“The Escape”
by John L’Heureux
from the May 6, 2019 issue of The New Yorker
After struggling with Parkinson’s disease for several years, John L’Heureux took his own life last week at the age of 84. He and his wife, Joan, carefully planned how and when, and his physician attended. Already planned was this story in The New Yorker, which is related and called “The Escape.” L’Heureux also asked that en essay, “On Death and Dignity,” be published as a companion to “The Escape.” In this essayk, L’Heureux talks about his career as a writer, going into some interesting detail of the last three stories published in The New Yorker, which is how I know his work at all. He talks about his fear as his Parkinson’s “progressed.” He ends by talking about how he and his wife looked at this decision in terms of their relationship with each other as well as their relationship with God and their religion.
As for the story, “The Escape,” I haven’t read it yet. I was more focused on the fact that an author I was growing to admire had died and that, as it turned out, he had planned it and written a thoughtful piece on the decision. But I’ve really liked L’Heureux’s three stories that appeared in the magazine over the last couple of years.
I’m a bit sad to read this one, but L’Heureux did leave us after also planning a book. His “The Heart Is a Full-Wild Beast: New and Selected Stories” will be published in December.
I like how “The Escape” begins:
Eddie Prior, age twenty-one, with his black hair slick and his blue, blue eyes, enteres this story with a great clatter.
I am nervous about how Eddie Prior exits the story.
Please feel free to comment below. Let me know your thoughts on the story and on L’Heureux’s work.
I have probably read all and only the same New Yorker stories by L’Heureux that you have Trevor, but I have not been impressed with any of them. This one was no exception. But I want to start with the essay, which was very powerful and moving. The essay is his real gem this week, but it also helps show what is wrong with the short story.
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L’Heureux says that this, like other pf his late stories, is semi-autobiographical. Anyone who reads both the story and the essay can clearly see the autobiographical elements in this story. But the problem is that just because they are autobiographical does not make them good as fiction. L’Heureux in his fiction seems to have nothing to say about the process of physical degeneration due to Parkinson’s that we have not heard said many times before and better. His fictional treatment of the subject adds nothing to his non-fictional essay treatment of it. There, it is strong and emotional. In the fiction is just seems flat and repetitive of things we already know.
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The story actually has two distinct parts to it – the Parkinson’s story and the father/son discussions of the nature of art. It is ironic that the son’s criticism of the father’s view of art, a view that seems to reduce art to bland list-like descriptions, is a criticism that could be made of L’Heureux’s own work. The one attempt L’Heureux makes to go beyond this is the ending. Eddie seems to make a magical escape into his painting – to both disappear into and escape death by doing so. Here L’Heureux seems to be saying that even though he has died, he will live on in his art, his writing, and so will continue to live on in this way. It is a nice little moment, but really the only one that elevates the story above the ordinary. The essay, however, was something very special.
A professor of mine at Stanford University, he was an inspiring and generous person. I’ve missed him ever since I graduated from Stanford.
I found this story deeply moving; its arc, Eddie’s entrance with great “clutter”, to the immersion in his art, from the representational to the abstract, he is slowly destined to no longer be Eddie, he is Eddie ineluctably becoming defined by the progression of his disease.
When writing personally about catastrophic disease, is there really anything “new” to say? Or is the real challenge to find one’s personal window into expressing it? In my own experience, I watched my father slowly slide away from his family, once a robust master of industry, to my mother’s caring for him at home for over two years, and ultimately his exile to the nursing home–“it has reassuring testimonials”–when she could care for him no longer, and all the clothes he never had a chance to wear. “Everything is gone.” It’s a life slipping away, to me, powerfully, uniquely expressed in this story.
And, yes a wonderful essay.
Dennis,
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“When writing personally about catastrophic disease, is there really anything ‘new’ to say?”
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Generally, the line between a great writer and an average one is whether or not they have something new to say. If they don’t, they’re just talking. When my father died of liver cancer over a decade ago, it was mostly a peaceful decline. But he went through a few moments of lapses of lucidity and abject helplessness that were very emotionally difficult. One of the hard moments for me was a few weeks before he died when we got a call letting us know his new hearing aid was ready for him to pick up. I walked over to their office to thank them, but let them know he would not be needing it. I could write about these things in a fictional story rather than an essay, but there would be no art to it as I am not a writer. It would turn out much as Eddie’s son criticizes Eddie’s view of his paintings. Just a descriptive list. Not art.
