Fitting Ends (22 page)
Most of the time, for me the ending comes when a character reaches a certain border. I remember, back in junior high, reading the old story by Frank R. Stockton called “The Lady or the Tiger?” You know that one: A king discovers that his daughter is having an affair with a young man who is not of royal blood. The young man is arrested, and his punishment is to be decided by the daughter herself. The young man stands in an arena, and the daughter must choose between two doorsâbehind one is a tiger that will tear her lover to shreds; behind the other is one of the daughter's rivals, whom the youth would then immediately marry. The princess gestures toward one of the doors, and the youth goes to open it. Frank R. Stockton says: “And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of that opened doorâthe lady, or the tiger?”
I still think of that ending a lot, and I feel like it has influenced my sense of closure. I tend to think of those doors, unopened, waiting for my character to turn the knob.
Q: Where does your subject matter come from? How much
were you drawing from your own life experiences when you
wrote this book?
A: This is always an awkward question for a fiction writerâobviously, one of the reasons to write fiction is so that you can pretend to be different people; to live through the eyes of people who are on a different path than you are.
Of course, I can't pretend that I don't share some personal history with many of my characters. Like many of my characters, I grew up in Nebraska. That landscape is very important to me. Like many of my characters, I moved from a rural to an urban area as a young man.
But I don't think any of the stories have much truly autobiographical material. There are versions of people I might have become, if I had made different choices. There are versions of people I love, but they are radically altered from the real-life versions. There are definitely versions of places that I know well, like Chicago and small-town Nebraska. But none of the stories are representative of my actual life. For me, one of the fun things is taking a little kernel of the world that I know wellâan image, a landscape, a personality quirk, or a telling bit of dialogueâand using it to build an entirely different world.
Q: One last question. How is your name pronounced?
A: It's easier than it looks. It's like “Shawn.” The name is apparently Old French/Gallic.
Dan Chaon
is the acclaimed author of
Among the Missing
, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is currently at work on his first novel.
Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion
Chaon has professed to being influenced by the well-known old story, “The Lady or the Tiger?” Like that story, many of the stories in
Fitting Ends
deliberately end on the edge of a moment, leaving the reader to decide what the future holds in store for a character. Do the stories point the reader toward a particular conclusion, or do they leave the unanswered questions entirely to the reader's own view of human nature?
In “Presentiment,” Rich thinks: “Love didn't have anything to do with the outside world: It just happened. Some mysterious brain chemistry set in, and you couldn't avoid it.” Is his love for his autistic son really so mysterious? How does this example of love compare with others in the book? Are some types of love more positive than others?
Many of the young characters in
Fitting Ends
exhibit a great dread of the future. What does their pessimism stem from? Is it a function of psychology? Family and social circumstances? The larger culture? Do you think these young adults will continue to face the world with such trepidation as they get older, or is there hope that they will grow out of it?
A review of
Fitting Ends
in the
Chicago Tribune
said, “Dan Chaon shows a marked affinity in both setting and sensibility with fellow Midwesterners Wright Morris and Willa Cather.” What is a “Midwestern sensibility”? Are there places in these stories that seem to particularly represent such a sensibility? Which aspects of Midwestern life does Chaon seem critical of, and which does he appear to view with affection?
In “Thirteen Windows,” the narrator admits that sometimes he sees things that aren't there, and many of the other characters in the book struggle with skewed perceptions of the world around them. To what extent are the various characters' problems a result of misinterpretations of reality? To what extent are the characters lying to themselves? Do you see some of the narrators as more clear-sighted and honest than others? Which ones seem most trustworthy?
“Chinchilla,” “Accidents,” and “Going Out” all present children who must cope with a parent's alcoholism or mental illness, but every child responds to his or her situation in a different way. Why? What are the factors that seem to influence each of these children the most?
Ghosts and ghostly visions figure prominently in several of the stories. In other stories a memory of a person's past self haunts the present. What do ghosts represent in the world of these stories? What would it take to dispel these ghosts?
Several of the characters in the book have made an effort to break loose from their small-town roots, and they are often in conflict with those they have left behind. What are the advantages and disadvantages of setting off on one's own, versus the decision to stay put and remain close to one's origins?
In his interview, Chaon talks of being concerned about the order in which the stories appear in
Fitting Ends.
How did you approach reading the stories in this book? Did you start with the first story and read straight through until the end, or did you skip around here and there? Would the order in which you read the stories change the effect of the book as a whole? Why do you think Chaon chose to place the stories in this particular order?
The epigraph of the book evokes Charles Dickens's
A Christmas Carol
, and Scrooge's desperate question to the Ghost of Christmas Future: “Are these the shadows of things that Will be, or are they the shadows of things that May be, only?” In what ways are these stories about fate, about the “shadows of things that Will be”? Are the characters' futures sealed, or is there hope for them to change? Are their ends really “fitting,” or should we to take the title of the collection ironically?
Also by Dan Chaon
Among the Missing
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 1995, 2003 by Dan Chaon
Reader's Guide Copyright © 2003 by Dan Chaon and The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in slightly different form by Northwestern University Press in 1995.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Ballantine Reader's Circle and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2002092792
First Ballantine Books Edition: April 2003
eISBN: 978-0-307-41526-4
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