“Cut”
by Catherine Lacey
from the April 22, 2019 issue of The New Yorker
Before she turned thirty Catherine Lacey’s debut novel, Nobody Is Ever Missing, was critically acclaimed and even made The New Yorker‘s best of 2014 list. She has been prolific since, publishing another novel (The Answers), a collection of short stories (Certain American States), and even an illustrated survey on the entangled relationships between many of our favorite writers (The Art of the Affair: An Illustrated History of Love, Sex, and Artistic Influence). I haven’t read any of her work yet (so I want to hear how it is if you have), and look forward to “Cut,” her first story to show up in The New Yorker.
She definitely has a provocative first paragraph:
There’s no good way to say it — Peggy woke up most mornings oddly sore, sore in the general region of her asshole. She felt an acute burn when she used the toilet, and found traces of blood in the crotch of her pajamas. Later — clots. This may be unpleasant to consider, may even be a bad place to begin, but if there were a nicer way to tell this story it wouldn’t be this story.
Lacey is particularly astute in her interview with David Wallace (here), so I am excited for the story as well as for your insights. Please feel welcome to share your thoughts below!
Overall, this is a strong story, one with crisp prose and a clear sense of narrative identity. The overarching metaphor of the cut works well to service the story’s conceptual core of how patriarchy and modern society has a way of (violently) tearing female identity apart. The so-called ‘sex announcer’ is a very nice touch–both effective black humor as well as an interesting way of fictionalizing the abstract concept of how woman internalize the domineering and objectifying ‘voice’ of men. Moreover, each female character expresses the effects on misogyny in a slightly different way, leading to a quite textured and layered analysis on the topic. I feel the piece has given me a better understanding of at least part of the trauma inherent to the female experience in our society, which I’m grateful for.
That being said, some of the metaphors/similes/observations felt clunky (especially the one about the subservient women in the ‘Republican red’ uniforms), and there are times when the portrayal of misogyny and patriarchy comes across with enough heavy-handedness and amplification to imply that all males are destined to being apathetic, abusive perpetrators. In a sense, it’s certainly true that all men (especially, though probably not exclusively, heterosexual men) have been acculturated in such a way as to harbor, wittingly or not, at least quasi-misogynistic tendencies, but it seemed that this story doesn’t make room for any gradation, instead settling with the notion that men in general are, fundamentally, brutes. Given that the goal here is clearly conceptual and less about drawing realistic characters, I suppose that’s excusable in a sense, though it’s always a bit off-putting when every character from a specific demographic or ‘group’ is so overtly, negatively, and moralistically stereotyped.
The thought that keep coming back to me as I made my way through the story was how much it mirrors the style and structure of “The Itch” by DeLillo. This is essentially the feminist variant of that story, albeit more explicit in it’s themes. Personally, that’s a compliment to mind mind, as I liked DeLillo’s story and feel this one stands on similar footing.
This was a fairly awful story. I wasn’t sure at first I would bother to comment at all about it, not really feeling much like thinking any more about it once I was done reading it, but then I read Reader’s comment. Your first paragraph, Reader, makes it clear we had different reactions to the story, but then in the second paragraph you captured quite well the things I found problematic in the story. The words “clunky” and “heavy-handed” reflect a lot of what I thought about the story. It actually lost me fairly early on with the line, “employing his male birthright to decide when something was or was not a joke.” Peggy has just told her husband that she has this cut or tear in a very sensitive location and his first reaction isn’t “Oh my God we need to get you to a doctor right away!” or even “This sounds pretty serious. Maybe I should take a look at it.” and yet Peggy doesn’t seem to react to that part of his response. It seemed at this point that Lacey was just interested in her clunky and heavy-handed gender criticism and not much concerned about Peggy either. Maybe that is Lacey employing her birthright as an author to decide when the welfare of her characters comes first.
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Much of the rest of the story seemed to just be a patchwork of tiny episodes that are not really all that well connected and that often just drop out the fact Peggy has this seemingly serious medical condition altogether. The point of many of them is also opaque. Take the elevator encounter with Tallulah. The girl seems rather obnoxious and its not clear what she is doing in the story. Is there supposed to be some significance about her name? Lacey tells us that “there is a type of California couple who will name their daughter as if casting the ravishing ingénue in the film of their lives.” Ok. So Tallulah’s parents suck. Or maybe just Californian’s suck. Or something. But so what? Peggy explains the scientific finding that people are nicer to beautiful people and Tallulah is disgusted by that. But again, so what? Is this episode connected at all to Lacey’s gender critiques in the other parts? It does not appear so. So it just seems like a diversion or filler. And so we clunk on.
