Fat

Well, I didn't hear otherwise, so I figured I'd just go along with Brandon's suggestion on how to discuss the December book: Where I'm Calling From.

I quite enjoyed a lot of the short stories in the book, but one that really kept me thinking afterward was "Fat."

It's one of the shorter stories in the book. Only 6 or 7 pages maybe and probably took fewer than ten minutes to read.

It's the one about the waitress telling her friend a story about this incredibly fat customer that she waited on, and who she seemed to take a bit of extra care of because she felt sorry for him and his girth.

As the waitress tells the story, she includes some details of other conversations she has with coworkers and with her husband. And ends with a bit of introspection.

Now, when I read this story, I was fairly convinced the waitress, our narrator, was relating to her friend, Rita, a dream she'd had. The way the waitress describes the fat man, the detailed way she continues to talk about his fingers. The way the customer repeatedly refers to "us" and "we" instead of "I" and "me."

After doing a bit of google searching, I have yet to come across any critic or commentator or essayist that agrees with my conclusion. It seems that everyone approaches this story in the same way. As though this, fictitiously, actually happened.

But the more I read about it, the more convinced I am that the narrator is telling her friend about a dream she had. A dream that led her to make some conclusions about her own life. At one point, she talks about serving the man some food and then looking in the sugar bowl, saying, "I know now I was after something. But I don't know what." To me, that sounds like the part in a dream when you know you need to find a person or a place or an object, but you don't know what you're looking for.

Does that happen to anyone else, or just me?

At the end of the story, the narrator and her husband go to bed and Rudy wants to sleep with her, but now she feels overwhelmed by size and imagines that she is much larger than the husband that is forcing himself on her.

The story ends when the narrator says, "My life is going to change. I feel it."

This story is so full of symbolism, from the size of the fat man, to the food he consumed, to the need to find something, to the unhappy marriage.

I still believe the whole thing was a dream in need of interpretation. A reflection of a problem the character's mind was trying to work out.

Thoughts?