It’s Just Another Day In Big Bear City, California by Ann Beattie, 1974
The magic trick:
Creating a strange time capsule of mundane details
A is for Ann.
Weird early story from Ann Beattie today on the website. It seems to want to crib the humorous weirdness from Barthelme and Coover that surely was floating around literary circles at the time. Beattie manages that appropriation awkwardly, and the story never gets comfortable in its own skin.
Nevertheless, I really liked it.
You can ignore the parts that try on other authors’ styles for size and focus on the stuff that would later come to define Beattie’s own trademarks – the flat dialogue, the mundane plot points, the vague ending that indicates the same feelings of ennui in perpetuity.
I don’t know why but I especially loved the little references to regular life in this story. The cost of greeting cards, the La-Z-Boy recliner, the soda machine that doesn’t work. It’s almost like a time capsule. A weird, pointless time capsule.
And that’s quite a trick on Beattie’s part.
The selection:
“Now the Air Force is even admitting that it’s tied up with them,” Big Bear says from his La-Z-Boy reclining chair.
“What do they say?”
“I just told you. All those sightings over Nebraska. The Air Force is coming out and admitting it.”
“What do they say, Bear?”
“You love this subject, don’t you? You love to talk about the spacemen.”
“Who brought it up?” Estelle says.
“I did. I know you love the subject,” Big Bear says.
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