The latest New Yorker short story, "Hansa, Gretyl and Piece of Shit." by Rebecca Curtis, raises more interesting questions about the parents of the chief protagonist, a young girl named Gretyl, than it does about her. She's a passive girl who tends to blame herself for anything that's wrong and as such, is not that interesting,
Some might argue that's a description of all-too-many girls, and perhaps that's the point. If so, it seems just a bit out of date.
Gretyl's parents are the key to this distressing tale, albeit one with a politically correct ending.
In a nutshell, this is a family of three daughters considerably spread out in years and by the time Gretyl is coming of age, the parents do little more than feign interest in their last offspring despite her increasingly distressed physical condition. Gretyl's mother is into the nice things of life and her father, a pilot often away, has begun to wonder if he should start over again with a new wife who can give him a son.
Gretyl is depicted as singularly passive and accepting of her plight as an illness, now routine if quickly addressed, takes a devastating hold. Her only friend, a stray cat she secretly feeds, meets a dreadful fate, seemingly becoming a nail in Gretyl's own coffin. But they will be reunited in the afterlife, or so Gretyl eventually appears to believe.
Saved by an immigrant intruder, Gretyl also marries one and becomes a
workaholic anesthesiologist not in San Francisco, but in Oakland. And as
we all know, there is no there there, at least not a there one wishes
upon oneself. Loyal and supportive of her criminally apathetic parents
as time passes, she's depicted as a saint.
With the German fairy tale a structural device, the ending is appropriately a mostly happy one -- far too happy when it comes to Gretyl's parents.
The bottom line: Ms Curtis has a prose style well suited to story telling, but she needed a better story to tell. It did serve to remind me that it had been a while since I had listed to Englebert Humperdinck's opera "Hansel and Gretyl" and it's beautiful "Prayer Duet." Now if only one could have come across something like this while reading the story. And hmmm -- in the opera, Hansel is generally played by a woman. Nothing new in opera, but in tune with these times of gender fluidity. perhaps Ms Curtis will consider incorporating something along those lines for her next offering.
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After I posted this review, I got to thinking there might be another way to look at this story. Perhaps it can be viewed as a political allegory even though Ms Curtis made no mention of that possibility in her author interview.
The backdrop is President Donald Trump's run for office
in 2016 plus various subsequent statements. Central to his election
campaign was a call to strictly limit cross-border immigration ("rapists
and murders") and to, if possible, halt all immigration from Islamic
countries. In conjunction with this, Trump was widely viewed as seeking
the continuation of "white supremacy" when it comes to who controls the
U.S.
In brief, the chief protagonist of the short story in
question, a teenage girl named Gretyl, is near death as a result neglect
by her lily white parents. Outside, a seemingly threatening, non-white
man appears to be lurking and there are reports of break-ins and
robberies in the neighborhood.
But in the end, the immigrant, a
man originally from Palestine, but who grew up in Kazakhstan (Islamic
regions) saves Gretyl and she goes on to marry a Persian-American and,
except for one thing, leads a productive life focused on helping people
who are disadvantaged.
The moral: the long-dominant white
population Trump wants to preserve and protect are losers and our
salvation lies with immigrants and especially, in this case, if they
have an Islamic background.
Perhaps Ms Curtis could be encouraged to comment.
