new story in current New Yorker
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Tue, 08 Jun 1999 08:14:29 -0400
This week's New Yorker (dated June 14, 1999) has a lovely short story by J.
Robert Lennon called "Flight," which feels like a cross between a Raymond
Carver narrative ("I was so intent on the incessant approach of road that
the stationary world seemed to race away when I looked at it, and I felt as
if I were falling helplessly through space.") and an old NY'er Salinger --
such as "Pretty Mouth...." The narrator is driving a rented car that has a
cell phone, and while he sleeps at a rest area, it rings, and the caller is
a woman, a stranger, who starts a remarkable monologue that sounds like it
could have come straight from a Glass mouth: "First of all, I want to say,
I want to apologize, and please don't say anything, please. I would like
to finish before you say anything or hang up on me." She goes on to
detail, mostly by omission, how something terrible has happened between
them and that it is her fault, and that she cannot convey how sorry she is.
As Holden Caulfield might say: it's quite a remarkable monologue, it really
is.
The rest of the story is a kind of fractured narrative, shifting from story
line to story line, so that together the threads lead to a coherent
narrative. It is gloomy in the end, but nicely polished and, even though
it sounds in parts like other writers, it comes together on its own and, I
think, stands intact and strong.
Nice story, if you can land your hands on an issue.
Also, for those of us who like our recluses (!), it has an amusing feature
by Frederic Raphael, who wrote the screenplay for "Eyes Wide Shut," the
Stanley Kubrick movie that opens soon. No secrets revealed, but I couldn't
think of anyone but The Old Man on the Mountain (a ham-handed reference to
Salinger, for anyone who hasn't lived in New Hampshire and doesn't know
that particular geographical tourist attraction) as Raphael details
Kubrick's obsession with privacy and silence and withdrawal behind
(literal) gates.
Given that I spent yesterday stalled much in transit, with the magazine and
a biography of Truffaut, I got a lot of excellent reading done!
--tim