"Featherweight:" Good Title for the Latest New Yorker Story

"One Night Standards"

        By Ashley McBryde 

I ain't gonna stay for the weekend
I ain't gonna jump off the deep end
I ain't gonna ask where your ring is

Thing is, we all got secrets

You don't wanna hear about my last breakup
I don't wanna worry 'bout the space you take up
I don't even care if you're here when I wake up

It's just a room key
You ain't gotta lie to me
Can't you just use me like I'm using you?

And so forth and so on in the same vein.  The lyrics of this song, identified by The New York Times as one of the best songs of 2020 came to mind as I was reading a short story called "Featherweight" in the March 29, 2021 New Yorker.  It's by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, and concerns a young Native American man who has gone away to college.

Basically, it's an ode to hookup culture even when it arguably morphs into something that resembles a relationship, but not one that gets much further than sex, and even that turns out to be not what the young man in question thought it was. If you're interested, you can read the story for the details.

As we know, sex sells. It's sort of like the law of gravity: it never changes. Mr. HolyWhiteMountain clearly knows it and the New Yorker clearly sees no reason to resist. 

The story is written in the first person and the unnamed hero, having left his reservation, wants to "know what larger America is all about."  In his case, that means having sex with as many white girls as possible. Readers are told a couple of their names but little else about them other than that they are into power, hatred (not against him) and that "racist cowgirls give the best head."

Now let's turn to the usual New Yorker interview and see what Mr. HolyWhiteMountain has to say about this portion of his story:

"The white girls come to the table with their notions of what indians are, and what it means to be an indian, which don’t really speak to his experience at all, whereas he’s noticing things about them that they don’t know about themselves, things that indicate an unbridgeable gap. There’s a difference between assumptions that come from stereotypes and the kind of understanding that results from closely observed experience. The early situation in the story was a way for me to talk about how whiteness—which, and this is something we never talk about, is different from being white—functions. The most striking thing about people who really embody whiteness is that they see everything but themselves. Whereas people who aren’t coming from that space, usually people of color but not always, see themselves (because they’ve been objects of the white gaze for decades and centuries) and the peculiarities of whiteness at the same time. This blind spot is one of the reasons this country is such a mess right now; whiteness doesn’t get to function in an unimpeded manner anymore, and this process of coming to self-awareness is extremely painful, both for these people waking up to the values that underpin whiteness and for the rest of us, who have to experience their resistance to that awakening. I felt from the start that much of the support for Trump was about this: the promise of a return to a time when white people didn’t have to look at themselves, which means they could continue participating in the great American project of forgetting—the past, how the country was made, etc."

This strikes me a little like conceptual art:  you see a small heap of objects on the floor of an otherwise bare room that appears, well, like a small heap of objects. Staring at it for some time doesn't change much.  Then you notice that on one wall, usually in small print, the piece of art is identified and underneath, is a lengthy explanation of the work by the artist. There you learn it is all about, say, colonialism, slavery, racism, exploitation, police brutality, etc. etc. 

This is called conceptual art and one can, I suppose, view Mr. HolyWhiteMountain's story in that context. There is the text and then there is what he says it is supposed to be all about. 

Mr. HolyWhiteMountain's notion that people who embody "whiteness" (see Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me" for the best explanation of this) don't see themselves while others do is an interesting notion worth exploring beyond just a concept. Why doesn't Mr. HolyWhiteMountain, who in the interview says he is working on a couple of novels, actually do so? As opposed to maintaining that a bunch of undescribed tawdry hookups comporting with "One Night Standards" somehow illuminates it.

Well, if it weren't for all the sex, would readers bail out on this piece?

Finally tiring of white girl hookups,  the story goes on to what the narrator describes as his first love, a native American girl, but of a different tribe than his. What readers learn about that is, surprise, surprise, their sex life -- and how a French woman studying abroad is forced to listen in. Our hero views the French girl in much the same fashion he imagines people of "whiteness" view others. "She was an endless entertainment to me."

