A New Yorker Story More About the Parents Than the Child

 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 If so, it seems just a bit out of date.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.

The Arrival of "Black Privilege" When It Comes to the Arts

 "Despite the really horrific climate we've reached, it still doesn't distract me from the fact of how amazing it is to be a Black artist right now,'' Brooklyn sculptor Simone Leigh told the New York Times upon being selected to represent the U.S. at the 2022 Venice Biennale.

She's right about that. 

Even if one only reads the arts sections of major American publications episodically, one thing is crystal clear. Museums, theaters, operas, galleries, the film and television industries etc. are falling all over themselves to feature Black artists and Black subject matter.

In the last couple of years or so, we have repeatedly encountered the phrase "white privilege" -- the notion that whites are showered with benefits, thanks to a county having been founded on "systemic racism." While there may be some truth to that, there are plenty of whites who have not been at all privileged and many of them seem to have voted for Donald Trump on the view that it was time for change. Experiencing now prolonged economic stagnation or decline, they see immigrants and minorities as a threat from below (fears Trump plays upon), but they also feel totally dismissed by the coastal elites who are for the most part, but not exclusively, white.

Many of these people, particularly in the Middle West, are descents of immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island with no money in their pockets and started their American journeys in New York garment industry sweat shops, in coal mines, in lumber camps or on hard scrabble farms. 

But back to the arts.  The pendulum is swinging and many are probably saying it's about time. Blacks in particular, but also other U.S. minority groups, of one definition or another, are finally getting their due. At the extreme of this trend is the "cancel culture" movement -- not just getting rid of statues of Confederate military heroes and removing the names of people like Woodrow Wilson and Flannery O'Connor, deemed to be unacceptably racist, from buildings, but at its extreme, dumping pretty much anything deemed to be "Eurocentric" in nature. We may be back to book burning before it's over, but maybe climate change will get us first.

There's nothing wrong with selecting Simone Leigh -- clearly a sculptor of distinction -- to represent the U.S. in Venice. Interestingly, as the Times article points out, Blacks represented the U.S. in the last two Venice Biennials as well: Martin Puryear, a sculptor in 2019, and Mark Bradford, a painter, in 2017. They also are artists of distinction, but how many points on a line does it take to make a trend, some might ask? Still lots of lost time to make up, others would say.

But as I read the arts pages and material sent to me by various opera, theater and music groups, one cannot help but wonder if, in the current environment, the race, sexual orientation, and gender of artists has a lot more to do with the prominence that they currently achieve than the works of art they produce, many of which are hailed more for sociopolitical messages than for aesthetic values.  But that's another topic. One that I have addressed before and will probably return to.

To be fair, however, aesthetic considerations are a major element in the work of Simone Leigh and her statues can be fairly evaluated on such considerations alone.   

Here's an example - a photo I took of her sculpture "Brick House" (emblematic of the character of a strong Black woman) near the north end of New York's High Line Park.

The bottom line: in at least one area of American life -- the world of high-culture arts -- "Black privilege" has arrived. As Ms Leigh put it: "how amazing to be a Black artist right now."

Flannery O'Connor as a Displaced Person

 Earlier this year, Loyola University Maryland removed the name of author Flannery O'Connor from a residence hall, making her in effect a displaced person.  I mention that because I recently read her story "The Displaced Person" for a literary seminar and will have a couple of things to say about it.

O'Conner, a Catholic who died in 1964 at age 39, repeatedly used the word "nigger" in her stories set in the South because that's how the characters she was writing about often referred to Black people back then. But that is not what purists in the age of Back Lives Matter/Cancel Culture have found to be the subject of concern.  Rather, some comments she made to friends in personal correspondence that has become public have been deemed to show that she was a racist.

In the age of Cancel Culture, the significance or worth of a piece of art is determined far more by the racial/gender/sexual orientation of the artist than by the attributes of the object in question. One only need to read the arts pages of the New York Times in the current times to see how that works. To my knowledge, there has been no outcry against O'Connor's published novels, stories and essays. Falling into the now highly unpopular genre of literary fiction, they are not what one would call "page turners" and perhaps are now not widely read.

