I also love the way you use the eroticism of rape in "Chantelle," but I find a troubling element here. This time, however, the problem for me lies not in the fact that your story can make the rapist intruder, and the knife, incredibly erotic . . . the problem for me lies in the fact that the ending turns the story into a deception on the reader. . . .
Now perhaps I'm reading the story incorrectly--it is a very complex story, and there are a lot of layers--but when I first read this story, the phone call at the ending was a complete surprise. This was the first time I saw that the narrator knew the rapist would not do any harm, and that this entire story is a manipulation of Chantelle, and not a real threat at all. I found this to be a manipulation of the reader, or at least me, anyway.
Yes, after re-reading, I find you did drop clues . . . The first line, the glancing at the watch (when is my delivery boy coming), but in the first- person, present-tense narrative that drives this story so powerfully, the narrator comes across as much surprised as Chantelle to find a delivery boy with a knife.
Even after careful re-reading, when I find a perhaps more accurate reading, where the narrator is expecting the intruder, but not the knife, and not exactly what the "rapist" will do, and that this element of surprise is as much a part of the game as the forced seduction of Chantelle, I still find a gnawing problem in that the reader is being manipulated unfairly, every bit as much as Chantelle.
For me the crux of the problem is illustrated with lines like "I tease the head with flicking tongue until the growing fever in the eyes I HAVE NOT DARED GLANCE AWAY FROM [emphasis mine] warns me that teasing will not be permitted for long. And I suddenly realize that I find this man beautiful after all, and if he hadn't had a knife to my throat I might have wanted this as much as he did. It is then that I first begin to tremble. . ." These lines should be addressing the same moral dilemma addressed in "Mint in your Throat," (a victim can experience arousal while being raped, and this only deepens the problem of recovery) but if the rapist is not really a rapist, then we are faced with another quandry entirely. Now we are faced with the narrator as the rapist, in the way she has manipulated the situation to have sex with Chantelle, which I guess may also be the point you're trying to make, and I can respect that, but can you make the point without deceiving the reader unfairly?
Nonetheless, though I find the premise is intrinsically flawed, I still find this an incredibly beautiful story. The last two paragraphs (before the rapist calls and apologizes) when the narrator realizes that this will be the first and only time she can have Chantelle are deeply moving. Have you considered ending the story here? Does it, in the end, matter that the rapist was invited by the narrator? Would it make sense to return to the beginning line:
" . . . The memory of her arching against me. And the chance that this night has changed her mind about what she wants...although it will take time to know for certain. I lay back down against her, realizing that she is somehow, impossibly, asleep. I am suddenly eager to join her."
***
"She still doesn't know."
****
(later mail)
In your response to my discussion of "Chantelle," you say:
>As for Chantelle -- well, I meant to deceive the reader. In some
sense,
>I think readers have it too easy most of the time -- they assume
things,
>and get crotchety when forced to question those assumptions. See
>"Morningsong" for a simpler example of this. And thematically, the
>deception of the reader echoes the deception of Chantelle -- and the
>narrator's own deception of self.
Well, I have to say that your ability to force readers to question their assumptions is one of the things I admire most about your writing. You don't back away from the tough issues, and you explore sexuality and humanity in all of its delicious complexity. But there's something about the ending of "Chantelle" that's still nagging at me. Even when I accept the deception of the reader as an echo of the deception of Chantelle and the narrator's deception of herself. In fact, if the narrator is lying to HERSELF about what is happening, she must, BY NECESSITY in a first person narrative, be lying to the reader. But even when I concede this fact, something's not quite right here.