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“Or is the real challenge to find one’s personal window into expressing it?”
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The essay was the perfect way for L’Heureux to tell us what he had to say about his own experience. There are two reasons to write autobiographical fiction. One is because a writer thinks it is the medium that will best allow them to say what they have to say about their own life or experiences. The existence of L’Heureux’s essay proves that is not the case here. The other reason is because a writer just doesn’t have any better ideas, so writes what he knows – himself. I don’t know enough to say that is the case here. It is quite possible L’Heureux thought he could say things about his experience through his fiction that an essay would not capture. If so, he was wrong.
For me, this piece started out a bit slowly–on unsure footing, if you’ll excuse the pun–but it gained momentum and narrative confidence as the story progressed. By the end, it felt well-realized, certainly an apt and bittersweet send-off for someone who was quite literally staring death in the face throughout the writing process. (From a strictly literary/stylistic perspective, sure, it’s not the most innovative story–the early pacing felt rushed to me; however, it serves its purpose well, which is to capture the floundering, degenerative experience of the protagonist (i.e. a quasi-L’Heureux) and his immediate family as they all confront a crippling disease.)
David, it seems that your definition of what is or isn’t art–that it *must* say something ‘new’–is overly rigid and not particularly useful. Honestly, I’m not even sure what you mean by new to begin with. It’s almost as if writers are required to provide insights that all of humanity previously lacked in order to be considered worthwhile. Obviously, that’s unrealistic. Take “100 Years of Solitude” for instance. One could very reasonably argue that Marquez has nothing especially ‘new’ to say about the sociopolitical realities or experiences of South/Latin America(ns), as the backdrop (and zeitgeist) of his epic tale is in effect simply a recounting of a series of circumstances that mirror very well-known happenings in the continent. As for his meditations on solitude, love, death, history, etc., gripping and entirely true as they are, I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say he was charting new territory on any of those topics. Much of his core views and opinions are actually pretty broadly held and were before he wrote them. On the contrary, what elevates that novel to something extraordinary for most readers is the *way* in which its events and characters are recounted, how he weaves them together and embellishes each with fantastical yet entirely poignant flourishes. It’s that he captures such complex, textured elements the human experience so well, not that he’s saying anything particularly new about them. By your definition above, however, Marquez failed to achieve art. Well, that’s a hard sell! I think that might be what Dennis is getting at–that L’Heureux, in his own way, strove for and achieved that in “The Escape”. I’d agree.
Also, your last couple of lines about L’Heureux read pretty harshly, true or not, which is certainly debatable. Let’s not forget that the man died a few days ago, and he intend this to be his final contribution to literature and his own artistic legacy. A bit more tact would go a long way.
Reader,
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“Honestly, I’m not even sure what you mean by new to begin with.”
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Well, by “new” I just mean “new”. I think the problems of understanding start when trying to make a mystery of a simple word and idea. But if you still don’t understand, perhaps ask Dennis, since he is the one who introduced the word to this discussion, not me. Or just go back and read my first comment here again and see if you can see why, based on that, Dennis thought the word “new” made sense to introduce to the discussion.
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“David, it seems that your definition of what is or isn’t art–that it *must* say something ‘new’–is overly rigid and not particularly useful.”
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I would say it is a very minimal standard, as lots of things can be new and yet be awful. But if I told you that a book has a plot you have heard 100 times before with characters that are just like people you have read about 100 times before and with no new ways of telling the story, no new insights to offer, and, in fact, nothing that could really be called “new” in any respect, would you then ask, “Yeah, but is it a great book anyway?” It would seem really odd to think that option was still open at that point. I would prefer experiencing an actual 100 years of solitude to a book that re-told me things I’ve heard 100 times before.
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“Let’s not forget that the man died a few days ago, and he intend this to be his final contribution to literature and his own artistic legacy. A bit more tact would go a long way.”
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I did not show up at his memorial service and start yelling that he is an awful man. I wrote an assessment of his work. If we are to just give a pass to lesser work because he just died then we dishonour his profession and craft. I would hope that before he died, if he had been asked what people should say about his work after his death, he would have insisted that people say what they really think. That’s not a lack of tact. That’s respect.
Hey, guys —
Nice exchange. Thought-provoking. I will meditate on it and perhaps add something. Or perhaps not. In general, I liked the story, in the way it lurched through time and the transformations in the lead characters bodily and mental changes.
“New” — how man of those 4 stories about male sexual assault in the last couple of months had anything new to say?
