Benjamin Chambers writes:
I’ll confess up front that I don’t care for novel excerpts. The pleasures of fiction include completing a narrative arc, seeing a character in the round, or comprehending the whole of the author’s conceit and execution, yet all of these are thwarted by an excerpt. The New Yorker publishes a lot of such excerpts, and they are invariably unsatisfying. (Recent examples include Colson Whitehead’s “The Gangsters,” from the December 22, 2008 issue, or Louise Erdrich’s “The Fat Man’s Race” from the November 3, 2008 issue.)
TNY might reasonably be excused, however, for publishing work excerpted from novels that are to be published posthumously, as it did in the March 9, 2009 issue, with David Foster Wallace’s “Wiggle Room,” which is taken from his unfinished novel, The Pale King. On the other hand, with Wallace’s suicide still so recent, you can’t read “Wiggle Room” without being acutely aware of the poignant reason it’s before your eyes. And what can you say about it? You can’t praise it without wondering if you’re making unwarranted allowances; nor can you critique it without feeling that you’re kicking Wallace while he’s down.
That said, I soldier on. “Wiggle Room” focuses on a young I.R.S. agent’s fight against boredom as he does his stultifying work. The agent is suddenly visited by an improbable hallucinatory figure who knows all about the etymology of “boredom” and “interesting.” (D. T. Max, in his introductory essay, “The Unfinished,” tells us this figure is the ghost of another I.R.S. agent). The relief with which I greeted this hallucination speaks to how well Wallace conveys, during the first half of the piece, how unpleasant tedium can be.
One of my favorite aspects of the excerpt is the recurring image of the beach. The agent has been taught to visualize a pleasant afternoon at the beach as a way of refreshing himself mentally, but when he tries it, the imagery proves a flimsy defense. It starts off as “a warm pretty beach with mellow surf,” but “[a]fter just an hour [of work] the beach was a winter beach, cold and gray and the dead kelp like the hair of the drowned.” A little later, the agent’s sunny beach has devolved even further:

The beach now had solid cement instead of sand and the water was gray and barely moved, just quivered a little, like Jell-O that’s almost set. Unbidden came ways to kill himself with Jell-O.

Still, “Wiggle Room” isn’t terribly satisfying. It’s slightly more so than most excerpts because it narrates a complete incident, but it’s not a complete story. An I.R.S. agent is visited by a smart-ass ghost: why? Does it change him? Does the ghost come back? Does the ghost do anything besides belch up etymologies? Does the agent manage to stick with the job, despite his obvious hatred of it? None of these questions can be addressed by the excerpt, though I have to admit that it does its job—and Wallace would’ve been wryly savage about this—of teasing prospective buyers to read the entire novel-fragment when it’s published.
It’s also poignant to read (in the same issue as “Wiggle Room”) “Basically Decent,” John Updike’s posthumous review of Blake Bailey’s new biography of John Cheever. It’s poignant not only because the review may well be Updike’s last book review for the magazine, but because he was writing about John Cheever, who, like Wallace, was famously tormented and struggled all his life with doubts about the merits of his work; but who, unlike Wallace, was able by some miracle of grace to keep trying.
Updike doesn’t like Bailey’s bio much. Though he applauds its thoroughness, he nails its drawback with characteristic elegance, observing that “all this biographer’s zeal makes a heavy, dispiriting read.” The pleasure of reading Cheever’s fiction, in other words, and the “glimmers of grace and well-being” experienced by his characters, are “smothered” in the biography, which cannot ward off “the menacing miasma of a life which, for all the sparkle of its creative moments, brought so little happiness to its possessor and those around him.”
In this, though, Bailey’s biography is no different from literary biographies as a class. I’m sure Bailey did an excellent job of documenting the facts of Cheever’s life and the chronology of his work, but a life can only go so far to explain its art; explanation rarely improves the work. (This is partly what is meant by saying that art is transcendent, after all.)
Charles McGrath also reviewed Bailey’s biography for the New York Times. I preferred his review to Updike’s because McGrath, in addition to addressing the biography, took the time to argue that it’s not just Cheever’s life that deserves new attention, but his work does too. In particular, I appreciated the fact that he disassembled the ridiculous-but-common canard that Cheever was a chronicler of suburban malaise, when in fact, as McGrath notes, “…far from being another Sloan Wilson-like chronicler of suburban malaise—or even a meticulous painter of middle-class life like Updike—Cheever was a writer pressing against the very limits of realism itself.”
McGrath proves his case, I think, but I urge any doubters to check out Cheever’s story, “Some People Places and Things That Will Not Appear in My Novel”, which appeared in the November 12, 1960 issue of TNY, and which I wrote about here. In it, he uses metafictional techniques to talk about his impatience with the complacency and foolishness of then-contemporary fiction—and with his own.
But the phrase Updike uses to describe Cheever’s unhappy life, “menacing miasma,” is apt, and applies to accounts of David Foster Wallace’s life as well. Perhaps it’s only because Wallace’s story was published next to Updike’s review of Cheever’s biography, but I couldn’t help feeling that the degree to which Cheever’s unhappiness haunted his work (as in the “Some People Places and Things” story) was echoed in Wallace’s life and work as well. It’s hard not to think of Wallace when one reads Updike’s observation about Cheever: “Like Kafka and Kierkegaard, Cheever felt his own existence as a kind of mistake, a sin.”
Peace be upon them both, and upon Updike for good measure.