And, I must confess, I hadn't yet read "Morningsong" when I commented on the deception in "Chantelle." I have read it now, and if the assumption in "Morningsong" you are referring to has to do with the gender of the narrator, here I don't have a problem with your handling of the "deception of the reader." Here, I find a sneaky, and effective way of trying to explain the attraction one man might feel for another man to a society taught to find such acts repulsive. If a homophobe reads the narrator as a woman, and finds himself face to face with two gay men at the end of the story, told from the intimate, first person view point of a gay man, he will either be VERY "crotchety," and never read M.A. Mohanraj again, or have to suck in his breath, and take another look at his assumptions about life. THIS in my mind is simply good writing. You draw your readers into a sexual experience and after the readers have gone through it with you, you present them with a reversal that should leave them with a stronger understanding about not only homosexual love, but love and humanity in general. Sex and play and love are all presented in this story as something as natural and easy as waking up in the morning.
But "Chantelle." Ah the narrator here, sly seductress, is more troublesome to me. The narrator in "Morningsong" never pretended to be anything other than who he is to the reader. (And why WOULD he feel it necessary to mention his gender? He knows he's a man, and he knows he's gay. What's the problem?) Any deception here is provided by the READER filling in the blanks. But the narrator in Chantelle not only conveniently leaves out her knowledge of the "rapist," she actively uses deceptive language to lead the reader away from this knowledge. Language, it seems to me, that she wouldn't use even to deceive herself.
I can understand a certain amount of lying to herself to keep the thrill of danger in the game she is playing with Chantelle . . . When she surrenders herself as the "victim," in place of Chantelle, she's obviously fooling herself if she thinks she's truly a hero by saving Chantelle from the "rapist" she herself invited to the house. And I suppose this can all be part of the game that the narrator is playing on everyone, including herself. But there's still something nagging me about this story. . . . Something I can't quite put my finger on yet.
>I didn't plan out "Chantelle" -- the story evolved as I wrote it. I
>didn't know what the ending would be when I started it -- at least,
not
>consciously. And in some sense, that may explain why it doesn't
quite
>work for you -- I may just not have gotten the technique quite right.
I
>knew from the beginning of "Morningsong" that the protagonist was a man
-- I
>didn't know from the beginning of "Chantelle" that the protagonist was
a
>conscious collaborator. So I suspect there probably are some bare
spots
>in the story, some thin stretchings which could have been better
worded,
>been more 'in the head' of the protagonist throughout.
>Ah well. It was undoubtedly the best story I wrote back in '93 in
many
>ways -- or at least the most ambitious. Not so surprising that my
reach
>may have exceeded my grasp a bit...
(later mail)
Not surprising at all. And I STILL think this is one of your best stories. . . .
And let me confess, in the interest of being fair, I have always had difficulty with the unreliable narrator. Henry James' fiction often missed me on first reading for this reason. I'm just a gullible reader, what can I say. I definitely took this narrator at face value, swallowed down each word as gospel, until the ending forced me to re-examine my assumptions about the narrator. Which is what you were aiming at, after all.
So, now let's take a look at the structure of Chantelle and how the deception plays out. We have three characters, two with agendas. The rapist has a thirst, like most men, for watching lesbian sex, and loves to dominate women. The narrator, wants Chantelle, but also may have a bit of an urge to play the role of sex slave, something SHE may not be quite willing to admit yet, as well as the knight in shining armor rescuing her damsel in distress. And poor Chantelle, "She still doesn't know" what she wants. Have I finally accurately delineated the motivations of your characters?
Bare spots in the story? I think at this point I am going to have to ultimately defer to other readers . . . The problem with approaching a story critically, is that it is a bit like trying to explain the punch line of a joke to someone who didn't get it. If you don't get the joke, you will never laugh, even after someone has explained the point. Especially when someone has explained the point.
And this is the danger of using an unreliable narrator. But the payoff of using this technique, when everything is working, is huge. The reader, sucked into the unfolding saga word by word, reaches the ending and must ultimately turn his or her world inside out in order to understand the story. If this is the punchline to a joke, the result is laughter. If this is the climax of a sexual encounter, the result is orgasm. If this is the pivot point of a parable, the result can be enlightenment.
I must say, that despite all my crotchety bitching and moaning, this is an intricately woven story, with myriad threads intertwining like counterpoint. I'm confident it will reveal something new every time I return to it.
-- Everett Wilson