Second Lives by Daniel Alarcón

“Second Lives” is the oil / water separation between starting a new life and being tied to an old one through family responsibility. Families hold the key to our history and ultimately to our identity while starting a new life forces us to adapt and reinvent ourselves. The two situations never blend but remain separate leaving the main character to abandon his family in the middle of a revolution and a neighbor to leave his wife to the neighborhoods ridicule of her situation.

The main character illustrates this idea through his older brother, Francisco’s whos first letters describes the weather as a bather might notice the pools temperature while not committing to dive. Then by the fourth letter, immersed in his new life “he omits to ask the family how they are instead focusing the content on his developing social life at school.”

Then a again a few line down the main character notes “We did eventually get a photo of the few American friends Francisco acquired in those first months, and perhaps this could have clued us in about his eagerness to move on.”

The name of the family Francisco stays with is, Villanueva, means new house. Francisco who no longer shares his family’s experiences, instead lives in a new house, with a new family, in a new culture. The word “new” itself seems to imply a relacement of that which can now be considered old which in his case is his past, his family, his origins.

Francisco having completely acclimated to his new life continues to move from area to area even though this makes it difficult for his parents and brother to get their visas through him enabling them an escape from a difficult revolution. The main charactuer surmises that Francisco’s attitude must stem from him wanting to forget where he had come from in order to be american. After all, this is what the Villanueva’s children were attempting in their refusal to learn the Spanish language and which was stressed again when they warned Francisco immediately upon his arrival that they didn’t speak his language even though their father was Spanish and a Spanish teacher.

The younger brother soliloquizes that he understands the need to have a second life which he compares to peoples interest in avatars and virtual realty. He himself imagined an American life for years bolstered by his brothers experiences, and pictures as well as through his attempts to learn American culture.

Then their was another character that underwent this transition as well. The neighbors husband who left his wife to live with a mistress is another way of starting a new life. The writer draws out the treachery the wife suffers of being left behind which forces her to evaluate how well we know each other and perhaps who we really are.

She asks the mother “where are your people from?” then she continues “How well do we know each other, really, Monica? Do I know what you do?”

In the end, we comprehend this need to adapt and shed an old life but we are torn because we also cannot help but feel compassion for those left behind just like the little brother who hurt and bitter attempts to forget Francisco but fails.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/08/16/100816fi_fiction_alarcon?currentPage=all#ixzz0wQom6qYa

The Train of Their Departure by David Bezmozgis

The Train of Their Departure by David Bezmozgis describes a powerful and unavoidably common theme found in society and literature today, a disconnected impersonal isolation from ourselves and those we should be closest to.

All of the main characters appear to have little emotions for themselves or those around them starting from the very beginning where it is explained Polina did not fall in love for Maxima but allowed him to pursue her into dating, sex and eventually marriage based on curiosity over his impersonal and "robotic” advances.

Even the secondary characters we never meet seem destined with the same fate: “her friends did not fall in love but descended into infatuation.”

Maxim, her futures husband is not immune from this disconnect isolation from feeling as he is described being attracted to her as one might a future business partner citing her hard working and serious minded attributes. Even when it describes how he brings her flowers it is viewed a perfunctory act by both Maxima and Polina with the phrase “he had established a habit of bring her flowers once a week.”

During abortion procedure, which is perhaps one of the most personal procedures one can have it is described by a physical sense of disconnectedness: “Like a magician’s assistant, Polina felt as if she had been split in two. The doctor and the nurse pretended that her top half didn’t exist and dealt only with her bottom half.” Her top half, her self is divorced from the operation.

During the operation she also describes focusing on only her top part pretending that what happens below is very far away as if the operation isn’t happening to her but a remote situation unconnected to her.

Then when she wages a bet with Alec to determine whether or not they would see each other again Polina makes an effort to shoot well “as if to win” as if to avoid seeing Alec again but not because she did or didn’t want to see him but simply because “she could not perform otherwise”. She should be able to make a decision whether she would like to see him or not and moderate her efforts towards those ends to win or lose but instead she explains she has to perform well as if she is at work and the outcome of the bet are of no consequence to her.


Later Polina discovers she is pregnant and confronts Alec tht she is “almost certain” the child is Alecs and not her husbands. “Almost certain” indicates she continued to have martial relations during her relationship with Alec just as Alec had keep himself occupied when he did not see Polina. This is not a story of passion and love but of people in the motions of doing things as one might find in a factory which appropriately enough happens also to be where they both work.

Although Polina is upset with the situation she isn’t passionate or even remotely emotional about where this might leave her relationship with Alec. When questioned by him about her plans she explains she can raise the child with her husband, alone or with someone else. The very possibility that she can think of someone else at this moment signifies that she is not overly attached to her relationship with either her husband or her lover or even a desire to be alone.