While the narrator of "Featherweight" has little in his mind throughout the story beyond his next sex act, his girlfriend appears at least somewhat more substantial if in only as a trope. She's interested in social justice issues when not locked in the bathroom by herself smoking dope. 

In the end things don't work out leaving the protagonist wishing that, if only for a moment, he could be a classic (white American) "dreamer" living in suburbia (see again the aforementioned "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi-Coates).

Mr. HolyWhiteMountain is, by the way, currently a lecturer at Stanford University.  Sounds like something a "dreamer" might like to be.

One Way In Which to Justify a Happy Ending in Fiction

 Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd" is a comedic novel, which means it has a happy ending.  That's as opposed to a tragic novel, which doesn't.

When it comes to Hollywood movies, just about any excuse will do, since the public by and large doesn't like films that end as "downers."  That was traditionally true of Broadway musicals as well, which is one reason "West Side Story" was a breakthrough: it doesn't end happily.

But back to Hardy (1840 -1928): his heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, by the time she was only about 24 years old, had already rejected one suitor, married the wrong man and then when he appeared to have died, promised to marry an older man she didn't love as a result of a thoughtless Valentine's Day gesture sometime earlier. Fortunately (for her), the former was shot and killed by the latter who then turned himself in to serve essentially a life term in prison.  That left her free to marry the right man, the man who had first proposed to her only to be rejected.

But why should readers believe this man, Garbriel Oak,  really is the right man and that their future together will be a happy one?  In Hardy's view it has to do with the nature of real, or true, love.

Briefly by way of background, Oak, an exceptionally competent and reliable fellow had, following a stroke of ill-fortune, come to work for Bathsheba when she inherited a prosperous farm and gained considerable social stature in the process. Whenever problems arose, Oak was there to take care of them, never again pressing his suit as he worked closely with Bathsheba and eventually became her second in command.

Then, just as Bathsheba is finally free of those other entanglements, Oak announces a plan to go to America (the novel being set in rural England), leaving Bathsheba unjustifiably distraught. "She was aggrieved and wounded that the possession of hopeless love from Gabriel, which she had come to regard as her inalienable right for life, should have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this way." She is, after all, far from a worldly woman in age and experience despite her pluck and independence. 

Thinking about it, Bathsheba comes to realize she is about to lose the only true friendship she had and, taking matters into her own hands, convinces Oak that if he will only propose again, she will marry him. Somewhat bemused, he does: he has always wanted her.

The reason, in Hardy's mind, that their love for each other will now last is because if "a substantial affection" survives an initial knowledge of  the rougher sides of each other's character, and only develops into romance "in the interstices of hard prosaic reality," it will make for a solid bond.

"This good fellowship -- comaraderie --  usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the two sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is as strong as death -- that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name (love) is evanescent as steam."

And there the novel ends, on page 428 in the Penguin Random House 2015 Vintage Classics Edition.

"Future Selves" As Minimalism In The Short Story Format

 Minimalism is a mid-twentieth century movement that sought to strip aesthetics to its essentials -- most prominently in art, but also in music, dance and literature.

One literary example is the short story "Future Selves" in the March 29, 2021, issue of The New Yorker by Ayşegül Savaş. Although she identifies herself as a Turkish woman living in Paris, the story in question in set in the U.S.

Why minimalism?  This is a story that has neither a plot or the usual substitute -- significant character development. Nor is it noticeably "writerly," which is to say replete with metaphors, similes or imaginative, poetic prose. Rather, the sentence structure is about as basic and straight-forward one can get.

The takeoff point is a woman and her husband looking for a new apartment, not because they immediately need one, but rather because they want something different.  So there is no rush and they look at a few interesting if impractical options before eventually moving into something practical, but otherwise of little interest. When it comes to fiction, this is about as pedestrian as it gets.

Unrelated to the apartment-search basis of the story, our heroine, who is telling this tale as a first-person narrative, travels to visit a younger female cousin who is still in college. The cousin takes her aunt to a series of parties at which nothing remarkable happens. But she does recall a quiet, awkward young man who is part of the group, but not in the mainstream.

