"Balloons" in the New Yorker Comes Across as Trivial

 Thomas McGuane  has a style of writing that makes his May 3. 2021 New Yorker short story a pleasure to read, but "Balloons" is unfortunately a rather trivial piece of work. In the usual New Yorker author interview, McGuane talks about how he began writing the story without knowing how it would end, but thanks to a dream, something came to mind. Too bad.

Sex, in the familiar triangular configuration, serves as the framework for a  rather simple-minded plot: a man depicted as a bore and a buffoon in his seemingly successful prime degenerates into a pathetic mess when his unfaithful life leaves him.  But guess what?  He ultimately has the last laugh on his predator -- a man who views himself as on a considerably higher plane.

An unexpected development -- the subject of the dream -- serves to give the story a twist, but it could have been used to much better advantage.  

There is an early signal that trouble looms ahead in the form of a discussion among the three characters about a mugging. The bore insists that a victim has every right to retaliate. That's about the only topic we encounter that might provide clues as to what McGuane's characters think about, together or separately. They are, shall we say, rather uninteresting.

In particular, just what the women might have to offer, other than sex, is a complete mystery. She's depicted as a woman characterized by "her contempt for everyone who was not interested in her looks."

Hmm.  Isn't that what intelligent woman complain about?  That they are objectified by the male (or even another female) gaze? In this story, the unnamed woman is apparently distressed if she is not.

Well, character development, in this story at any rate, is not McGuane's strong point and in the afore-mentioned author interview, he actually seems proud of it. Ok, for some readers that may be a plus.
 

"Featherweight:" Good Title for the Latest New Yorker Story

"One Night Standards"

        By Ashley McBryde 

I ain't gonna stay for the weekend
I ain't gonna jump off the deep end
I ain't gonna ask where your ring is

Thing is, we all got secrets

You don't wanna hear about my last breakup
I don't wanna worry 'bout the space you take up
I don't even care if you're here when I wake up

It's just a room key
You ain't gotta lie to me
Can't you just use me like I'm using you?

And so forth and so on in the same vein.  The lyrics of this song, identified by The New York Times as one of the best songs of 2020 came to mind as I was reading a short story called "Featherweight" in the March 29, 2021 New Yorker.  It's by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, and concerns a young Native American man who has gone away to college.

Basically, it's an ode to hookup culture even when it arguably morphs into something that resembles a relationship, but not one that gets much further than sex, and even that turns out to be not what the young man in question thought it was. If you're interested, you can read the story for the details.

As we know, sex sells. It's sort of like the law of gravity: it never changes. Mr. HolyWhiteMountain clearly knows it and the New Yorker clearly sees no reason to resist. 

The story is written in the first person and the unnamed hero, having left his reservation, wants to "know what larger America is all about."  In his case, that means having sex with as many white girls as possible. Readers are told a couple of their names but little else about them other than that they are into power, hatred (not against him) and that "racist cowgirls give the best head."

Now let's turn to the usual New Yorker interview and see what Mr. HolyWhiteMountain has to say about this portion of his story:

"The white girls come to the table with their notions of what indians are, and what it means to be an indian, which don’t really speak to his experience at all, whereas he’s noticing things about them that they don’t know about themselves, things that indicate an unbridgeable gap. There’s a difference between assumptions that come from stereotypes and the kind of understanding that results from closely observed experience. The early situation in the story was a way for me to talk about how whiteness—which, and this is something we never talk about, is different from being white—functions. The most striking thing about people who really embody whiteness is that they see everything but themselves. Whereas people who aren’t coming from that space, usually people of color but not always, see themselves (because they’ve been objects of the white gaze for decades and centuries) and the peculiarities of whiteness at the same time. This blind spot is one of the reasons this country is such a mess right now; whiteness doesn’t get to function in an unimpeded manner anymore, and this process of coming to self-awareness is extremely painful, both for these people waking up to the values that underpin whiteness and for the rest of us, who have to experience their resistance to that awakening. I felt from the start that much of the support for Trump was about this: the promise of a return to a time when white people didn’t have to look at themselves, which means they could continue participating in the great American project of forgetting—the past, how the country was made, etc."

