Matthew Klam's Hectic Depiction of a Slice of Society

 Matthew Klam's "The Other Party" in the Dec. 12, 2022, online version of The New Yorker is another example of short fiction as a snapshot in time as opposed to a traditional story with a beginning, middle and end. It's also fiction for our time in that it offers a convincing depiction of a contemporary inter-generational relationship, in this case a father and his teenage daughter in a very white middle-class neighborhood of Washington DC, as evidenced by a reference to Wisconsin Ave. 

Having lived there for 20 years, I know it well.

The wife and mother of the family is present too, but she doesn't loom particular large in the sequence of events. That's because in the pandemic, she has moved her practice into the basement of their house and is depicted as dealing onscreen with an endless stream of patients "in states of dislocation and despair." Having recently lost a job, dad, the chief protagonist, is managing quotidian affairs, 

Publication of the piece is well-timed in that it depicts a hectic pace of events connected with the Christmas season -- a neighborhood party centered on a traditional decorated cookie swap lubricated by a bowl of punch for the older generation and something far less structured, and, given the state of the world, a lot more dangerous for the teenagers.

Dad's method of coping seems to be "go with flow" because there is really no alternative.

Klam's prose style is almost stream of conscious in nature, mostly from the father's point of view.  It's as though readers are seeing and hearing the smallest of developments, as they take place, in exquisite and often colorful detail. The mix becomes increasingly cacophonous as the chief protagonist attempts to deal with the cookies, think about his wife, cope with rapidly changing developments involving his daughter and her friends, and try to absorb and properly relate to a piece of very bad news about a long-time neighbor and friend of his own.

The amount of detail is so rich and the flow of events so fast-paced I personally felt rather exhausted by the time I reached the end of the piece -- and very impressed with Klam's ability to convincingly assemble and depict so much information. 

What the point of all of this?  Hard to say. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is fundamentally a snapshot in time of a certain strata of contemporary society. There is a stab at a conclusion with a somewhat sappy message (although one with which I can identify) -- but the main point seems to be that life is increasingly messy: don't fight it. 

A Couple of Reasons to Read "Hello, Goodbye" by Yiyun Li

 Did you meet someone in your first year of college who became a friend for life?  Are you a parent who has difficulty, or memorably had difficulty, dealing with the wisdom of young children?

If the answer to either of those questions is "yes," you might enjoy Yiyun Li's short story in the Nov. 15, 2021 edition of The New Yorker entitled "Hello, Goodbye."

The story, like a lot of  contemporary literary fiction, doesn't go much of anywhere at the end of the day, but it's well written. It's a partial exploration of certain interpersonal relationships as opposed to a tale that ends in the resolution of a plot or a set of issues.

The friendship is between two women, Nina, a daughter of Chinese immigrants, and Katie, who is apparently white and of European descent. Brought up in Kansas and Indiana, respectively, they went to U.C. Berkeley and ended up saying in California, both working in marketing (of course) for Silicon Valley firms. This was back in the late 1990s.

After that backdrop, the story jumps 20 years or so forward, into the current pandemic. Nina has a couple of precocious young daughters and a reliable, but boring husband. Katie, who has never had a child, wants to get out of her marriage to a wealthy jerk considerably older than she is and arrives on Nina's doorstep in need of help. Nina tries to balance her friend's needs with those of her children, the latter exacerbated by the pandemic and her husband's rather passive attitude toward parenting. 

If that sounds interesting, perhaps because you can identify with one or more aspects of the situation, I recommend "Hello, Goodbye."  The dialog in particular is good. If not, forget it. 

Perhaps the most memorable sentence in the entire story comes near the beginning. It goes as follows: "Nina was 27, not helplessly young, yet far from being trapped in a mildewed marriage, as she tended to believe many middle-aged women were." Readers can decide for themselves the extent to which she may have ended up in one. 

In the usual New Yorker author interview, Ms Li said that when it comes to relationships, she believes "muddling through" is better than wrecking things by opting for more extreme measures. The story is definitely in that vein.

The Literature of Olivia Rodrigo's "Sour" & Elena Ferrante

This is another post in which I look at the lyrics of popular songs from a literary point of view. It deals with a recent, very popular album called “Sour,” written and sung by Olivia Rodrigo, that consists of a number of closely linked songs akin to the chapters of a book.

