Lorrie Moore - Bark - Stories

“Sorry, people,” the biker said. He gave the approaching Ian only a quick unfazed double-take. He flicked one of his puppy ears at him and hurried to straddle his bike. “Wrong address, everybody!” Then his whole too-stoned-to be-menacing gang started up their engines and rode away in a roar, kicking up dust from the driveway gravel. It was a relief to see them go. Ian continued to run down the road after them, howling, chair overhead, though the motorcycles were quickly out of sight.

“Should we follow Ian?” asked Nickie. Someone near us was phoning the police.

“Let Ian get it out of his system,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said and now made a beeline for Maria.

“Good job!” I could hear Nickie say to Maria. “Good job getting married!” And then Nickie threw her arms around her former caretaker and began, hunched and heaving, to weep on her shoulder. I couldn’t bear to watch. There was a big black zigzag across my heart. I could hear Maria say, “Tank you for combing, Nickie. You and your muzzer are my hairos.”

Ian had not returned and no one had gone looking for him. He would be back in time for the rain. There was a rent-a-disc-jockey who started to put on some music, which blared from the speakers. Michael Jackson again. Every day there was something new to mourn and something old to celebrate: civilization had learned this long ago and continued to remind us. Was that what the biker had meant? I moved toward the buffet table.

“You know, when you’re hungry, there’s nothing better than food,” I said to a perfect stranger. I cut a small chunk of ham. I place a deviled egg in my mouth and resisted the temptation to position it in front of my teeth and smile scarily, the way we had as children. I chewed and swallowed and grabbed another one. Soon no doubt I would resemble a large vertical snake who had swallowed a rat. That rat Ben. Snakes would eat a sirloin steak only if it was disguised behind the head of a small rodent. There was a lesson somewhere in there and just a little more wine would reveal it.

“Oh, look at those sad chickens!” I said ambiguously and with my mouth full. There were rumors that the wedding cake was still being frosted and that it would take a while. A few people were starting to dance, before the dark clouds burst open and ruined everything. Next to the food table was a smaller one displaying a variety of insect repellents, aerosols and creams, as if it were the vanity corner of a posh ladies’ room, except with discrete constellations of gnats. Guests were spraying themselves a little too close to the food, and the smells of citronella and imminent rain combined in the air.

The biker was right: you had to unfreeze your feet, take blind steps backward, risk a loss of balance, risk an endless fall, in order to give life room. Was that what he had said? Who knew? People were shaking their bodies to Michael Jackson’s “Shake Your Body.” I wanted this song played at my funeral. Also the Doobie Brothers’ “Takin’ It to the Streets.” Also “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”—just to fuck with people.

I put down my paper plate and plastic wineglass. I looked over at Ian’s dad, who was once again brooding off by himself. “Come dance with someone your own age!” I called to him, and because he did not say, “That is so not going to happen,” I approached him from across the lawn. As I got closer I could see that since the days he would sometimes come to our house to pick up Maria and drive her home himself in the silver sports car of the recently single, he had had some eye work done: a lift to remove the puff and bloat; he would rather look startled and insane than look fifty-six. I grabbed both his hands and reeled him around. “Whoa,” he said with something like a smile, and he let go with one hand to raise it over his head and flutter it in a jokey jazz razzamatazz. In sign language it was the sign for applause. I needed my breath for dancing, so I tried not to laugh. Instead I fixed my face into a grin, and, ah, for a second the sun came out to light up the side of the red and spinning barn.

For their generous reading and helpful insights, thank you to Julian Barnes, Charles Baxter, Melanie Jackson, Mona Simpson, Lorin Stein, and Victoria Wilson.

Lorrie Moore, after many years as a professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin — Madison, is now Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Moore has received honors for her work, among them the Irish Times International Prize for Literature, a Lannan Foundation fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs , was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

ABOUT THIS READING GROUP GUIDE

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Bark , the first collection in fifteen years from acclaimed short-story writer Lorrie Moore.

ABOUT THE BOOK

“Fifty years from now, it may well turn out that the work of very few Americans writers has as much to say about what it means to be alive in our time as that of Lorrie Moore.”

— Harper’s Magazine

A literary event — a new collection of stories by one of America’s most beloved and admired short-story writers; her first collection in fifteen years, since Birds of America (“Fluid, cracked, mordant, colloquial … Will stand by itself as one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability.” — The New York Times Book Review , cover).

In these eight masterly stories, Lorrie Moore, in a perfect blend of craft and bewitched spirit, explores the passage of time, and summons up its inevitable sorrows and hilarious pitfalls to reveal her own exquisite, singular wisdom.

In “Debarking,” a newly divorced man tries to keep his wits about him as the United States prepares to invade Iraq, and against this ominous moment, we see — in all its irresistible hilarity and darkness — the perils of divorce and what can follow in its wake … In “Foes,” a political argument goes grotesquely awry as the events of 9/11 unexpectedly manifest at a fund-raising dinner in Georgetown … In “The Juniper Tree,” a teacher, visited by the ghost of her recently deceased friend, is forced to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a kind of nightmare reunion … And in “Wings,” we watch the unraveling of two once-hopeful musicians who neither held fast to their dreams nor struck out along other paths, as Moore deftly depicts the intricacies of dead ends and the workings of regret …

Gimlet-eyed social observation, the public and private absurdities of American life, dramatic irony, and enduring half-cracked love wend their way through each of these narratives in a heartrending mash-up of the tragic and the laugh-out-loud — the hallmark of Lorrie Moore — land.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What is the metaphor of the title? How do the epigraphs help to set it up?

2. The stories share several themes, among them aging and the passage of time, parents and children, divorce and separation. What would you say is the primary theme of the collection?

3. Several of the story titles have multiple meanings. How does Moore’s wordplay keep the reader guessing?

4. The dialogue in Moore’s stories is often funny. Would you call the stories themselves humorous?

5. Real-life current events cast shadows over several of the stories. How does Moore use them to shape a deeper meaning?