This strikes me a little like conceptual art:  you see a small heap of objects on the floor of an otherwise bare room that appears, well, like a small heap of objects. Staring at it for some time doesn't change much.  Then you notice that on one wall, usually in small print, the piece of art is identified and underneath, is a lengthy explanation of the work by the artist. There you learn it is all about, say, colonialism, slavery, racism, exploitation, police brutality, etc. etc. 

This is called conceptual art and one can, I suppose, view Mr. HolyWhiteMountain's story in that context. There is the text and then there is what he says it is supposed to be all about. 

Mr. HolyWhiteMountain's notion that people who embody "whiteness" (see Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me" for the best explanation of this) don't see themselves while others do is an interesting notion worth exploring beyond just a concept. Why doesn't Mr. HolyWhiteMountain, who in the interview says he is working on a couple of novels, actually do so? As opposed to maintaining that a bunch of undescribed tawdry hookups comporting with "One Night Standards" somehow illuminates it.

Well, if it weren't for all the sex, would readers bail out on this piece?

Finally tiring of white girl hookups,  the story goes on to what the narrator describes as his first love, a native American girl, but of a different tribe than his. What readers learn about that is, surprise, surprise, their sex life -- and how a French woman studying abroad is forced to listen in. Our hero views the French girl in much the same fashion he imagines people of "whiteness" view others. "She was an endless entertainment to me."

While the narrator of "Featherweight" has little in his mind throughout the story beyond his next sex act, his girlfriend appears at least somewhat more substantial if in only as a trope. She's interested in social justice issues when not locked in the bathroom by herself smoking dope. 

In the end things don't work out leaving the protagonist wishing that, if only for a moment, he could be a classic (white American) "dreamer" living in suburbia (see again the aforementioned "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi-Coates).

Mr. HolyWhiteMountain is, by the way, currently a lecturer at Stanford University.  Sounds like something a "dreamer" might like to be.

"Topics of Conversation:" Chick Lit in Spades

 It's appropriate that both The New York Times and The New Yorker assigned women to review Miranda Popkey's relatively recent novel "Topics of Conversation" because this is Chick Lit, or literature primarily of interest to women, in spades. Both of the lengthy reviews are positive so if you don't like what I have to say below, click on the names of the publications above and read something different,

Aside from women, I suppose a male writer worried about how he might convincingly depict The Contemporary Woman might be interested as well, but beware: one could get rather depressed in the process.

Before continuing, I suppose I should explain how I came to purchase and read this book.  I was skimming through my daily Lit Hub email and noticed an item about a woman wanting to read Henry James novel "The Ambassadors"  -- one of his best, in my humble opinion (I haven't read all of his books). And I thought: "this sounds like an interesting person, so perhaps I should read her book."  It didn't take long to get through it. Although it's about 220 pages, it's a very quick read.

Sarah Resnick, who reviewed "Topics" for "The New Yorker" probably hit the nail on the head in saying that Popkey's book attempts to capture the contradictions of female [sexual] desire. 

"This contrast—of women raring to assert their agency in one context, then willing, even eager, to relinquish it another—captured my interest in part because of its familiarity. I’d seen it crop up recently in widely praised works both written by and featuring brazen, outspoken, and almost always middle-class white women," Resnick said.

One can't help noticing what Resnick is talking about as one reads the book and, among other things, one begins to wonder, if this is true, what does it say about the credibility of the #MeToo phenomenon?  Well, of course there have been some brazen atrocities, but there have also been some claims that make one wonder. 

In "Topics of Conversation," which contains more in the way of monologue (both outer and inner) than actual conversation, the chief character, an unknown woman loosely associated with academia, floats along on a river of alcohol as do the other female characters, including her mother who, after four gin and topics considerably heaver on gin than on tonic, admits that she had sex -- at her instigation -- with her therapist when her sessions came to an end. 

In the acknowledgement section of her book, Popkey thanks her own therapists in New York and St. Louis, "neither of whom I have slept with."  That, apparently, is in case you, the reader, have come to the conclusion that this work must be largely autobiographical. 

