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Annotation / Alexander Epstein Alexander Epstein AHS Capstone Annotation, Revised Section Leader: Gillian Epstein May 10, 2006 I Background a Short Fiction It has been said that short stories are for busy people or for those with short attention spans But it seems that no matter what one says about short stories versus novels, as many exceptions support the opposite argument, and it becomes hard to pin down precisely what comprises a short story For instance, the busy or distracted reader can meander in and out of a novel for ten-minute intervals, but cannot with a short story Thus the classic definition of a short story that it must be able to be read in one sitting Yet there is no strict consensus on the defining traits of the short story, which is technically a genre, not a form, and yet resists the precise definitions that usually surround both The only obvious criterion, of course, is the defining length, approximately under fifty-pages: typically in the 12-16 or 18-24 page range, but sometimes in the 28-36 and occasionally even 38-48 page range.1 Other definitions place the maximum word length at 7,500 words, and in contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000 Stories shorter than 1,000 words fall into the flash fiction or “short short Prof Alicia Erian, Newhouse Visiting Professor of Writing, Wellesley College, April 10, 2006 Annotation / Alexander Epstein story” genre; stories surpassing the maximum length approach the areas of novelettes, novellas, or novels.2 Beyond its length, some consider the short story in terms of a “slice of life,” while others have held short stories to be a stepping stone in literary apprenticeship along a writer’s ascent to novels and other longer works.3 Perhaps it is most helpful to instead employ metaphors to compare the shorter and longer forms of fiction For example: A short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film A short story is a weekend guest; a novel is a long-term boarder A story is a brick; a novel is a brick wall A short story is a flower; a novel is a job.4 In any event, modern short stories emerged as their own genre in the early 19th century Early examples of short story collections include the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales (1824–1826), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales (1842), and Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1836).5 In the first half of the 20th century, a number of high-profile magazines, such as The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner’s, and The Saturday Evening Post, all published short stories in each issue The demand for short stories was so high and the pay so lucrative that Henry James and F Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short story writing to subsidize their novels and pay off debts Since it has been all but impossible to make a living from short stories since the times of Henry James and F Scott Fitzgerald, the genre has been assured of its continued status as a serious art Today a short story’s shortness may be said to ensure its degree of accomplishment, selfhood, and purity, untainted by commercial interests, or, as Scott “Short Story,” Wikipedia Accessed May 6, 2006 Moore, p xv Ibid, p xv “Short Story,” Wikipedia Accessed May 6, 2006 Moore, p xv Annotation / Alexander Epstein Turow puts it, by “the larded stuff that too often oozes out of the Hollywood sausage grinder.”7 Turow, a popular contemporary crime novelist and short story writer, speaks to the heart of the modern short story when he writes, “Art—or whatever it is I’m doing— begins with the maker, not the audience Capitulating to established expectations means abandoning that obligation to lead.” As a result, the short story contrives less, and instead explores, experiments, and blurts It must be able to stand on its own, but it has, in a manner of speaking, nothing to lose.8 If, as Lorrie Moore writes, literature’s purpose is to allow readers to spend time with people they might never wish to in real life, then the fact that not only the readers but the authors of short stories minimize time spent with their characters likely explains the preponderance of sad, or at least difficult, short stories in existence9 Authors are only interested in the emotional trials of their characters to a point, and in quickly constructing wounds, tones, situations, and triggering events Once the focused melancholy or anxiety has run its course, according to Moore, both the reader and the author of the short story depart before the metaphorical (or literal) noose.10 No matter what type of fiction one writes, thinking like a writer is a complex undertaking that involves the unconscious Beyond the five senses, a writer relies upon curiosity, imagination, and skepticism—in the scientific sense, not the cynical sense.11 Skepticism obliges the writes to look beyond the obvious in situations (whether fictional or real) and to ascertain the true meanings of human behaviors and interactions Is a smile genuine or merely polite? Is a burst of anger caused by hatred of the target or by a Turow, Writers on Writing Moore, p xv Ibid, p xvii 10 Ibid, p xvi 11 Bernays and Painter, p Annotation / Alexander Epstein bad day at work? In other words, writers recognize as well as psychologists that things are rarely what they seem, and that, especially in human affairs, they must reason their way past “seems” to “is.” It is important for them to understand how their characters will act in any given social situation, for this will help determine the characters’ futures and shape the forward movement and final resolution of the story This intuitive writer’s quality must be particularly acute for short stories, in which some cultural, human truth may be delivered through invention and imagination on a mere dozen pages In short stories, the ending often shines a light on the tightly-constructed narrative to illuminate its meaning at once with surprise and inevitability As Lorrie Moore writes, “If a story is not always, therapeutically, an axe for the frozen sea within us, then it is at least a pair of brutally sharpened ice skates.” 