Complex Numbers

So what's the point?

This week's Fiction Writing class reading was two short stories: one by Ann Beattie (I'm not sure whether that's because the teacher thinks Beattie's any good, or because she's the UVA English department chair) and the other by Raymond Carver.

I guess the mistake I made in reading them was expecting something to happen - because nothing did, except a bunch of neurotic people made small talk with each other.

It's pretty bad when I'm reading two stories by authors known for their sparse, brief styles and I find myself skipping over whole paragraphs. Because I was reading for class, I forced myself to go back and read the boring parts.

More, there were no great revelations, no AHA! moments, no epic conflicts (hardly any conflict at all, and I'm being generous in assuming that two people talking at cross purposes represents "conflict") There was a lot of characterization, good dialogue and scene-setting.

But here's the thing: there's no fucking POINT in setting a scene, writing breezy dialogue, or developing a character if all that character is going to do is sit around being neurotic!

This is what I'm supposed to be looking up to? This is the style I'm supposed to emulate if I'm to achieve my goal of getting published? I expect I could do it - come up with vapid characters and have them drinking tea with each other while talking about flowers - given some more practice, but now I'm not sure I want to.

So what's the point?

(It just came to me - have the aforementioned tea party be disrupted by a horde of zombies (little metaphor there) or tentacled space aliens. Whomever is left after the carnage can spend the last three paragraphs frantically searching for the tea bags, only to find there's no hot water left...)