I don't know why now of all times I want to start reviewing writing and for this of all stories to be the story with which I begin. So it is. Sometime I wake up at six for no reason at all and the morning is beautiful.
This story frustrated me greatly. It frustrated me like Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers: it's actually pretty good, but missing some little something that's hard to pin down and classify in limited terms, but turns out to be the only thing that gives literature any value at all. You might not realize what you really love about storytelling until you read something like Flamethrowers and you can see it clearly through its absence. Stories are driven by desire and the uncertainties that surround it. Does the desire run counter to some semblance of moral obligations, does it run opposite another desire, what actions does the desire merit, what obstacles are between the desire and its actuality? Any good storyteller will manipulate uncertainty such that you are exploring a dilapidated mansion under the silver light of the moon, and a flashlight of which you are not in control. You hear sounds in the darkness and you wonder and you cower and you ready to fight and then the light moves to the sounds and you see that it's the radiant heater clacking maniacally, which is to say, your best friend has been satisfying your wife in ways that you were never able. Though I do my little argument a little disservice by using Freedom's major plot pivot to talk about how uncertainty is at the center of all story. It is easy to see how uncertainty about a situation like this could drive a novel.
I think one of the major accomplishments of Karl Ove Knausgaard in My Struggle, is how he manages quotidian uncertainties to drive the narrative. I have only read the first half of the first volume, but it's clear that he is doing something unique if we can be excited to accompany a teenage-him to a party, that doesn't actually turn out to be a New Year's party, to then meet a girl he's interested in, in the street, and try to get invited to her party, but fail. The excitement of this plot is not readily apparent. But the ever-renewing desire throughout is palpable; the young Karl knows that anything is possible on a night like this. He's sixteen and has gone to great lengths to acquire and stash away beer. He's told there's a party and he gets to the party and it's a few people sitting around watching TV. He convinces himself that this woman's friendliness denotes interest. She explicitly says he's not invited to her party. He goes home with his friend.
But the entire time we remain convinced that anything can still happen, that the night can be redeemed. This is a literary experience I want to have. I want to feel that hope in all its folly and truth, and then the despair. That is a rich experience that momentarily puts you at the intersection of the fates and the will, which is a place I enjoy dwelling. It is a place I long for, that most times eludes me.
Returning to Russel's story, it starts off well. Two young people have eloped to California to bum around the desert. Sounds good.
"The night before, just outside Albuquerque, they parked behind a barbecue restaurant and slept inside a cloud of meat smells. The experience still has the sizzle of a recent hell in Angie's memory. Will they do this every night? She wants to believe her boyfriend when he tells her they are gypsies, two moths drunk on light, darting from the flower of one red sunset to the next; but several times she's dozed off in the passenger seat and awakened from traitorous dreams of her old bedroom, soft pillows."
Russel accomplishes so much in this paragraph. The challenged narrative of gypsies, the trust in her partner, the what's-at-stake of going home, the potential doom of when moths actually arrive at the light. It fits with the desert, and the "pulse event" of pollination that is about to begin among the moths and the Joshuas.
"Andy watches his girlfriend's lips move, mouthing the lyrics to a song Andy didn't realize he knew. My wife's lips, he thinks, and feels frightened by the onslaught of an unexpected happiness. Were they serious, coming out here? Were they kidding around? Are they getting more serious? Less? Perhaps they'll sort it out all out at the next rest stop."
This is all so good. This is a story I want to read. The narrative of young people leaving it all for love and adventure can be done again and again, as far as I'm concerned.
But then the story gets ridiculous and loses all emotional tension. A Joshua tree spirit leaps from a tree and enters the female character, Angie, causing her to become somewhat crazy and never want to leave the desert. Their relationship becomes ambiguously terrible, though still for some reason continues, as he gets a job and tries to take care of her who has become quiet and obstinate.
"Did you hear me? I said I'm leaving, Angie."
That afternoon, Andy gets a job at the Joshue Tree Saloon.
Then there is a period of peace, coinciding with the Joshua tree's dormancy inside of Angie, which last from April to mid-May. In the park, the Joshuas' blossoms have all dropped off, leaving dried stalks. Andy does not even suggest "moving on" anymore, so thrilled is he to laugh with Angie again. He comes home with fistfuls of tourist cash, reeking of Fireball and Pine Sol. OK, he thinks. Oh, thank God. We're getting back to normal.
Then one day, after a spectacular thundershower, Angie tells him that he needs to go home. Or away. Elsewhere, a bedroom other than the motel.
She feels terrible, she doesn't know what she is saying.
Get me out of it, the plant keeps throbbing like a muscle in Angie's mind A rustling sound in her inner ear, the plant's footsteps. A throaty appetite makes her imagine stuffing herself with hot mouthfuls of desert sand. Once andy leaves her, she'll have a chance to inspect her interior, figure out what's gone haywire.
End quotation. None of this makes any sense to me. This opposition between the plant and Angie seems like the only potential place for an interesting conflict. It's not explored at all, though. Angie is basically taken over by the Joshua but it just makes incommunicative and somewhat insane.
This quasi-mysticism plant-in-woman is the meat of the story, which is then resolved at the end by the memory of their love's genesis, while making love in the desert, which causes the plant to leave her, which makes the couple happy again. Or maybe the plant has only gone dormant, it's suggested in the last sentence.
What's so frustrating is just how sloppy it all is. It reminds me of my writing and I expect better from people getting paid at least something to produce better stories that are being published in the eminent organ of contemporary literature. Interesting themes are brought up, undercut, or discarded seemingly at random. Characters make sense, and then not. The mystical does not lend a new perspective on the human.
I want so much more from my generation. If my experience is representative, it will be the focus and rigor necessary for creating tight stories, that is the main challenge to art and thought in this age of dissipation.