Dennis — nice to hear from you again. Where have you been?
“I would prefer experiencing an actual 100 years of solitude to a book that re-told me things I’ve heard 100 times before.”
Well played, David! Worth a legit laugh.
As for the rest, a blend of agree/disagree. I suppose I’ll leave it at that, though I think I see where you’re coming from.
William,
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“New” — how man of those 4 stories about male sexual assault in the last couple of months had anything new to say?
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I’m going to take you up on that question.
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1. Leïla Slimani: “The Confession” – Lack of newness might well characterize the outcome of this story more than the approach. The idea of trying to present a rape from the point of view of the rapist recalled years later has a great deal of potential for something original and interesting, but Slimani does not really deliver. The excuse that he was only a boy when it happened and that he now, years later, feels bad about it is pretty bland stuff and not something unexpected. The idea of the story was encouraging, but the delivery not so much.
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2. Jonathan Lethem: “The Starlet Apartments” – This one was a disappointment to me and I don’t remember it as well as the others (probably because of that), but I don’t recall thinking that the problem was a lack of originality. The issue I had with it was more that the story did not quite make sense and Lethem under-explained what was going on leaving it murky and thus unsatisfying. So for this one I would not say that a lack of newness was the problem.
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3. Pat Barker: “Medusa” – I liked this story a lot. For me, the idea that the character is trying to deal with the effects of being raped and also looking at ancient art that depicts such violence towards women was showing her experience in a new way. The #MeToo movement has spawned a lot of discussion about the question about how we should deal with art by problematic artists, but almost always the question is about people who are still alive (or who were alive in our lifetimes). The idea that historical, even ancient art, is a source of her difficulties and how she engages with it differently now was a fresh idea and part of the story’s success.
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4. Catherine Lacey: “Cut” – [Aside: I don’t think I ever explained this, but my inclusion of it among the recent rape stories was because I was wondering at the time, and still do wonder, if the cut was supposed to be a metaphor for having been sexually assaulted. I still really am not sure about that, but the general hostility the main character has towards men seems to me best explained by that idea.] Here. again, it was not a lack of newness that I thought was a problem here. There were a lot of little scenes in this story that were stuck together in a series that did not seem to me to say anything much to each other or add up top anything, but they did not lack for originality. There was a lot going on in this story that ended up with a scattered chaotic result, but not a “heard it all before” reaction.
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So there it is. Of those four stories, I liked only one. But of the other three, only one of them was really lacking in newness, and even that started out with the potential for newness in the approach to the story.
May i offer a definition of “new”–the original formal arrangement of (possibly unoriginal) thoughts and narrative elements? As for this story, I was moved at points but it’s inherently moving material which doesn’t stop it from being overly schematic at points–the father/son debates–and also having an authorial voice which seems to blunt any pathos by distancing the reader.
“Newness” as a critical evaluative element in forming an idea of which writing is worth reading or which not isn’t very useful. Most readers mostly read New Yorker short stories because they are there. After finishing the story the reader either approves of it being run or doesn’t. Think of how much work nobody would see if this rigid criteria of “newness” were enforced by agents, editors, publishing houses, self-publishing venues or even Twitter, Facebook, the New York Times bagetta, bagetta, begatta. In fact, there are so many evaluative criteria available to reject or pull unliked writing from anywhere that anyone whose writing is read by anyone has achieved a huge personal victory. Anything I ever found valuable to read was by chance. So overemphasizing a key evaluative element like “newness” is a creativity killer, imagination reducer which makes almost any writing suffer the fate of the beautiful butterfly pinned to the styrofoam and though dead, looked at through a powerful magnifying glass. All life animating function has been destroyed like how Freudian critics evaluate its worth by how much sexual imagery is contained in “Bleak House”. It’s a fruitless endeavor. Why not look at what’s actually there rather always try to evaluate whether it should be there or not. One could just let this be as a odd quirk of critical human nature.
The objection to the word “new” seems utterly bizarre to me. I looked up “new” in Webster’s to see if maybe some synonyms would help. It tells me that “fresh”, “novel”, and “original” are all synonyms. It tells me that “innovative” is a closely related word. It also tells me that “original” is a synonym for “creative”. So if someone tells you that a story has nothing in it that is fresh, novel, original, or creative. That the plot, characters, ideas, and even the craft of the writing is nothing you have not seen many times before, how can that not be helpful as an evaluation of a story? Maybe some people like writing that is stale, unoriginal, hackneyed, uncreative, and that is something they have seen many times before. Maybe they still think that writing like that can be counted as great writing. But that just seems crazy to me.