Benjamin Chambers writes:
A spate of actual work has kept me from commenting on the recent Steven Millhauser and Italo Calvino stories in The New Yorker, let alone the new excerpt from David Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel that appears in the March 9, 2009 issue. But it hasn’t stopped me from running across this breathless announcement that Wallace’s novel will be published next year, along with the surprising (and not entirely reliable) announcement that his first novel, Infinite Jest, is among the 10 longest novels ever written. (Here’s the complete list.)
Why do we humans like narrative, anyway? Professor William Flesch tackled this question in his 2008 book, Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components in Fiction, which was apparently one of James Wood’s favorite books of 2008. According to Flesch, his book uses “ideas of evolutionary psychology and particularly evolutionary game theory to explain why narratives work.”
Wallace, I suspect, would’ve been intrigued.

Benjamin Chambers writes:
Tracy Daugherty (who published the story, “Low Rider,” in The New Yorker in 1987), has just come out with Hiding Man, the first biography of long-time TNY contributor Donald Barthelme. Good reviews so far (here’s another), in particular for putting Barthelme’s work in context and establishing that his dense, allusive stories were anything but random.

Benjamin Chambers writes:
Normally, when people complain about fiction in The New Yorker being “depressing,” I jump to the magazine’s defense. “You need to read more than one issue,” I say, or—even less convincingly for my debaters—”Nonsense! It frequently publishes light fiction outside of ‘Shouts & Murmurs.’ Like, er, Woody Allen or, um, Donald Barthelme …” If I try a different tack, and argue that fiction has many pleasures to offer besides good cheer, I end up in a worse muddle. I know this to be true, but I can’t prove it to readers deaf to these charms. Still, I try: I won’t hear my beloved New Yorker maligned.
But sometimes I think that great institution doesn’t care. It’s like that moment in the movies when the hero’s scrappy, pint-sized sidekick stands at his back, fearful but resolved, before the crowd of muscle-bound heavies armed with pool cues and broken beer bottles, and then the hero somehow wanders elsewhere, oblivious to his sidekick’s peril.
Case in point: “The Elephant,” by Aravind Adiga, from the January 26, 2009 issue, centered around Chenayya, a man roughly 30, who delivers furniture via bicycle for a pittance and a squalid life he cannot seem to better. The story’s firmly in the reveal-social-injustice school; the point is the injustice of Chenayya’s poverty, which is clear from the outset. The problem with this sort of story is that there’s no reason why it should be any particular length, once the basics are established: there’s no dramatic reason to continue cataloging the character’s abasement or shortcomings, which makes one question the whole enterprise. (Place where I checked out: when Chenayya, frustrated and angry with all that he cannot have, throws cow dung at a prostitute and then jams his dung-covered fingers in her mouth.)
The following week, in the February 2nd issue, George Saunders weighed in with “Al Roosten.” Though “Al” is much funnier than “The Elephant,” the laughter palls quickly, once it becomes clear that the main character’s pathetic, and Saunders has been laughing at him and made you do the same.
Both stories have the same narrative arc—best drawn as a flat line—and are intended only to evoke the hopelessness of their main characters’ situations. Worse, they’re both aggressively medicinal, in an eat-your-literature-it’s-good-for-you sort of way.
Sorry, but I’ll stick with dessert for now, and wait, rosy with optimism, for the next issue.