Then, in a very curious entry, she thanks Nobel Prize-winning poet Louise Glück "who gave me permission to write fiction" and award-winning author Ben Marcus "who gave me permission to write a novel."

What in the world is this all about?  After three waves of feminism, does Popkey still believe that as a woman, she needs to ask permission to do this, that or the other? Or is this a sly means of self-promotion: the implication that if Glück and Marcus have given her permission to put pen to paper, they must consider her talent to be equivalent to theirs?  Or perhaps this is just old-fashioned name dropping. Whatever it is, it is ill-considered and even inappropriate.

Along with a great deal of sex -- much talk about it as opposed to descriptions of it actually occurring (this book is far from pornographic) -- there is a good deal of transgression, real and imagined. It probably goes without saying that sex and transgression sell a lot of books, which may at least help explain the nature of the narrative.

Near the beginning, for instance, a chain-smoking psychoanalyst named Artemisa, who is apparently both a bigamist and in an open marriage with her current husband (they have a young child) casually bares her breasts to Popkey's protagonist, then employed as a young nanny. Same-sex attraction is in the air.

But what follows is this:

"Most psychologists, Artemisia said, theorize the commonality of the so-called rape fantasy among heterosexual women as linked to shame.  ... Women are raised to believe they should not desire sex. More explicitly in earlier generations, yes, but the message remains implicit today, ... But okay, the rape is fantasy.  At least theoretically, it allows the woman to have the sex that she desires without also having to admit the shame of that desire. Force becomes a method of circumvention."

And so it goes, one drink after another -- mostly white wine, but also slugs of bourbon (while carrying a young child in one's other arm) and scotch and, of course, those gin and tonics. The life of The Contemporary Woman until (happy ending?) a rehab clinic leaves Pokey's protagonist sober as the book ends. (Spoiler: there is no thanks to any rehab clinic in the acknowledgement section of the book -- at least none that I noticed.)

Lastly, near the end of the story, the unnamed protagonist horses over the idea that women don't want to have sex with men they are supposed to desire, but do want the reverse. 

So, earlier in the tale, Popkey's heroine (if one can use that term) marries a man one might call "too-nice John" -- a man she can only eventually hold in contempt for excessively good behavior toward her, a beta-male if you will.  He richly deserves to be made a cuckold by means of an exceptionally tawdry initiative on the part of his wife. And to have her leave him, which she does.

There's more, of course -- the sisterhood of unmarried mothers, for example. But I suspect you've gotten the idea. 

My recommendation: forget "Topics of Conversation" and read "The Ambassadors" instead. But if you must, have a stiff drink always at hand. It will evidently help you understand The Contemporary Woman.

 

Women, Too, Can Objectify Sex

 For many writers -- particularly male, but not exclusively so -- female sexuality is a difficult topic. And never more so than in the present when it seems to increasingly be a moving target.

In that vein, Maya Phillips, a poet and cultural critic, had an interesting piece in the Feb. 4, 2021 "New York Times" entitled "On Female Sexual Desire" in the print edition, but confusingly, something different in the electronic version of the paper.  In any event, you can find it by clicking on the hypertext above.

The article, which discusses three TV shows, explores various aspects of female sexuality, all problematic in what Ms Phillips identifies as "our predatory culture," but for this post, I'm only going to talk about one of them.  I may come back to others later.

It's a familiar trope that when it comes to sex, men "objectify" women, or as Ms Phillips puts it: "with straight male characters, sex is rarely shown as anything more than an act."

To what extent might women be  drifting around to the same approach?

At the end of December, The Times, making its usual heavy contribution to year-end list journalism, published "The Best Pop Songs of 2020" by each of two of its critics.  

Generally unfamiliar with current trends in pop music (I did think Lady Gaga did a great job with the always troublesome national anthem at the Biden inauguration), glancing over the list, my eye fell upon Jon Pareles' third choice: "One Night Standards," by Ashley McBryde, who, not surprisingly, I had never heard of.  What was this song all about, I wondered, searching for the lyrics.