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I liked Reader’s observation that this story can be compared to “The Itch”, another story I didn’t like at all. I had not thought of it when reading “Cut”, but the comparison seems apt. The story I did think of as a point of comparison was Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch”. It is a story in part about cuts and tears in the same sensitive region and with significant gender-based criticism at its heart, but it is so much more artful and thoughtful in how it is written. Machado’s writing has a maturity I found entirely lacking in Lacey’s story. Machado is out there getting things done while Lacey is just riding the elevators up and down and finding things gross.
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Ok. That’s a lot more time than I wanted to spend thinking about this story. If you have not read “The Husband Stitch” I highly recommend it. I think I’m going to go back and re-read Pat Barker’s “Medusa” as a bit of a palate cleanser.
Ahem …. Trevor? I love that there is an edit function there, but when I tried to edit my comment (to fix the capitalization of the “S” in “IS”) I was told I could not edit my comment because it was marked as spam. Ugh.
PS – Just tried an edit on this comment to add this PS and it worked. Baby steps….
PPS … but now my entire previous comment is gone??? I hope you have a spam catcher and it was saved. Please check.
I found your comment and put it back from the spam. I installed this comment editor yesterday at the request of some commenters, and it is intended to allow you to edit your comment for the first five minutes after it is posted. I’m not sure why yours went into the spam, though!
I’ll try to troubleshoot it. Keep letting me know what issues it causes. The feature might end up in the trash very soon . . .
Thanks Trevor. I hope this was an isolated incident because I would like to see this function stay. I will leave it to others to decide if maybe the software was right in calling my comment “spam”.
:-)
What do these recent NYer storiea have in common: “Cat Person”, “The Confession”, “Medusa”, “Cut”?
William, I would leave “Cat Person” off that list since it is the one that is not unequivocally a story about a woman being raped as the others are. It also was published well over a year ago, while the other three are among the nine most recent stories published in The New Yorker. A run of 3 of 9 stories being about rape is quite a run. If you also include “The Starlet Apartments”, where it is more ambiguous again but suggests there was a sexual assault central to the story, that would be 4 of 9.
Well, that is an odd story. I think I have perhaps read it differently than others, It seems there are men in this story that do not fit the stereotype at all, but the narrator insists that all men this and all men that. She is not seeing the cry for help from the male student, but does recognise it in the female student’s poem. Her husband is another example with his statement about shaving his head and why looks shouldn’t matter, but she seems to have a double standard about that. His initial reaction to the cut could be the way he thinks she wants him to react. She is hiding her true pain from him, literally.
I don’t have previous experience with this author, but I would guess that the clunkiness is intentional. Peggy doesn’t really have her own views, and reacts on impressions. She chooses as friends women twice her age, presumably to glean their experience and make it her own. She is ungenerous in that she wouldn’t bother seeking out or nourishing a friendship the other way around where she could impart her life’s experiences. The scene in the elevator with Talulah is significant in that it shows Peggy explaining something that she thinks shouldn’t be right but is; it shows her being judgemental based on appearance – Republican red, probably pro-life. She does not know what she really thinks about anything. The “cut”, if it is supposed to be metaphorical, may be her taking sides with and against herself and not knowing what is right.
David —
Good edit. 4 of 9 stories about rape or sexual assault. You decline to speculate about what this might mean in terms of the criteria for selecting NYer stories. I will also decline.
Also, at the risk of being crude and stating the obvious I will offer my interpretation of what “cut” means. Probably everyone else can see it but you prefer to be discreet. Discretion has never been one of my chief characteristics. “Cut” stands in for “cunt”. That’s why it’s not “The Cut”. It means that women’s problems derive from having a vagina. Or rather, from men’s reactions to women having a vagina.
Can’t say it doesn’t grab your attention.
You can say it’s too Vice-girl or too look-at-me in its explicitness, but that could be said of Mary Gaitskill and A.M. Homes (or Dennis Cooper or Chuck Palahniuk).
The husband’s reaction (“Is this something that just happens to women?”) is on the money.
And yes, we should have solved menstruation by now (we’ve come a long way, though).
Crying face with no noise – gold-star descrip there.
Her search results reminded me of the wonderful play “Avenue Q” and the song “The Internet is for Porn.”
Elena and the city pool are both efficiently rendered.
“Time was out there killing people.” That certainly speaks an inarguable truth.
Overall, I was reminded of the works of Tom Perrotta, particularly Little Children (2004).
“Bodies, men. It’s always something.” Preach, Elena. A character with real wisdom.
Tallulah is a kid named after an old person, one that was a vanguard, a pioneer, one of the many time has killed. Time also killed Dr. Eugene. Poor Dr. Eugene. Felt like a eugenics riff, one of the many comments about birth in the story.
The story’s “about” a woman who doesn’t want to have a child even though that is the biological function of her vagina (and not for much longer, given her age). She is “torn.”
Republican Red is absolutely a stewardess outfit kind of color.
Beauty as Darwinian. Indeed.
