tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post4998279944274860086..comments2024-03-09T00:19:36.011-08:00Comments on Reading the Short Story: Fiona McFarlane's "Buttony"Charles E. Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11642048806407593585noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-3559152634230686402018-09-12T13:20:55.811-07:002018-09-12T13:20:55.811-07:00Thank you for your most perceptive and appreciativ...Thank you for your most perceptive and appreciative comments on "Buttony." I like the story also, especially, as you note, how it manages to suggest meaning, but forces us to help create that meaning--qualities of the short story as a form, it seems to me, when it is at its best. Thanks for reading my blog.<br /><br />CharlesCharles E. Mayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11642048806407593585noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-63947800322351119212018-09-11T10:57:19.095-07:002018-09-11T10:57:19.095-07:00I love this story (and teach it in my Reading and ...I love this story (and teach it in my Reading and Writing of the Short Story class at Smith College) because it has a beautiful vocabulary of transformation, as the button moves from being "cheap yellow plastic" from a "mustard-colored cardigan" to something that "seemed to pulse with life." The moment of transubstantiation occurs in "this sort of ceremony" that is "Buttony" in Miss Lewis's class. The button is handled with "reverence", especially by Joseph, who is like a high priest with his "solemnity" and his "processional walk." But Joseph changes the ceremony with a mundane trick when he pops the button in his mouth, like a priest taking the eucharist for himself alone. Miss Lewis thinks "you will solve this" and "suffer for it." I don't know what this means, but the story moves from order, as Miss Lewis claps her hands to bring her class to attention, to utter chaos, as her class ignores her clapping at the end. Joseph is now "alone and proud and terrible." And at the very end, he is a "shadow" a "blank" onto which we are invited to attached meaning. The ambiguity of what could be a simple tale of broken ceremony makes this piece strange, magical, scary. It suggests meaning everywhere, but it never entirely lets us in. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-70613879519670353912016-04-18T09:09:28.036-07:002016-04-18T09:09:28.036-07:00Thanks for this very interesting and provocative r...Thanks for this very interesting and provocative review of one of the better New Yorker stories of the year, in my opinion. It’s a story rich in symbolic meaning, as you indicate. I also see some similarity in that regard to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”-- though I don’t recall that story having a character quite as intriguing as Joseph, who you aptly describe as a kind of “embodiment” of “supernatural or spiritual forces that we suspect lie around us, but that we can never really verify." Following that line of thought, I suppose much of human life (both secular and religious) can be seen as a kind of elaborate version of the children's game Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button, which I also vaguely remember playing-- and have the psychic scars to prove it. (: Will be looking forward to your review of the much longer Beattie story, which I also liked.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com