It's all about a woman, "I ain't Cinderella," who has initiated a hook-up, or a one-night stand as they used to be called in line with the title of the song, and wants her partner -- presumably a man, but perhaps not -- to think of it as nothing more than that.  In other words, she is determined to objectify her partner and make sure that what is happening is no more than an act (as Ms Phillips would put it).

"Can't you just use me like I'm using you?" Ms McBride sings at one point.

If you are interested, you can read the rest of the lyrics here. They continue entirely in that vein.

My point is that it appears straight men may well no longer have a monopoly on the objectification of sex and the Times apparently thinks that is important for readers to know: third best pop song of 2020, on one of the paper's two lists at any rate.  The other list, by the way, puts "WAP" by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion at number seven, but that's a different if highly illuminating take on just where female sexuality stands today.

The way things are going, Ms Phillips could be well advised to reel in her indignation a bit. Meanwhile, fertile ground for authors on how their female characters can be convincingly depicted.

Humdrum-Sex, Disturbing Violence Loom Large in "Ghoul"

 Back about four years ago, when I was reading The New Yorker regularly (I stopped because I thought the magazine's coverage of the arts had significantly deteriorated), I came to realize that most of its weekly short stories were "downers."  You can read what I had to say about that here.

Well, I decided to re-subscribe and the latest short story, "Ghoul," by George Saunders, fits easily into that trend. It's unrelentingly dystopian if rather imaginatively set in an underground theme park that calls to mind Dante's "Inferno."

Asked in a New Yorker author interview whether the story has a message, perhaps as a metaphor to the current U.S. sociopolitical situation, Saunders said he didn't know what his story meant. He described it, in effect, as an exercise in writing -- an attempt to write something that will "try to get the reader to finish the story -- no easy feat -- by making each little motion of the narrative compelling."

How does he accomplish that? In large part in the tried and true manner -- heavy doses of sex and violence. Not much in the way of innovation there, but as we know, sex and violence sells -- and the New Yorker pays authors well for the stories it publishes.  

While the sex is depicted as rather casual, very open "mating" about which no one is much concerned, the violence is another story.  This theme park is run on the basis of a bunch of rules and the population (sort of a circus-performer-like tribe) is encouraged to rat on each other when transgressions take place.  As opposed to Dante, that brings to mind George Orwell and "1984." Those deemed guilty in "Goul" are kicked to death by their colleagues and friends, and one way to break the rules is to not kick hard enough.

When the chief protagonist, a man named Brian, gets involved in one of these situations, he has a bit of an awakening that Saunders identifies as perhaps the most significant moment in the tale.

“Sometimes in life the foundation upon which one stands will give a tilt, and everything that one has previously believed and held dear will begin sliding about, and suddenly all things will seem strange and new.” [Brian thinks to himself]  Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I find I’ve reached the same conclusion as Brian (aided, I’d say, by the process of writing this story): it depends. It depends on what we do next in the face of this new understanding of ourselves."  So Saunders told the New Yorker.

Readers can make of that what they will and that's the point, Saunders would say.

Some Ideas About The Use of Sex in Fiction

Probably one of the first things writers learn, or get told, is sex sells. But if one incorporates it in a story simply for that reason, problems often arise.

How can one depict it, or impart it with significance, in a manner that is not derivative?  All too often, the answer seems to be: make it even more transgressive than has previously been the case.  Contemporary fiction is riddled with that sort of thing -- and one has to grudgingly admire the imagination or enterprise of some authors.

But I ran across another option when reading a review of Julian Barnes latest book, "The Man in Red Coat."  Therein, the reviewer, Parul Sehgal, says that in Barnes case, "Desire -- sexual jealously -- lies at the core of much of his work, not just as dramatic engine, but as a spur to moral thinking." He then goes on to quote Barnes as having said: "Sex is the area where moral decisions, moral questions, most clearly express themselves. It's only in sexual relationships that you come up against immediate questions of what's right and wrong."

Well, that may be overstating the case, but you get the point. And in Barnes' case, his own experience may be one place in which he ran up against the issues in question.  According to Seghgal, the author's life has been characterized in part by "his attachment to a charismatic and congenitally unfaithful woman."

