Assistant Editor Toni Judnitch: This year, I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at the finalists for The Cincinnati Review’s Robert and Adele Schiff Awards, and I fell in love with the winning story “For Future Reference: Notes on the 7-10 Split” by Patch Kirschenbaum, which will appear in Issue 18.1, out in May. I could go on and on about the striking (ha) images, characterization, and humor, but what really made this story stand out to me was its powerful use of second person point-of-view. While it’s not uncommon to find stories told in second person in our submissions queue, it’s rare to find a story where the choice was made purposefully to elevate a story on a metaphorical level. Similar to the way first person POV must be chosen for a narrative reason, second person must serve an essential purpose to the telling. Kirschenbaum lines up these pins and expertly knocks them down.
I can still remember the first time a professor assigned Lorrie Moore’s story “How to Become a Writer,” which is often regarded as THE second person POV story to know and love and teach and return to for a fresh dose of awe. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling like this story drastically affected the course of my life as a writer. For many of us, it broke what we had perceived to be “the rules,” showed us that we could take risks and challenge ourselves to try new forms and techniques. Part of the immense joy of writing is discovering that there are no rules.
Still, writers who take risks in this way need to do something a little deeper than merely show off a fun technique, and Kirschenbaum’s story (like Moore’s) does just that, functioning as a hidden first person narrator telling the story of a teenaged boy and his path into bowling as a way to deal with his parents’ recent divorce. The protagonist’s new position within a fracturing family causes him to become alienated from himself, and it takes an outside narrative perspective, putting the experiences on another, the “you” in order to understand the changes in his life from a safe distance.
Kirschenbaum also breaks the narrative up into numbered sections, which shows the speaker’s attempt at ordering these events logically to gain some sense of control. If the protagonist can control the narrative, he wields some power, even if the events of his story are beyond it. Readers learn early on what drives him after watching Trudy/Gerty bowl for the first time: “Soon you will live for that sound: the controlled chaos of a ten-pin explosion.” The character yearns to order the chaos he experiences and the narrative choices reflect that, making the use of the second person POV essential to the story as a whole.
Bowling as a plot point also combines with the story’s central themes in an exciting way. At first, the narrator doesn’t understand himself or the game, trying, like Trudy/Gerty, to be a “Power Stroker,” someone who blasts through the pins, but he discovers that isn’t the way to go when Rory, the owner of the bowling alley, starts giving him advice:
“I know you want to be a Power Stroker, but you’re bowling like a Cranker who has no idea what he’s doing, and you’re really not built to be anything but a Stroker, especially if you ever plan on moving up from that nine-pound Nerf Ball you use.”
Rory (a character who immediately and completely won my heart) tells him instead that he should “stop trying to be fancy.” This contrasts well with the POV. In order to tell the story, the narrator had to find a way to get it out in the way that works for him. He cannot “blast through” the narrative because he doesn’t fully (or isn’t ready to) understand the ways in which his life is being shaped and changed.
One of my favorite tricks in this piece are the powerful formal choices at the end. Kirschenbaum takes it a step further, his sections functioning like frames in a game. Interestingly, the story ends in section nine, right as the character takes his final turn. Readers are left in the in-between, unsure how things will end for the character, and this adds to the overall effect. The protagonist is there as well, having told his story the only way he can, managing to achieve some transitory control, to order the chaos he experiences in his home life by leaving readers in the lurch. Having gained experience and a new understanding of his role and identity, the protagonist lets go both metaphorically and physically, the ball hurtling toward a 7-10 split, between success and failure. He doesn’t know what the changes in his life will bring, and the story demonstrates that. It ends simply: “Let that sucker fly.”
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