Kevin Moffett's Further Interpretations of Real Life Events

I haven’t read Kevin Moffett’s writing before so this story served as my initiation into his world, a happy occurrence. I looked him up, read more about him, and marvelled at how craftily he placed and then detached himself from the story. For the first few line, it seemed like he was talking about himself, but then the name Fred popped up and I checked if I had read the name of the author wrong.

The story introduces us to four writers – Fred, Frederick (Fred’s father, to avoid confusion, I am using this one for him), Carrie, and Moffett.

Fred, the protagonist and the narrator uses his childhood at the reference point for most of his stories (as told by the narrator). He seems to do this to express his views and emotions. He had had a difficult relationship with his father after his mother’s death, a wide gap came between them, which seemed to have resulted in poor communication between the two. To Fred, it all seems to be his father’s fault. He remarried and somehow Fred could never see Laura taking his mother’s place, although, she didn’t seem to be a bad person from what we see if her in the story. Fred (like everyone else, including me) thinks that he is right, but when he reads his father’s story about the visit to Mexico, or to the dumpster, it seems to threaten his point of view. It was his father’s side of the story, wherein he mourned his late wife and wrote about how he cherished his son. Fred’s ego prevents him from accepting that his father is a good writer because then he would have to accept that what his father wrote was believable and hence might be true. Again, this would shatter the foundation on which he builds his stories. This emotional turmoil leads him to become unproductive. He had previously based all his story on his bias against his father and when the opposite of what he thought/believed came to light, he was unable to write.

He shows how important a writer’s beliefs are. At least that is what I gleaned. If I do not believe in what I write, I cannot create a good story.

Frederick, the second writer, is an experienced man. He writes, not to earn a living, or as a hobby, but to express. He does not seem to write for anyone else other than his son. We see Laurie asking Carrie about what Fred thought of his father’s work. We also saw Frederick ask the same question over phone. He does not need anyone else’s approval other than his son. Probably, he wants his son to know how he felt or maybe this is his way of lessening the gap that has come in their relationship. Either ways, he presents a contradicting point of view, challenging Fred’s, but not on purpose. His aim doesn’t seem to be to negate what Fred believed, but to show him the other side of the story. Frederick is not a trained writer, he has seasoned with age, he writes from his heart and not for competition with his son but most probably out of love.

He shows how important approval is for a writer. We all seek approval, be it from a wider audience or a single person. I don’t say training or technique is not important but as Frederick shows, writing from heart trumps writing from the mind, which might lead us to break some rules. As long as a work touches someone’s heart or emotions, it is a piece of art worth admiring.

Carrier, the third writer, has stopped writing. We know she is a writer through conversation and not by action. We are also informed that she was exceptionally good at writing. She is the one who reads Frederick’s story and admires it, forcing Fred to read it. She also nudges Fred to accept the fact that his father’s story was good and makes him say so when they visit him during Christmas.

Carrie’s character shows how a good writer can lead the readers to the desired conclusion. She leads Fred to conclude, accept, and acknowledge that his father is a good writer. A good writer aids his reader to navigate through the story and leads her to the exact destination. She knew what Fred needed, a conversation with his father – to accept the fact that his father was not always in the wrong, and bridge the gap between them. Her nudge, I believe, helped father and son improve their relationship as it was Fred’s validation that Frederick seeked. I think a very important quality for a writer is to satisfy the emotions of her target reader, and even through, Carrie wasn’t writing a story but helping her boyfriend achieve that, she did it with perfection.

Kevin Moffett, the writer whose persona seemed to overshadow all the writers in the story. His emotions and capabilities mirrored in all three. Fred and Frederick, both wrote about father and son and so did Moffett. Obviously, I do not know about Moffett’s relationship with his father, yet the emotions, the twists and turns that came with it, and the realisation of an alternate perspective, everything seemed authentic enough for me to think that at least some part of it might be true. Moreover, Fred keeps commenting about the rules his father broke as Kevin Moffett played both roles – breaking the rules, and commenting that they shouldn’t be broken. I was really intrigued by how cleanly Moffett pulls that off. He breaks a rule and then declares how successfully he broke it. I wouldn’t have noticed that had he not written about it. To me, it was all flawless. And finally, like Carrie, he was quite successful in guiding me (his reader) how to navigate through the story.