46 PM on April 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
Only the boys, not boys, matter.
This is how I read it, too, but maybe it's just because I am utterly burnt out on narratives where women are only discussed if they are being seduced, tortured, masturbated to, or dying.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:46 PM on April 3, 2017 [4 favorites]
This is a good poem. It takes cliches and melodrama and makes a story from them that seems meaningful and perhaps resonant. Unfortunately it, and the reality that it depicts, has a seriously corrosive effect on my heterosexuality. It's a repulsive depiction of masculinity.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:00 PM on April 3, 2017
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:00 PM on April 3, 2017
It's like a beautiful poignant depiction of the development of douchebros, the kind who sexually humiliate fat kids and try to coerce "homely" girls into sex.
posted by emjaybee at 6:28 PM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by emjaybee at 6:28 PM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
Reading the story uncharitably's okay, I guess. Misreading it doesn't get you anywhere, though. Emjaybee, here are the sentences you're drawing from:
1. Boys enter the house, starchy in pressed shirts and flannel pants that itch so bad, fresh from Sunday school instruction, blond and brown locks (respectively) plastered down but even so with a number of cowlicks protruding at odd angles, disconsolate and humbled, uncertain if boyish things -- such as shooting at the neighbor's dog with a pump-action BB gun and gagging the fat boy up the street with a bandanna and showing their shriveled boy-penises to their younger sister -- are exempted from the commandment to *Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.*
2. Boys enter the house with girls efflorescent and homely and attempt to induce girls to sneak into their bedroom, as they still share a single bedroom; girls refuse.
The first one doesn't suggest that they're sexually humiliating the boy up the street and the second one doesn't suggest that they're attempting to coerce the girls into sex -- they're of the age where, months before, the story says, the boys wouldn't've talked to them.
Rick Moody had an essay introducing some year's version of the O.Henry Prize (I can't find it online) where he said that the job of fiction is to be descriptive, not redemptive, because, in fiction, accurate description is redemption.
This story's pretty fucking sad. Reading it otherwise misses the point, I think.
posted by thursdaystoo at 2:22 PM on April 4, 2017
1. Boys enter the house, starchy in pressed shirts and flannel pants that itch so bad, fresh from Sunday school instruction, blond and brown locks (respectively) plastered down but even so with a number of cowlicks protruding at odd angles, disconsolate and humbled, uncertain if boyish things -- such as shooting at the neighbor's dog with a pump-action BB gun and gagging the fat boy up the street with a bandanna and showing their shriveled boy-penises to their younger sister -- are exempted from the commandment to *Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.*
2. Boys enter the house with girls efflorescent and homely and attempt to induce girls to sneak into their bedroom, as they still share a single bedroom; girls refuse.
The first one doesn't suggest that they're sexually humiliating the boy up the street and the second one doesn't suggest that they're attempting to coerce the girls into sex -- they're of the age where, months before, the story says, the boys wouldn't've talked to them.
Rick Moody had an essay introducing some year's version of the O.Henry Prize (I can't find it online) where he said that the job of fiction is to be descriptive, not redemptive, because, in fiction, accurate description is redemption.
This story's pretty fucking sad. Reading it otherwise misses the point, I think.
posted by thursdaystoo at 2:22 PM on April 4, 2017
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