Deb Olin Unferth’s short story, Voltaire Night

Deb Olin Unferth’s short story, Voltaire Night, appeared in the summer 2015 issue of The Paris Review. Unferth is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She writes fiction and creative non-fiction.

This 15 page short story is actually three stories in one, and it’s always exciting to read several stories told simultaneously. It’s the story of the narrator, a drunken writing teacher. It’s the story of her students, a group of adults, taking a writing course, with the emphasis on the story of one particular writing student. And it’s the abbreviated story of Voltaire’s Candide.

The story starts with a confession:  Our self-absorbed, first-person narrator is a frankly selfish, self-absorbed, flawed, weak, lovelorn lush. “I’m the one who started it. I was depressed as hell and I wanted to share my bad news. ‘Has anyone read Candide?’ I said. I don’t even recall what the bad news was but it must have had something to do with a man who didn’t love me anymore. In those days, I felt most of the time like someone had knocked me in the head with a brick, and even though I had stopped drinking, I had started again and the way I saw it, a real brick in the head would have been okay because then I’d be dead or at least unconscious,” 

This opening paragraph is brilliant. Our narrator  is telling us what a terrible person is, but she’s funny and seemingly honest, which makes her likable. She confesses to being a bit of a hack as a teacher---she teaches at a fancy university, but she teaches an adult-ed class, off campus. She is lowering our expectations---she is not going to be a hero in the traditional sense, but it’s a good bet she will find redemption by the end of the story anyway, as most interesting protagonists do. 

The best memoir writers write this way. Think of Mary Karr’s Lit, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Sarah Hepola’s Blackout. All these narrators admit right from the get go of being wayward  in some way---they are sleeping around, doing drugs, drinking too much. Their parents have died or almost destroyed them as they themselves try to live. They have vices and their lives are, by and large, train wrecks. In short, they are guaranteeing that reading their stories is going to be fun! This is a canny way to set up your story, whether it be fiction and creative non-fiction. The narrator/protagonist is a loser. (Of course, she’s also a very good writer, so the story is compelling and filled with specific details about life disasters.) The protagonist isn’t intimidating, she’s funny and likable  but she’s still a disaster with nowhere to go but up---though first, she might stumble and fall even further. 

I think of these narrators as “low rent protagonists.” They don’t demand too much of us at first, and the writing is so good it doesn’t cost us anything to keep reading about them. Within a few paragraphs, we are already beginning to root for them. This is a great trajectory for your protagonists in fiction and creative non-ficion.

Our narrator in Unferth’s story makes herself even more accessible as a low rent protagonist with a further confession: “Still, getting that job was my one obvous piece of luck that year. The pay wasn’t great, but it was decent and it beat the other adjunct work I was doing. I was teaching all over town and could barely pay the rent. I was drinking in the cheapest bars, driving home blind."

Here we go. It’s going to be a bumpy, interesting ride. and now, on page 24, our story really starts. The narrator introduces her students: “The people who took these adult-ed classes tended to be smart, overeducated for jobs that were no longer fulfilling or that had never satisfied in the first place---journalists, lawyers--and now, in their middle years, they recalled that they had once wanted something artists for their lives but it had not worked out, and despite whatever trappings they had---spouses, houses, tykes---they found themselves confronting a deep, colorless, meaninglessness each day.” So clearly, these characters are in need of redemption too. And fortunately, this seemingly sad sack of a drunken writing teacher likes her students: “Their writing---let’s be honest---was nothing to shout about. Not good, mostly unreadable. No control or sense of timing, no grasp of narrative beyond cliche. But often the language itself had personality, and a clear voice came through: sardonic, witty, self-deprecating, with a tarp of sad earnestness over it, all of which I liked, so I found it easy to read the pages they gave me and to encourage them.”

So, we have the beginning of the story of our narrator. We have the beginning of the story of the students. And now, we have the beginning of the story of Candide (page 24): "In Voltaire’s Candide, there’s a certain passage where a huge crowd wants to board a boat, all vying for the same seat Candide---luckless man, but in this one instance he is lucky and in possession of some extra cash---has offered to pay for. The seat will go, he says, to the man or woman most bad off among them. One by one they choose their woes and tell their tales. That scene---communal, classroom-like, someone in charge judging their stories and making promises no one could keep---these students, with me as their leader, reminded me of that. After the final class of my course of the school, the students suggested we go for a drink.” 

Uh oh. We know no good will come of this---and of course, we want to read all about it. Think about this when you’re writing your own stories. Prepare your reader for a delicious, well-written disaster.

The narrator takes us to a bar. A bar is a great place to set a scene---possibly the best place to set a scene. All sorts of debauchery and drama take place at a bar. People act out, get in trouble, topple over, fall in love, fight, make poor decisions---putting a scene in a bar is a great way to build action and steepen your narrative arc.