I liked Lacey’s descrip of Peggy’s mind as nervous overpacker. Good character rendering. I wondered too of the inspiration for the character’s name. Peggy Castle? Peggy Olson?
Rational hypochondria is an excellent inclusion. Her student needs to embrace his inner Lloyd Dobbler.
Doctors booked solid for a month is a nice subtle social critique of the present moment.
The “muliebrity” poem was a standout moment. It’s true but it’s not good!! The title is too on-the-nose. Elena ain’t puttin’ up with no millennial guff. You teach ‘em how to write, Peggy, it ain’t yer job to save anyone.
Soup flights sound awesome.
Great humorous moment when the husband corrects her (who/whom) after she imagines the talking squash in her moment of schizophrenia.
I don’t love ending with a dream but it’s a solid image of endurance (which is what people without children do before time comes and kills them).
All good points, Sean H. I had missed that it was about whether she has a child or not.
My point about Republican red was that it led Peggy to a judgement about them (“probably pro-life”), not that it wasn’t a colour. They were probably just reacting to what seemed like an odd conversation in the elevator, and Peggy jumped to conclusions.
Both Reader and Colette make excellent observations about Peggy in this story, “Cut.”. It makes me think of the scene in “Bridesmaids” where one women insults another by maintaining her eggs are more fertile than the other ones’ (although way down the laundry list of somewhat obscene insults that get thrown at the insultee). I think in this story, Peggy is a very sensitive soul as is the male college student who visits her during office hours wanting to know what to do when any individual action he takes seems to contribute to causing pain either inside or outside or upon other life forms.
I think there are certain truths that thinking about what you should do because of them is a sure way to drive yourself crazy. Lacey seems to be lightly investigating mens’ insensitivity toward women, but also suggests evolution or Darwin’s insensitivity towards men and women by physically factually compelling them to evaluate themselves by how ethically life affirming is the conduct of their vagina or penis.
Peggy’s encounters with other female characters show how certain male attutudes and sexual greedinesses harm a women’s self image, tearing her apart. The specialized environment of this sexual politics discussion is that of upper middle class academia. Some readers identify with this milieu and to some, it seems quite different from life outside of it.
Having been born with a vagina or a penis is like being born with a mind excepting that the purpose of the first two cannot as easily be dismissed as the last one although often seemingly considered more important? And men, by attitude or fixed idea have more freedom in the conduct of their sexual organ than women, which is unfair. Because men should care as much about the lives of women and the creation of human life as women do.
But maybe we should try not to overthink the purpose of sexual organs or people”s attitudes towards them except when they are harmful or destructive to anyone in any way. I think Lacey is making a plea for guys to be more perceptive to the sensitive concerns of women about their sexual physiology and the effects these can have on their concept of their own worth.
The key for me in this story is Peggy’s example of how beautiful people are extended more privilege than those who are not. It is unfair but one has carry on in life anyway. I like this story a lot because it does what writers are supposed to do: write the truth about all the life crap that everyone and also very particularly women oftentimes, have to deal with.
And it doesn’t flinch.
One other thought or two. The situation of Peggy in “Cut” reminds me of Virginia Woolf. Woolf was molested on the kitchen table by male relatives as a young girl. If that hadn’t happened, she might have had children like male writers of that time. And her writing may have been completely different. Yet she carried on and wrote about the cruelties of men with their “beak of brass” probably those of her father towards her mother. Viewed from a detached perspective, “To the Lighthouse” still told the truth about unfairness within male/female interactions.
Thank you for your comments, Larry – they are much appreciated. I love “The the Lighthouse”. I wasn’t aware of what happened to her as a young girl – how awful.
What do people think about the dream where she adapts a pillowed side to catch her for when she is at home but hobbles along when outdoors? If, as Sean H says, the main theme is that she doesn’t want to have children (and I agree with this), perhaps the pillowed situation at home is because her husband also doesn’t want children, but outside, she’s judged and has to face it alone.
Colette:
Peggy’s not wanting children is certainly there. And she fault’s herself for this but her husband does not seem at all in tune with her which seems especially so because he wants sex without even thinking of how this might effect her because of the cut. So she has to say no. He seems to self-involved. Lacey doesn’t really go into causes very directly putting a more theoretical frame made more believable through realistic details and description. There is the tug of the understory or “undertoad” as John Irving terms it that makes a reader question what happened that could explain Peggy’s current sensibility. Readers might say heightened sensibility can never be really explained but something like the incident with Virginia Woolf discussed in Quentin Bell’s 1974 Virginia Woolf, A Biography sheds light on what could have happened.
I would agree that this is clunky, but it is also tart and acerbic in a way I enjoyed and I found it funny often. Lacey has enough offshoots towards various issues to keep the story moving along when not much happens in terms of overt drama. The question would be whether, like David, you consider these offshoots just weeds or interesting points of connection to various ideas about Darwin, men, misogyny, women, patriarchy, aging, academia etc.