Later, our heroine learns that the young man in question disappeared, leaving behind an apparent suicide note that was only belatedly discovered in a recycling bin. She ponders what happened and tells her husband about it, saying that it felt like something out of a film.

End of story.

In her New Yorker author interview, Ms Savaş maintains that this is a story of social relevance in that it is all about the difference between those who can imagine a future life, such as by being able to look for a new apartment, and those who cannot -- "the stark division between those who could imagine an acceptable future for themselves and those who couldn’t."  The young man who disappears being clearly one of he latter since, according to his note, he "couldn’t see a place for himself in the world."

Given the fact readers learn next to nothing about the man in question, and given Ms. Savas explanation of the motivation behind her story, one presumably must take those words as allegorical, representing not so much a single person as the state of the unfortunate and the oppressed everywhere.

Such is the nature of minimalism.

"Topics of Conversation:" Chick Lit in Spades

 It's appropriate that both The New York Times and The New Yorker assigned women to review Miranda Popkey's relatively recent novel "Topics of Conversation" because this is Chick Lit, or literature primarily of interest to women, in spades. Both of the lengthy reviews are positive so if you don't like what I have to say below, click on the names of the publications above and read something different,

Aside from women, I suppose a male writer worried about how he might convincingly depict The Contemporary Woman might be interested as well, but beware: one could get rather depressed in the process.

Before continuing, I suppose I should explain how I came to purchase and read this book.  I was skimming through my daily Lit Hub email and noticed an item about a woman wanting to read Henry James novel "The Ambassadors"  -- one of his best, in my humble opinion (I haven't read all of his books). And I thought: "this sounds like an interesting person, so perhaps I should read her book."  It didn't take long to get through it. Although it's about 220 pages, it's a very quick read.

Sarah Resnick, who reviewed "Topics" for "The New Yorker" probably hit the nail on the head in saying that Popkey's book attempts to capture the contradictions of female [sexual] desire. 

"This contrast—of women raring to assert their agency in one context, then willing, even eager, to relinquish it another—captured my interest in part because of its familiarity. I’d seen it crop up recently in widely praised works both written by and featuring brazen, outspoken, and almost always middle-class white women," Resnick said.

One can't help noticing what Resnick is talking about as one reads the book and, among other things, one begins to wonder, if this is true, what does it say about the credibility of the #MeToo phenomenon?  Well, of course there have been some brazen atrocities, but there have also been some claims that make one wonder. 

In "Topics of Conversation," which contains more in the way of monologue (both outer and inner) than actual conversation, the chief character, an unknown woman loosely associated with academia, floats along on a river of alcohol as do the other female characters, including her mother who, after four gin and topics considerably heaver on gin than on tonic, admits that she had sex -- at her instigation -- with her therapist when her sessions came to an end. 

In the acknowledgement section of her book, Popkey thanks her own therapists in New York and St. Louis, "neither of whom I have slept with."  That, apparently, is in case you, the reader, have come to the conclusion that this work must be largely autobiographical. 

Then, in a very curious entry, she thanks Nobel Prize-winning poet Louise Glück "who gave me permission to write fiction" and award-winning author Ben Marcus "who gave me permission to write a novel."

What in the world is this all about?  After three waves of feminism, does Popkey still believe that as a woman, she needs to ask permission to do this, that or the other? Or is this a sly means of self-promotion: the implication that if Glück and Marcus have given her permission to put pen to paper, they must consider her talent to be equivalent to theirs?  Or perhaps this is just old-fashioned name dropping. Whatever it is, it is ill-considered and even inappropriate.

Along with a great deal of sex -- much talk about it as opposed to descriptions of it actually occurring (this book is far from pornographic) -- there is a good deal of transgression, real and imagined. It probably goes without saying that sex and transgression sell a lot of books, which may at least help explain the nature of the narrative.

Near the beginning, for instance, a chain-smoking psychoanalyst named Artemisa, who is apparently both a bigamist and in an open marriage with her current husband (they have a young child) casually bares her breasts to Popkey's protagonist, then employed as a young nanny. Same-sex attraction is in the air.

