“The Presentation on Egypt”
by Camille Bordas
from the May 20, 2019 issue of The New Yorker
“The Presentation on Egypt” is the third time Camille Bordas’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker. While there are several authors who appear several times, this is particularly exceptional because Bordas was writing in French until she moved to the United States in 2012. Her debut English-language novel, How to Behave in a Crowd, was published in 2017, following two novels she wrote in French. For the most part, the two stories she has already published in The New Yorker were received well by readers here; here’s the post for “Most Die Young,” and here is the post for “The State of Nature.”
I think, without having read the entire story yet, that “The Presentation on Egypt” will also be well received. I think Bordas knows what she is doing.
It wasn’t his job to explain it over and over, to sit the families down and say, “The husband/the brother/the son you knew is no more, it’s only machines breathing for him now, and you wouldn’t be letting him go, because he’s already gone.” He was the surgeon, not the organ-donation person, not the social worker, not a friend. His job was to say it once. Once was often enough — families would unplug a loved one within a few hours. But certain people required extra attention. TV shows he’d heard of (TV shows his own wife watched) had led some to believe that desperate cases were never that desperate, that all you had to do, really, was to keep asking the surgeon, and the surgeon, because you kept him focussed and engaged in the case, would suddenly light up, go to the lab for half a day, find a solution to reverse your loved one’s vegetative state, and hug you warmly at the end of it all.
The doctor considering his role here is Paul. By the end of this short first segment, in which he tries to matter-of-factly help a grieving wife turn of her husband’s machine, Paul will have hanged himself. The story then shifts to Anna, Paul’s wife, and Danielle, Paul’s nine-year-old daughter, in the aftermath.
Please let us know what you thought of the story. Once I finish it, I think it’ll be time for me to seek out Bordas’s novel. Have any of you read it? If not, does this story make you want to?
I was not sure what to make of this story as I read it. It really felt to me like a fairly random string of events and observations that were not clearly about anything in particular and did not go anywhere. In many cases it seemed like just about any little bit could be added or removed and it not change a thing about the trajectory of the story, as it was unclear if there was any at all. I didn’t exactly dislike the story so much as I found it very puzzling. Even the seemingly central idea that Paul has committed suicide and Anna decides to lie to Danielle about how he died does not amount to much. Most of the story is about Danielle, and since she does not know that Paul committed suicide it actually doesn’t even seem to matter that he did. That fact really does not affect her since she doesn’t know it.
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I looked back on my comments about Bordas’ two previous stories for The New Yorker and see that I hated the first one and liked the second one. The one I liked I thought was funny. The one I hated was thought to be funny by others, but in ways that I could not even see what was supposed to be funny about it even after they noted this reaction. So my suspicion here is that this story is actually supposed to be funny as well, but just falls flat. There are a couple of places where, as I read it, I thought Bordas was making a weak or odd joke (like when she mentions the Chicago magnet and then explains that she means the city, not the band). And if someone told me they thought the whole thing was supposed to be comedy, I can see why the events of the story seeming random isn’t a problem. (Who cares about plot when the goal is humour?) It even helps make sense of the fairly abrupt announcement that Paul hanged himself. (‘Oh. That explains why he is such an awkward dick to Clark’s wife. There actually is something wrong with him.’) But the fact that I still feel like I have to guess that she was trying to write humour is not a good sign for how successful it was.
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Some parts (like the Chicago joke) just feel like very weak joke writing. Other parts (like the revelation of Paul’s suicide) seem perhaps more striving towards a Vonnegut-like satire or dark humour, but Bordas misfires every time. Oddly, despite that, I didn’t find this an unpleasant read as I did for “Most Die Young”. Just baffling. But if humour was the objective (and I assume it was as the most charitable reading of the story I can come up with) it failed completely.
Here is my review for this piece. I’ve also posted on my blog at https://www.wuxiangyue.com/new-yorker-fiction-review/the-presentation-on-egypt
The story is about family, unexpected suicide of a family member, and its impacts on other members. It is also about lies and secrets among family members. The author used these motifs to create a tone of melancholy, if not grief.
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The father who committed suicide, were telling others message of death of a loved one before he hung himself. He, as a brain surgeon, dealt with death all the time, and finally, in pursue of a totality of happiness, he kicked off the chair, wearing an adult diaper.
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The author said in the interview with New Yorker that the father part of story was written on the later stage of the composition process, but it was still the cornerstone for the content that came afterwards.
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The girl grew up and was faced with a bunch of problems that most of us would encounter. The author discussed how her father’s death and her mother’s lie influenced her life. The character-building was quite successful. It’s continuous, from her childhood to her adulthood, even though the years between were not told.
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There was no obvious climax in the story. If there was, it should be the beginning part of the narrative, where the father decided to kill himself. The story grew from there, like a stream of river, getting resolved as time went by.
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It is a story worth reading, and it really reminds me a Japanese director, Koreeda Hirokazu, and his film, Maboroshi no Hikari. They are both about a sudden suicide of a man and its influence on the wife and the child. The difference might be the tone, apart from the focused character and time span. However, they both resolved into a state of acceptance, and lives went on.
David —
As is often the case, you speak for me on this story. I don’t understand what Bordas is doing, either. That structure where she alternates mother and daughter speaking and then the other thinking about how to react is bizarre. It seems like Bordas is trying for shock value in some places — like the dad hanging himself and the daughter swallowing the lighter. But to what purpose?
Wu — I really don’t see how the author shows us that the father’s suicide affects the future lives of his wife and daughter.
