New Yorker short stories from podcast feed, Part III
Teju Cole, Incoming – Very strange elliptical fragmented mysterious experimental tale! I think it’s about migration? This is one of the best stories I read/listened to this year, I think.
Anne Carson, 1=1 – I’ve never read Anne Carson before, believe it or not. I tried to but just COULD NOT get into her. Listening to Teju Cole discuss her work was very helpful, though, especially his discussion of her sentences and the parallels/techniques they share with poetry. This is a very elliptical story but has definitely stuck in my mind. It opens with a woman going for a walk, listening to music she wants played at her funeral, and weeping. There is a lot in the story that’s left out – a lot that the reader needs to provide themselves. I will tackle Carson again at some point. Some of the things that Cole said in his discussion that I found useful/interesting:
Cole is interested in stories that don’t dramatize what the world is doing, but rather respond to what the world is.
Narrative arc according to Cole: we begin with self-absorption and move towards recognition of pain of others, we’re all in this together, there’s a lot of casual cruelty in this world and I don’t want to consent to it. How do you reconcile going for a swim in a beautiful lake while others are drowning? What sesne does it make for these two mornings to exist side by side? Story poses questions but doesn’t answer them – naming this contradiction can be the beginning of an ethic. Story as immersion rather than didactic.
Yiyun Li, Extra – Wonderful 3rd person 19th-century-esque voice about the trials of Granny Lin and her parallel relationships with a young boy and old man. I remember reading this in like 2006-2007, when I was just WAY too young to get it. Some things… you have to be mature to read! I liked the parallel between this story and Flaubert’s A Simple Heart. Summary vs scene is very well done throughout – i.e. her daily life and habits.
Joy Williams, Stuff – Weird story about a nature writer for a magazine who gets diagnosed with cancer, and goes to visit his mother who seems bored of him – is the whole story a kind of Last Temptation of Christ death vision? I liked the lack of explanation in the story – this would be good to discuss in a classroom (though I anticipate some students would find it frustrating). The Colin Barrett discussion of this story is great. I am definitely going to read more of Joy Willians/engage with her more, on the basis of Barrett’s obsession alone… she is definitely a writer’s writer.
Joy Williams, Chicken Hill – A story with a precocious child character, which is always a risky endeavour. Another story that you can’t quite pin down, which resolves around mystery. The plot follows the shifting power dynamics between Ruth the main character and the child. Again this is a story more similar to a poem – something you need to really bring you A-game to; you have to be ready to engage with and interpret it. “Sometimes the refridgerator took pride in keeping things cool and crisp and other times it didn’t seem to care.”
Don DeLilo, The Itch – Meh this didn’t really do much for me (neither the story nor the Joy Williams discussion of it – what an interesting story for her to pick!). The story is basically about a man who has an itch he can’t get rid of, it’s very metaphorical, etc. Just didn’t really grab me emotionally but it’s certainly written competently enough. I will always feel guilty about only having 100 pages left to read of Underworld and not finishing it…!
Yiyun Li, The Particles of Order – Absolutely beautiful story about a woman whose two sons have killed themselves, staying in a cottage of a famous murder mystery writer. Lots of good quotes about writing and life in this. I love how this is not auto-fictiony at all. “All things unendurable, in the end, become less so.”
Yiyun Li, When We Were Happy We Had Other Names – This is when I broke off from listening to the podcast feed because I wanted to read more Yiyun Li. Very sad story about a woman whose son has killed himself; she makes a list of everyone she knows who has died.
“How did that girl with the radio in her lap become this woman, in the middle of her life, with so many dials fading?”
“How had something this colossal found and trapped them, Jiayu thought, when they were so ordinary, so inconspicuous? The death of a child belonged to a different realm – that of a Greek tragedy or a mawkish movie. What was the probability of an ant’s being struck by lightning? And for the ant to survive and toil on? With what wounds?”
Yiyun Li, A Flawless Silence – Quite the depressing story about a woman married to a Trump voter getting emails from a creepy older man who pursued her as a teenager back in China. One of those stories that asks, Did I make a horrible mistake with my life?
“What’s wrong with letting the automatic take over one’s life?”
“Can you love someone without liking them?”
Yiyun Li, A Small Flame – This one was a bit meh for me compared to the others. Too much time spent in the past imo, not enough fictive present scenes. Plot follows Bella in Beijin on vacation after two divorces. The opening scene (in which she buys flowers and tosses them away) is the best part of the story, I feel.
Patricia Highsmith, The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World – A short compressed focused story about a woman on her deathbed. A will-she-won’t-she plot about what she will do with an amulet. Yiyun Li’s discussion of this story is good, especially when she muses: Is Mrs. Blynn a cold reptilian god? Is she evil?
This takes me up to 36 total New Yorker short stories listened to/read this year. Will I be able to make it to 52 by the year’s end i.e. one per week (we are currently in week 43)? Will I resume listening to them while breastfeeding/going for long pram walks/crying in the dark? AGAIN, TIME WILL TELL