“Another Story”
Book 1, chapter 5; Book 2, chapter 3
Characters
1.5 A guy (unnamed), his friend (unnamed), girlfriend of the friend (Jenny)
2.3 Ray (who has been unfaithful to his wife and is seeking to allay a divorce by means of a letter), Clara (his wife), Maureen (their daughter), Katy (whom the letter is sent through), Janet (Ray’s mistress), Ralph (a friend of Ray’s), Anna (another mutual friend) Clara’s mother and father (unnamed), Connie Moran (whom Clara has sought out for legal counsel), Jack Walsh (Janet’s former boss), Bill Greenleaf (“Salesman of the Year” at Ray’s firm), Pastor Ingebretsen (priest Janet’s talk with.)
General Subject/ Plot
1.5: Story-telling. A man calls an old friend and, non-plussed by the way he receives the call, makes something up about their past –not the thing he’d intended to make up- which the man easily believes.
2.3: Infidelity. A man explains in a letter to his wife the reasons they should reconcile — it only happened the once, it was a human mistake committed under the influence, it is no reason to throw away eleven years of marriage.
Motifs
1.5 Jesus, blue suede jacket, Bomba the Jungle Boy, alcoholic friend, relationship from way back like in “lovers” etc., infidelity, Capwell’s, Los Angeles,
2.3 Letter from husband (like first “Another Story” and “Born Again” and “in the Bedroom…) Jesus, Happy as a clam (like first in the bedroom), alcohol, clothing, career advancement, salesman,
Notes
In the first “Another Story” the protagonist spontaneously creates a story of the past that was different from the one he’d intended to tell, the story of why their friendship had ended perhaps (though the caller too gets lost between the real past and his stories of it). In the second “Another Story” a cheating husband tells his wife a version of a story she’s undoubtedly heard before about how he was only unfaithful to her and one time and it didn’t mean very much and so on…. The first is a phone call between to men who’ve “fallen out of touch”, the second is a letter between a separated husband and wife (the friend tries to rattle the friend, the husband tries to calm the wife.) In the first, “Another” means “a different, a second”, in the second it indicates more of a repetition.
The second “Another Story” could almost be the letter of the first “In The Bedroom”: both include the phrase “happy as a clam.” Both mention Ralph, a friend of the husband. Both mention a woman named Janet, though in the first “In The Bedroom” she is the cousin of the wife, while in the second “In The Bedroom” she is the lover of the husband. (It is certainly possible that the lover of the husband in the first “In The Bedroom,” who is unnamed in this story, is also named Janet, but it seems unlikely Sorrentino would have us think so.)
A number of the chapters of A Strange Commonplace have this quality: there is nothing to prevent them from being a part of the same story line, but it seems unlikely. (Some chapters clearly couldn’t be part of the same story, some chapters clearly are, some chapters clearly fall somewhere in between.)
Instead of a story line or plot maybe the idea of a scatter plot graph is helpful. The real story is unknown and none of the chapters quite tell it –they are mere plots on the graph– while the story line is a sort of average of the plotted points, representative of a general drift or trend.
[…”The story was emerging into the eternal present of all stories, an insubstantial present, a chimera” –first Another Story.]
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