12 b Social Psychology Just as writers of fiction strive to understand what drives the thoughts and actions of characters on paper, so psychologists strive to understand and predict human thinking and behavior in the real world But while writers have an intuitive knowledge and sense of human nature, psychologists employ scientific methods, such as experiments and statistics, to achieve the same end Different branches of psychology go about this task in different ways, but social psychology is unique in that at its heart is the phenomenon of social influence: the fact that all people are influenced by other people “Social influence” may conjure images of friends persuading one another to drink, or of advertising campaigns persuading the public to vote for a particular candidate But to the social psychologist, social influence 12 Moore, p xvii Annotation / Alexander Epstein is much broader than direct attempts by one person to change another person’s behavior —it extends to thoughts, feelings, and attitudes Additionally, it takes on many forms other than deliberate persuasion; people are often influenced by the mere presence of other people, even when they are not physically present but are only in a person’s mind And on a still subtler level, all people are immersed in a social and cultural context Thus, social psychology may be defined as the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people.13 Social psychology’s focus on social behavior is shared by several other disciplines in the social sciences, including sociology, economics, and political science Important differences distinguish social psychology, however, most notably its level of analysis: the individual in the context of a social situation.14 For example, to understand violence social psychology focuses on the specific psychological processes that trigger aggression in specific situations: to what extent is aggression preceded by frustration? Does frustration always precede aggression? If people are feeling frustrated, under what conditions will they vent or not vent their frustration with an overt act? What other factors might cause aggression? Other social sciences are more concerned with broad social economic, political, and historical factors that influence events or trends in a given society 15 For example: Why is the murder rate in the United States so much higher than in Canada? How changes in society and government relate to changes in aggressive behavior? 13 Aronson, p Ibid, p 12 15 Ibid, p 13 14 Annotation / Alexander Epstein Also, unlike personality psychology, which studies the characteristics that make individuals unique from each other, social psychology’s goal is to identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of personality, social class, or culture.16 The laws governing the relationship between frustration and aggression, for instance, are believed to be true of people in all places and classes and of all ages and races More fundamentally, it has been established over the years in social psychology that two immutable motives determine complex human behavior: the need to feel good about ourselves (self esteem) and the need to be accurate in our understanding the world and ourselves (social cognition).17 When the two motives conflict, the phenomenon of dissonance results—where to perceive the world accurately requires us to confront the fact that we have behaved foolishly or immorally Benjamin Franklin became the first intuitive dissonance theorist in history when in 1868 he asked a political opponent for a favor in order to beget his friendship18, and it has been theorized that Osama bin Laden exploited the dissonance of young Muslims in his orchestration of the 9/11 terrorist attacks19 While the research involved in writing fiction is mostly experiential and personal, such as author Annie Proulx listening to cab drivers’ stories and observing people flirting in bars20, the research methods of social psychology involve three primary approaches: the observational method, the correlational method, and the experimental method The observational method chiefly fulfills a descriptive function, as in ethnography or participant observation by researchers (or unwittingly by writers) Archival analysis is 16 Ibid, p 11 Ibid, p 18 18 Ibid, p 184 19 Ibid, p 187 20 Proulx, Writers on Writing 17 Annotation / Alexander Epstein another kind of observational method, used extensively in the current project, in which accumulated documents of a culture, such as diaries, novels, and newspapers, are examined for insight into the culture’s values and beliefs Then there is correlational methodology, which uses statistics to correlate different variables; and, of course, the experimental method Although social psychology is a relatively young science that originated in the United States no more than seventy years ago, cross-cultural studies are becoming widespread and the methods of the discipline are being increasingly adopted by social psychologists in all parts of the world This cultural expansion is highly valuable, as it will serve to reinforce the universality