{"id":6691,"date":"2017-06-19T06:45:49","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T10:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6691"},"modified":"2017-06-19T06:45:49","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T10:45:49","slug":"dis-mem-ber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6691","title":{"rendered":"****DIS MEM BER"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"teenage

photo: Tammy McGary, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Joyce Carol Oates \u2013 This collection of mostly longish short stories features Oates\u2019s sly humor and penchant for the off-kilter. There\u2019s something just a little bit obsessive, just a little wrong about many of the stories\u2019 protagonists, until there\u2019s a LOT wrong. Someplace along the line, they take a turn into some very dark places.<\/p>\n

The disarticulated title of the story, \u201cDIS MEM BER\u201d anticipates the menace underlying the tale of a pre-teen girl fascinated by her older step-cousin\u2014handsome, mysterious, and just disreputable enough to charm a young girl and enrage her father. The first-person narrator mostly misses the sinister potential in his attentions, but you will not, and you read on with growing unease.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in the story \u201cHeartbreak,\u201d a lumpy young teen is jealous of her attractive older sister and her budding relationship with their stepfather\u2019s handsome nephew. It opens as follows: \u201cIn the top drawer of my step-dad\u2019s bureau the gun was kept,\u201d signaling that Oates will follow Chekhov\u2019s famous advice: \u201cIf you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although these two tales turn out quite differently, they show an affinity for the voice of a young girl troubled by her sexuality and the impact on men that she has, may have, may never have, wants, and fears. Oates mimics the progress and backtracking and stuttering nature of thought with liberal use of interjected italics and parenthetical phrasing: \u201cEven when Rowan was furious with me, and disgusted with me, still he was fond of me<\/em>. This I know. It is a (secret) memory I cherish.\u201d These devices in places feel excessive, even intrusive. Parentheses within parentheses send you down a rabbit hole.<\/p>\n

Young girls are not the only females prey to second thoughts. The eerie story \u201cThe Crawl Space\u201d concerns a widow haunted by\u2014and haunting\u2014the home she shared with her husband, now in other hands. Similarly, in \u201cGreat Blue Heron,\u201d a new widow is plagued by her husband\u2019s brother, determined to wrest the executorship of his estate\u2014and, undoubtedly, all his assets\u2014from her. What precisely happens in these two stories, as the women\u2019s ghosts and fantasies take hold, is not clear. Their trace of ambiguity leaves you free to interpret. Letting readers \u201cdo some of the work themselves\u201d can be a strength of the short story form.<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Drowned Girl,\u201d a college student becomes obsessed with the unexplained death of a fellow student. \u201cLike gnats such thoughts pass through my head. Sometimes in my large lecture classes the low persistent buzzing is such that I can barely hear the professor\u2019s voice and I must stare and stare like a lip-reader.\u201d In this, as in all of these stories, Oates deftly creates a specific, concrete setting for her characters. The believability of these environments makes you believe the characters also are plausible until you\u2019ve traveled with them pretty far into the deep weeds of their bizarre perceptions.<\/p>\n

The final story, \u201cWelcome to Friendly Skies!\u201d is not a thematic fit with the others, but ends the book on a decidedly humorous note. Passengers on a you-can-anticipate \u201cill-fated\u201d flight to Amchitka, Alaska, are taken through the standard airplane safety monologue with a great many ominous additions.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Block\u2019s recent multi-authored short story collection, In Sunlight or in Shadow<\/a>, inspired by the realist paintings of Edward Hopper, could not pass up the opportunity to include one of Oates\u2019s lonely\u2014and deliciously skewed\u2014female protagonists.
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