Benjamin writes:
“Sylvia Townsend Warner” is one of those triple-barreled, aristocratic names reminiscent of an era: it’s the name of an imperious (and rich) great-aunt, loyal to her own relations, who takes care never to mix with yours. It’s also the name of an author who published 164 pieces in multiple genres in The New Yorker between 1936-1977. Forty-one years of publication in TNY is a formidable track record for anyone, and at least 150 of Warner’s contributions to the magazine were fiction, so I determined to look her up. I’m glad I did.
The problem with such a prolific writer, of course, is where to start. Looking over her work in the index to the The Complete New Yorker, however, I noticed that her work appeared in an unusual number of departments: Fiction, Poetry, Comment, The Air, Family Life, and Easel. Curious to see what she contributed that would qualify for “The Air,” “Family Life,” and—was she, I wondered, a painter, too?— “Easel”, I found the following:
“Too Cool the Air“, from September 16, 1939, is one of those airy portraits TNY used to specialize in. Narrated in first-person by an unidentified narrator, it’s impossible to say for certain if it’s fiction or creative non-fiction, though it’s likely the former. The narrator relates a chance meeting, after a lacuna of 10 years, with “a crony of my Aunt Angel’s,” the chatty Miss Filleul, who, it transpires, is most probably a “brazen and accomplished thief.”
Fast-forward three years to July 11, 1942, and we find “The Family Revived,” a lightly humorous piece (again with a first-person narrator indistinguishable from a witnessing reporter) about a Mrs. Bogle, who has gathered a group of people in her Dorsetshire cottage for a “Sunday Salvage Afternoon.” It’s wartime, of course, so the guests have gathered to slice the metal butts off old cartridge cases and the like. Mrs. Bogle, a woman full of “predatory good intentions,” sees the war as an opportunity to revive her vision of home life in the old days, when the family would gather around the fire. Her enthusiastic plan is torpedoed, however, by reasonable objections, her husband’s brute practicality, and the embarrassed resistance of her guests. Complicated, for so short a piece, it’s difficult at this distance to be certain one has caught all the ironies.
“Too Cool the Air” and “The Family Revived,” though pleasing, are dated trifles, easily forgotten. The same cannot be said of the gem of the lot, “Elphenor and Weasel,” from the December 16, 1974 issue, which also features Woody Allen’s classic, not-to-be missed story, “The Whore of Mensa.” (Presumably, it’s the word “Weasel” that accounts for Warner’s story being classified in the CNY index under “Easel”.)
Tartly written, “Elphenor and Weasel” tells the story, surprisingly whimsical (though not, ultimately, happy) of Elphenor, a fairy destined to live among human beings, who bumbles along as a necromancer’s assistant until he meets his green-skinned, frivolous love, Weasel. Together, they enjoy a summer of love and breakfasts, and then, when the necromancer makes plans to sell them, they run off together, alternately working and stealing food until they fetch up in a church in the winter time. They choose the belfry as their sanctuary, but sadly, they misunderstand the purpose of churches, and more particularly the power of bells, and a bell-ringers’ practice proves the end of them.
But oh!, the deft compression with which Warner tells the story. Here’s an example, describing why Elphenor, shipwrecked in England and discovered by the necromancer, seems meant to be the man’s assistant: “To tease public opinion, he had studied English as his second language; he was penniless, purposeless, and breakfastless and the wind had blown his shoes off.” I love everything about that sentence, from the idea that fairies might learn English to “tease public opinion,” to the precise hammer-blows of the words, “penniless, purposeless, and breakfastless”—and then, Warner switches rhythm to say he was also shoeless.
Here’s another, fairly random example. Elphenor hails from Zuy, where English elves and fairies—such as his green-skinned, hill-dwelling lover Weasel—are known only by reputation.

At Zuy, the English Elfindom was spoken of with admiring reprehension: its magnificence, wastefulness, and misrule, its bravado and eccentricity. The eccentricity of being green and living under a hill was not included. A hill, yes. Antiquarians talked of hill dwellings, and found evidence of them in potsherds and beads. But never, at any time, green. The beauties of Zuy, all of them white as bolsters, would have swooned at the hypothesis. Repudiating the memory of his particular bolsters, [Elphenor] looked at Weasel, curled against him like a caterpillar in a rose leaf, green as spring, fresh as spring, and completely contemporary.

But you must read it yourself. And if you’re already a fan of Warner, what other works of hers do you recommend?

Benjamin Chambers writes:
I’ve been on vacation, and so missed the momentous news, yesterday, of John Updike’s passing. His fiction was never my cup of tea, but I mourn his loss just the same. Universally admired for the smooth, sparkling facility of his sentences, he was what most writers wish they could be: able to laugh at himself, but deadly serious about his work; supernaturally and steadily productive in multiple genres; critically admired and at the same time a household name; a thoughtful and perceptive critic who read widely; and (though he has never been given much credit for this by readers of his fiction) omnivorous in his interests.
If that list is a bit jumbled, it merely reflects the breadth of Updike’s wide range. And for those with fixed ideas of Updike, based perhaps on his recent stories, I urge them to go back and read “Friends from Philadelphia,” the first story he published in The New Yorker, back in 1954. I read it for the first time last year; though I didn’t comment on this at the time, I was pleasantly surprised by its multiple subtexts, and a piquancy that age has not dimmed.
Years ago, a friend of mine, a New Yorker, passed on a quote she swore was from Updike, something to do with “… the secret sense that anyone not from New York had to be, in some sense, kidding.” Nonetheless, that was how I felt when I heard the news about his death: that someone, somewhere, has got to be kidding. I feel it still.