of the laws of human nature as they are now known or to indicate new variables that will ultimately allow more accurate predictions of human social behavior c Psychological plausibility in fiction: a critical lens The disciplines of social psychology and short fiction, despite their practitioners’ common focus on the universal aspects of human nature and behavior, had not appreciably engaged in any dialogue at the time a provocative philosophy article was published in 1952 The contemporary thinker Robert T Harris wrote in The Journal of Philosophy: “The analysis of plausibility in fiction—the explication of its nature and of the relations between it and other phenomena of imagination and intellect—seems to be unbroken soil.” The arguments in his article gave rise to a scholarly discussion that well frames and motivates the synthesis of the two disciplines in this project The Harris hypothesis, as it will be referred to here, posits that fiction, including the short stories Annotation / Alexander Epstein read, written, and analyzed here, demand “plausibility.” “Plausibility,” writes Harris, “consists in the subsumption of fictional events under laws of nature; and since the subject matter of fiction is for the most part human action and character, the relevant laws are mostly laws of human nature and laws of the formation of character.”21 The parallel tasks of the writer and psychologist in seeking to understand these “laws of human nature” are echoed in Harris’s comparison of plausibility in fiction with its counterpart in scientific prediction of outcomes Both involve “a general feeling associated with estimating…the hypothesis’ antecedent probability.” The key difference lies in the fact that, in scientific situations, the more unlikely a hypothetical outcome is considered to be, the more probable is the hypothesis when evidence is found supporting it However, the plausibility of a piece of fiction cannot rest upon such “easily traceable data,” for stories deal with images, not physical senses or sensations Harris notes that, unlike the scientist in his laboratory, the writer of fiction is unable to produce the surprising or rare result that verifies a hypothesis “Symbols and images in fiction cannot be compared to sensa for confirmation; hence all satisfaction in reading fiction must depend on our feeling that what we are reading is generally plausible.”22 To achieve a sense of plausibility, Harris asserts that story writers must “avoid the deus ex machina like poison” and know better than anyone that “truth is stranger than fiction.” The author, according to Harris, “has a serf-like half-freedom in choosing his premises and constructing his imaginary world.” The universal laws of human nature dictate that characters will behave in certain ways in certain situations, and whatever they do, they must it consistently with their own premises “Even if inconsistency be part 21 22 Harris, p Harris, p Annotation / Alexander Epstein of the man , he should still be consistently inconsistent.”23 This is all because, no matter how complex the laws of human nature are to fully explain, the laws are nonetheless exemplified in fiction and tacitly recognized by the perceptive reader Harris concedes that “little enough is explicitly known” of these laws (although the body of knowledge today is much greater than at the time of his article), and Paul Welsh’s 1953 rebuttal underscores his concession24, but the reader’s intuitive scientific hypotheses and common sense expectations of character behavior can be said to amount to a basic understanding of social psychology In such a case, it may not be an unreasonable demand for character interaction in short fiction to be subsumed by the “laws of human nature and character formation”—in other words, to be consistent with the universal findings of psychology The Harris hypothesis, as would any such bold proposition, immediately met with resistance Paul Welsh, another academic, wrote in The Philosophical Review in 1953: “Mr Harris can make his case good only by imposing narrow limits on the range of the term literature… Even if we take his definition in its broadest sense it is unsatisfactory, and…the problem of plausibility is not significant in fiction, or literature in general.” 25 Welsh asserted that fiction cannot be compared to scientific hypotheses and that internal consistency does not imply plausibility (although Harris claimed it was only one of a number of requirements to construct plausibility) Welsh further denied that “laws of human nature” need to be observed in fiction dealing with human characters and stressed that what readers will accept as satisfying literature is merely a product of the times and their changing views.26 23 Ibid, p Welsh, p 104 25 Welsh, p 102 26 Ibid, p 107 24 Annotation / Alexander Epstein A number of Welsh’s points are indisputable For instance, it is at once obvious that some types of fiction make no pretense of being the least bit plausible, such as fairy tales, fantasy, ghost and horror stories In his criticism of the Harris hypothesis, he exposes the difficulty of the question, when given an impossible premise in a story, “whether the results narrated follow in a world pretty much like ours,” and whether this comprises plausibility “How we determine,” Welsh asks, “whether, if the beanstalk did grow overnight, there would be a giant’s castle above it; and if Jack did climb the beanstalk, there would be in the castle, consistently with what we know of a world like ours, a talking harp, and so on?”27 The consistency and external reference requirements of the Harris hypothesis clearly fail when extended