New Yorker Fiction and "What is This Story About?"

 It's not unusual to read a work of fiction and find oneself thinking: "I wonder what this story is about?"

This is perhaps especially true with respect to the New Yorker's Nov. 23, 2020 short story entitled "The Winged Thing," by Patricia Lockwood.  Part of the problem is that it isn't actually a short story. It's an excerpt from Lockwood's forthcoming novel "No One Is Talking About This" and in effect, is an ad for that book for which Lookwood didn't have to pay, but instead presumably got paid. Wouldn't most writers love to find themselves in that position!

Basically, if you read the excerpt and you like Lockwood's style of writing, you might buy her novel and perhaps find out by reading the whole thing what she's really trying to say. Is that what this this "text" is about.

In the usual author's interview, Lockwood is first asked about her approach to the narrative -- "a protagonist who is immersed in the language of the Internet" -- and indeed there is a bit of that although in some respects, more abstract in nature than one might expect on the basis of that description. It's all about escaping suffering, we are told.

Finally, there is what happens in this excerpt.  The apparently younger sister of the unnamed chief character, a woman who may be a lesbian ("Back in Ohio and heterosexual again," she says at one point), is about to have a baby that appears to be developing in the womb in an abnormal fashion bringing up, among other things, the possibility of an abortion.

There, Lockwood spins out a convincing and thought-provoking narrative of all that might go on in such a situation and as a result, one could easily conclude it's what the story is about. Except for two things. First, this is just a small segment of a novel and second, in her interview, Lockwood says that the significance of the episode is that it plucks the main character out of her online life and puts her "back into the body that suffers." And that then leads Lockwood into a rather puzzling explanation of the nature of language.

What is this story about?

A Charming Little Tale On The Role of Language by Rushdie

The Nov. 23, 2020 issue of The New Yorker features a charming little tale by Salman Rushdie on the the role of language, and the importance of freedom of expression, in a functioning democracy. It's charming in that "language" (not any particular one) is depicted as a person of the female gender and like an actual person, can suffer certain indignities.

"She fears she may be decaying. It’s even possible—though it’s hard for her to admit this, even to herself—that she may die.

"Nobody’s listening."

"Nobody cares."

Nominally, the main character in "The Old Man in the Piazza" is an elderly individual who is first an observer of an era of strict Political Correctness when no one is allowed to say anything negative about anyone or anything.

When that era ends, people argue about everything and the old man, possibly because he has presumably been around long enough to have accumulated wisdom, becomes a popular mediator, at first reluctantly, but then with a sense of enjoyment. But, alas, his popularity becomes so great that people are afraid to disagree with him -- bringing on what is arguably a new era of Political Correctness.

At this point, Lady Language has had enough and begins to scream uncontrollably although at such a pitch no one can hear her and, gathering up her skirts, she departs the position in the piazza she has occupied for eons, at one time surrounded by young men who where presumably certain poets of an earlier age consumed by the beauty of language. But they are long gone.

The result of the exit of Lady Language: "our words fail us" and no one knows what to do about anything, including the old man, who if actually wise can't impart wisdom any more.

In the usual New Yorker interview that accompanies the publication of short stories, Rushdie says he prefers an argumentative society to that in which speech is controlled. "The ability to have such disagreements is what one might call 'freedom,'" he said, noting that this applies to all societies and that no great import should be attached to the seemingly Italian setting or to references to certain topics, such as denigration of immigrants (Rushdie being one) that appears to reference the prevailing Trump era here in the U.S.