‘Gryphon’ by Charles Baxter

Gryphon by Charles Baxter, 1985

The magic trick:

Layering of considerations and responses

“Gryphon” features one of the more remarkable characters I’ve encountered in several months of story-reading. Miss Ferenczi shows up to our narrator’s class as a substitute teacher, and proceeds to deliver a strange blend of humor, subversion, and near-nihilism. If she weren’t so aloof, she might seem scarier. As she is, though, it’s purely fascinating.

So on one level, the story gives the reader the chance to consider the Miss Ferenczi Experience and respond. Then there is the level which serves as the story’s heart: not how we respond to Miss Ferenczi but how the narrator responds to Miss Ferenczi. That consideration, which the story mostly saves until the end, is what the reader is left to ponder.

And that’s quite a trick on Baxter’s part.

The selection:

“You think she’s seen all those angels?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t think she has,” Carl informed me. “I think she made that part up.”

“There’s a tree,” I said suddenly. I was looking out the window at the farms along Country Road H. I knew every barn, every broken windmill, every fence, every anhydrous ammonia tank, by heart. “There’s a tree that’s . . . that I’ve seen . . .”

“Don’t you try to do it,” Carl said. “You’ll just sound like a jerk.”

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