Misread cues and social delusions
A new collection by the doyenne of short stories
Joyce Carol Oates may be criticized in the Twittersphere for her frank and controversial observations, but her status as the doyenne of the American short story remains uncontested.
In “Beautiful Days,” the prolific author once again delivers a selection of skillfully written stories as powerful as any she has produced in her long and distinguished career.
The volume opens with the image of a roiling river that mesmerizes two restless souls who soon plunge into an affair, disregarding the audible roar warning of danger ahead. That waterway is an apt metaphor for this three-part story collection, which begins with a succession of recognizable domestic tragedies, picks up the pace in the rapids of paranoia, and finally goes over the edge in a cataract of mindbending tales.
There are no happy endings — you’ve been warned — but the material is continually fascinating.
The figures throughout are pathetic and poignant, misreading cues and often deluding themselves. In Part I, an adulteress declares her desire to be “brutally, totally” honest with her lover at the onset of their affair, then fails to mention her terminal illness.
An unwitting actress, recruited by a suicidal narcissist to help him recreate a childhood memory, tolerates his erratic behavior in the mistaken belief that they are building a relationship. And a grieving stepmother — on a cruise and emotionally at sea after her daughter’s sudden death — fixates on an unattractive “freak family … out of a Diane Arbus photograph,” only to realize that she is the person whom her fellow travelers find bizarre.
The currents of confusion grow stronger in Part II. “The Disappearing” details an aging housewife’s escalating anxiety as she observes children, friends and favorite activities fading away.
She grows desperately afraid of losing her husband but may in fact be losing her mind to dementia. “Friend of My Heart” provides an excruciating account of an embittered adjunct professor’s obsession with a college classmate who has surpassed her professionally. Ostracized by “elitists,” disrespected by “inferior minds” and warped by jealousy, she steels herself for a long-awaited showdown, then finds her perception altered when her rival, mistaking her for someone else, greets her with genuine warmth.
That character, teetering though she is on the edge of psychosis, is nevertheless the most sympathetic of the numerous academics that appear in these stories. Tenured or not, they are an unhappy bunch — callous, clueless, frightened, egotistical and aloof. (Ms. Oates, who spent decades on the faculty at Princeton University, clearly has little love for her former colleagues.)
Worst of all are the postdoctoral researchers in “Undocumented Alien,” the central story in boldly experimental Part III. Using their intellects and the protocols of the project as shields against standards of human decency, they objectify a Nigerian student “saved” from deportation by reducing him to the status of a lab rat. When computer chips implanted in his brain affect his cognitive functions, the 21st-century Frankenstein struggles to cling to his humanity in a display that is horrific for both the subject and the reader.
Equally sinister and possibly more disturbing, at least for parents, is “Fractal,” a variation of Hansel & Gretel, in which a mother eager to please her precocious son drives him to the distant Fractal Museum, where he is lured to his doom in an alternate reality simulating a video game.
The destruction of innocents is addressed again in the surreal title story, “Les Beaux Jours,” inspired by the abstruse artwork of the painter Balthus. A vulnerable young girl, barraged by graphic imagery in the media and carelessly exposed to the sex lives of her parents, is drawn to — and then literally drawn into — a suggestive painting she doesn’t quite understand. Once inside, she is exploited and imprisoned by the nefarious Master. Her pitiful appeals for rescue echo down the halls of the museum, unheard or unheeded, as her life is sacrificed for art.
Love her or lambast her, one is obliged to acknowledge the author’s seemingly inexhaustible imagination. Joyce Carol Oates’ ability to revisit the same genre over and over again and continually create something fresh is enough to blow an appreciative reader’s mind — and blow her critics right out of the water.