the mall [retros]

meta

Hello PNP’ers, and welcome to the second in my retros series, in which I revisit past stories, share inspirations, influences, choices, and – sometimes – brutally criticize myself.

These are a way to realize the ‘meta’ content of the Clancy Steadwell character in a way I hope PNP’ers will find intriguing, satisfying, and – most of all – honest.¹

The story subject to retrospection in this edition: the mall.

This is my ‘oldest’ story, not by Substack publish date but by actual written date. If you can believe it, I believe this story was written almost ten years ago.

I was inspired to publish this story to the ‘stack after reading a couple of slice-of-life, public place exploration pieces by

Jimmy Doom

and

Sherman Alexie

. I recalled writing something in that spirit ages ago, so went into ye olde fiction folder on my desktop and dredged it forth. I was surprised to find that it mostly held up and avoided making sweeping changes, only correcting a few grammatical things here and there before posting.

As you’ll see, looking back, I do wish I changed more.

Regardless, it was a relative success of my early days on Substack and gave me a certain degree of confidence in my abilities, given that I had written it a long time ago and my writing prowess had undoubtedly advanced since then. Jimmy even ended up re-stacking it…twice!

In a way, I think this is one of the most interesting retros there will be. It is very much a snapshot of Clancy Steadwell as a writer from a different time and if you’re familiar with my work, you will recognize the tone and cadence to be quite different.

Let us retrospect…

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I have always hated the mall.

When I was young, maybe three or four years old - or however old you must be to truly know what your parents mean when they say “We are going to the mall”- I used to roll around on the front lawn and kick and scream and cry in the ultimate temper-tantrum to avoid going.

I must start by pointing out that this story, having been written before the invention of the Clancy Steadwell character, is unabashedly truer to life than the other stories published in PNP. I have always hated the mall, and always will. I would throw tantrums like the one described, although I probably enacted them before a trip to anywhere.

There is an interesting grammatical convention here that I recognize in my current work. I still do it today, a sort of triple conjunction rather than comma separation: and kick and scream and cry. In research I have found this is called polysyndeton, and I think it is probably a hallmark of more modern, literary style that may or may not be cliched, but I will continue to use anyway, and I quite like for reasons I am not sure about.

I recall Hemingway doing this, although he maybe did so by starting sentences with the conjunction, a personal cliché I like to try and avoid if I can, for some reason it is too easy to do. I think there is a lot of Hemingway fetishizing in this story, as I will point out later as well. I recall I wrote this around the time of the Hemingway App becoming a thing, there was a lot of that going around at the time, if you’re a writer as well (who am I kidding, you are) you may be able to pinpoint the ‘era’ in which this was written (or perhaps is still ongoing).

The infinitive phrase to avoid going – probably should have been cut. It is obvious why one would do what the sentence describes.

Now I go under my own masochistic volition.

I wrote this during a time in my life in which I would definitely go to the mall by myself and walk around. In fact, it was a time – about 8 months – in which I didn’t have access to the Internet. I also had a limited data cell phone plan for my smartphone, which forced me to use it sparingly. I was unable to really surf the web or play video games online or watch streaming services – the main time vortexes of our era. It forced me to read and write a lot more, which made it a formative time for me.

But I think I got bored sometimes and decided to wander, I lived near a mall that was within walking distance and was perfect for this. (Oops, sentence starting with a conjunction. Oh well.)

Going to the mall and not buying anything gets me off in a way. 

This story carries an commercialism theme that is still often present in my current work, and this sentence presents a concept that nicely hooks in to the conclusion of the story.

I think I still have this sort of petty aversion to buying things. Some of my friends and family say I’m good with money, but it’s not true, I’m terrible with it. I’m just really good at denying myself things that I want. It makes me feel mentally strong, like I’m flexing a certain muscle.

In many ways, though, I think this propensity is as much a hinderance as it is a help. Sometimes you need to spend money to make money. Sometimes you do need a new backpack, not the one you’ve been using since elementary school with your initials on it. Sometimes you do need a new grey sweatshirt because one time you got oil from your Subway sandwich on it and it won’t come out, and besides it’s too small because you’ve been eating too many Subway sandwiches.

Sometimes I follow people in the most innocent, discrete way.

Another theme that ties in with the inspiration that Jimmy and Sherman provided: people-watching, people-listening. One of the best ways to find inspiration for stories.

This bit also touches on class relationships and the concerns of the different classes you may encounter at the mall, as well as the narrator’s keen sense of who belongs to which class.

Have they ever seen Napoleon Dynamite? Did they like it?

The truest way to know someone’s character.

I go to the restrooms in Barnes and Noble and a man enters the stall next to me as I pee. He unleashes a cheek-rippling shit.

This is the dark beauty of the mall.

The climax of the story.

I really did one time have this experience, although ironically it was in a public library restroom and not a Barnes & Noble.

I go into the pet shop. It smells bad.

This is where the Hemingway obsession of the times manifests itself most negatively. I at the very least thought that I was enacting some kind of stark minimalism here that added to rather than detracted from my work.

C’mon, though, Clancy. Fine, no adverbs. But no simile? No metaphor?! Literally anything would have been fine.

I was young, scared of being pretentious, and in being so, ended up being frightfully pretentious myself. I think these days I would have done something funny here, probably a simile of a nature befitting of the commercialism theme, perhaps comparing it to the smell of the pooper in the Barnes & Noble.

Let me know in the comments what you think I could have written here instead.

I imagine the windows in my apartment covered in giant handwritten signs: “AMERICAN MALE, AGED 24.”

And another: “HE HAS FOUND HIS FOREVER HOME.”

I really, really love this ending, the narrator transposing the signs on the glass of the puppy pen in the pet store to the windows of his apartment. I have said on Notes that I always have the endings of my stories envisioned before writing, but I think that is a modern phenomenon. I did not have this premeditated when I began writing this one, but when it came to me, I must have been ecstatic.

Not only are we all being sold to, but we are also all for sale, we are all willing to sell out as quickly as possible for the next corporation to be able to brand us as having been fortunate enough to choose them.

When we shop, not only are we buying things for ourselves, but the mall is also buying us as well, and I like to think I am too expensive for the mall.

(By the way, if Teavana or Barnes & Noble want to send me a sum for mentioning them in this piece, I’d be happy to accept it.)

At the same time HE HAS FOUND HIS FOREVER HOME implies to me that the narrator is stuck, that whatever class he inhabits has grounded him there for good.

I’m interested in what others make of the ending in relation to the rest, if you care to read the story again.

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thanks for reading. what did I miss? read ‘the mall’ and let me know if there’s anything else you’d like covered.

which piece of mine would you like to see retro’d next? otherwise I’m just going to keep going in order of published date.

1. See my latest essay, auto-neurotic as-fiction-ation, for more explanation.