I was disappointed. I have liked some of McGuane’s work a lot, but this one did not work. The idea is that the character thinks that maybe there is some connection among three events that happen one evening and the riddle is to figure out how. But I don’t see any connection nor any really good reason to think there is one. The story still might work if there was something more interesting about the fact he thinks they are connected, but, nope. It’s not a terrible story at all, but a bit of a letdown.

Hey William. Yup remember that story although the title escapes me. Some controversy among the gallery as to its “realism” at the time, that of course mattered not at all to me, who found it powerfully nightmarish in capturing the anguish of the refuges.
Meanwhile, loved the McGuane here–along with his refreshing interview. Just the sense of mystification surrounding these seemingly disparate events I found compellingly described. No a-priori logic or resolution necessary. It is a riddle and for several pages, for me at least, totally engaging.

Thanks, David, I’ll do that.

Dennis, you have used that line before about exterior vs interior logic, but the problem is that this is not the real distinction here. The real distinction here is between logic and not logic. In this story, the character thinks three events are related, but there is no logic presented in the story to support that claim. It is not that they are connected according to some specific-to-the-story logic. If they were, then he would have something. As it is, he has nothing.
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To make this exterior vs interior logic point more clearly, I turn to an example I remember John Cleese giving that I believe he attributed to Spike Milligan. He used the term the “internal logic of the sketch”. The idea was this: You can start with any premise you want, no matter how bizarre, and just stipulate that this is how things are. His example was that you could start a sketch with everyone sitting in garbage cans. But now, once that starting point has been established, if someone enters the room who is not in a garbage can, that requires an explanation, but not the fact that everyone else was in cans at the start. For the viewer to ask for an explanation for the initial set-up is to miss the point and to incorrectly apply real-world logic to the internal world of the fiction.
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That, to me, is brilliant. Cleese and Milligan are, of course, entirely right. But none of this applies to McGuane’s story. He does not construct for us any alternate logic that we are asked to accept. He just has a guy who wonders if three events are related, thinks it is a sort of riddle, and never comes up with a connection. If the story were about why it is that sometimes people have absurd thoughts like these, then McGuane has something. If the three events actually were related, but in some difficult to decipher way, then he would have something. But if at the end there is no connection and it’s not about the absurdity of the character thinking they are, then there is nothing left. If that is good enough for you then you are saying any random string of events is cool with you. No plot twist is too absurd, no disconnect to great. With that as your “standard” it is difficult to see how any story can ever fail to be anything other than brilliant.
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PS – I never click the box for notifications, so I can’t help you with that issue.

I liked this quote from an interview with Anthony Varolla, editor of the lit mag “Crazyhorse” that appeared in “The Review Review” today:

“Of course there are a million different things that keep me reading a story—language, style, elegance, characterization—but the best is the feeling that I’m not reading a story at all.  That’s number one.  Forgetting all about the other stories looming in the submission file and getting lost in the world of the story in front of me.  If that happens once or twice a week for me, it’s been a good week.”

When a story achieves this, quite an accomplishment!   The often indescribably seductive quality of a good story that enfolds us in the world the writer has created.

BTW I”m still getting zip notifications of new comments. And I’m a neat guy! Trevor are you out there??? What’s the glitch?

Greg–Love the question to pal David: “Do you enjoy Jackson Pollock’s paintings”? (Also look forward to his reply although I’m still not notified of new comments for some reason.)

Really appreciate the passages you’ve selected from this and other “New Yorker” fiction. These authors are speaking and you’re listening. Isn’t this what it’s all about? I think so.

Nice!

I don’t usually defend stories in the way Dennis would? I do usually seek some point/meaning etc. But…I thought this worked mostly on the strength of McGuane’s stylistic ability and feeling for a place and masterful creation of a mood. The events captivated me and I went alone willingly, entranced. I wouldn’t call this profound, but I certainly found it skillful and engaging.

I think every story is always a referent for something other than itself by the way. It always refers to what we know of the world, even if it doesn’t have an obvious point or meaning. McGuane is referring to things we know about cowboys and places like Montana for instance or even to Frank Lloyd Wright. He’s not writing within a bubble. But….I’m not sure there’s a clear/obvious point to the story.

I love your analysis William and fully agree with your conclusion….That being said, I believe it’s so very hard for many people to accept the harsh reality of your last sentence, “…how life consists of chaos and that meaning is only an illusion?”

Greg —

That sentence about chaos and illusion was my interpretation of the theme of McGuane’s story. My own take on reality and the universe is a bit more nuanced. I don’t accept traditional religious cosmology, where meaning is provided by following rules made by the
Guy in the Sky so that we get an ultimate reward. I’m more of a positive existentialist, like Victor Frankl — meaning is provided by engagement in everyday life and appreciation of this world — flawed as it is. Believing in any kind of perfection — in this world or the next — runs counter to all our experience and is at best very imaginative.