to folklore, fairy tales, and fables; and even the plausibility, Welsh adds, of more “realistic” literature such as King Lear can be dubious Yet if one does restrict the scope of fiction to be considered by the critical lens of the Harris hypothesis, such difficulties appear to be largely mitigated or avoided The contemporary author Carl Hiassen echoes Harris when he writes: “Unfortunately for writers, real life is getting way too funny and far-fetched…the daily news seems to be scripted by David Lynch Fact is routinely more fantastic than fiction.”28 Or at least the sensational, tail-of-the-bell-curve facts routinely reported in the media are Hiassen offers advice to his peers to be “exceptionally choosy about their material,” for often it is simply “too true to be good.” He writes that he was often asked if the Elian Gonzalez saga would ever make it into his novels, and he replied that “real-life drama defies satire.” Such outlandish events, even if they can happen in real life, are too bizarre to be 27 28 Ibid, p 104 Hiassen, Writers on Writing 10 Annotation / Alexander Epstein “Keeping a safe distance between professors and him was still important.”38 It is well known in social psychology that people’s beliefs about themselves and the social world persist even after the evidence supporting these beliefs is discredited, a fact called the perseverance effect Derek characterizes high school teachers as “brutish” and dentists as “evil,” blanket statements that are easy to make All too often, people not take the time or not have the desire to rationally consider the situational causes of someone’s behavior, and they develop an internal (or dispositional) attribution—attribute the behavior to the person’s character, attitude, or personality Due to correspondence bias, they are more likely to form dispositional than situational attributions (e.g., that the teachers are brutish rather than overworked) in the absence of supporting evidence, and this is called the fundamental attribution error It is easy to apply this error to a whole group of people in society, such as all teachers in Derek’s case, and it then becomes the ultimate attribution error It is unfortunately a very plausible behavior Derek later encounters “an attractive Italian-looking student in a sharp pink and white blouse.” Elena’s physical attractiveness is the spark for Derek’s initial interest, an experience common sense and psychology both support They grow to like each other as they continue seeing each other frequently over the summer, demonstrating the mere exposure effect—the finding that the more exposure one has to a stimulus, the more apt one is to like it At the first lecture with Dr Fishman, Derek’s negative stereotype immediately comes back: “He reminded Derek of a James Bond villain, always composed and mirthfully evil.”39 It then turns out that no one in the class wishes to solve the first board problem, and no one raises their hand to correct Derek Why? The board problem may 38 39 Epstein, “Chaos Theory,” p Ibid, p 20 Annotation / Alexander Epstein be difficult, but the students are also experiencing the spotlight effect, which, as the name suggests, is the tendency of people to overestimate how much others are watching their actions or appearances and making judgments (internal attributions) about them No one wants to be wrong in front of their classmates, like Derek, “who stood bewildered, indignant, and trapped,” but his classmates not care nearly as much about his plight as he does, and they will probably forget it before long Fortunately, having the consonant cognition of a carefree weekend with Elena successfully reduces (and temporarily eliminates) his dissonance from feeling foolish Later in class, however, Derek’s very accessible prejudice—a hostile or negative attitude toward a member of a given group— makes him loathe the professor’s voice, “more somniferous and yet more agitating than any other.” The consistency of Fishman whispering to Elena followed by him being “pitted against his girlfriend” each time leads him to conclude that Fishman is actively plotting against him; this intuitive conclusion based on patterns is governed in psychology theory by a thought process called the covariation model Social norms, deindividuation and loss of responsibility in a group all result in Derek’s classmates remaining quiet rather than saying anything to Fishman when he expels their peer Even Elena stays quiet, at least in part due to her public compliance despite her lack of private acceptance of the situation—she is, simply put, too scared to rock the boat Yet later, she seems to defend Fishman: “maybe he just had a really bad day.” Surely Elena forms situational attributions about him largely because she recommended him to Derek even though no one forced her to so; since there was no external reward or obligation for her action, according to dissonance theory, she internally justifies it (“I’m a decent person, and I recommended Fishman, so of course he’s an excellent professor.”) But to 21 Annotation / Alexander Epstein Derek (who has no knowledge of insufficient justification) these sound like excuses (or worse) because he can’t stand Fishman After overhearing about the barbeque, another classic instance of frustration-aggression theory plays out “Only one person could be Fishman’s guest at the barbeque, and he had chosen Elena And that was that.” Prevented from attaining his goal of joining Elena, Derek proceeds to aggressively sabotage Fishman’s lecture, during which Fishman pathetically employs a consonant cognition to try to reduce his dissonance after “a minor arithmetic error” and subsequent