A. L. Kennedy's "Wasps"

Who'd've thought I'd be blogging twice in a week about A. L. Kennedy? She's this week's New Yorker fiction writer, though, and thus the subject of the latest post in my Magazine Reading Project.

This is actually quite handy, because I wondered, in the previous post, if the things that bothered me about Kennedy's first collection were the result of youth, or of something inherent to her work. I complained about the narrative stasis that seemed a hallmark of her stories, and about her tendency to rely too heavily on victimhood as a topic. And indeed, this new story, at least in those respects, is just like her early ones--a cuckolded mother of two stays cuckolded, and does nothing about it, and everything remains the same.

However, Kennedy has gotten a lot better at it, and I like the story a lot. I felt a little funny complaining last time, because I know that a story doesn't require strong narrative drive to be good; nor does its protagonist have to "change" or experience "redemption." Here, though, Kennedy's immersion in the details of the character's life--and her superior ability to choose and refine those details--makes the piece worth reading. Of particular power is her portrayal of the protagonist's sons, who at the ages of 7 and 4 have learned to channel their anger at their absent father upon each other. There is a great moment where the older boy "washed his own hands very thoroughly, theatrically, with the air of a weary surgeon. As she watched, the weight of an older brother's responsibilities and trials hardened his jaw enough for him to look very much like his father."

The really excellent bit here, however, is a scene in which the father subtly, quietly, transfers the blame for his absence and infidelity onto the younger boy. "That's why I go away, Jimbo," he says. "For you."

Ouch. In the wake of this scene, the father leaves again, and the mother again lets him, and once again I longed for something other than stasis, true to life as stasis might be. But there's no accounting for taste, and no denying that, judging by this story, anyhow, Kennedy has gotten really good. It's a better piece of writing than anything in her first book. Here's hoping somebody someday says the same thing about me.

A. L. Kennedy

So I'd been asking W6 frequent commenter Zoe what's good out of Scotland, and a few weeks later what should show up in my mailbox but a puffy airmail envelope marked Scotland Cultural Delivery. Inside were a couple of books and a CD compilation of Scottish bands singing about books. The CD I'll get to another time, but I just read one of the books--A. L. Kennedy's first collection, Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains.

I had heard of Kennedy but hadn't read her. I'm glad I did--she's good. Her narrative style is deceptive--these stories seem to ramble aimlessly, before they suddenly reveal themselves to have been headed straight for their target all along. A few of them ("Translations" springs to mind) leave out so much information that you wonder for a long time what the hell you're even reading--but they always add up to something, however convinced you are that they won't.

One thing that irks me, though--and I'm speaking here only of this collection, which remember is her first--is how unrelievedly victim-oriented these narratives are. The first four stories, for instance, feature, respectively, a disease victim, a rape victim, an infidelity victim, and another rape victim. I certainly regard this kind of material as legitimate fodder for fiction--who wouldn't?--but I found myself longing, by the end of the book, for the characters to do something about their plight. I'm not talking about happy endings, or pluck, or "redemption," Lord help us, but agency. It's a truism that abuse begets misery, and while I don't expect or desire literary characters to find clever and satisfying ways around their unhappiness, I certainly would like to see them give it a shot, and fail interestingly. Ultimately I find these stories a little static--in each one, the tone is glum, and you sit back and wait to see what the dark secret is, and then it's revealed, and then you're glum too.

Like I said, though--it's good anyway. Kennedy isn't going in for the lurid, smeary lyricism that afflicts a lot of writers of "serious" material; her stuff sounds like something worth reading.

Who's read her books since? There are a bunch. Personally, I would be mortified to be judged on some random blog by a dude who's only read my first book, so weigh in on the comments if you're a fan (or not).

(And Zoe--thanks again for the package!)