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Notes - Jealous Husband

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Submitted By salil
Words 1376
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FALL, 2004

Anne Lowenkopf

Notes on “The Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot”
By Anne Lowenkopf Where does Butler find he ideas for such stories as this? I don’t know, and I’m not certain it can be learned. But I do believe the short story is the best medium in which to try. Seven pages is not much to invest. And, assuming you find yourself rewriting your attempt again and again, tenfold times, seventy pages is still less than a novel. Short stories beg for experimentation; they consume so much less of your time and effort. You could fit fifty short stories comfortably into the pages of a novel. But I think the inventiveness that conceived of this story isn’t to be gained from rewrite–that’s for polishing the story’s design and language, for working out its details. But its inventiveness–I think that comes from the chance observation, the wandering thoughts that come when one should be sleeping, the private joke that suddenly seems to have possibilities. Catching these fleeting whimseys on the fly and getting them down on paper instantly or as close to instantly as you can manage encourages the brain to make more. The doing is not as simple as the telling because what seems amazingly clever and daring in its flashing conception, often limps and drags as you start converting images to written words. Capture as much of the conception as you can; struggle with rewrite later. And don’t–here’s the most important element–don’t discard your limping words. Keep working on them until they embody and evoke your vision. The more you use these unexpected bursts of inventiveness, the more often they will enter your awareness. Try the experiment and see what comes of it.

Incongruity is another source of humor, and this story bristles with incongruity. 1

FALL, 2004

Anne Lowenkopf

There’s the notion of a human becoming a parrot, not reincarnating as a parrot

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