The point of view is first person singular and genre is essentially “chic lit,” the topics being mainly those that would resonate with women in the teenage to Young Adult age spectrum. Despite certain shortcomings, I think it is a very commendable effort and perhaps even more so if one listens to the music, which I didn’t.

The topic is all too familiar: a girl has lost her boyfriend to another girl and in that context, it is interesting to compare it to the approaches taken by both Taylor Swift, who dealt with a similar  situation by way of three songs on her recent “Folklore” album, and with Elena Ferrante, author of a number of books, most famously four novels known as the Neapolitan Quartet.

Let's take Ferrante first because Rodrigo's effort is all about a young woman who has been abandoned by her boyfriend and that is a recurring theme throughout Ferrante's writing. Indeed, one of her novels is entitled "The Days of Abandonment" and asked whether it was feminist in nature, Ferrante replied:

"Yes, because it's sustained by the female reaction to abandonment, from Medea and Dido on. No, because it doesn't aim at telling what is the theoretically and practically correct reaction of the contemporary woman faced with the loss of the beloved man nor does it brand male behaviors as vile."

That's a comment one should keep firmly in mind when considering "Sour."

Shifting gears, Taylor Swift, who Rodrigo has said she greatly admires, tried to get to the heart of her breakup story by looking at what happened through the differing points of view of the three protagonists whereas Rodrigo sticks to just that of the abandoned woman. But in my view, Swift failed to take good advantage of her technique.

Both Swift and Rodrigo seem to have difficulty fleshing out the character of a man and that's one of the reasons their lyrics are chic-lit in nature. In both instances, their men are one-dimensional – akin to cardboard cutouts -- and it’s hard to see why the women who lost them found them attractive in the first place. They are simply foils for the expression of female emotions ranging from love to hate plus much in between, which is probably nothing new when it comes to songwriting. But as literature, it can be a major shortcoming.

In any event, “Sour,” like a good opera, opens in media res with our 17-year-old songwriter heroine – why not call her Olivia? -- proclaiming insecurity and wallowing in self-pity.

“I’m not cool and I’m not smart and I can’t even parallel park,” she moans, declaring her ego to be in such a crushed state that she wishes she could disappear.

 Life is brutal thanks to a traitor -- a boyfriend who has just left her for another girl. She’s a loser (this will be of considerable significance in due course) and that’s tough apart from lost love, or perhaps lost late adolescent infatuation. In short, she's been abandoned and as a result, is left feeling both highly vulnerable and in her view, justifiably angry.

The young man’s departure was apparently not all that unexpected. As the story proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that he meant a lot more to Olivia than she did to him, but Olivia has trouble believing that and accepting the idea that what a person says can easily be situational as opposed to valid for all time.

A major reason she can’t accept what has happened is because she consistently failed to be true to herself throughout the relationship.

“I kept quiet so I could keep you,” she says. Winning is apparently what it was all about.

While her boyfriend was clearly no great prize -- “loved you at your worst, but that didn’t matter” -- she wasn’t either.

The young man in question has taken up with an older girl (even a couple of years can seem significant when one is 17) who is more sophisticated and more comfortable in her own skin than is our heroine.

“She’s everything I’m insecure about,” Olivia bleats.

And to make matters worse, the new girl – no need to give her a name because she’s essentially a trope – has blonde hair. Life is unfair, Olivia eventually comes to understand -- to her credit.

As a budding teenage songwriter, Olivia finds comfort in the power and validity of music. As such she can’t believe her former boyfriend can actually get along without her because of what he said in a certain song he wrote. Surely a song is where truth lies.

But with such thoughts predictably going nowhere, Olivia turns to more prosaic matters, revolving around a teenage rite of passage – a driver’s license.

Despite her inability to parallel park, she somehow managed to get one just the previous week. This was at the urging of her boyfriend who had wanted her to be able to drive over to his place as opposed to him having to spend time picking her up.

“I know we weren’t perfect,” she admits, which is undoubtedly an understatement.

Moving on is necessary, but not easy. At times, Olivia feels she is taking 1 step forward only to then take not just the usual two, but 3 steps back.

