It’s about brevity. The compact form and the intensity of twists, turns and meaning in the short stories in this collection has given the sen of peeking into a life. Perspectives have changed, of course, but this second volume has relied on two major modes of dress. In some stories readers have been called out in the 2nd person, in others the tale has been framed by one character speaking to another.
Reading Overton’s stock of stories has become a part of my daily routine and it feels often that I am spending some time overhearing a conversation—listening to someone detail something they once heard or experienced. Sometimes I close the book and am furious, other times I’m perplexed. Usually, I am trying to think of what I could write here.
"The Gilded Pheasant" by Stephen Morehouse Avery (certainly not the same Steven Avery that was the focus of the Netflix series Making a Murderer) imports that sense of overhearing and structures the story around it. If you were worried or thought the title "The Gilded Pheasant" might reflect some kind of sexist metaphor about one woman’s true beauty and a man’s failure to recognize it—you were right. We are brought in to hear how this happened.
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| Stephen Morehouse Avery (1893-1948) |
Avery’s narrator invites us to listen and learn. We begin with a man who is "on the Continent somewhere, in a forgotten little cobbled street… [he] peer[s] into faces, passers-by, or someone in a carriage…he will look up from his duck and Madeira and start as tho he’d seen a ghost." We are promised that we will learn "why" the man does this, but the narrator is careful exclaiming "strike me cold if I will tell you how I know." I imagine that this man looks like the actor Peter Lorre; his eyes dot across space as if to question not only the placement of everything in sight but also the stability of its existence.
This man is not Peter Lorre. He is Forrest Windsor, a broker on Wall street who, in 1925, I am sure would have had a complicated life in the coming years had he stayed in the states. Forrest is a married man, though he began his engagement with a woman named Marion because, as Avery writes, "he needed a woman, a wife." Marion is gorgeous but Forrest finds himself bored by the relationship. Whatever he proposes to do Marion responds apathetically, "very well, Forrest, if you wish."
And so the broker is distraught. He finds it impossible to be especially generous or loving. I don’t imagine he is the Jordan Belfort type, but I’m not sure he isn’t a Mr. Moneybags fool either. He doesn’t appear to be consumed by his job—what we learn is instead that he cannot figure out how to talk to his wife, whom the narrator refers to as "a vagueness." Forrest is kind of like a Philip Roth character, without any of the attempts at humor.
To remedy the death of romance, the two go to France for a vacation. Forrest is hopeful this will enliven their relationship, and perhaps the marriage can be about something more than convenience. One night as they determine where to go for dinner, Marion gives specific directions to the driver. Such decision making confounds Forrest as he is used to Marion’s apathy. This is a good start, he thinks.
When they get to the restaurant, the Faison Doré, Forrest is overcome by a kind of sorrow mixed with annoyance. The restaurant is run down. It used to be something beautiful and extravagant but now it feels falsely pompous. Still, it is extravagant: “there were wall mirrors reflecting from every angle an unbelievable somberness of red and gold.” The past is evidenced by some ruin, reminding Forrest of his youth and a time of possibility. Marion’s silence bothers him and he grows all the more perturbed by the "fixity of the expression" on her face.
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| Drawing accompanying story from The Los Angeles Times (February 20, 1927) |
As the two sit and dine, both Marion and Forrest start to listen in on another conversation between an Englishman ex-undersecretary and a European prince, named Carlos. In a rolling story, Carlos explains his time in Christopbal sur Mer, France where he fell in love with the most beautiful woman. This story-within-the-story is the bulk of "The Gilded Pheasant."
At this point we are reading an account told to one person that is overheard by someone else, which is being communicated by a different person. It is like Inception, but instead of dreams we have a Romantic tale about love in Europe. Rather than some philosophical pondering, we witness a frustrated broker who can’t figure out the equation for love. Layers folks.
Back to the lecture at hand. Carlos explains that he was unable to stay with the woman (whom he gives the name "Beatricia"), since he was a Dutch prince. Too much was at play from political dispositions to royal hierarchies. It would never work out.
Never one to give up, Carlos chased Beatricia from country to country. Eventually the two agreed to separate, on the condition that in five years, if they both still loved one another they would meet at the Faison Doré. Carlos still loves her and he wants to explain that "I was a fool to balance the rest of the world against five minutes with her." Marion and Forrest overhear the conversation and both uncomfortable. Marion wants to leave and Forrest, well, he finds its all laughable and silly.
I’ll stop there. The why, but not the how of the story was promised by the narrator and this time I won’t encroach on that.
It is of note that Overton chose to follow the fantastical and supernatural "The Mummy’s Foot" with a far more traditional work that is Shakespearean in its ability to balance the epic scales of romance with the mundane particularities of life. This raises questions about the sequencing of short story collections: what kind of rhythm is established? What is the motive for following one story after another?
Looking back one through-line has been popularity and Hollywood. While many of the authors discussed in previous posts have had their stories adapted by Hollywood, Avery’s fame came primarily as a screenwriter. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1935 (The Gay Deception) and he wrote movies that starred Shirley Temple (Our Little Girl), Henry Fonda & Olivia DeHavilland (The Male Animal), Joan Crawford (The Gorgeous Hussy) and Cary Grant (Every Girl Should be Married). Those titles suggest the troubling winking of Hollywood’s gender politics; attached to Avery they also reveal what his brand was. He trafficked in the bait-and-switch.
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| How have I not seen this movie? Every Girl Should Be Married (Don Hartman, RKO, 1948) |
Avery was close to adapting "The Gilded Pheasant" for the big screen. However, when RKO had a turnover of leadership in the early 1940s numerous projects were sent to the trash. Avery’s was one of them. I wonder how this might be told visually. Would it be through flashback? Would there be flashbacks within flashbacks?
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| The rights for "The Gilded Pheasant" were purchased in 1941 (from The New York Herald Tribune October 19, 1941) |
The mirrors would help here. The old mirrors in the restaurant, marked by former glory, are one of the strongest symbols in the 19 stories so far. Not only do they serve a symbolic purpose—the past is shot through some peculiar vision that is only partially accurate—but they also function narratively. Avery needs the mirror so that Forrest and Marion can listen and follow the conversation between Carlos and the Englishman. Without the mirror this is a very different story, more about privacy and listening than romance and relationships.
Further, the mirror suggests a kind of self-reflection. "The Gilded Pheasant," relayed as it is through many layers, is an allegory for the popular short story form. We come to a tale, whether in a newspaper or in a collection, listen in to the details of some life, act as if we are only vaguely participating and we move on. Sometimes we are transfigured and haunted and we leave looking like the man "who looks up from his duck and Madeira." Other times, we might treat the characters as if they were only a "vagueness."
So, this is a short story about short stories. I’d like to think that the RKO production would have been a movie about Hollywood movies, if it ever got made. In my dreams I can try to reckon with the how and the why of that imagined film, just as the narrator of "The Gilded Pheasant" recounts the how and why of the man "on the Continent." But I may never get both.
FIRST LINE: "On the Continent somewhere, in a forgotten little cobbled street where the rain is drawing fine black lines across the yellow glow of a corner lamp, a man is peering into faces, passers-by, or someone in a carriage."
LAST LINE: "And I have told you why he does this--and strike me cold because I've told you also how I know."
You can read "The Gilded Pheasant" and other stories in Overton's collection at UNZ: http://www.unz.org/Pub/WagnallFunk-1927
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