SSM 2010 - Discussion of Alyson Hagy's "Brief Lives of the Trainmen"

From Alyson Hagy's Ghosts of Wyoming we take a look at "Brief Lives of the Trainmen."  It originally appeared in The Idaho Review.

There very well may be spoilers in the discussion of this story this week.

“Brief Lives of the Trainmen” by Alyson Hagy

 

Dan Wickett

 

I've been reading a fair amount of flash fiction lately, and so took maybe a different look at this particular story, in which Hagy tells the life of a day on a particular train, one carrying the men that are laying track for the train company in the Wyoming Territory (which helps date the story obviously).  "Brief Lives of the Trainmen" is broken up into ten short sections, each a narrative that 'stars' a different person involved in this track laying endeavor.  None of these sections is even two full pages long, and because of this, I read each as a flash fiction within the structure of a larger, fully developed, narrative.  And I think Hagy was successful at this, even if she wasn't trying.

Each of the sections read as a fully functional piece to me, and could have found a home in journals like an elimae, or The Collagist, or other places that are publishing flash fiction today.  However, when put all together, each becomes more powerful, as it flushes out not only these ten individual stories, but also a larger story, that of this community that are linked together in the same way that Hagy links her sections.  By setting the story up in this fashion, I think Hagy allowed herself to include a larger group of characters within this community.  Had the story been written in a more straightforward narrative manner, I'm not sure how she would have been able to get as much information about so many people without some incredible plotting.

On a short side note, I'm a big fan of the work Hagy does to give her readers excellent metaphors and/or similes.  Some examples from this particular story (though you can dip into almost any page in the book's eight stories to find examples) include:

Her voice is as complaining as a crow's.

He sleeps behind Engine No. 212 in the tender car, armored by his stacks of wood like a beetle trapped in amber.

Billy Dolph tumbles free of his dreams like a circus aerialist.

And similar to the story discussed last week, Hagy continues in "Brief Lives of the Trainmen" to describe Wyoming in wondrous ways--her opening line, "He is awake before daylight greases the black pan of the sky" seems a perfect opening for a story set on the "naked plains of the Wyoming Territory."