The New Yorker - Discussion

[dback]

The new story defintely seemed to reference the conversation we had about the photographer (Diane Arbus?) who photographed the folks in the West (Wyoming) exactly as they were, and then they turned on her--everyone knew that they were good, God-fearing patriots, and SHE turned them into grotesques.  These characters are definitely some of the more grotesque she's written in terms of the withered, battered, creatures they wind up compared to how they started.  I'll also post this in the Annie Proulx section (hopefully the mods won't mind) in case the conversation is more appropriate there.

I must say, I love her writing, but didn't love this story--too sprawling, and ultimately too plagues-of-Job.

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

I am still stuck on the issue with the Annie story in it.

Lots of great stuff.

I especially liked the article by the Japanese novelist about how he began running at the same time he became a novelist.  It is really an interesting memoir and it's full of the type of writing and subtle contradictions that characterize his fiction.

If only I could keep his name straight.  Plus, of course, it is translated from Japanese.

******

Cartoon --

There is a cartoon that made me absolutely guffaw, that kind of laughter that is involuntary, a belly laugh, that is supposed to be healing and good for you.

My son heard me laughing and he wanted to know what it was about.

It is the cartoon that shows four or five businessmen lying on the ground with knives in their backs.  Another businessman stands holding a knife, and he says to his (boss or colleague) "I was just being pro-active."


I asked my son if he knew what it meant. (12 years old) he said he did, but when I asked him, he couldn't articulate it.  I told him it was about the idea that you should go out and start a war with anyone who might potentially fight with you someday. 

Sad day when we are forced to laugh at this scenario, because crying has gotten us no where.

[Rosewood]

The new story defintely seemed to reference the conversation we had about the photographer (Diane Arbus?) who photographed the folks in the West (Wyoming) exactly as they were, and then they turned on her--everyone knew that they were good, God-fearing patriots, and SHE turned them into grotesques.  These characters are definitely some of the more grotesque she's written in terms of the withered, battered, creatures they wind up compared to how they started.  I'll also post this in the Annie Proulx section (hopefully the mods won't mind) in case the conversation is more appropriate there.

I must say, I love her writing, but didn't love this story--too sprawling, and ultimately too plagues-of-Job.

I must say, at the risk of being thought a prude, that the title was off-putting for me.
Too much needless 'in your face'.
Didn't read it.
Don't know if I will after reading your post, dback.
I'm at the point in my life where I tread carefully.
Literary-wise and every-other-wise.

The last couple of issues of TNY haven't caught my fancy so I haven't posted.
The cover with the bookstore and the woman receiving books from Amazon being caught out
by the owner of the bookstore was wonderful though. Had a lot to say about a lot of different
things. Layers. So I did like that.

Some of the cartoons were good too.
Maybe this week's issue will cheer me up.
Maybe not.

I'm stressed to the max (old fashioned expression!) lately what with my mom being in and
out of hospital and the usual family sturm und drang.

Lots to do.
And I usually wind up too exhausted to do much but work, then crawl into bed.

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

Rosewood, sorry to hear you are stressed. I hope your mom is okay.

I agree with you I found the title off-putting.  Does it help to know the original reference (in the story) is about a cow?

I actually just read it again.  I was thinking about how I have this serious pile of reading to get through, New Yorkers and books and on and on, and here I am reading through a story a 2nd time. 

The writing is really wonderful.  Although the story is not uplifting (to say the least) -- but IMO not as bad as the last one. 

[CANSTANDIT]

SPOILER:



tough call, Ellen..Rose and Archie both die, and apart from each other, with coyotes and babies for some nightmarish effect. But Dakotah is abandoned early; raised rather cruelly; her son dies; she loses an arm; her husband loses half his body, while they are estranged. And she's back to the family of origin, the people who seem to hold alot of the culpibility, in the end.

 Sounds like Rose and Archie may have got the better deal. 

One thing that continues to strike me: I do see a bit of a similiarity between Ennis and Dakotah. I'd like to explore that sometime; both are sensitive people left largely to their own psychological devices by familials-other than the counselor for Dakotah-  who don't recognize their internal lives, and use them to a fault....And yet there is always some pocket of support, here and there, like Ennis's mother; and the legendary, Don Wroe, who probably unknowingly gives J and E their only 'home' together (leaving Jack out of the picture, because Ennis tends to view him as one of his major obstacles in life, unfortunately,while desiring him at the same time...).