How Iris Murdoch Opened a Young Woman's View of Life

I recently published a short post on why people read fiction and here is another on the same theme.

Susan Scarf Merrell, a novelist and creative writing instructor, has a recent piece in the New York Times in which she relates how discovering the works of Iris Murdoch at a young age opened her eyes to a different world than that in which she was being brought up.

Merrell relates how she grew up in a literary family where books were everywhere, passed around from one person to another and discussed at dinner, in the car or on walks. These included works by authors such as Dickens, Austin, Agatha Christie, C.S. Lewis, George Eliot -- you get the picture.

Iris Murdock was not in the family canon. And despite being a contemporary author who had, at the time Merrell discovered her work by chance in the closet of a vacation house in Sicily, written about half of the 26 novels she would eventually publish, was never mentioned in the Merrell household.

For the young woman -- and this is no doubt a story familiar to many -- Murdock's novels opened a new world of possibilities. Life could be considerably, and excitingly, different from what Merrell up to that point had imagined.

"Her people voiced prejudice, held misguided opinions, and Murdoch took them down, but with understanding and affection.  Marriages ended, things were said, there was way too much drinking and even some fighting, and life went on. Yes, in Murdoch's world characters behaved badly and were not always punished for it.  And even if they were, they found their way to reasonable fates."

And, of course, there was all the sex: "hetero- and homo-, extramarital, even incestuous, all charged with violence, betrayal and yearning -- utterly thrilling to an overly protected kid like me."

Did Merrell then share or discuss these works with other members of her family?  She did not, clearly feeling they were not part of that world.

"I had, I think, finally been introduced to the private world of reading that many people inhabit; a dream state I now regard as a portal to the act of breathing life into fictional works of one's own."

"George & Lizzie" (This review gives the story away)

Warning: this review of “George and Lizzie” gives the story away. Please don’t read it until after you have read the book. Contrary views are welcome.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 If, on a lark, a bet or a dare, or perhaps because nothing else in life much interests her, a girl decides to have sex with all the starters on her high school football team, what can she expect out of life?

That’s 23 boys by the way – 11 on offense, 11 on defense plus the kicker – and one a week, every week until the “Great Game” is won.

Fiction as Autobiography

Earlier this year, the New York Times Sunday Book Review ran a piece by Jami Attenberg entitled "It's My Fiction, Not My Life." I clipped it out when it ran and then lost it in a pile of papers.

Authors, Attenberg noted, are very frequently asked by readers how much of a story they have written is autobiographical. Some smile are willing to answer in one fashion or another, no matter how frequently they are asked. But many others are not so accommodating.

The Challenges of Writing About Sex

As we all know well, sex sells and that as much as anything else is probably why it looms as large as it does in a lot of fiction.

But how exactly to write about it, or even more difficult, how to depict it, is a challenge for writers.

Early last year, Literary Hub, staged a single-elimination style tournament for "literary sex writing."  Such prose, I observed at the time, evidently stands in sharp contrast to ordinary old sex writing and as such, may be considered a high-minded, as opposed to a prurient, activity.

Are Corporations, Society or Writers Killing Literature?

This post is about three writers offering differing views as to why literature appears to be dying.

"The Big Five publishing houses are located within a few subway stops of each other in Manhattan; that rich island which represents 0.000887 percent of our country’s surface. This is not benign. Our literary culture has distended and warped by focusing so much power in a singular place, by crowding the gatekeepers into a small ditch of commerce. A review in the Times trumps everything else. You can’t tell me that this doesn’t affect what is, finally, bound into books, marketed, and sold. Which designates what can be said and how one says it. Why do we cede American letters to a handful of corporations that exist on a single concrete patch?"

So says Matthew Neill Null, a prize-winning author and native of West Virginia.

The lengthy quote comes from an article published by "Literary Hub" wherein Null complains that publishers aren't interested in stories based on the lives of real people, especially if they are situated in rural communities.

If they were alive today, writers such as William Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe might as well forget it.