mayhem embarrass him with the spotlight effect Elena and Derek’s internal-external attributions of Fishman continue to conflict through their celebratory dinner After Derek has crashed the barbeque at Fishman’s house and hears about the professor’s woes as a result of him, his internal attribution (or judgment) of Fishman perseveres: “was it even possible for the man to break down like that?” This is also plausible from a dissonance standpoint, as accepting blame would serve to increase his dissonance and cause him distress Hints of postdecision dissonance—aroused after he makes his decision to abandon both Elena and Fishman—suggest that he will attempt to self-justify his behavior, burning his bridges to both of them “Chaos Theory” is in most respects as plausible and consistent with the psychological laws of human nature as “Accomplice,” although the somewhat irrational temperament of the protagonist may for some readers make it less so Now, so as not to belabor the coding process of the remaining two short stories, much more compendious accounts of each are offered, focusing primarily on their deficiencies in plausibility 22 Annotation / Alexander Epstein The psychological plausibility of the first of the two original stories written for this project suffers compared to the second “You Need a Liz” is about a college student, Kevin, who encounters a girl, Liz, who closely resembles his girlfriend Christine Because of the girls’ perceived similarities, he feels emboldened enough to start dating them both (“twice the Christine”40), an ambition that lasts only so long before the inevitable unraveling One of the plausible parts of the story is the central theme of Kevin becoming attracted to women at social dances This is plausible firstly because the excitement or arousal that stems from music and the effort to be musical can be partially misattributed to the attractiveness of the partner The concept called misattribution of arousal stems from a law of human nature described by the two-factor theory of emotion: people feel physiological arousal, and then they seek an appropriate explanation for it Since people are not perfect, sometimes their explanations are not perfect either, and an attractive partner is a very salient possibility for why one’s heart would be racing Second, meeting at a social dance implies the common interest and experience of dancing, and similarity is strongly linked to initial attraction in relationships There are other strong parts of the story that evoke informational social influence (the “slogan generator”), dissonance reduction, self-perception theory (Liz deciding she feels comfortable with Kevin), group polarization (the “mood killers” on the bus), introspection, and curiously, the self-fulfilling prophecy (Liz thinking she may know Kevin from before because he acts that way toward her) However, the basic premise of the story—the fact that Kevin wishes to date someone almost identical to his existing girlfriend—seems dubious Social psychology refers to a comparison level for alternatives, people’s expectations about the level of rewards and punishments they 40 Epstein, “You Need a Liz,” p 23 Annotation / Alexander Epstein would get in an alternative relationship If it is much more favorable than their present comparison level, then they will be motivated to pursue the other relationship But Liz offers no such advantages over Christine, so Kevin’s behavior strikes the reader as irrational The “laws of human nature,” as the Harris hypothesis would say, are not being “subsumed.” If Kevin’s behavior is implausible, then Liz’s reaction when she meets her former roommate Christine and discovers the truth of Kevin’s double-dating is perhaps even less plausible: “Liz evidently recognized Christine but said nothing… Liz’s smile faded to uncertainty.” Liz continues to be silent and passive as Christine and Kevin sort out the mess without any input from her, but surely such an insult to Liz’s pride would lead to an act of aggression, whether verbal or physical Direct provocation that is deliberate and not situational (“Oops, I started dating a second girl by accident”) is directly linked to aggression, yet Liz does not even appear to be resisting Such shortfalls in the story’s plausibility compromise its effectiveness in engaging the reader, who cannot avoid being distracted as he or she contemplates why Kevin or Liz are doing what they are doing This is not to say that “You Need a Liz” is not engaging, but in reading it, one cannot help but sense that it has not reached its full potential When a reader is sufficiently baffled by the cause and effect of character interactions, it can become difficult to focus on the story itself Like poor grammar, implausible character behavior is not invisible and draws away the reader’s precious attention; the net effect is that it impedes the intellectually satisfying comprehension of the story as a whole Every gear and belt in an engine must be arranged and related in certain ways for the machine to function, and in much the same manner, the attitudes and behaviors of characters in social 24 Annotation / Alexander Epstein situations must reflect the workings of social psychology for the narrative to enjoy undivided attention The last of the four pieces analyzed shed light on the case when many aspects of the story appear to be inconsistent with social psychology The interaction between the two main characters in “They’re Not Your Husband” is so implausible that the reader almost feels uncomfortable The sometimes passive, sometimes almost inexplicably motivated reaction of Doreen to her husband’s demand for her to lose weight causes the reader to stop and ask, “Why is she acting this way?” The reader’s incredulity is justified when the story is coded and telltale deviations from human nature emerge Earl, the husband, overhears customers at the restaurant where Doreen works mock her chubbiness It is both intuitive and psychologically true that overheard messages clearly not intended to be persuasive are, for that very reason, highly persuasive So far, so good However, Earl then accosts his wife: “I hate to say anything, but I think you’d better consider going on a diet I mean it, I’m serious I think you could stand to lose a few pounds.” Her response: “’You never said anything before.’ She raised her nightgown over her hips and turned to look at her stomach in the mirror.” Then, without further convincing, she capitulates peacefully: “’Maybe you’re right.” She dropped her nightgown and looked at him.” While the Christian plea to “turn the other cheek” is noble advice, most people not take it, as has been illustrated in countless experiments in and out of the laboratory Aggression often stems from the need to reciprocate after being provoked by intentional aggressive behavior from another person, such as Earl rudely accusing his wife of being fat If Doreen’s self-esteem were low, she would likely either cry or vent her anger; and if it were high, she would probably defend herself and 25 Annotation / Alexander Epstein perhaps show aggression, as well Yet she does neither and the spousal relationship seems unaffected; in fact, she permits Earl’s zealous oversight of her dieting If the dynamic were different such that Earl were less controlling, then insufficient justification —becoming convinced that something one were not forced to is desirable because one would feel foolish voluntarily doing something undesirable—could explain Doreen’s actions On the other hand, if Doreen were less irresolute and never complained about the dieting, then obedience to authority and the normative social influence of her husband (an immediate and important “group”) could explain her actions But neither principle works here There is clearly an external justification for her dieting—Earl—and since people tend to overestimate external reasons for their behavior and to underestimate internal reasons (the overjustification effect), any real desire on Doreen’s part to diet should wane with continued pressure from Earl, for she will have no intrinsic motivation for something she is forced or incentivized to It is like the classic psychology joke about the old man who was taunted by a group of kids and one day decided to start paying them to taunt him until they were taunting him for the money; then he paid them less and less, until he finally paid nothing, at which point they no longer had any desire to taunt him Returning to the character Doreen, while she does display some of the public compliance typical in obedience, she carelessly breaks her diet at one point and voices her coworkers’ (but not her own) concern And she seems to privately accept the need for the diet, too: “I’ll give it a try You’ve convinced me.” At the end, she just shrugs when she points out her husband to her coworker after he has just embarrassed her The shrug epitomizes the implausibly unresponsive, indifferent Doreen and the oddly stable marriage that has produced children and no apparent problems in the household 26 Annotation / Alexander Epstein It is impossible to read “They’re Not Your Husband” without stopping often to try to extract the meaning of its character interactions The reader’s intuitive understanding of the laws of human nature tell him or her that the pieces of the puzzle not fit, that the characters’ behaviors not make sense in the situations and contexts in which the author places them This can make the reader’s experience frustrating, as it obfuscates his or her goal of delving past the implicit psychology and into the unique, fresh aspects of the story that make the events and people in it worth the time Indeed, when the reader perceives that he or she is being prevented from attaining this goal, frustration-aggression theory predicts the increased probability of an aggressive response—or at least putting down the book d Conclusion After the coding and analysis of the four short stories were completed, the collective evidence suggests that psychological plausibility is indeed linked to the engagement of a story with the reader, although it is not possible to say how it generally impacts the reader’s enjoyment or appreciation of short fiction The conclusion certainly supports the significance of the Harris hypothesis, which motivated this study with its proposition that the reader possesses an intuitive scientific lens and that “characterization and the formation of character” should thus be “intellectually satisfying” by “subsuming the laws of human nature.” Harris further asserted that “all satisfaction in reading fiction must depend on our feeling that what we are reading is generally plausible.” This sweeping claim cannot be proved or disproved, but at least when the scope is restricted to short realistic fiction, it appears to be valid insofar as characters’ deviations from 27 Annotation / Alexander Epstein understandable, everyday behavior can cause a reader to stumble incredulously and become distracted from the overall narrative—a serious problem given the notion that short stories are meant to be read in one sitting Due to the small sample size of four stories analyzed in this project, it is difficult to isolate patterns of how convincingly different categories of psychological principles are conveyed in