Just some ideas.

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

Ennis like Dakotah?  In some ways.  I will have to think about that.

Would Dakotah and/or Sash be better off dead?  Probably Sash would be. 


SPOILERS -- I read it again last night.

I still can't believe "You are his wife" is enough of a reason for Dakotah to sink into a life shackled to Sash, unless she somehow wants it.  His parents are much more on the hook, IMO. 

But I know Annie intends the story to point in that direction.  IMO she is demonstrating the exploitation of women.

Rosewood said she was put off by the title -- so was I, and it wasn't so much "prudery" as the use of a term that strikes me as insulting to women -- and now I believe that was the intent.  Bonita works tirelessly at the ranch, much harder than Verl.

Interesting that sometimes Bonita thinks of poisoning Verl, but then she remembers how exciting their courting was (and even then SHE was driving the distance to meet HIM.) 

Sash thought Dakotah might make a good "handmaiden."  Would it break her arm to get him a beer, chips, salsa? (ouch, her arm.)

The cow that ended tits up in a ditch  had been trying to climb over a steep, muddy slope.  The cows on Verl's farm were never taken care of, you couldn't blame them for trying to escape.

Nor Shaina either.

Dakotah trying to leave the ranch was like the cow trying to get up over that steep, muddy slope to a better life, and like the cow she tries so hard she uses up all her strength, and the result is "tits up in a ditch."

As for that phrase, she hears Verl say it when she is a child, and it has stuck with her all these years, presumably never repeated.  It must have had meaning for her the first time she heard it.  When she is asked by Sash's parents to tell them his fate, and she has no words for it, she says what seems to her the most awful thing you can say about someone's condition.

Is she applying it to herself, even then?

[tfferg]

The title struck me as being quite rough or crudely comic, but when reading the first use of the phrase in context as Verl's description of the dead cow, it seems merely earthy, though without any compassion for the suffering of the cow. It was a relief that it didn't seem to be a literal description of a woman.

Dakotah's use of the phrase to describe Sash's condition to her in-laws, who had not treated her well when little Verl was born and she was a single mother of their grandchild, is cruel because she has been trying to numb herself to the pain of losing her child and Marnie and wants them to become numb to the pain of effectively losing their son. She wants to teach them the lesson she has learned that it doesn't pay to love.

Mrs Hicks' response is to sheet home the responsibility of taking care of Sash to Dakotah. Dakotah may feel that she cannot withstand the relentless pressure the Hickses are going to exert, in the same way she was unable to withstand the emotional blackmail of the volunteer who made her agree to go to see Sash in the hospital. Isolated in Wyoming, how would she be able to resist the pressure of the local assumptions about the role of a wife unless she decided to get out?

From what I understand from the scandals over the treatment of wounded and traumatized Iraq veterans in the US, there will be little support from the army or the government.

[Rosewood]

July 7 & 14th issue:

Great Sempe summer cover. (LOVE his work!)
It is exhuberant AND refined, both at the same time.
Great, individualistic pen line. I'm smitten.

Inside there is a most wonderfully excellent article on
G.K. Chesterton, a man I hardly knew anything about until now.
Coincidentally, I had finished THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY a few
months ago and this piece on the author deepened my understanding
of what at first I took to be mere parody.

THE BACK OF THE WORLD
The troubling genius of G.K. Chesterton
by Adam Gopnik

There is also, believe it or not, a good AND thoughtful review of
the Will Smith's blockbuster HANCOCK. Interesting.

Less so, the story by T.C. Boyle which, having to do with a plentitude of
rats, I managed to avoid like the plague. HA!
But, honestly - rats?
I'll take RATATOUILLE.
And even that, I tended to look at with a jaundiced eye.

Still, there was a wonderful poem by Jack Gilbert in this issue:
(Why is it that a lot of the poems in TNY always bring
me back to Brokeback? Oh, I know, because a lot of them
are about the weariness of heartbreak. OR is it wariness?)

AFTER LOVE
He is watching the music with his eyes closed.
Hearing the piano like a man moving
through the woods thinking by feeling.
The orchestra up in the trees, the heart below,
step by step. The music hurrying sometimes,
but always returning to quiet, like the man
remembering and hoping. It is the thing in us,
mostly unnoticed. There is somehow a pleasure
in the loss. In the yearning. The pain
going this way and that. Never again.
Never bodied again. Again the never.
Slowly. No undergrowth. Almost leaving.
A humming beauty in the silence.
The having been. Having had. And the man
knowing all of him will come to the end.

