Ben Okri's "The Secret Source" Takes the Easy Way Out

 Ben Okri's short story "The Secret Source" in the Sept. 12, 2022 online version of The New Yorker is an interesting read -- until he gets to the conclusion. There, shifting gears from a disturbingly, all-too-plausible conspiracy theory centering on water shortages, readers are left with a fairy tale non-finish.

In the usual New Yorker author interview, Okri claims the ending is valid because reality is ambiguous. Thus, it's up to the reader to interpret the abrupt, fantasy-world conclusion it in a fashion that is "true for you."

This reminds me of the proverbial tale of attending an exhibition of abstract art with the artist present.  Looking at one piece, someone tells the artist: "I really like it, but what does it mean?"

"It means whatever it means to you," the artist responds.  

If you like that sort of thing, you'll probably like Okri's effort, but to me, he simply takes the easy way out. The story, strongly reminiscent of George Orwell's "1984" in the sense that remote, anonymous government authorities bent on nothing but staying in control have found ways to quash all significant dissent as conditions worsen. And just as in Orwell's story, there are truth seeking protagonists, but too far on the fringes of society to have much clout, and increasingly at risk as they attempt to press ahead.

Okri, in the interview, suggests a number of possibly interpretative routes for the end of his tale. Too bad he didn't use his considerable powers of prose to spin one out. 

"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.