But what follows is this:

"Most psychologists, Artemisia said, theorize the commonality of the so-called rape fantasy among heterosexual women as linked to shame.  ... Women are raised to believe they should not desire sex. More explicitly in earlier generations, yes, but the message remains implicit today, ... But okay, the rape is fantasy.  At least theoretically, it allows the woman to have the sex that she desires without also having to admit the shame of that desire. Force becomes a method of circumvention."

And so it goes, one drink after another -- mostly white wine, but also slugs of bourbon (while carrying a young child in one's other arm) and scotch and, of course, those gin and tonics. The life of The Contemporary Woman until (happy ending?) a rehab clinic leaves Pokey's protagonist sober as the book ends. (Spoiler: there is no thanks to any rehab clinic in the acknowledgement section of the book -- at least none that I noticed.)

Lastly, near the end of the story, the unnamed protagonist horses over the idea that women don't want to have sex with men they are supposed to desire, but do want the reverse. 

So, earlier in the tale, Popkey's heroine (if one can use that term) marries a man one might call "too-nice John" -- a man she can only eventually hold in contempt for excessively good behavior toward her, a beta-male if you will.  He richly deserves to be made a cuckold by means of an exceptionally tawdry initiative on the part of his wife. And to have her leave him, which she does.

There's more, of course -- the sisterhood of unmarried mothers, for example. But I suspect you've gotten the idea. 

My recommendation: forget "Topics of Conversation" and read "The Ambassadors" instead. But if you must, have a stiff drink always at hand. It will evidently help you understand The Contemporary Woman.

 

"Love Potions" May Be More New Yorker Promotional Fiction

 In a recent post, I raised the question of whether at least some of the weekly fiction published by The New Yorker is promotional in nature.  In other words, is it fundamentally a form of advertising for the author or more likely, for the author's publisher and if so, does the publisher pay the magazine to run these pieces, or perhaps give them to The New Yorker without charge?

These questions came to mind because often what passes for a short story is an excerpt from a new novel about to be published or just published.

The story, "The Case For And Against Love Potions" by Imbolo Mbue in the March 22, 2021 issue of the magazine appears to fall into this category, but with a twist.  Instead of an excerpt from Mbue's just-published book "How Beautiful We Were," the story I will refer to as "Love Potions" is an outtake from "How Beautiful." In other words, it is material originally written with the book in mind, but which didn't make it into the book.

To put it another way, still using the film analogy, this is material that has been picked up off the cutting room floor, dusted off and printed in The New Yorker.

That doesn't mean it is bad.  Indeed, "Love Potions," set in a subsistence farming community somewhere in Africa (presumably Cameroon), has a certain charm to it.  Commendably devoid of the all-to-familiar "craft" one associates with Writers Workshop-influenced fiction, the story reads like a folk tale, but for adults as opposed to children.

In a nutshell, it explores the idea that while humans need to love and be loved, there are other reasons for marriage, stated in simple, declarative sentences replete with a lot of down-home wisdom.

If it has a flaw, it's because it reads exactly like what Mbue says it is in the usual New Yorker author interview. The first draft of the story, Mbue explains, was a very short story about a character named Wonja. Too short and too one-sided (just the case against a potion), a second story about a character named Gita was tacked on.

If I were Mbue's editor, I would have said: "If you want this published, you have got to better integrate these two tales." As it stands. it reads like two separate stories, but with no pause in between. At a minimum, a better transition is needed, but finding a way to weave the tales together would be even better.

Although it may not be evident to readers, Mbue explains her story can be viewed as a critique of the patriarchal order of society. Fair enough, but I don't think that comes across as strongly as the aspirational nature of life as it unfolds in an African village setting.

Reader Reaction to my Novella "Manhattan Morning"

 I recently explained that my novella, "Manhattan Morning," is now available in a larger format as a PDF file.  It is illustrated, has a more readable font and is free of charge.

You can find a link to the PDF version on the  "Manhattan Morning"  page of this blog by clicking on the box so labeled at the top righthand corner of this post.