The narrator reveals to us, but not her students, that her boyfriend keeps leaving her (page 25). Then she urges her student to tell the stories of the the worst things that had happened to them. We lean in for more. Our narrator promises her students nothing---if they win, they just win “Voltaire Night.” They play anyway. Nothing is at stake, but of course, everything is. Our narrator plays Voltaire night with one writing class, and then she plays with another. She keeps playing---Voltaire Night is the most fun she’s having, but it’s dangerous too, and the danger she’s putting herself into makes her intriguing  She gets drunk with her students (a no-no, but of course, fascinating to read about): “We’d all be drunk, having closed down several places, and the folks from the suburbs missed the very last train and had to curl on a bench at the station, like criminals down on their luck 9which ween’t we all, in some way? ) until the five-thirty a.m. shuttle. But it was worth it, we all said, for how else could everyone have gotten a turn? How else could everyone have told their story?” (page 28) Our narrator is making bad decisions, her students are behaving badly, and we want to read all about it, we want her to dig herself further into a hole. “As for me, I’d arrive home at four in the morning and spend a few days cursing myself. The trouble I could get in for this. Unseemly. Voltaire night was out of control, a monster I had to rein in but didn’t know how to rein in. I didn’t want to rein it in. Voltaire night was the one night I looked forward to, all of that sitting around feeling for ourselves. I would have liked to do it every night.” (page 28)

And now, on page 29, five pages and almost 1/3 into this 15 page story, we get the worst story of all, the story told by a freelance designer, who was living in Hyde Park, with his pregnant wife. The stakes for him are already raised---he’s poor, his wife is pregnant, he doesn’t have a steady job, he needs money badly. Great set up for a protagonist. He agrees to do a 12 week experiment so that he can earn $15,000. People doing stupid things for money makes for a great plot. And then for seven pages, this new narrator (via Deb Olin Unwerth) tells us the story of how he came to do an experiment, which brought him some money, but also resulted in him not being present for the birth of his very damaged child. Our original narrator occasionally chimes in, but on the top of page 30, the new male narrator clearly asserts himself.

The narrator can’t see natural light for twelves weeks and he has to have a rectal thermometer inserted in his anus. Oy! But a great set up. Unferth is setting this narrator up to be miserable and of course, he becomes increasingly miserable. He has to sleep during the day and stay up at night, like a vampire. He sneaks around, stops working, but pretends to his wife that he still is (page 31). Meanwhile, there’s a baby in the making. Pregnancy often makes for good reading. We worry for the parents, we worry for the protagonist who is most invested in the pregnancy (in this case, the father.) The narrator is doing this terrible experiment and making these sacrifices and sneaking around for the benefit of his future daughter.  “But I thought of my coming daughter, how beautiful she’d be, how much like her mother, and I soldiered on. And one day it was five weeks left, and one day it was four weeks left, and one day it was three weeks left” (page 32.) He starts to hang out a bar and begins to drink too much. His apartment is hot, his wife is furious. His story is getting worse and worse and more and more intriguing.

Finally, he wakes up in his car (page 33.) He is exposed to sunlight and the experiment is not yet over. He has a hangover, and he’s run out of gas. Things are very, very bad.  He’s reached his lowest point, the point all protagonists have to reach in order for the reader to really worry and fear for them. And we fear for him. Will he lose the money? Will his wife leave him? What is happening to the baby? What now? He goes back to his apartment (page 34) and his wife is gone. “Outside, I stood by a signpost and threw up in the road. My daughter, my wife---I’d let them down in so many ways. I’d kept my own wife in the literal dark during the most trying months of her pregnancy, had ignored her, had done no freelance work, and now on top of that may have even lost the fifteen grand and would sink us into debt... Shaking, starving, still hungover, terrified and tired as hell. I took a shower as it got dark. I drove to the lab.” (page 34) 

He learns his wife has gone into labor and the rectal thermometer is removed (page 34.) He finally gets some relief. But the story isn’t over. His baby is seven weeks early. His butt is spasming and he’s in pain (note: there is humor here.) He’s exhausted and hungover. Things are still very bad for him. And then they get worse: On page 35, we are there for the birth of a baby (even in disaster, readers are riveted by births) and we learn this his baby girl has been born without any muscles. ”Holy mother of God,' said a nurse, and pulled her hands to her chest. 'Our Lord Jesus Christ…’ What? we said. What was it? I was too scared to let go of my wife’s hand and walk over there. 'What’s wrong?’ cried my wife, but they bundled the baby up and raced off with her, turning in the doorway to say something along the lines of, ‘We’ll be right back.’”

We’re at the bottom of page 35 here, almost at the end of the story. The tension continues to build: Now a baby is in peril. This is great tension building, and fantastically clever writing. Bad things keep getting worse for the male narrator. Meanwhile, the original female narrator inserts herself. There is now a vast difference between her story and his: “Things were beginning to take a slow turn for the better for me. A very slow creak was sounding in the wheel , but it was turning. I was managing to publish some stories at last. The horrible man was gone for good. It would be the beginning of a better life for me, though it did not feel better yet and it would take mea couple of years to roll my way out. Still a long road to happiness but I was seeing tiny points of light in the distance and I was heading toward them. I’d teach one more class after this one at that school, but my heart wasn’t in it and I didn’t do a very good job. The following year I got a tenure track position at a large university, a job I’d really wanted, and then I was gone   (pages 35-36).” 

Good for our female protagonist. What about our male? He is not certain his baby is alive. And then he finds out, on page 37, that the baby is alive but she has no muscle. Her condition is associated with a very short life span. The doctor calls her appearance “startling.” What could be worse? Your baby is alive but you aren’t allowed to see her? As readers, we are going crazy: Show us the baby. Show us the parents’ reaction. Unferth is keeping us in suspense, which is exactly where we want to be, as anxious as we are (and readers want to be anxiously await information and resolution. Don’t underestimate the power of this yearning.) The story soon ends: The male protagonist shows his classmates a picture of his daughter, now seven years old. And his wife thinks the baby is perfect. 

We learn, before we learn about the baby, that the male protagonist was dying  of stomach cancer (page 36.) But this is not nearly as shocking as his, and his wife’s acceptance, of their baby daughter’s strange appearance. And we, the reader, are left pondering this man’s fate: Was his the worst story ever? Or the best?

It’s a difficult question to answer. Maybe yes, maybe no. But it made for a brilliant  compelling, hard to put down, story.