The ending is quiet ironic, as the one thing Polina seems to want vehemently is to avoid a 2nd abortion and the only thing Alec appear to care somewhat about is the welfare of the unbord child yet they decide to have the abortion anyway to preserve a relationship which seems at best based more on companionable convenience then about deep feelings.

This idea can be witnessed in the last few paragraphs when Alec decides to offer her to come with him out of Russia as a conciliatory/consolatory gesture for having the abortion which she responds to in kind by cautioning him not to “try to hard next time he will be telling her he loves her.” The title “The Train of Their Departure” can be viewed as a departure from the only thing both main characters hold dear, the unborn child which in the end, they don’t feel strongly enough about to keep.

New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/08/09/100809fi_fiction_bezmozgis

Blue Water Djinn by Téa Obreht

Blue Water Djinn

There is a sense of pervading isolation in this story starting with the main character a young boy named Jack. Little Jack is left alone at a hotel in an Arabic country . He is placed in a context of a foreign country, immersed within a foreign culture amid a hotel with foreigners from different countries all as displaced and separate as he is but perhaps more so because he is the only child. He lives in the hotel alone with little supervision from adults which enables him to slip in and out at night and witness the drowning of one of characters labeled the Frenchman. Unable to make sense of this adult drama he keeps this secret to himself as he watches everyone search for the disappeared man whose clothes have washed up on the shore. The secret further separates him from those around him and weighs heavily on him.

The Frenchman like Jack is also isolated by being in a foreign country, but also being set apart from everyone by his substantial weight. When they find his clothes washed ashore they laugh at the size as they lay it on the sand, he is considered more of a joke then a person. The Frenchman does not have a real identity or a name and is instead referred to solely by humorous references to his portly size and his nationality.

The Frenchman’s drawings of things caught in the fisherman’s net is a symbol of creatures pulled out their habitat similar to the plight of the main characters: the boy and the Frenchman. It also speaks of the creatures final separation from earth, death. The Frenchman is aware of what they symbolize as the author describes him “There was something cowed and lonely in the Frenchman’s face when he looked at the things that came out of the water.” Then later again he is confronted by a turtle which has been hurt and pulled out of its habitat which it struggles with great effort to return to as it takes eight men to hold it in place. Again the Frenchman is aware of the turtles isolation as the author describes the scene through Jacks eyes. The Frenchman clearly wanted to touch the turtle, but the struggle on the beach made that impossible. The phrases bespeak of isolation of being ripped from the familiar but also the isolation found in death when the Frenchman questions the hotel employees about the crack on it’s back. He experiences a sense of lonely association with this suffering animal but even here he cannot touch it or connect with it because of the situation.

In the last scene the child is again alone on the beach at night looking through the port hole of sunken boat for the Djinn that the hotel employees have told him reside there which is off limits to all guests because of the dangers it represents. He is able to access the boat because of the low tide and we wonder if the tide will come in seperating Jack from the living like the Frenchman.

The Dredgeman’s Revelation by Karen Russell

This story seems to investigate the strangeness of life and death, being and not being, living and not living. The main character, Louis is born dead to a dead mother and then as if he reverses his decision to be dead decides to live. Unfortunately for him he is sent to a family where he describes his escape from them as a coming alive, while also alluding to having killed his adoptive father. Simple put he has killed not to save his life but in order to live.

Louis later signs up for work on a barge where the crews lives our put on hold so that they are waiting their return to land in order to live again while Louis wants to avoid this return to land and perhaps to living to the point he fantisizes about sabotaging the ship.

Then, the end of the story, the ship does not return to land but instead catches fire which kills a crew member attracting scavenger birds. Louis discovers before being killed by these birds that he does in fact want to live just as death is at his door step and it is to late for him to do so.

An Honest Exit by Dinaw Mengestu

An Honest Exit by Dinaw Mengestu

There are two exists in Dinaw Mengestu's story in which both man intentionally leave something behind to take back their identity and through this their dignity. Their exit is described as honest since it is departure from their compliant roles.

The son who teaches at a prestigous class leaves behind a job he feels he has unwittingly played the part of a trained monkey teaching class concerning a history which is not his own effacing his own identity as a black man. His father's death acts as a catalyst for him to grasp at his own immigrant history to reaffirm who he is.

Then there is his father who is forced to play the compliant puppet obeying Abrahim in order to leave Africa but who once in Europe rebels reassuming his independent identity and his desires.

Then their is also the fact that there is something not so honest about either mans exit from their former behavior. The father is breaking a pact he agreed to maintain with Abrahim, and the son has invented parts of his father's history. In order to be true to themselves, as adults, they realize that things are not so simple as the son students beleive them to be and that sometimes being honest is not a luxury we always have.

New Yorker: Lenny Hearts Eunice

New Yorker: Lenny Hearts Eunice
by Gary Shteyngart

The Game of Love is the salt on the twisty pretzel knot of life demonstrating how a little love helps us to endure the meadering knots we all work through which also perversly make us appreciate life, love, and pain all the more.

