- Anna Maria Junus
The Deal Me In Short Story Challenge Week 2: I'm a Fool
Note: I had intended to do the January challenge of posting every day but my computer has decided not to co-operate. So instead of fighting with it, I'm going along with it's moods for awhile. I am going to at least try and keep up with my short story challenge. For more about this challenge, go to Deal Me In.
*****
Ugh. I pulled the Jack of Hearts. Which led me to this atrocity. It makes sense. The Jack or Knave is a fool. Love makes you stupid. How fitting that I would be reading "I'm a Fool" by Sherwood Anderson, first published in 1922. This was in the The Heath Introduction to Literature, a college textbook. Which means that Sherwood Anderson was an important literary guy. Further a search on google revealed that this story was important enough to film several times. I decided to watch the one starring Ron Howard to see how they dealt with it. There's two versions on youtube. One is introduced by Henry Fonda, the other by Colleen Dewhurst. It shows how important this work is. It may be important but I don't have to like it. Ron Howard was a lot more sympathetic in the film than the star of this short story. There's also another film that looks like a play done in the 50's but I didn't want to sit through this story again. The story is told in first person by a young man who wanders the countryside as a horse trainer. His companion is a much older black man who is showing him the ropes. And here's where my first turn off happened. The character refers to his companion using the "n" word - several times. This only happens in the short story, not in the film. Now the literature and historical person in me knows that this was common for the time the story was written. I wouldn't change it because that would be wrong. I'm against censorship and I recognize that until fairly recently, the n word was frequently used. Frankly, I think they should have used it in the film so that you can get a truer picture of this guy than the film portrays. The humane part of me is totally turned off by it. So that was a struggle. I had to remind myself every time I came across the word that I can't judge this story according to current times. Interestingly, the story is kinder to Burt the black character than the film is. Our main character (who lacks a name) looks up to him in spite of the derogatory label. In the film he's portrayed as a weak drunk. Putting that aside, I never could warm up to this boy. One day he dresses up and goes to the races and is turned off by a man with money simply because of the way he was dressed. He decides to show off, get a little drunk, and consequently meets a man who is with his fiance and his sister. Our "hero" likes the sister and decides to lie about himself using some of his knowledge of horse racing in order to impress these people with money in spite of the fact that he looks down on people with money. Later he realizes that he's an idiot because now he can't keep in touch with this girl that he lied to because then she would find out that he's not who he bragged he was. Clearly he didn't think this through. The attitude of this guy to other people reminded me a lot of the main character in Catcher in the Rye. Arrogant, looking down on others as a way of bringing himself up, and full of himself. And stupid. And a liar. I hated that book too. The story wasn't very long at all but I couldn't wait to be finished with it. The film had to do some padding. I just hated the main character. But I didn't hate him enough to love hating him. I just wanted a horse to run over him. As for the writer, Sherwood Anderson, clearly this story did not make me want to read anything else by him.
