Get Your Shorts in a Bunch discussion

This thread is now open for discussion. Please remember to mark all spoilers!

Okay...I'll confess to being BIG TIME behind when it comes to posting. I'm up to date on the stories, but not the posts. I intend to remedy that tomorrow. For now, here's what I thought about Bitter Grounds:

I LOVED it! Is that enough of a post? ;-) J/K! Anyway, my significant other is from NOLA (New Orleans, LA), and he has told me some pretty...well...pretty NASTY and ultra-violent stories about that town (I've never been; I'm kinda scared to go, but he's heartset on going for vacation this year! How can I deny him his adopted hometown?!?! Oh, love! It makes us do things we normally wouldn't, I guess, although I MAY use this story as my plea against it!). Seems to me like Mr. Gaiman may know the town pretty well. I love how Mr. Anderton is like a coffee girl. He is supposed to represent one, right? Sometimes I think I imagine too many things going on and I miss the main point. But that is what I took from this story, and I thought the set-up around it was primo. I thought it was hilarious when he mixed up Zora Neale Hurston and Zelda Fitzgerald up, and I also wonder if all academic conferences are so stodgy and 'rehearsed.' Another funny part were the subtitles in the bar saying 'slaughter' instead of 'laughter.' This is one of those stories that is kinda hard to talk about without giving away spoilers so I'm a bit flummoxed lol. So I'll just leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

"There are doors, after all, between the living and the dead, and they swing in both directions." (page 106)

What did you think, Becky?

~Teresa~

I've never been to New Orleans, but I have always wanted to... not for the partying or the craziness or even the music (I'm not into any of those things and I'm NOT a jazz fan) or because of Anne Rice (GAG ME.) but because of that quality that Neil captures so well here. That gothic kind of eeriness and dark unknown and mysticism and oddity... mixed with the everyday "That's just New Orleans" vibe. LOL At least that's how I imagine it.

Regarding your comment... It's not really Mr. Anderton. (view spoiler)[It's the nameless dead-inside guy who ran away from his life. He stole his identity when Anderton went "missing". He's the one that's like the coffee girls.

But here's my thought - is he really reliable as a narrator? I mean, we see him as the Good Samaritan who has no plans so he's just gonna give this guy a ride, but what kind of person just walks away from their life? I'm convinced that he's a sociopath. He played out on Anderton (and Anderton's colleague) the things that he imagined could happen to him. I feel like he did this just to see what would happen. Every time someone he's met is left alone with a 3rd party, they seem to disappear. So I think he makes up those 3rd parties.

For instance, when he threw his phone out the window, he thought to himself "I wonder if someone will pick it up and then have my life." So, when Anderton needed a ride, I think he gave him one... but I think the way we are told it happened is a lie. I think they got there too late, and Nameless took the opportunity and killed him and stole his life. He then fudged the truth a bit, that the tow guy was there and waiting, and that he left Anderton with him. He made the bit up about the mission to retrieve the wallet as his alibi. It doesn't need to be verifiable TO US... because we can't verify it. We can only take his version and believe it or not.

So then he gets to New Orleans, meets the colleague, does his spiel, then they go out and drink and talk to the ribbon girls. He leaves with one of them, and the colleague is left with the other... and never seen again.

I don't think either ribbon girl existed - or not in the way he said. They might have really been at the bar, but talking only. There was never any leaving with a girl... it was just a made up story to cover his actions.

So... I think that Nameless IS a zombie, of the "life sucks, so I will no longer follow life's conventions and just do whatever seems right in the moment" variety, and while technically alive, has lost his humanity, along with his tastebuds. LOL So he doesn't care anymore, he's just looking for a cheap thrill in the moment. (hide spoiler)]

I KNEW it wasn't really Anderton, but WOW! Your breakdowns are always so damn *perfect*!!! You really have a way of thinking about things that I don't lol. I knew that our narrator was, in essence, a coffee girl, but I didn't go so far as to make the 'unreliable narrator' connection. Well done!!! And, as always, thanks for your very valuable insight!!! :-)
~Teresa~

LOL Maybe I just see things this way because I'M a zombie! ;P

A book zombie! Arggg... lol

No, really though... I dunno... I saw Taking Lives, so I think it just triggered something in my brain that made a kind of association.

That's one thing that I love about Neil's stories though. They are always layered. You can see them in whatever way works for you, and they kind of fit no matter how you approach it. You can take the story at face value, or you can interpret it any number of ways. (view spoiler)[For instance, you could look at it from the gap perspective... how horrifying would it be to sit home waiting for a member of your family to come home with the milk... and they never come back. We have three families (potentially) who will now be going through this - Nameless's, Anderton's, and the colleague's.

They'll panic, call the police, search and hope and go through the stages of grief, and eventually realize that they'll never know what happened to them. Were they abducted? Murdered? Just disenchanted with their mundane life and didn't care enough about them to even say goodbye? (hide spoiler)]

I think it's important that the main character doesn't have a name though... Neil definitely falls in the "Names have power" camp, so choosing to leave him nameless is a deliberate means of showing that he could be anyone. You never know the people you encounter... It's a bit scary!

Teresa wrote: "A book zombie! Arggg... lol"

LOL Definitely that!