There is a rigid definition of new that runs if it’s been done at all before, it is not worth looking at and should not be seen. I can see David’s point that we shouldn’t have to wade through stale, unoriginal, hackneyed or uncreative writing but usually a short story that bad doesn’t appear in the New Yorker unless a story appeared that you thought was that bad but others thought had more merit than you felt it deserved. I don’t think people like bad writing per se. They like something containing enough good elements to it versus too many badly executed or left out aspects (at least for them) to make whatever it turns out to be, worth reading. If you think writing is like tennis and only the best should win 1st prize than newness may be helpful in deciding the winner. And usually we only see bad writing when it sells really well usually by appealing to a base instinct in human nature for which some readers have an inescapable craving. People are mostly disappointed when newness is used to imply someone’s work is not worth being read if was good for other reasons. Nabokov’s “Lolita” may be a great novel but it seems like trash beatified into the sublime. Quite a trick that, but it still seems trash to me. Yes it may be fresh, innovative, original, and creative but all that is wasted on trash. And oversexed older men taking up with 13 year old women are not new, its been done before. Quite a lot in ancient times.
David —
Thanks for your analysis of the 4 “rape” stories in terms of newness.
However – I do think you guys have gotten way off track with your discussion of newnesss. When you start quoting dictionary definitions, you have moved far from any aspect of creativity or spontaneous reaction to the stories themselves. It reminds me of several months ago when Trevor was twisting himself in knots trying to make some distinction that I’ve now forgotten. The story gets lost in the process.
William,
“When you start quoting dictionary definitions, you have moved far from any aspect of creativity or spontaneous reaction to the stories themselves.”
I agree, but when people don’t seem to understand the meaning of the word “new” and imagine that it is somehow “overly rigid” or that it has “a rigid definition” unlike any other word someone could use to describe a story, what is one to do? My hope in using synonyms and antonyms was to help them understand what the word “new” means and what it doesn’t mean, since they seem flabbergasted by it. Maybe I should have stuck with my original statement that “by ‘new’ I just mean new.” It’s really not a complex or mysterious word, so I don’t get why so many people are having trouble with it.
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Would they lose their basic understanding of language for any other word? Denis said, “I found this story deeply moving”. Should we start worrying that the word “moving” has too rigid a definition and liking a story just because it is moving is too high or low a standard? Denis also said the ideas in the story are “uniquely expressed ” … and guess what the word “uniquely” means? It means that it is something new. So he both complains about newness then invokes it.
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There must be something magical about the word “new” that makes people lose all perspective. Any other claim of “I liked the story because it was ____” or “I disliked it because it was ____” probably (I hope) would not have launched people into concerns that the definition of the words in the blank are too rigid or not informative or whatever. It would make it impossible to ever explain why someone thought something was or was not good.
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Anyway, that’s more of a strange sidetrack of discussion than I ever thought this would devolve into. And it’s Monday again, so on to the next story!
Hey William–Thanks for the kind acknowledgment above. Yes, I am alive and breathing although a bit distracted in recent months. However, always enjoy tuning into the lively discussion here and happy to see most of the regulars are still at it. David of course, borrowing from an expression in sports often applied to an indispensable player–“The Franchise”! Way to go David!
Certainly not my intention to create a kerfuffle stemming from my use of the terms “new” and “unique”. Not much I can add here but this story brought to mind a one-act play with illness at its center that may be familiar, “WIT”. Set in a cancer ward for an experimental drug, that it captured the experience of cancer treatment, although written with accuracy and beauty, wasn’t “new”, and likely described in many memoirs and nonfiction where cancer is a central “character”. What was “unique” in my reading was the very powerful, personal and poignant voice in which that experience was expressed and developed by the writer. Same here. Again, speaking personally, how L’Heureux developed this narrative was quite compelling.
Dennis —
“Compelling” is a word I understand. If that’s your reaction, I don’t think it needs much further explication.
Very good! Although my trusty Skeat’s Etymological dictionary is close by if we need it!