Much of this has to do with her acquiesce to subservient status in a relationship within which she felt “pretty” or “fun” only if her boyfriend told her such was the case.

“I hate that I gave you power over that kind of stuff,” she complains, without much justification. After all, as she says, she was the one who set things up in that fashion.

But then the story gets murky as self-abasement rears its ugly head.

Maybe, she says, she found it exciting to never really know how her boyfriend was going to treat her next: love her, want her, hate her, walk her to her door, send her home crying?

“The roller coaster is all I’ve ever had,” she tells us, the word “ever” suggesting her recent failed relationship may be just the proverbial tip of an iceberg.

In fact, Olivia may well be in therapy (she has told us nothing about her background) and perhaps that’s how she was able to find a therapist for her boyfriend, who she sees as having  benefitted from such help – far more than she herself has, it appears.  Olivia still believes she has to make herself into someone she isn’t.

Her former boyfriend is looking happy and healthy since he left her and is even a better man for his current girl. He has purchased a new car and his career is taking off, leaving her crying on her bathroom floor, his apathy salt in her wounds.

Good 4 u she thinks (tweets?), with sarcasm rather more hopeful than genuine.

Then Olivia steers off in a different direction. Perhaps it was fortunate her boyfriend dumped her, she decides to believe, depicting him as damaged goods. His new relationship isn’t so great. Rather, (pardon Olivia’s French) it’s déjà vu.

While the blonde boasts to her friends the young man is “unique,” Olivia sees his prevailing behavior (which she seems to know a lot about), as just a replay of the things he did with her.

Like trading jackets, or recycling jokes Olivia told him, or enjoying a particular Billy Joel song with his new girl, like they did.

“When are you going to tell her we did that, too?”

To his credit – although perhaps unfortunately for others – the young man remains true to himself, a characteristic Olivia finds infuriating.

While he made no concessions, she eviscerated her true self in an effort to become the person she thought he wanted. This, by the way, could be straight out of "Days of Abandonment" and Ferrante's depiction of her heroine, Olga.

Rodrigo's heroine wore makeup because she thought her boyfriend liked the Prom Queen look. She learned how he wanted his coffee and memorized his favorite songs. She read his self-help books so he would think she was smart.

“All I ever wanted was to be enough for you.” (Such was the case with respect to Olga as well.)

But the remake didn’t work (Olivia failed to become "exciting") and is left feeling “I just want myself back.”

Time goes by – it’s now a month later – and Olivia is somewhat more reconciled to the loss of  “all the sunlight of our past.”

The young man’s current girl friend is sweet and pretty and apparently also able to bring out the better in him, but perhaps to an insufficient degree. Olivia believes he is lying to her as well.

She can't give up the notion she and the young man had really been happy together before it all unraveled and, with a certain degree of noblesse oblige, even expresses hope he’s happy with the new girl, as long as he isn’t happier. In other words, Olivia still isn’t willing to admit defeat. She was the real thing; he just hasn’t figured it out. She isn't a loser!

But wait a minute: there's at least one more possibility. Perhaps society is to blame. What a concept!

Girls are pushed into presenting themselves with perfect bodies and white teeth and there they all are, out on social media, looking too good to be true.

Olivia, fixated with having failed to measure up, wants to throw away the phone upon which she views the competition – Instagram or wherever.

“I know their beauty is not my lack, but it feels like that weight is on my back.” 

She so desperately wants to be like such girls: happier, prettier, jealously, jealously. This is straight out of Edvard Munch. Olivia would fit right into "The Frieze of Life."

Well, those thoughts, too, are unproductive so it’s time for yet another tack. How about a notion of complicity?

Dumping her was her boyfriend’s favorite crime, she decides, but what if she was his accomplice? Only one person’s heart was broken, but “four hands bloody.” Knowing full well what he was capable of, she told lies and defended him to others “just so I could call you mine.”

That pretty much brings us to the end of the story, except that, like a good, old-fashioned tale, it has a moral to it.

Olivia has become a better person as a result of her misfortune in the sense that she is now able to see less fortunate members of society – a somewhat dorky boy she once knew and a lonely girl struggling to get away from dreadful parents – in a new light.

The aren’t the losers she probably once thought they were when she was riding high. They simply were unlucky – they got a bad deal of the cards of life when they were born as she herself did if for a girl, looks, and especially blonde hair, are pretty much everything.

