"If I Loved You" by Robin Black and (briefly) "The Last Thing We Need" by Claire Vaye Watkins

T: “The Last Thing We Need”

A: Clarie Vaye Watkins

B: Battleborn, 2012

T: “If I Loved You”

A: Robin Black

B: If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, 2010

Q: How do these writers use the epistolary form successfully?

Background: Recently a friend I workshop and write exercises with has been composing an epistolary short story.  It’s a form I’m not inclined towards, but his efforts have piqued my interest.  Because his story is one neighbor writing to another, I’ve been reminded of Robin Black’s beautiful short story “If I Loved You” a number of times.  Watkin’s short story, “The Last Thing We Need,” is also an epistolary short story and, like my friend’s piece and Robin Black’s, is written from only one side of the epistolary exchange (in other words, we only see one side of the letter writing, no letters are exchanged).     

A: Robin Black’s story is key—as the title suggests, her narrator doesn’t mail the letter, doesn’t even write one (in other words, I remembered wrongly) so it becomes a 2^nd person narrative without the awkwardness of a second person narrative.  That awkwardness stems from the ambiguity of the “you”—generally we might think it’s the reader or, when done expertly, the narrator herself.  However, the way both Black and Watkins use the form, the “you” is a clearly defined person, a silent listener, who is also a character in the piece without becoming a generic category.