fiction However, the same kind of lapse in plausibility occurs in both “You Need a Liz” and in “They’re Not Your Husband” when Liz and Doreen remain inexplicably passive and indifferent despite the provocation and wrongdoing they are dealt Neither character appears to be inherently “weak,” but it may be a particularly difficult challenge in writing plausible fiction to depict nonviolent women who have been wronged and who may be suffering from low self esteem, obeying someone, conforming to their peers, or rationalizing their own behavior due to insufficient external justification No other psychological principles emerged as consistently misrepresented in the stories, suggesting that authors are fully capable of incorporating all manners of plausible character interaction in their short stories Thus, this interdisciplinary study holds implications both for academia and for all manners of fiction writers, especially for writers of short fiction Creativity with grammar, it has been said before, must be wielded carefully by the author, lest it detract from the whole and make itself known Wanton creativity with how characters behave in social situations which have universal influence on all human beings similarly draws attention to itself Ensuring that the laws of human nature are not uncouthly violated is advice that the writer of short fiction would be wise to bear in mind 28 Annotation / Alexander Epstein III Reflection This has been one of the largest—actually, the largest—self-directed humanities project I have ever undertaken Needless to say, the process of arriving at this point has been both fruitful and stimulating, but also no easy task My first inkling of an AHS Capstone project occurred to me last spring, when I fell in love with the Short Narrative class at Wellesley Short story writing was an invigorating and eye-opening experience that catalyzed my existing (though recently latent) writing talents My abilities to observe and to write engagingly grew immensely in Professor Sides’ class The following fall I continued my study of short fiction at Brandeis while discovering another topic that I was passionate about: social psychology Professor Akert’s Social Psychology class at Wellesley instilled in me an appreciation and understanding of the discipline that extended far beyond the classroom The two areas became my AHS Depth for the Olin degree requirement, and it was only natural as I planned for Advanced Fiction Writing this spring to launch into the Capstone When I attended the preliminary meeting in December, I only had a vague notion of combining short fiction with social psychology for my project By the time the Capstone class began in January, I was not much closer to narrowing the topic down, although I had read short stories voraciously over the break to get ahead In my initial proposal for the project on January 30, I wrote: “The topic of my Capstone project is generally fiction writing, and more specifically, short narrative that attempts to integrate social psychological authenticity.” This was about all I knew at the time, and the rest of the proposal reflected that I fancied seeing whether I could “craft a couple of short 29 Annotation / Alexander Epstein stories as compelling as those by authors along the lines of Alice Munro, Catherine Brady, or Nell Freudenberger.” The naïveté is evident now, but I was rather unsure for a while of how best to concretize what I wanted and was capable of doing Narrowing the topic of study and merging the two disciplines were two tremendous challenges that I needed to resolve I had so much material and knowledge gathered for the project that I was sifting through it daily, but without knowing exactly what to look for, it was inefficient It was helpful to meet with my section leader both on scheduled class time and often outside of class to discuss iterations of my proposal and the most promising directions to take the project These reviews went a long way toward preserving sanity and not wasting much time on unfeasible ideas For instance, my section leader immediately dismissed the notion of trying to write short stories that would “have some of the elements” of stories by well-known writers She also wisely guided me away from the can of worms that is labeling fiction in terms of “good” or “bad.” Who is to say, after all, that one story is any better than another when some other person will claim the opposite is true? When dealing with fiction, it is very easy for evaluations to fall back to a holistic positive or negative reaction This is understandable and to some degree unavoidable, but such evaluations needed to be objectified How to objectify the subjective? By holding it up to an objective mirror, of course In other words, enter social psychology Combining social psychology with my writing was a true work of synthesis The two disciplines never crossed paths in my mind before, but now they had to share beds I was surprised at how difficult this initially was Should I try to write stories with explicit consideration for a given list of principles from psychology? For example, should I pen a 30 Annotation / Alexander Epstein story that elucidates insufficient justification, fundamental attribution error, diffusion of responsibility and self-evaluation maintenance theory, and then look back and see if it’s at all realistic? That seemed as though it might be doable, at least until I sat down and tried it Then I realized how unnatural and topsy-turvy the approach was—nothing more than a curious thought experiment It struck me at some point that pure psychology should not be intertwined with the writing process, but that it