Aimee Bender and Rick Bass

The two short stories “The Rememberer” by Aimee Bender and “Fires” by Rick Bass were both stories about lovers who had difficult relationships. In “The Rememberer” the character Annie was in a relationship with someone who was experiencing a reverse evolution. In “Fires” the narrator seems to be falling for a runner named Glenda. Their relationship is a bit complicated. The narrator tries not to become more then friends with her yet throughout the story they seem to become very close.

“The Rememberer” is narrated by the character Annie whose lover is experiencing a reverse evolution. When reading this, I was confused as to what the author was trying to present when explaining the reverse evolution. Annie talks about how her lover, Ben, rapidly is changing ultimately becoming nothing. She reminisces on their relationship and on how they never could seem to just enjoy each other’s company or have fun with one another because they were always overthinking things. For example, Annie reminisces on the first time they had sex, saying that they both kept their eyes open, the lights were on and they ended up having an hour-long conversation about poetry. I believe the metaphor of this story is that sometimes over thinking things too much in the long run makes you end up not realizing what is going on to begin with. Annie was over calculating her life with Ben, not allowing herself to just enjoy each other’s company which eventually led to her losing someone very special to her. This story was very captivating and I enjoyed the background message the author put in using the reverse evolution.

In “Fires”, the narrator is a low key man living a simple life in the woods. When I began reading this and it was talking about the animals and the nature I was confused as to how it was going to connect to the first story, but then, Glenda was introduced. Glenda is the other main character, who turns into the narrator’s lover. She is a runner and they become friends, he follows behind her on a bike to protect her as she runs. This story moved along very slowly and was not as suspenseful as the first story. From what I knew at this point in the story, I inferred they would become close as they were together every day and he protected her as she ran, then they went swimming together and he slept next to her as she napped, but that didn’t happen. In the end she just ended up leaving him with nothing more than a goodbye. I believe the reason she did this was because she began to feel herself falling further for him. They did have somewhat of an intimate moment in the lake after she lit a fire in the valley, but that did not lead to anything either. Something that made me ponder was the title of the story, “Fires”. There must’ve been some meaning to the fire that Glenda lit, which could’ve ultimately killed them both.

Both of these stories deal with lovers and I believe they connect in a sense that the lovers did not quite know how to connect with one another so they left the situation. In “The Rememberer” Ben ended up ultimately leaving Annie because she could not do anything but overthink situations, and Glenda ended up leaving her lover because she began to realize she was falling for him.