Lorrie Moore\'s, \"How\" We Live

Lorrie Moore's, "How"

We live in a very subjective world. Our very realities can be challenged with just words and, as any good police novel will tell you, witnesses are unreliable because everyone sees things differently. So, when it comes to developing an understanding of the truth, how we perceive our external and internal worlds defines what we are able to communicate as truth. but, do we actually tell the truth? Can we actually communicate a truth using a modern philosophical understanding of the term? When it comes to writing, is truth more or less subjective? Edward R. Murrow said, "most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit."

A writer may communicate the most intimate and thorough details about a character, but not themselves. Complete, unabashed, uncontrolled and unfiltered self-awareness put on paper does not exist - we are always covering up our truths, if only just a little bit. In Lorrie Moore's short story, How, we see a truth-telling of a particularly narcissistic and fatalistic form.

The narrator of How, weaves a predictive tale of just how a relationship between the audience and a man will play out. The style of the tale is that of an embittered lecture, filled with the kind of explanatory detail that makes the reader immediately understand that the You of the story is actually the Me of the author. but, the pain of what has happened in the relationship(s) is too great to admit to, so the author distances herself from the story by creating a third person - the reader. What makes this technique rather interesting is that we are drawn in to the author's description of the relationship and, perhaps, can relate to it on many levels, but ultimately we are not the intended audience - she is. We all have the friend who uses us as a venting space - a wall to shout against - and for whom any words of comfort or sympathy we offer is met with absolute indifference. How, is a revelation of a very personal truth - that the author is soured on men, soured on relationships, and sees nothing but a repeating pattern of sexual disappointment looming into the future.

The agony of relationships weighs very heavy in How. "You will fantasize about a funeral. At that you could cry. It would be a study in post-romantic excess, something vaguely Wagnerian." She believes herself to be trapped because he is little more than a man-sized puppy who doesn't understand why you have just slapped him for peeing on the carpet, "But I love you, he will say in his soft, bewildered way...that is always enough, why is that not always enough?." The intent of this story is to purge herself, or at least the narrator thinks this is a purge, of the history of such relationships that fizzle and fade by finally talking one through all the way to the end. This is her attempt to keep these kinds of relationships at bay, to talk herself out of the next guy (or this guy) before the inevitable end. But what this story says about the narrator is so much more than the words,

The mechanics of the story are quite clear and they absolutely fall into the dulce et utile form, but actually seem to mock it just a bit. Literature of this kind is entertaining in that as we are dragged through her broken glass of a relationship, we do so from the kind of confidante position that is reserved for close friends and audiences of reality TV. The author is spinning a cautionary tale about the dangers of ambivalence and inaction in a relationship - she is educating us about what can happen when you continue to do something you know you shouldn't. For this story, as for most literature, this format works exceptionally well.

What we have to glean from the text is the author's intent. The title of the story clearly spells out, particularly after reading, that the intent is to map the course of the relationship and observe how it went wrong and how it continued to go wrong. In essence, the story is a monologue that focuses primarily upon what is inevitable, what the author cannot change about herself or about her experiences. Indeed, her awareness of her own inability to achieve intimacy with others is particularly keen, "A week, a month, a year. Tell him you've changed...the two of you are incongruous together." She wants two things from this text, to explain herself without actually discussing her own faults, fears, and problems; and to convince us that because she can talk about these kinds of relationships with such seeming clarity and authority, that there won't be a next time. The problem is, however, and that is made evident by the absolute lack of any note of hope, that the narrator will not be breaking the cycle anytime soon as long as the guy in the story doesn't change.

To understand how this story is told, we have to put ourselves in the author's shoes. How to craft a story that reveals everything and nothing all at the same time? How to entertain the reader while giving them something to chew on?

The answer is found in giving us a one-sided discussion with someone so frighteningly inept at managing her relationships that we cannot help but feel a similar form of ambivalence toward her as she does toward the boyfriend.

The author also knows that we are a wickedly voyeuristic society that thrives on the misery of others. In this, then, the author is taking the idea of teaching us a lesson just one bit further. She is telling us that we are no better than the narrator herself - we will treat our entertainment, our involvement with her and this story, in the same manner.

But, is the author actually conscious of this fact? Is she aware of the duplicity inherent in this form of story telling? That is unclear. For many authors, the process of conveying a message is often secondary or even subconscious to the actual writing - what occurs on the page is what came out of their mind without filtration or craft.