But on to "The Displaced Person," a story set in the American South in the wake of World War II that was first published in 1955. It centers on two women: Mrs. McIntyre, an older widow who runs a farm, and Mrs. Shortley, who, with her husband, works for Mrs. McIntyre as do two Black men.

The displaced person is a Pole who, with his wife and two children, have been, through the offices of a local Catholic priest, placed with Mrs. McIntyre who has apparently sought to have them on the view the man may be a better worker, and less expensive, than the help she has been able to hire locally. This is cloaked in humanitarian considerations, leaving Mrs. McIntyre somewhat confused about her own sentiments.

But readers are introduced to the situation first and foremost through the eyes of Mrs. Shortley and what she sees corresponds to prevailing currents, and especially since Donald Trump ran for President on an anti-immigrant platform. Although there is some rather nobleness-oblige-type sympathy for those trying to flee horrible circumstances abroad, and some thought that immigrants can be useful (especially in high-tech and agriculture at present), they are "not us" and if not a potential drain on government resources, a threat to the employment and wage levels of existing Americans. They are also viewed as source of cultural and social disruption and even an outright threat of one sort or other -- potential terrorists if they come from certain countries or subscribe to certain religious beliefs, or "rapists," drug dealers, etc, if they arrive from elsewhere. 

And sure enough, the displaced Pole, despite or perhaps because of his admirable work ethic, is soon viewed as a threat, even by Mrs. McIntyre. It's a good read.

Flannery O'Conner is generally identified as a member of the "Southern Gothic" school of fiction and one characteristic of that style of storytelling is the employment of grotesque characters or situations to shed light on the human condition by, in effect, amplifying certain of it's characteristics.

In "The Displaced Person," the grotesque appears most notably in the sexuality of the two women mentioned above.  This is most explicit with respect to Mrs. Shortley, clearly not a particularly attractive women. "She stood on two tremendous legs, with the grand self-confidence of a mountain, and rose, up narrowing bulges of granite, to two icy points of light that pierced forward, surveying everything." 

What gets Mrs. Shortley's sexual juices flowing?  

One day, in the story, she encounters her husband smoking a cigarette in the cow barn, which, she warns him, he shouldn't be doing.  "There was about a half an inch of cigarette adhering to the center of his lower lip. ... Mr. Shortley, without appearing to give the feat any consideration, lifted the cigarette butt with the sharp end of his tongue, drew it into his mouth, closed his lips tightly, rose, stepped out, gave his wife a good appreciative stare, and spit the smoldering butt into the grass. ... This trick of Mr. Shortley's was actually has way of making love to her."

This stunt, it turns out, was the manner in which Mr. Shortley had courted his wife. He didn't give her anything pretty, but sat on her porch steps smoking. "When the cigarette got to the proper size, he would turn his eyes to her and open his mouth and draw in the butt and then sit there as if he had swallowed it, looking at her with the most loving look anybody could imagine." 

"It nearly drove her wild." 

What about Mrs. McIntyre?  When she was 30, she married a 75-year-old man after working as his secretary for a few months "because of his money, but there had been another reason she would not admit then, even to herself: she had liked him."

Known as "the Judge," what was he like?

"He was a dirty, snuff-dipping Court House figure ... His teeth and hair were tobacco colored and his face a clay pink pitted and tracked with mysterious prehistoric-looking marks as if he had been unearthed amid fossils. There had been a peculiar odor about him of sweaty folded bills ..."

"The three years that he lived after they had married were the happiest and most prosperous of her life, but when he died his estate proved to be bankrupt."  Despite having married him in part for his money and getting left with nothing but a mortgaged house and 50 acres from which the timber had been cut, Mrs. McIntyre had buried the judge on the property and preserved his home office untouched through two subsequent marriages, one to an alcoholic and the other to a man who ended up in a mental institution. She didn't hold it against him. Other considerations had evidently been more important.

While O'Connor provides no details of Mrs. McIntyre's sex life, one can easily imagine that what turned her on was equally grotesque to that of what stimulated Mrs. Shortley and perhaps that is one reason that of all her hired help over the years, Ms. Shortley was the person Mrs. McIntyre got along with best.

 

Considering Zadie Smith and her Novel "White Teeth"

According to an article in The Guardian, Zadie Smith recently reflected on her debut novel, "White Teeth," which quickly became a best seller after it was published in 2000 and subsequently won a number of awards.

