New Yorker Short Stories

I've never cared for the New Yorker's taste in poetry, but I usually concur with the prestige accorded to their fiction selections. (Anybody who liked Brokeback Mountain ought to check out how well-written Annie Proulx's prose was!) Now that I'm on vacation, I'm catching up on the short stories in back issues. I'm keeping notes as I read, in order to educate myself in the art and craft of short-fiction writing, and I'm posting them here in case anyone wants to follow along. No huge spoilers, but if you want to discover the stories for yourself, don't read my summaries until you have.

Dec. 10, 2007: “Found Objects” by Jennifer Egan
The setup: A 35-year-old kleptomaniac in New York confides to her therapist about her two latest thefts, both perpetrated during a blah date with a man she met online.
The theme: Are our motives for pathological actions really different from our motives for socially acceptable actions?
Something weak: I really wanted more biographical background information on Sasha.
Something strong: The astonishing cruelty of her last theft felt tragically true-to-life.
What I’ll take with me: A reminder of how unfixable psychiatric problems often are.

Dec. 3, 2007: “The Visitor” by Marisa Silver
The setup: A 22-year-old nurse’s aide, Candy, lives in L.A. with the seamstress grandmother who raised her; both are haunted by the legacy of Candy’s late mother who was an absent drug addict, while by day Candy struggles with an angry silent mutilated patient at the VA hospital.
The theme: Do we in the healthcare profession learn how to take care of people based on how we have been taken care of ourselves?
Something weak: References to puberty rarely ring true, and this story’s references (“The frock…grabbed at the tender buds of Candy’s new breasts”) are no exception.
Something strong: The organization, within the space of the story, of disasters great and small is masterful and a concise re-expression of real life.
What I’ll take with me: More respect for nurse’s aides and for all in humble positions.

Nov. 26, 2007: “Álvaro Rousselot’s Journey” by Roberto Bolaño
The setup: A middling Argentine novelist finds that a Parisian film director has been plagiarizing his work and heads to France to confront him, meeting a prostitute, a bum, and a fellow Argentine writer on the way.
The theme: None.
Something weak: I hoped it had been building toward a more satisfying ending.
Something strong: The magic-realism style, initially hard to get into, works here.
What I’ll take with me: A reminder of the momentum inherent in plots of mystery and quest.

Nov. 19, 2007: “Or Else” by Antonya Nelson
The setup: A 39-year-old pathological liar takes his incidental girlfriend to the house in Telluride, Colo., which is the only place he has ever been happy, claiming it is his family’s and breaking into it, in order to reminisce about the summers he spent there as a child visiting a “hippie” family different from his bickering own.
The theme: In some ways, our childhoods entirely define us.
Something weak: Nothing major.
Something strong: The repeated hurts and downgradings which David has suffered or perceived himself to suffer, even from the Harts whom he has adored, explain a lot. Also, the way that Danielle’s individuality sort of matters without really mattering is realistically done.
What I’ll take with me: A goal of trying to separate happiness from nostalgia.