Thanks, Greg. My view isn’t as unconventional as it once was, like in the Middle Ages. It’s true that religious faiths all espouse a supreme being. That was fine in pre-scientific times, when people didn’t understand natural phenomena and they had to invent gods who threw thunder bolts to explain lightning, etc. No longer necessary.

William and Dennis – I enjoyed your extended thoughts on this concept…..and also Dennis, thank you for that invaluable quote…..going forward, “abyss” will now have a special meaning for me!

I’m puzzling over this story and enjoy the comments above. I liked the layers of remove and distance: he’s not in his “real” house but an extra apartment. Not in his real car but in the doctors’ car (or, in her misread, the wrecked car). Not designing his own buildings but models of other architects’ designs. I loved the image of the shard of mirror at the end and, not to overreach I hope, saw the whole story as a mirror shard.

Amy – I got a bit fixated on the shard, and at some point, had the same though as you about it. I also wondered about the bad luck that broken mirrors are supposed to bring.

I usually don’t like puzzle stories very much, but this one is so interesting and playful that I got right into it. The “riddle” of the title seems to me to somehow be about the relation of author to reader, and what each brings to the experience. Should we read the architect in the story as representing the author? It may be too obvious, but it’s a start.

Various random thoughts in no particular order –

The criminals who make off in the car seem to be an allusion to “Bonnie and Clyde”, although I haven’t figured out a reason for it. Also, I think the street urchin who appeared at the beginning of the story likely witnessed the robbery of the Sinclair Station, unnoticed, and was excitedly telling the old man about it.

Besides the mirror shard, the entire current model the architect is working on could also represent this story in some way. Both the model and the story are ultramodern things, the story being full of fashionable meta-this-and-self-referential-thats, and I think McGuane is making a very sly and crafty joke about how he sees that sort of writing. But he doesn’t want the reader to settle into just one way of seeing it, either, I don’t think. That’s part of the fun. Or, not fun, if you don’t like authors playing mind games with the reader in order to wake them up a little about what is going on during the trance state induced by reading.

Okay, I have to stop – just thinking about this story very much tends to make me dizzy in a house-of-mirrors way. And I’m recovering from this season’s hideous variant of the flu, which has my brains even more addled than usual.

I’m so glad to see such thoughtful commentary here—thank you, all! Here’s a bit to add.

I was hooked from the fourth line: “Most of my clients thought it was my design.” This a guy who reflects on his “remote house and its unconquered air of vacancy,” someone who suspects that he’s not inhabiting his authentic life. Given the line I cite first, which of us is? Can any of us separate what is authentic in our workaday life from a perhaps greater, more mysterious reality? The narrator is nagged by the vision of the old, genuine cowboy, who wears his worn-out Stetson to be distinguished from the railroaders, and his encounter with the young boy. Such excitement, such joy at meeting! (Maybe they were talking about the vivid robbery—something so real in their midst. I like that possibility.) The narrator has none of that “enchantment” in his own life.

Two different realities converge when the sheriff offers his take: “… it never needed to come to this. Maybe you should think about that. There wasn’t nothing in the world wrong with that young woman. [His faulty grammar states that, in fact, there was something in the world wrong with her.] You ever see a pretty gal in a morgue? I don’t recommend it.” The narrator hasn’t considered he’s complicit in his own life, much less her death. See how he says his “models… pretty well ate his career.” An impossible thing!

And then the sheriff’s answer to the narrator’s question about the cowboy’s name: “If he has a name, I wouldn’t know it.” Such an odd way to answer—it’s our final clue that the cowboy is out of some mythic reality, and not some individualized character. The narrator already knows the cowboy’s name—he heard the boy call him Jack, but that doesn’t explain to the narrator who or what he is.

Similarly mythic are the man and woman with the upturned car. “ ‘Just play along.’ His gaze was very direct. ‘I think you can do that.’ “ The man sees right through the narrator who seems to have been “playing along” his entire life. Only later, with the sheriff’s judgement, do we see the narrator as a would-be, failed savior, the Christ allusion of him picking the thistles from his palm. The ER doctor—someone who actually saves lives for a living—says to him, “You’re lucky to be alive!” Again, what an odd thing to declare, unless you deal with the realities of death every day, looking into the dark unknown frequently enough to know that yes, we are lucky to be alive.

I haven’t read enough McGuane to know whether this is the top of his form, but I loved this story. Joyce Carol Oates has said that the short story is a “dream verbalized,” and “The Riddle” measures up exquisitely.

Interesting comments. I’ve read “Riddles” several times, had my wife who can always figure out murder mysteries, read it and she came away as bewildered as i am. It was driving me crazy and I began trying to figure out a way to contact McGuane and ask him for answers or at least clues. The idea that these are random, unrelated events and mean that life is random, bewildering, without easy answers is the only way I can make meaning of the story. Still, it’s unsatisfying.