She hopes the boy somehow converted his lousy hand into a royal flush and she decides the girl is commendably courageous in her attempt to “unlearn all their hatred.”

Nothing is forever, nothing is as good as it once might have appeared, and every door is hard to close. Those are Olivia’s closing thoughts as she realizes her setback was nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary in the grand sweep of things. She’s learned the value of empathy and compassion. A life worth living is not “all about me.”

Her teenage Dream was just that and her boyfriend’s behavior was not all that bad.

“We don’t talk much, but I just gotta say. I miss you and I hope you’re ok.”

Like Ferrante, Rodrigo does not ultimately brand male behavior as vile.

The ending saves it and as a result, I'd give this one a B+.

The Incorporation of Ideas in Fiction

 The latest email from Literary Hub offers an excerpt from Fiona Mozley's novel "Hot Stew," which is described as all about wealth, inheritance, gender and power.  Well, except for gender, that sounds a bit like "The Forsyte Saga," by John Galsworthy, published in 1922. 

But what interested me about the excerpt was Ms Mozley's decision to include a couple of provocative ideas in the middle of an episode of tangled personal relationships.

The first is sociopolitical in nature: whether private charity is good for society or simply serves to preserve for a longer time than might otherwise be the case income inequalities.

In the except, a man named Bastian asks a woman named Glenda how a woman named Laura was doing:

“She’s well. She hates her job though.” “Where does she work?”

“At some kind of charity. They treat her like shit but are constantly going on about how grateful she should be for working in such a friendly environment, and how they’re doing a really good thing by paying her a salary rather than getting her to give her time for free. She wants to leave as soon as she can.”

“What does she want to do?”

“I don’t think she’s fussy. I think in an ideal world she’d be working for some great political campaign with someone amazing she really believes in. But how on earth is she going to find one of those? And, you know, how many people actually get to do a job they like?”

“But isn’t working for a charity a bit like that? I mean, isn’t she already working for a good cause.”

Glenda looked at him as if he’d just vomited.

“Not really,” she explained quietly, as if so embarrassed by what he had just said she didn’t want anyone at the neighboring tables to hear her set him right. “Charity is inherently reactionary, isn’t it? It puts the onus on individuals rather than the collective. It relies on certain individuals having large amounts of disposable income. I think Laura would rather pursue political solutions to the world’s problems rather than charitable ones.”

“Oh right,” Bastian replied.

So there's an idea readers can stop and think about if they wish, or possibly just dismiss Glenda as perhaps an old student lefty who never got over the utopian ideology that tends to go with it.

The second idea is related to the growing acceptance, in some corners of society at any rate, of something along the lines of gender fluidity -- the notion that people naturally have aspects of masculinity and femininity and can slip back and forth between them -- and/or to the notion that stereotyping by outward display is out of date,

Here, the character identified as Bastian, is watching his current live-in partner, a woman named Rebecca, get dressed:

Bastian thinks that tights are strange and he tells Rebecca as much. Then he says, “Isn’t it weird that men and women wear different clothes.”

“Weird how?”

“Just strange. Like, it’s one of those things that you become so used to, you don’t ever think to question it, but then sometimes, for instance, just now watching you put on those tights, you realize it’s kind of bizarre.”

“You could say that about anything,” Rebecca replies. It is sometimes difficult to read her expression and tell whether she finds something humorous or exasperating. On this occasion, he suspects both. “Would you like to wear women’s clothes, Bastian?”

“Not especially. They seem kind of uncomfortable. Especially tights. It’s just that it’s strange that I’m not allowed to. Or, rather, I am allowed to, but it would be perceived as a dramatic statement about my identity when actually, when you think about it, why should anyone care?”

“How radical of you.” This time, she is making fun of him, but he thinks it’s in a friendly way. She goes back to the kitchen and Bastian hears her pour some coffee from the cafetière into her thermos flask and screw on the lid.

Well, there was a story in a local paper the other day about seven-year-old triplets wanting to petition Costco, the warehouse store, not to separate girls and boys clothes.

Women, have, of course, long appropriated menswear. Fashion designers have tried on many occasions to push men the other way -- without success. But perhaps such notions will become more acceptable than in the past.