Category: Aea Varfis-van Warmelo

Aea Varfis-van Warmelo is a Greek-British writer and poet based in London. She writes about deceit, the apocalypse, and other good things. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Intellectual Property, was published by the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in 2024.

The Punchline

In the long day (a full spread of time slopped out and doled by larger forces) there are smaller punctuations — beats and breaks, spasms that portion it all up for me. I’m of an irregular beat so I’m always keeping an eye on my own distraction, that mounting urge to look away, and have a keen sense for the shape of time: how long it takes to do something, how efficient I can be, how many words a story needs. Too many things overstay their welcome – guests, novels, so many smells – and you can only judge this by them crossing the invisible threshold of time you were willing to give. When something is timed just right you can sense it by the mark it leaves behind, how its goodbye leaves you feeling, how much it smarts on your cheek. So it’s all about the set up, the cradling of borrowed attention, the making you look, the keeping you there – and then it’s all about the punchline.

I will spoil nothing, but I promise to describe the feeling.

Here are stories chosen for their endings:

‘Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz’ by George Saunders

There’s a brilliant slime of technology here, in a story about a miserable widow and the commodification of memories. Saunders’ descriptions ooze and the characters are full-hearted and hazy at their edges, bleeding slightly into the world around them and their narrator, who is keen to love but not skilled at it. The ending is a sly wallop — like falling asleep in a bath, only waking up when you slide in too far.

First published in The New Yorker, September 27, 1992. Collected in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Random House, 1996. Read online here

‘The Princess Diana Bit’ by Stewart Lee

Undeniably a short story. Lee plays with the two act structure inherent to comedy by stretching it too far, opening up a chasm between a set up and a punchline to smuggle a load of detritus. Here Lee performs a conversation between a couple on the day of Princess Diana’s death and the spectacular feat of this bit is how much I dislike it and how much I am longing for it to end. I think it’s the particular tone Lee strikes when he performs these two characters – there is something pathetic about them, and fundamentally devoid of humour. When the punchline comes it feels earned by everyone involved.

From Stewart Lee’s Stand-Up Comedian. Watch here

‘Bullet in the Brain’ by Tobias Wolff

This story ends in its middle, and then it burrows into itself until it ends again. Time warps so pleasantly here and there’s a playful antagonism at play – Wolff’s protagonist is so dislikable his only hope is either being shot or redeemed with some injection of humanity. Both happen. Reading it is some good release.

First published in The New Yorker, September 17, 1995. Read here. Collected in Our Story Begins, Bloomsbury, 2008

‘The Things That Carried Him’ by Chris Jones

Form and craft are very seductive forces, I feel, and I confess I’m still at the stage in life where I am enamoured by journalism that reads like fiction. I just love the convergence of real people and good storytelling. Pieces like this often make me think about our default instinct to narrate chronologically, to replay how time has struck us, and Jones’s essay shows that a human life can be narrated in many directions and it can begin with an ending.

First published in Esquire, May 2008. Read here

‘Sredni Vashtar’ by Saki

and ‘The Way Up to Heaven’ by Roald Dahl (first published in The New Yorker, February 27, 1954. Collected in Kiss Kiss, Knopf 1960)

I will write about these two stories in one because they are completely mingled in my memory – I read both as a child and they taught me that cruelty and death are wonderful and thrilling conclusions when a story winds itself up tight enough. They remind me of the misanthropy I found so essential to childhood, where the world of adults is always telling you what to do and when, and how totally satisfying it was to read about nastiness, how bruising a perfect punchline should be.

First published in The Chronicles of Clovis 1912; collected in Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV, Max Reinhardt Ltd 1957; Pan Books 1960. It can be read here

‘The Way Up to Heaven’ by Roald Dahl

and ‘Sredni Vashtar’ by Saki (collected in The Chronicles of Clovis, 1912)

I will write about these two stories in one because they are completely mingled in my memory – I read both as a child and they taught me that cruelty and death are wonderful and thrilling conclusions when a story winds itself up tight enough. They remind me of the misanthropy I found so essential to childhood, where the world of adults is always telling you what to do and when, and how totally satisfying it was to read about nastiness, how bruising a perfect punchline should be.

First published in The New Yorker, February 27, 1954. Collected in Kiss Kiss, Knopf, 1960

‘What I Was Told by the Woman at Shepherd’s Bush Station Last Week’ by the Woman at Shepherd’s Bush

A strange little lady in a hat that said GO, seemingly overwhelmed by the need to share her life with someone, turned to me and began our impromptu exchange with ‘the roof of my house fell in and it is mess everywhere’ and I thought for a split second of the time I spent working in a school and how children would tell me about their lives with a lack of social lead up that always left me pleasantly surprised and, admittedly, relieved, because I often find the pleasantries of adulthood taxing, so I turned to her and said ‘was it mould or something? damp?’ and she said she didn’t know but it was awful, dust everywhere, so probably not mould, and even her dog is sick now, ‘can you imagine I have to wear a mask at home? so much dust. the dog sniffles, she is…’ and then she gave me a stellar impression of the dog and I said something consoling and then she said ‘so that is why I have this’ and then pointed to the inner corner of her right eye, which was bloodshot, presumably irritated by the dust, and I said ‘I see, that’s terrible’ and she nodded and the exchange was finished, having entered my life with neither a beginning nor really an end, so it’s spilled into the rest of my life and I keep telling people about it and each time someone laughs about it I feel closer to having resolved its presence in my life

First told to me on February 27, 2024 in Shepherd’s Bush, London

‘Emergency Stop’ by Armstrong and Miller

There are three fundamental things I love about short stories: their brevity is a perfect and easily consumed escape, they are made for sharing with others and starting conversation, and they make me think about form. This sketch by Armstrong and Miller is 35 seconds long and when I was a teenager it ticked every one of those boxes.

From The Armstrong and Miller Show, first shown in 2006 on BBC One. Watch here

‘Cathedral’ by Raymond Carver

I’ve buried this story deep in my anthology here, but it’s actually the story that gave me the idea to create a collection around endings. Carver’s narrator is a belligerent and unsympathetic character and in some ways seems infected by his thinking, like his notions and resentments are permanently germinating under the surface. His reluctance to look past himself means the reader has to read through his murk, and in the process of the story he is disassembled slowly, until it ends with a sudden light, a release of breath.

First published in the Atlantic Monthly, in 1981. Collected in Cathedral, Knopf 1983. Read here

Actions I perform that I believe are short stories, that brief syncope

When I release the control on a tape measure or retractable dog lead and the cord or metal tongue slams itself back into its sheath with mortal velocity, when I get a real flow going while slicing vegetables and the knife doesn’t leave the cutting board, when I clean the windows with old newspaper and with each swipe I soften its crinkles to mush while staring at the tree outside which begins to seem brighter, when I say a brief prayer for someone running for the bus, when I call my little brother but hang up before he can finish saying ‘hello’ and then repeat this several times, cackling, until he begins to decline my calls, when I hear my neighbour switch his light off at the end of the day, when I close the window so I cannot hear my neighbour’s conversation, when I blow a kiss as a goodbye to my friend and ask myself where I picked up that awful habit, when I plunge a fresh pot of coffee, when I smile at a child who does not smile back, when I serve a bowl of pasta, when I take the first bite, when I begin to resent the lilies in the vase because they reek of piss.