Fiction Frustrations From The New Yorker
I know I blab a lot about The New Yorker, if it’s worth the cost, and if the fiction is any good. Anyway, I just finished reading Waiting by Amos Oz, and again I have something to say.
First of all, my mom really loves Oz, and she’s recommended I read him a few times, so when I noticed a story of his was featured, I was interested. Then the story started. It’s about this guy who can’t find his wife, basically. The whole story is of him walking around town trying to figure out where she’s at, and the whole time you get this eery feeling that maybe something happened to her.
Do you find out at the end what happened to the wife? Nope. It’s a little frustrating, but it goes right back to my usual complaint about the fiction in the magazine: is it any good? Was I entertained?
Tough to say. The writing was pretty good, although it got annoying how many times they pushed the whole “he’s walking against the wind/against an invisible force.” That seemed very amateurish. But the thing about a story like this being in this magazine is it makes you think that maybe you didn’t “get it.” And maybe I didn’t, but that’s not what I want to know. I’m exploring whether or not I liked the darn thing.
My “quest” to figure out if I liked it is kind of like the story itself: no resolution, just buildup. Did anything happen to his wife? Is it something or nothing? Is the story something or is it nothing? Could be one or the other, I don’t know, but you have to give credit where credit is due: I read through the whole story, never considered shelving it, and I’m on here now devoting a good bit of time and energy talking about it. So it definitely struck a chord with me.
What if the boy that delivered the note were not Arab? What then? Would this story have the same edge? For a minute there I thought perhaps the character was dead and he was a ghost. That would’ve incensed me, by the way.
If there’s one good thing about consistently reading this mag’s fiction, it’s that I’m realizing I probably shouldn’t submit to it anymore. I don’t want my stories to cause these feelings in readers (even if I could) at this point. My goal is to entertain and maybe stimulate thought, and this story just felt like it was part of a bigger piece or something. I hate being left out like that.
May 28th, 2009 at 4:11 am
I found that even by mid-story it was pretty clear that Benny’s wife had left him. His children are away on a “field trip” and, at the story’s end, it is revealed the Nava, the wife, and their two children sat outside a lot, low-talking. The narrator reveals that Benny never cared or was interested to know what it was they talked about. They were discussing leaving Benny.