Lenny knows he will struggle, fail, lose his job, be abandoned by new generation and suffer their redicule but will hold on to love and savor the moments he has.

The salty pretzel is appreciated because of it's twists, gaps, and finite quality. Enjoy it now, it's almost gone.

Gossip Girl: I want my friend back this will be easier done with serena out of the picture.

Chuck: I want my friend back - this will be easier done with Serena out of the picture.

He's not referring to Nate. He can always be friends with Nate even with Serena in the picture. It makes more sense that he is speaking of Blair.

He needs Serena to stay away in order to win her back. Chuck knows that if Serena returns she will act as a moral compass guiding Blair to stay away from the "bad" influence Chuck is based on her decision to trade a night with Jack in exchange for the return of his hotel. In order for her to stay in Florida Chuck is encouraging a rift between her and Nate so that she won't have any reason to return to quickly giving him time to get closer to Blair.

Blair's Moral Compass: I feel as if Blair is playing the part of Scarlett in the movie "Gone with the Wind" where she is attracted to good morals in an esthetic sense, while not truly believing in them. Blair and Chuck are not bound by the same morals as everyone else, it's what makes them so similar and spectacular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSfniJXUC9E

Midnight in Dostoevsky by Don DeLillo

Two young students invent an imaginary world to evade their inconsequential one, when one continues left alone during vacation break and the other returns to find they are unable to reconcile what has been created a revolution erupts.

Don DeLillo makes a fine use of the characters Robby and Todd to demonstrate the human need for control by dictating our interpretation of the world. He also reveals what little power actually resides in these ego-driven interpretations which are often flawed and ultimately insignificant. Life continues regardless of what we think and argue it to be and the old man unchanged by the boy’s arguments concerning his identity continues to take his walks unperturbed, hands clasped behind his back.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/11/30/091130fi_fiction_delillo?currentPage=all

Indianapolis (Highway 74) by Sam Shepard

Two souls in limbo collide at holiday Inn and find a little comfort where they least expect.

Loops

There is an ongoing theme of loops and characters stuck repeating mindless behavior. Stuart is “crisscrossing the country again without much reason.” He explains how “sometimes places pop into his head and he just goes” Giving us a sense that this is character who is lost and is evading himself and all which is and who are familiar to him. He is caught in a senseless loop repeating his mindless actions with no target or strategy.

Stuart also has social loops by having what he describes as a “bunch” of children with various women. Seemingly not investing in these relationships but constantly creating new ones.

Then there is his dog that is running in a circles in the back of the car. The fear of the storm making him also behave illogically.

There is the senseless loop of violence playing on the television where robbers kill employees who don’t have the key to the safe, but shoot the victims anyway. The receptionist can’t lower the volume or turn the channel because it’s on a computer system she has no control over which makes it an inescapable repetition of events.

Then Becky whose husband kidnapped her daughters and have disappeared is stuck in her own loop of false leads, despair and going from her house to the Holiday Inn.

Two souls collide breaking the impenetrable loop

Becky’s words “I was so in love with you” breaks through all the senseless and mindless loops which hold the characters in a state of compliant and perhaps willful aloofness throwing them into a type of urgent intimacy.

Stuart can no longer maintain his passive uninvolved escapism. He is affected by Becky's words and because of this he feels a need to destroy the televisions, the coffee tables, the lobby and flee but realizes there is no escape to what has been said. Instead, he leaves the hotel and is driven back by the blizzard and by the whirlwind of his emotions that suddenly overwhelm him forcing him to face Becky’s emotions and his feelings.

In the end, Becky's voice causes Stewards façade to shatter and the loop to end.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/11/23/091123fi_fiction_shepard?currentPage=all

Premium Harmony by Stephen King

Premium Harmony
King’s cynical portrayal of husband who happily trades in his wife’s death for a free purple ball, a soda, and the freedom to smoke in peace.

The Purple Ball
The couple in this story are caught in a power play about insignificant issues such as difference between a few cents, Little Debbies, purple balls, and cigarettes. Life revolves around the more bizarre and insignificant aspects of our society. A need for a certain color ball, a t-shirts which say “My Parents Were Treated Like Royalty in Castle Rock and All I Got Was This Lousy Tee-Shirt, and a husband itemizing the purple ball and the soda the managers offers him on the house, when his wife just died, but then noticing that the offer does extend to the cigarettes.

The Mechanical Rabbit
By the end of the story, the husband, same as the mechanical rabbit King invoked in his first few lines, fails to be changed by his wife’s death. His life remains as meaningless as before he lost his wife and in the end the reader is left with a grim picture of a husband enjoying his cigarettes in an air condition car, indifferent to his wife and her dead dog in the back seat. From this vantage point, the reader can only imagine he will continue to lead this apathetic meaningless mechanical life and the plastic rabbit continues to run in circles.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/11/09/091109fi_fiction_king