A Story I Loved: ZZ Packer's "Brownies"
- Staff Writer
- Jun 7
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 23
A story on the nature of being a writer, and the nature of being young.
A few years ago, a mentoring writer introduced me to ZZ Packer’s short story “Brownies”. At this point in my development as a writer, I was admittedly wary of mentorship from other writers, thinking dogmatically that the best way to become a better writer was to simply write. I was consumed enough by my everyday life that I didn’t have the time to read, and frankly didn’t see much of a need for persistent reading in my everyday life, especially not my life as a writer. This may seem counterintuitive to people who (rightly) assume that good writing comes from voracious reading. But at the time, I figured that if there truly was any universal truth in one of these books I left untouched on the shelf, it would occur to me of its own accord, sooner or later.
“Brownies” did change that. As I began to read the story, I found it at first trodding, meandering. But then slow shifts began to occur. Certain moments hooked into me, and I began to re-read passages and mentally annotate. I began to recognize myself in Packer’s narrator’s uncertain, unsteady voice.
Reading back in hindsight, the story is not as refined as it could be, not as clean or as tidy as maybe a more established author’s stories, who (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere was Packer’s first and only collection of stories) might have taken enough workshop classes to know exactly what to snip, what drove the plot forward, what didn’t. It is at times over-long by a few paragraphs, just long enough for a reader to take note. But that is where it derives its charm: it is wholly original, and authentic, not fully mature in its own creation, and it demonstrates voice, that tricky, nebulous term that writers struggle to completely define or harness. Just from reading this story, you can tell Packer is one to watch. She has voice, undeniably, and that voice blends between Packer’s narrator and Packer herself at points throughout the story. What struck me on a first read, and on the many reads following, is that there is a tenderness about the way that she writes about these characters that simply cannot be faked. It is what a writer cannot teach to another writer, beyond the construction of prose and syntax and the rules of grammar. It is a thing that lives inside of a writer. Other reviewers have said about Brownies that this is a story that clearly meant a lot to her, a view that astonishes me because it’s what I grasped on a first read, as well. In a world of dry MFA fiction and self-referential dogma, pointless drivel seemingly written to be as inconsequential to the lives of everyday people as possible, “Brownies” stood out because it felt irrepressible, as though Packer had become a writer just to write this story. That is a feeling unforgettable for all writers: the sharp sting of pleasure at writing something that for the first time, made you think, Yes, this is what I’ll do.
I love Packer’s entire collection- “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”, especially the titular story, but there’s something about Brownies that I return to time and time again. Maybe it’s the child-like innocence of the story, accurate to the minute details of how children interact- mixed cruelty and fondness, a protectiveness over other people’s perceptions of their innocence while inside harboring a secret desire to give it all up. Maybe it is because it is a story, fundamentally, about writers, and what it means to become a writer.
Much of the story’s quiet excellence comes from the characterizations of its narrator, nicknamed “Snot” by her peers. Snot is an interesting narrator. Like most writers, she’s not completely the insider or the outsider. She is tolerated by the other girls, but the nickname “Snot” lets you know right away that she is not cherished. Just by the nickname “Snot”, Packer allows us to learn a lot about her character. She is the conduit through which the story is told, and though the story is fundamentally not about her, it cannot exist without her realizations and motivations, and the unique way through which she views the world. To me, that’s what being a writer is about. Not every story is auto-biographical, and sometimes that is the point. But every story cannot be told without the unique way one views the world. That’s what separates us from the court reporters and typists of the world.
On the outset, Snot already has all of the features to make a good writer. She is observant, and curious, and curiously drawn to words in a way she cannot explain. But she is not the only writer in the story. The other writer in Brownies is a girl named Daphne, who is quiet and mature beyond her years in a way that Snot is not. Daphne writes a poem, and Snot is encaptured by a line- “My father, the veteran.” Maybe that’s every writer’s first step- finding yourself enamored by language in a way that you cannot make sense or real logic of. Snot keeps repeating it, trying to discover what it means, trying to make sense of words through the words. I assume the moment was partially derived by Packer’s tutelage from Tobias Wolff, writer of the famous and much anthologized short story “Bullet in the Brain”. Bullet in the Brain also features a jaded writer who once too was enamored by a single sentence, “They is, they is, they is.” Different lines remain with different people. What remained with me from “Bullet in the Brain” was another line, a throwaway line earlier in the story that says, “He did not remember the… respect he had felt after reading the book. He did not remember the pleasure of giving respect.”
That’s what Brownies reminded me of. That somewhere along my route to becoming a writer, I had forgone the pleasure of giving respect to another writer, the pleasure of opening a short story or a novel and finishing it cover to cover, and thinking Goddamnit, I wish I had written that. It’s that kind of thing that encourages you to keep writing- the brilliance and temerity of these strangers you will likely never meet, except through their words and their characters. It truly is work like Packer's that encourages writers like myself to envision a future for ourselves in the craft, who remember that writing, above all, has always been fundamentally a pastime of misfits and those stuck in social gray areas.
I won’t spoil the story, but I will say that the ending is an ending that has always stayed with me. To me, the ending cuts away the curtain, and shows Snot on the precipice of discovering what it means to be a good writer, what it means to possess that foundational ideal of pure, perfect empathy all stories strive towards. So far yet in the story, she has not crossed the final bridge between observant child and writer- the gap to describe what others cannot bring themselves to or cannot notice. To take the observations and metaphors that you discover throughout the banality of everyday life, and to use it in some way to change your own life and with any luck, the lives of others. To funnel it towards something- whether that thing be art or charged empathy towards your fellow human.
That’s why Brownies changed the way I thought about reading. It’s true that there are some simple fundamental truths about living that writing does not necessarily need to explicate. But we forget them. Good writing reminds us of our responsibilities, towards what we create, and what we perpetuate. Good writing, then, is a streamlined way of discovering the fundamental truths about life without having to experience them ourselves. There are times when simply being given the message can dilute the efficiency. Like the adage, if you teach a man to fish, they’ll be fed all their life- in the same way, what good writing does is implements the message that if you teach a reader to search for their own meaning, it makes the end message all the more satisfying, all the more memorable.
Z.Z. Packer's "Brownies". Retrieved from UMass Boston.
An insightful write-up by Michael Byers on "Brownies" on the Fiction Writers' Review. The FRW is a website that this website adores and pays homage to.
