Reading as a Writer: "Roy Spivey" by Miranda July

"Roy Spivey" by Miranda July is a clever story about a woman who meets a famous movie star on an airplane, and the two hit it off rather quickly. The star, who July dubs "Roy Spivey" as to preserve his anonymity, gives the narrator his phone number and asks her to remember the last digit: 4. As the story progresses, the reader learns that the narrator has used this magic number as a way to get through some of the most difficult parts of her life.



But what, you may ask, makes this story good writing?

First and foremost, I think the popularity surrounding this story is due to July's unique writing style, blending witty and clever humor with events in her story that are almost too bizarre to be real, yet there they are, grounded in reality.

Take, for example, this bit of the text:

He stared at my arm in front of his chest for a moment, then he growled and bit it. Then he laughed. I laughed, too, but I did not know what this was, this biting of my arm.

“What was that?”

“That means I like you!”

It seemed unlikely that someone who had just bitten and been bitten by a celebrity would have this kind of problem.

This sort of encounter seems rather unbelievable. First, we must accept that this narrator actually met a celebrity on a plane. I think this is believable enough. I've seen a celebrity boarding a plane before. But then, the reader is expected to believe that this famous celebrity actually bit our narrator. Incredulous!

Yet, July's genius is that she grounds these seemingly unbelievable situations in the very believable, the mundane. She writes, "We adjusted our seat backs and tray tables" when referring to the landing. Everything about the plane ride is very mundane, very real. This setting keeps us grounded, even when the ride gets a little strange.

July's quirky humor pops up throughout the piece ("'It's Febreze.'" "'Oh, I've heard about that.'"), but ultimately, what sells this piece is the sense of loss at the end. There is a deep sense of regret after the narrator tries to call the phone number and it is disconnected. At the same time, there is an acceptance of where the narrator is in life. She's certainly not the same woman she used to be when she met Roy Spivey. And he is not the same, either.

Finally, I think what makes this story so popular is that July blurs the line between non-fiction and fiction. The story, with an unnamed narrator and a first-person perspective, comes across as rather true. Thus, the reader spends their time thinking about who this mysterious celebrity could be, and if something as ludicrous as this situation could happen to them.

Shout-outs to favorite lines:

"I shut mine again and right away opened them, slowly, and he opened his, slowly, and our eyes met, and it seemed as if we had woken from a single sleep, from the dream of our entire lives." Simply beautiful, even if it's a con.

"We walked down the tunnel between the plane and real life." Wow, this line was so cool! I've always felt that being on a plane feels like something different than real life, suspended far above the trifles of the busy world. What a way to name this feeling.