Weekly Response: Lorrie Moore's Bird's of America

                Lorrie Moore’s quirky, birdy characters in Birds of America  remind me of the characters in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. Portrayed in a real-to-life, nobody’s really normal type of way, I appreciate the characters in this book so much more than most of the completely normal or completely abnormal characters  I often come across in, say, TV shows and movies. Too often, characters fall under one extreme or the other, but I enjoyed the intricacies and complexities of these characters.

                I might be over-sharing when I say I could identify with almost all of these characters. (My particular favorite is Ruth in “Real Estate.” I think that’s my favorite piece in the collection, but I enjoyed them all).  Like the critics on the book jacket say, Moore seems to really focus on characterization. She hits on what it’s like to live in America in this modern era with precision and wit. The stories grow organically from her characters. I imagine she had a clear picture of who the story was about before she knew what the story was about. This is just a guess though. Thinking of characterization in such a focal way does have implications for my own writing though, because I have always assumed an author needed a story. Perhaps all she needs is a character to start with. This offers me a new perspective from which to view possibilities for future writing.

                I think the work is about, first and foremost, people…what the human experience brings and how alike yet different and weird we all are. There are weird families, weird individuals, weird relationships in this collection and in life. When you get right down to it, we all try to put a “normal” foot forward yet we all carry our own set of quirks and eccentricities. We are indeed like birds, putting on a show, or aerial-like dance to impress or capture the attention of others. And most of us are searching for something (what that something is, anyone’s guess is good enough). Like Moore’s characters, we “migrate” and move around, try other people’s nests, circle back again. The problem is sometimes that we take our insecurities and loneliness with us. The unrest and malcontent just follow along, like saddlebags (or love handles, what-have-you). Your lot is your lot and your baggage is your baggage…whether we choose to try to leave it behind when we migrate, it will find a way to pop up again. Like Ruth, we’ve just got to puff out our breasts and settle into our nests best we can.