Aspects of a NYT Article on Book Clubs For Men Only

The New York Times  has an article about book clubs for men only, which you can read in full by clicking on the hyperlink under those words.

I'm not going to address the ins and outs of that notion, which seems reasonable enough, but rather quickly mention two topics contained within the article because they relate to earlier posts on this blog.

The first club mentioned in the article is located in Marin, California, and it has what was described as a cardinal rule:  no books by women about women. While the members of the club were apparently thinking mostly of "chic lit" as something they aren't interested in reading, when it comes to popular fiction in general, they don't have too much to worry about. See my earlier post entitled "Male Characters Dominate Fiction."

"High-Minded Sex:" A Curious Outcome With Sea Anemones

Literary Hub published the results of the semi-final round of its single-elimination "Tournament of Literary Sex Writing" today and the outcome was curious in more ways than one.

First, the contests' finalists, former American author James Baldwin and contemporary English writer Jeannette Winterson, were both describing same-sex encounters in the passages from their writings that were selected for the competition. Oh well, conventional sex between men and women is so very yesterday. Either a gay black male or a lesbian will be the overall winner. The Lit Hub judges can congratulate themselves on being about as politically correct as it gets these days.

"High-Minded Sex:" The Erotic Eight to the Fornicating Four?

Today, Literary Hub announced the outcome of the second round of it's single-elimination competition for best depiction of sex in literature.  The starting point was what the service identified as the "erotic eight," which I assume means the outcome will be identified as something along the lines of "the fornicating four" -- as opposed to the more conventional "final four."

Today being April Fool's day, it is hard to know whether the decisions of the distinguished judges should be taken seriously, but having written up the first elimination round, I'll play along with the game. As was the case yesterday, the actual passages of "literary sex writing" will not be reproduced on this blog. But links will be supplied for the convenience of readers who can't resist seeing what the fuss is all about.

"High-Minded Sex:" First Round Victors

In yesterday's post, I wrote about a March Madness-style tournament on "literary sex writing" -- you know, the presumably high-minded method of addressing this evergreen topic. In other words, we're talking about art as opposed to pornography. But as the years pass, that distinction appears to get increasingly blurry.

As advertised, winners from the initial round-of-sixteen were announced today with the following results (this being a family-friendly blog possibly read by scores of children, the actual passages will not be reproduced here, but links will be provided):

"High-Minded Sex," and the Winner Is ...

If one is an author in the current reading environment, one is told that to label something "literature" is to bestow upon it a kiss of death.

So if the word "sex" is associated with the word "literary," will that turn off otherwise interested readers in droves?

Literary Hub, an on-line aggregator of news and features about writing, could be about to find out. The service has just announced a single-elimination style tournament for "literary sex writing."  Such prose evidently stands in sharp contrast to ordinary old sex writing and as such, may be considered a high-minded, as opposed to prurient, activity.

Sex Sells, and Sells and Sells and Sells

The Sunday Business section of the New York Times recently carried a lengthy article on Meredith Wild, a woman who, after becoming a very successful independent author of romance novels, started her own publishing imprint called “Waterhouse Press.”

“I wanted something that sounded like it was a real imprint, because nobody takes you seriously as an independent author,” the Times quoted Ms Wild as saying.

After first publishing her own books, Ms Wild began acquiring and releasing the works of other self-published romance writers under the Waterhouse name, becoming what the Times termed “a kind of value investor in erotic prose, pinpointing under-valued writers and backing their brands.”

About a Teen: Life is Gross, Nothing New About Sexting

Justin Taylor is an adult male. His story “So You’re Just What, Gone?” – published in the May 18, 2015, New Yorker -- is about a 16-year old girl, told from her perspective. It’s written in a style known as “close third person,” which preserves the intimacy of the first person while giving the author more observational and descriptive freedom than would otherwise be the case.

The challenge, of course, is credibility. Charity is depicted as attractive and bright (Advanced Placement English), but immersed in the seamier aspects of life. Knowing them well, she copes with them competently. Do you recognize this person? Is this present day, middle class America presented akin to the manner in which  Dickens presented the seamier aspects of Victorian England through one of his characters?