Denis, an argument that goes like this…
1. Story X is about someone dealing with having cancer.
2. There have been stories before about characters dealing with cancer.
3. Therefore, story X is not new.
… would be an absurd way to understand the criticism of a story not being new. It would be almost as bad as this argument:
1. Story X has a man as the main character.
2. There have been other stories with a man as the main character.
3. Therefore story X is not new.
To criticize a story for not having anything new in it is to say that there is nothing new in it, not that it is not new in every respect. This is why earlier I talked about a situation where “the plot, characters, ideas, and even the craft of the writing is nothing you have not seen many times before”. That’s not the simplistic claim you are mischaracterizing it as. And when you call something “unique” you have to accept that you are calling it new. Something cannot be unique and also something you have seen before. That’s just not how those words work.
Some of the commenters on Mookse have read way more than others so that if they read the same thing presented the same way in too many short stories, their time is being wasted. And others of us not nearly so widely read may see something that touches us for not having read it so many times in similar short stories. We just haven’t read 500 short stories so that some of what we like, they can’t stand or easily find fault with. The problem they encounter is described by reader/writer/teacher, Samuel R. Delany:
“Vast amounts of fine literature [short stories too] wait to be read. Many more skilled writers exist than I can read in my lifetime. Unskilled writers don’t hold much interest for me. Bad writing makes me angry.”
And he cites Emily Dickenson, who wrote, “Nothing survives except fine execution.”
So when widely read readers encounter something repeatedly just below the mark of fine execution just for one or two sentences or there is nothing new for them in a particular short story, it drives them a little bonkers.
What I like is when a commenter pinpoints exactly what is wrong with a sentence, a phrase or just the overall feel the reader gets out of the story. If it is something you hadn’t noticed, it is helpful. So though I might not agree, still I have been directed to something I may not have noticed before.
And Mookse has always highlighted excellent writing. So the more widely read commenters are an added bonus to explaining what is really good or not so excellent about a particular short story. So even it might seem digressive, it is usually an interesting offshoot of analysing a particular story.
Larry —
Nice comment.
Larry and William–
Right. One of the things that makes the Mookse comment section both entertaining and frequently insightful. We have a range of voices: of I sense genuine scholarship (also those aspirants to be Harold Bloom attempting to deconstruct each piece), to the more casual reader of fiction who choose to share primarily how a particular story impacted them. All welcome. Fun across the board!
Right. Including female voices. We males must keep this from being a place that alienates women by its ferocity. Not saying that has happened, just that I see only a minority of female voices and I don’t want to lose them.
Count me as on board with you three above. Especially William’s last comment. Non-male (and POC) voices are vital and welcome here. Such people often shed some of the most interesting insights for me personally, their readings tending to be more distinct from my own.
William,
Thanks and Reader, I always look for your comments because you always have interesting insights that always add to the discussion of New Yorker short stories. I agree with William, we need vital and welcome non-male comments. Even Virginia Woolf noticed how sometimes in other times and places, womens’ viewpoints and perspectives haven’t always been as appreciated and valued as they should be when she wrote, “As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking,” in “Orlando.” Some attitudes seem so slow to change.
Larry B.
Amen. Nice quote.
Virginia Woolf is in a league of her own. Good find, Larry.
Reader:
I wish Virginia Woolf were here today to clarify what has occurred with the whole “me-too” movement as much of what has been written seems not have gotten to the essence of what has occurred although the last half year of New Yorker short stories have touched on certain aspects of the situation. Most of her writing is still published here in America and in England. In a way, Edward Albee”s play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” promotes her work by stimulating curiosity even as it seem more an attack on academia which is mostly made up of men so his play seems “wrong targeted.” Much of Woolf’s writing is written in a higher asthetic. But she writes unflinchingly about aspects of most women’s lives that to this day in the “me-too” movement are still continually disturbing.
The best writing (although each reader must decide which of it resonates most for them) often deals with one’s life experience wherein a writer communicates something about life that can help a reader better deal with it’s unpleasantness. John L’Heureux’s “”The Escape” deals with facing death. And as was expressed earlier in these comments, “The Escape” is very compelling. I think the energy and life force of the protagonist as he dances down the stairs is an apt metaphor because at the bottom lies nonexistence or death.
In the side bar story on the New Yorker website, L’Heureux details his struggle with slipping toward death and gradually losing the ability to write. He explains his decision to end is life to avoid outright pain and suffering and also tha pain and suffering he must have felt after feeling he was no longer able to write.
A similar yet somewhat different perspective on this is seen in the story,” Hello Darkness,” interview and story about “Deadwood” writer David Milch written by Mark Singer on page 24 of the May 27th New Yorker.
The one saving grace for both men is that the process of writing either many books or screenplays is a satisfying endeavor in one’s life, worthy of all the effort.