What It Takes To Keep A Young Girl Alive by Jayne Anne Phillips, 1979
The magic trick:
Turning the normally nostalgic ‘tales from my amusement park summer’ into a desperate, sexually threatening slice of realism
A weekend double of very brief Jayne Anne Phillips stories from her acclaimed debut collection, Black Tickets.
There are many romantic retellings of summer jobs at amusement parks. It’s a fertile ground for nostalgia.
Here, though, we don’t get any warm, fuzzy memories. We get gray loneliness, desperation, and a constant – though vaguely described in the story – sexual threat imposed by the boys and men in town.
And that’s quite a trick on Phillips’s part.
The selection:
She signed her name and the recruiter told her to be there May 5th, everyone would have a lot of fun. Maple Point was trying to do outdo Disneyland and Sue was trying to leave home. They hired boys to cook and girls to serve food and run rides. Courtesy Corps girls were blonds in yellow suits and white gloves and broadbrim hats. They stood under white umbrellas and answered questions but Sue was a waitress at the Silver Nickel. Where everything was striped and a fake piano tinkled.
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