Samhi C. – Staff Writer

skc5908@psu.edu

Thursday, April 6, at 6:00 p.m. in the Metzgar Lobby, author Rachel Swearingen stood at the podium for the second Smith Creative Writers Reading Series reading of this semester and read “Advice for the Haunted,” the last short story in her collection “How to Walk on Water.” 

“Advice for the Haunted” is part of a linked story series, her only one. Swearingen says the “first story wasn’t satisfying… it’s not in this collection.” The inspiration for the original story revolving around a recluse named Natalia derived from a line in Mary Ruefle’s poem “Like a Daffodil” that reads “I had the sudden urge to eat postcards of famous paintings.” 

Swearingen describes the struggle she felt in trying to give Natalia, someone who never moves, who never interacts with the world, agency. She turned to writing stories from the viewpoints of characters in Natalia’s world. Swearingen says, “I usually don’t write interlinked stories [but] I grew to know more and more about her,” the “her” being Natalia. 

The first of the linked stories, “Boys on a Veranda”, a third-person limited short story revolves around a psychiatrist who watches Natalia from his window. Meanwhile, the second linked story, “Advice for the Haunted” is a first-person short story narrated by a young woman who has moved into Natalia’s apartment with her partner Nick after Natalia has died. This story was in part inspired by Swearingen’s memories of growing up around antiques as her father was a small town antique dealer. She describes how these objects made her feel both “fascinated” yet “haunted.” 

In the story, the young couple are surrounded by Natalia’s things which they have not thrown away and muse over how she must have died. The only fact known is that she somehow fell from the “L platform”. Whether she jumped on purpose, tripped by accident, or was pushed is unknown. The story has an air of mystery and haunting right through the end but rather than being a “Who done it?” or a “Ghostbusters” 

episode “Advice for the Haunted” leaves the audience with self-revelation on the narrator’s part in a Gatsby-ish manner: “It would become an incantation, a theme song for the coming years. To never be like Natalia. To take the train downtown each morning. To never be afraid.” 

Swearingen’s short story brings forth a concept which, in my opinion, sits at the center of human existence: How do you live fearlessly if you do not know what comes next? If you do not know whether or not the metaphoric “L platform”s in life will be something you safely get through? But if you live risk-free, how is it that you really live, how is it you thrive? All avenues of life, our careers, our educations, our art, our stories are filled with risk. They have to be. This does not mean we have to go looking for trouble. But we should not lock ourselves up to possibility, positive possibility, either, fearing the “what-if”s. 

Swearingen herself reveals the risks she is taking with her work. She discusses how she has always wanted to write screenplays and she has decided to finally give it a shot after a filmmaker she knows

asked if she wanted to adapt “Advice for the Haunted” for the big screen. 

Swearingen, originally from New London, Wisconsin, earned a B.A. in University of Wisconsin for German and Art History then a PhD in Western Michigan University for Creative Writing. Having spent a few years teaching at the college level, today she is a full time writer and still teaches short-term and adult writing classes including a session she just finished at Cornell University.