was a promising tool for looking at writing that has already been written and for dissecting it I just needed some stimulus to define what precisely psychology was supposed to look at That stimulus emerged when I performed scholarly searches for psychology in fiction, a very sparsely populated border, as I discovered The seminal Robert T Harris article was enough to convince me that plausibility in fiction was a very plausible prospect for my project Many of the arguments in the article had already been drifting through my mind and some of these I had even tentatively mentioned to my section leader But once I discovered that another academic had thought along the same lines, I examined the literature that followed, including Paul Welsh’s rebuttal, Sparshott, and others I was emboldened to pursue my investigation of the idea that “plausibility” is a significant factor in stories that are “engaging and enjoyable”— I made sure not to consider the forbidden “good” that Harris used, and sought out-of-the-box modes of approaching the problem By February 13, I had conceived of coding stories for universal psychological processes as well as the two-plus-two-story format After that, it was a matter of getting lots of short fiction reading done, reading through the “Writers on Writing” column, brushing up on my social psychology, and writing two original short stories I 31 Annotation / Alexander Epstein deliberately linked my writing of the stories to my Wellesley class, which assured my timely completion of them and access to helpful feedback for improving and revising them Their revisions proved time consuming, since I was taking into account comments from my Wellesley professor, classmates, and section leader all at once The coding of the stories for instances of “laws of human nature” was a unique task that at first was incredibly daunting But it seemed daunting precisely because it was unique and new Once I had most of the basic concepts from social psychology accessible and on the tip of my tongue (or fingers), far less page-flipping was required to identify these concepts in the stories, and I was surprised when I grew to enjoy this analysis toward the end As in any self-directed project, once the patterns were established, the rest was a relative piece of cake It was like baking cookies or molding plastic; once I had the dough or the mold, the rest fell into place Relating the results of the coding compendiously turned out to be difficult I felt there was simply too much to say about the intricacies of every psychological facet that I extracted from the four stories The level of psychological detail I perceived in the stories once I had the hang of it astounded me, both in my original ones and in the published ones I actively shortened what I wrote and tried to equally address the stories I was afraid that an authorial bias might sway my ability to objectively evaluate the experiences of reading the stories However, I found that I felt sufficiently distanced from my two stories while coding them, for my perception of them did not seem markedly different I could objectify them and not be distracted by knowing the real-life events that inspired bits and pieces of them Indeed it seems to me that my methods were 32 Annotation / Alexander Epstein as well-adapted and developed as they could have been for the purposes of my project, and I cannot think of any major changes I would make were I to the project over In the end, despite the objectivity of social psychological coding of the stories, which made the analysis of “plausibility” much more scientific than Harris’s, the link to an “engaging and enjoyable” reading experience remains to some degree a subjective conclusion The limitation lies, I believe, in generalizing my personal reactions to a wider readership But since I independently arrived at my decisions about which stories were most likable and which were most plausible, it stands to reason that the study does carry weight and adds a very valuable and concrete perspective to the scholarly dialogue It is certainly the most scientific in nature and method, even as it supports—in a more limited scope—the philosophically fluffy but worthwhile Harris hypothesis Even if academics never embrace it, it is still very edifying and helpful knowledge for the writer in me And if it makes me a better writer and amateur social psychologist, it will all have been worth it Appendix 33 Annotation / Alexander Epstein Bernays, Anne, and Pamela Painter What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers College Ed 2nd Ed New York: Pearson Longman, 2004 Moore, Lorrie, ed The Best American Short Stories 2004 New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004 Shun-Lien Bynum, Sarah “Accomplice.” The Best American Short Stories 2004 New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004, 58-75 Aronson, Elliot, Timothy D Wilson, and Robin M Akert Social Psychology 5th Edition Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005 Various authors “Writers on Writing.” New York Times (1999-2001) http://www.nytimes.com/books/specials/writers.html?_r=1 Carver, Raymond “They’re Not Your Husband.” Chicago Review, 42 (1996), 145-151 Harris, Robert T “Plausibility in Fiction.” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol 49, No (Jan 3, 1952), 5-10 Welsh, Paul “Hypotheses, Plausibility, and Fiction.” The Philosophical Review, Vol 62, No (Jan., 1953), 102-107 Sparshott, F E “Truth in Fiction.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol 26, No (Autumn, 1967), 3-7 Epstein, Alexander “You Need a Liz.” March 7, 2006 Epstein, Alexander “Chaos Theory.” April 11, 2006 34