[CANSTANDIT]

Ellen: Last post re: Dakotah, above..Great analysis!

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

^^^^^

Thanks, Jo --


Rosewood, I got the July 7/14 New Yorker today.  RATS in the short story?  I may very well skip that one.  thanks for the warning.

I love Adam Gopnik's writing.  I'll be back later to comment.

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

July 7 & 14th issue:

Great Sempe summer cover. (LOVE his work!)
It is exhuberant AND refined, both at the same time.
Great, individualistic pen line. I'm smitten.

Rosewood, I agree with you about the art -- last time I tried a water color of the ocean it didn't look very much like an ocean!

But I'm not sure what it means.  Is it just what we see on the surface?  The dog shakes water off his fur -- the man -- ?

Inside there is a most wonderfully excellent article on
G.K. Chesterton, a man I hardly knew anything about until now.
Coincidentally, I had finished THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY a few
months ago and this piece on the author deepened my understanding
of what at first I took to be mere parody.

oh -- well naturally if you read his novel you would get a lot out of the article.  There were some moments in there when I was holding on by my fingernails -- very intellectual on Adam Gopnik's part, I thought.  I liked his final observations about writing styles (especially journalism) and how they changed around the 1920s.

[Rosewood]

July 7 & 14th issue:

Great Sempe summer cover. (LOVE his work!)
It is exhuberant AND refined, both at the same time.
Great, individualistic pen line. I'm smitten.

Rosewood, I agree with you about the art -- last time I tried a water color of the ocean it didn't look very much like an ocean!

But I'm not sure what it means.  Is it just what we see on the surface?  The dog shakes water off his fur -- the man -- ?

Inside there is a most wonderfully excellent article on
G.K. Chesterton, a man I hardly knew anything about until now.
Coincidentally, I had finished THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY a few
months ago and this piece on the author deepened my understanding
of what at first I took to be mere parody.

oh -- well naturally if you read his novel you would get a lot out of the article.  There were some moments in there when I was holding on by my fingernails -- very intellectual on Adam Gopnik's part, I thought.  I liked his final observations about writing styles (especially journalism) and how they changed around the 1920s.

I think, with Sempe, I'm looking for delight with maybe a slight soupcon of irony.
The dog merely shrugs off the water and is ready for anything. The man maybe envies that a bit.
Maybe he wishes he could be as uninhibited? Or maybe the scene is just what it appears to be.
A dog and a man coming out of the ocean on a sunny day at the beach.
Sempe's not so deep that you have to shift through layers.
To me, he is a terrific stylist with a light hearted and almost old fashioned ability to
capture the moment.

That's what a lot of his art is about. He is, more than probably any of the New Yorker cover artists,
a romantic at heart and he delights (there's that word again) in capturing joy. (May 19th cover)
I most especially love his interiors. Sometimes he uses musicians and their instruments in the most
touching and even reverant way. Yes, that's what I see in him: the reverance of the small moment.

As for the Chesterton article, yeah, it helps that I'd read one of his books. But really, I'm always interested
in authors I've heard about or familiarized myself with over the years AND I'd always heard of
Chesterton's Father Brown series and his brilliant theory of the post man as the 'invisible man'.
(Truth be told, I've always found Gopnik a bit pedantic.)

[Sandy]

Rose,

Chesterton was a very prolific writer. Some of my favorites are the numerous Father Brown stories. Years ago at a used book store in Chicago I scooped a pair of volumes, one called Orthodoxy. the other Heretics. Glad I did.

J.L. Borges wrote an essay about him in "Other Inquisitions," and like most everyone Borges writes about, he is a fascinating literary man. Enjoy.

Sandy

[Rosewood]

Posted some comments on the current furor caused by this week's
New Yorker cover over on the political thread - Election 2008.

In case anyone's interested. 

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

Coming in late to this discussion, Rosewood.

I am fairly appalled by it.  For many of the same reasons you cited on the Election thread:  the only reason it is satire is because of the magazine's cover logo.  If you know it is coming from the left, then it meant to be taken as humor.  In any other context, however, it would be a gross smear.