Why, oh why do I continue to read the fiction in the New Yorker? Why, when it continues to be, without fail, depressive literature? Not just depressive- bleak is more accurate. Characters wandering through their lives as ghosts of real people, their dreary existences mapped by failures and/or misfortune, or at best oddities.
Recent yarns I have read include: A story about a boy who makes it his life's goal, quite apropos of nothing, to press his lips to every square inch of his body- he actually snaps vertebrae in the process; A tale of a put upon guy with an asthmatic toddler, his ex-wife hateful and hurtful, his job and carpool mates a miserable mess; A remembrance of two college girls, from different backgrounds, interested in the same man- one of them settles for small town boredom (after the man had chosen the other girl), and dreams about what life had been like they been together, only to meet the man on a train many years later, and discover he's really not all that great after all; And a dizzying story in which a man's mid-life to death is reduced to half-remembered flashes of drunken nights and never quite knowing what in his life he really has had any control over- told in a rapid succession of seemingly overlapping memories, unsettling as it is confusing.
Even a piece by Stephen King a while back- I wasn't expecting happy go lucky, but maybe something scary or suspenseful to break up the monotony. But no, it was a simple piece about a man waiting in his car on a very hot day, while his wife goes into a convenience store. She proceeds to have a heart attack and die in the store. He goes in and is consoled by the people in the store, and stays around just long enough so that when he leaves to go to the hospital to claim his wife's body- he returns to his car to find he had forgotten the dog had been in there and is now dead as well. Sigh.
It's not that these stories aren't compelling, or poorly written. The fact that I have plowed my way through them, despite the somber subject matter, speaks to the fact that they are clearly interesting pieces. And maybe I read them, hoping for a little sunshine to peak through somewhere. A little joy... perhaps some whimsy. It's gotta happen sooner or later, right? I suppose I'll just keep reading to find out.
3 comments:
I actually need to start getting that magazine again. It's not the bleakness that deterred me--it's the sheer power-packed prose... It would sit their, unopened, taunting me, in piles, for years, until I finally gave up and accepted I take the easy way out, all the time, with my leisure reading.
Oh I hear you... The only reason I am even reading my mags right now is because I am not currently reading a book. If I am reading a book, my New Yorkers pile up and taunt me too... with their 12 page articles about subjects I had no idea I even had an interest in...
Seriously, I am not a literary multi-tasker. Can't do it- especially since my reading time has been cut into by the little one. And generally it's just the fiction that's bleak... but still I pick and choose, reading those beasts cover to cover is next to impossible for me. But somehow I always get sucked into the damn fiction... BLAST!
I feel ya on this Jay.
I try to keep my reading varied these days. For every "good" book I read ("good" as defined by Oprah and the other powers that be,) I allow myself one crap novel. For every Cormac McCarthy, I get a Hunger Games. Yeah, I read YA. I'm no longer ashamed to admit it. I read westerns, I read James Patterson, I read all sorts of WalMart/mainstream fiction. It's mainstream for a reason, after all. People like it.
Sometimes escapism is exactly what I need - If I want to be depressed I'll watch the news or read The Wallstreet Journal.
Literary fiction certainly has it's place, and I do enjoy it. I enjoy tight narrative and well-crafted prose as much as the next guy. But let's be honest - I had to read the first 150 pages of "Gilead" three times before finally surrendering to the fact that I was never going to get through it, Pulitzer Prize notwithstanding. Does that make me uneducated or pedestrian? Maybe. But I'm cool with that.
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