The reason I am writing about this again is because I have added extensive reaction from readers, plus my responses to some of that often very candid commentary, to the "Manhattan Morning" page.  

You can read as much or as little of that as you want by simply scrolling down the page.

In due course, I plan to delete the version of "Manhattan Morning" that is for sale as a Kindle book.  That format hasn't been popular and doesn't work well with illustrations.

I Suppose I Should be Flattered, But I'm Not Sure

 If you've visited my Welcome Page you know that visitors to this blog are modest in number.  So modest that when one friend recently discovered that I had a blog and asked what it was about, I told him it was basically a conversation with myself, (I'm a good listener.)

So imagine my shock when I found out that on one recent day, 671 pages had been accessed followed by 528 on the following day.

What in the world was going on?

For about three seconds, I thought:  "Amazing: I have written something of interest!"

But immediately thereafter, I thought: "No. Something odd has happened."  

The answer, it turned out, was that a service called "Plagscan" was prowling through my blog. The reason?  Some entity, most probably an academic institution, was apparently using this application to see whether some piece of writing had been plagiarized.

By clicking on the word "Plagscan" in the paragraph above you can learn more about the service from Wikipedia.

Should I be flattered that my writing could be worth plagiarizing?  Or should I be annoyed at this unwanted intrusion into my little corner of cyberspace?  What do you think?

McKinsey Recommends Racial Quota System for Hollywood

 McKinsey and Company, probably the most well-known if highly controversial American management consulting firm, has recommended that Hollywood implement a racial quota system when it comes to making movies.  That's according to an article in the March 12, 2021 New York Times headlined "Lack of Diversity Costs Hollywood Billions." 

McKinsey's recommendations have come into question over the years on a number of fronts, but most recently with respect to the opioid crisis. Less than a month ago, the firm's top executive was forced out of that position when McKinsey had to pay almost $600 million to 49 U.S. states because of the role it played in inappropriately urging its client, drug maker Purdue Pharma, to excessively push sales of OxyContin. That was only one of several scandals mentioned in a New York Times article of Feb. 24, 2021.

With respect to Hollywood, McKinsey has recommended that the film industry "commit publicly to a specific target for Black and nonwhite representation across all levels and roles that reflect the American population: 13.4 percent Black or a total of 40 percent for all people of color," the NYT reported.

In addition, the consultants, among other things, recommended that film makers "financially support a range of Black stories by committing 13.4 percent of annual budgets to projects starring Black actors with Black producers, writers and directors behind the camera."

Hollywood need not act upon those recommendations, but if the industry fails to become more racially diverse, as much as $10 billion in potential additional annual revenues may be lost, the consultants said.

I mention this for two reasons: most films made for entertainment fall into the category of fiction, which is mostly what this blog is about, and when looking at the contents of a work of fiction it is often, but not always, interesting to understand its genesis. 

New, Free Illustrated Edition of "Manhattan Morning"

If you've ever desperately wanted to read my novella, "Manhattan Morning," but don't like Kindle and/or can't afford $3.00 in these troubled times, help is at hand.

I have just released a new,  larger (but not longer) PDF version  of the book, formatted for easy reading and attractively illustrated with photographs of my protagonist's walk from the Warwick Hotel in mid-town Manhattan to just beyond Grand Central Terminal.  The photos, which I took about 15 years ago, now have an almost historical feel to them in view of what has happened to New York City as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Even if you don't want to read the book, you might enjoy leafing through the PDF file and looking at the photos.  And it's FREE. Please click HERE to get it.

I've also added a "Manhattan Morning" page to this blog -- referenced above.  It joins my Welcome page and a page devoted to my writings about Virginia Woolf. 

Pages differ from a blog post, which you are reading now, as pages don't disappear down the stack as time goes by.

Warning: "Manhattan Morning" is not on any bestseller list and never will be. If you do read it, or even just look at the photos, please consider leaving a comment or sending me an email with your impressions -- good, bad or indifferent. Your opinion is worth a lot more to me than $3.