The book, she said, "had been given an easy ride by the white critics because [its characters] were mostly brown." And, of course, Smith herself is a woman of color -- the daughter of an English father and a Jamaican mother -- just like one of the lead characters in "White Teeth." And the traditionally very white male-dominated Anglo/American publishing industry was, and is, under pressure to be more inclusive.

"It had all sort of mistakes, I'm sure," Smith said, referring to the book in question.

And on another occasion, Smith said: "I have a very messy and chaotic mind."

I mention these comments because I just finished reading "White Teeth."  While this is certainly a memorable work by a writer with impressive powers of observation and an exceptional ability to write dialect, it is also a rather messy novel with room for improvement.

With respect to Smith's ability to write dialect, in my view the novel contains too much of a good thing -- far to much in some instances.  Smith's characters often talk a lot while saying very little.  That's the sort of people they are, she would undoubtedly argue, but as a reader I would tell her: "I got that message loud and clear earlier on."  I found myself flipping through pages from time to time and I'm someone who generally carefully reads prose with a pen in my hand.

As for messy, this is a book in which one reads a lot about a particular character only to have him or her then disappear, often for extended periods. The book opens with a great deal about Archie Jones, leading one to believe he is going to be one of the main characters.  As it turns out, he really isn't. Other characters, such as the wife of the controversial scientist Marcus Chalfen, seem to loom very large at one point, only to pretty much just peter out.

Topics, too, come and go without much in the way of resolution, with the exception of Smith's main topic: the lack of identity felt by immigrants, particularly those of color in a traditionally white nation, and mixed-race people who are also of color.

"But Irie (Smith's mixed-race protagonist) didn't know she was fine. There was England, a gigantic mirror, and there was Irie, without reflection.  A stranger in a stranger land."

A couple pages later:

"And underneath it all, there remained an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere."

And this:

"But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears -- dissolution, disappearance."

Or:

"Millat (one of an immigrant family's twin sons) was neither one thing nor the other, this or that, Muslim or Christian, Englishman or Bengali; he lived for the in between, he lived up to his middle name, Zulfikar, the clashing of two swords."

And so it goes -- and in the process of all this, Smith's characters, who in some respects seem richly drawn, end up appearing to be little more than types or caricatures crafted to make a certain point. One rarely has a feeling of being inside of them, of really understanding their feelings and motivations.  Instead, one is forced to rely on what Smith's all-seeing narrator wants to tell us, sometimes to make a point and at other times for purposes that aren't all that clear.

Why be so critical when there is much to admire about Smith?

We are in a period where "the canon" -- the list of books thought to represent the best of what culture has to offer (Western culture, that is) -- is under reconsideration and Zadie Smith is a name one hears mentioned as where things should be going.  Read "White Teeth" and decide for yourself.

New Narratives for a New Diversity

The  May 14, 2018, issue of The New Yorker includes a short story by Edwidge Danticat entitled "Without Inspection" that can be viewed as representing a new narrative for a more diverse America.

This country has always been a nation of immigrants (after it was "discovered" by European explorers at any rate), but until relatively recently, the vast majority of the newcomers were Europeans who arrived legally.  Thus, the classic immigration story has long been one of persons, parents or grandparents who arrived from the "old world" at Ellis Island in New York harbor and after various trials and tribulations, often including discrimination, eventually achieved the American Dream, if not for themselves for their offspring.

Trump's Tactics and The Two Narratives

The current flap over whether Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is in some way responsible for Tuesday's apparent terrorist attack that killed eight individuals in Manhattan is illustrative of two trends I have been writing about.

The most straight forward is a salient element of President Donald Trump's modus operandi and one that his supporters love: the best defense is a strong offensive.

We Could Do Without Courts "I, The Donald" Suggests

So-called President Trump's authoritian tendencies were on display yet again as he railed on Twitter against the legal obstacles that have arisen to his intemperate immigration ban,

Remember that TV series about one of the worst Roman emperors, entitled "I, Claudius?" Well, how about "I, The Donald?"

Silicon Valley Upset By Trump, But Partially Responsible

Ok, this post is not about fiction -- unfortunately.

But, as we are learning hour by hour, President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration has caused chaos, not just at airports and other points of entry into the U.S., but around the world.