As the trend of this blog moves more and more toward questioning the quality of NYer stories, I’ve started investigating other places that publish short fiction. So far my choice for home of good stories is Tin House. This month’s issue (girl with pink hair on cover) has 6 stories. I like 3 of them, dislike 2 and haven’t read the 6th. Next up — Prairie
Schooner.
William, I have some bad news for you. Tin House has announced that their June 2019 issue will be the last one. The full statement is here: https://tinhouse.com/on-the-closing-of-tin-house-magazine/
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I was not a regular reader of Tin House, but did so occasionally. It will be missed.
OMG! And just when I was starting to look at them as an alternative reading source. Well, as I said, there is still Prairie Schooner. And Granta, And Zyzzyva, and all the other little mags listed in the back of the Best Short Stories collections.
I sort of liked the way this was structured with a big, climactic moment (which was a genuine surprise) and then a sort of long, drift. I had disliked her previous two stories, and read this one with the intention of not finishing it if it was irritating, but this sort of caught me up in its drift. I’m not quite sure what she’s saying either, but I don’t think the tone is meant as comical. If it is, then it completely sailed by me also.
To me, this story depicts the seemingly random events one faces throughout their day and their attempt to draw meaning from it. While we see other people’s reactions, we can’t truly empathize and understand their motivation. So we trust; we guess; we misinterpret. Whether we intend to cause a particular effect or not, we impress other people’s lives in certain ways, sometimes with very little control. And at the end of the day, we wonder what “really” happened, and why. It’s like explaining history, the pyramids, and having to live with a measure of doubt.
I think particularly nice diversity of takes on this one. Must admit, Paul’s suicide one of the most startling, unexpected moments in any of this “New Yorker” fiction! I share with some of the comments, I’m simply drawn into this piece, finding it totally engaging, swept along. In fact in some respects Melinda’s reading could be applied to the film “Last Year at Marienbad” coincidentally briefly discussed in this issue: “At the end of the day we wonder what really happened, and why…and having to live with a measure of doubt.”
I like the comments on this one particularly the suggestion of it as a Vonnegut dark satire and Melinda’s comment of how one tries to interpret events in one’s life or the events of others lives, close to one. Tone is kind of mixed as though one does not know exactly how one should explain it. So one lightens it a little when its possible, make the uncomfortable, somewhat accessible and somewhat comfortable. But it seems very difficult, like when you have to tell about something quite cold and reach and reach for some kind of comprehension when maybe there isn’t any. So it is an easy smooth read but there is a coldness to what happens that can’t quite be pinned down. I think it sort of explores the dysfunctionality of family through a central event, then dissects the effects of what happened while simultaneously probing for the motive of the suicide or unlocking the personality or mindset of the father. A clue hidden away in a profusion of detail and description may be in the line, “Anna would talk herself out of spying on her daughter’s interiority. It wasn’t as if being aware of Paul’s had ever helped her much.” “And nonexistense underrated, . . . The father was very interior and the daughter possibly grew up very interior which could be an aspect of the father that resurfaces in the daughter. The daughter has a preoccupation with sharks. Sharks are cold-blooded in that their blood has an overabundance of nitrogen which the shark has to endlessly counterbalance by breathing in oxygen. So one could identify nitrogen as negative pain or death of watching people die so death seems more prevalent then life. So he is a doctor who tries with his knowledge to save life but maybe more often, sees it end. Marries to nourish a life apart from himself to make whole or breath life into emptiness and have a daughter, who will somehow find the happiness or life that eluded him. To become too interior is to possibly disconnect from oneself and then almost by contamination the ones closest to the too interior disconnect from aspects of themselves in their lives in sympathy which makes it difficult for them to connect with anything meaningful because it never happened for the father. And his disconnection actually results in nonexistance.
Not unlike Hamlet’s contemplation of suicide, “To be or not to be?” This search for oxygen is also reflected in the unstated condition of something solid like a lighter caught in the daughter’s throat. I would think the diameter of the windpipe is small so that the daughter would be struggling for oxygen. I once had a stringy piece of beef caught in my throat and I remember trying so hard to breath and my awareness of my environment reducing to about an inch in front of my face. A lady security guard forcibly hugged my stomach so the beef popped out of my mouth. I think that part of the story where the lighter got stuck was let go in terms of how she was able to somehow unlodge it from her throat and swallow it. It is difficult to tie that into not being happy. I see this as a very effective film short starting with a flashback with mystery aspects moving through any and all evidence to be had searching for a moment to explain the tragedy where all the plot is in the first event. There is a poignancy in all this that I feel that helps me understand how the mother and daughter feel about the father, though that might seem far-fetched. There is no change in how they feel which though true to life is kind of a no improvement downer. Too much nitrogen is like when your favorite hockey team loses the Stanley Cup because they couldn’t make enough goals or defend from others making enough goals. But that struggle to get a goal any which way is slightly a granting of a small piece of hope for some kind of life. This makes me think about all this from a different perspective seen in a Hindi film called, “October.” A college age guy is attending an upper tier hotel management graduate internship at a top hotel in New Delhi. He is angry at how difficult it can be to make everything come out right and he continually risks getting booted out of the program. Suddenly at a party on the 3rd floor another young lady in the program he almost talks to falls through the railing of the roof patio sustaining severe head trauma, has to be intubated and is technically brain dead. This is all shown unflinchingly and is difficult to watch. The guy wonders if she was trying to talk to him just before she fell, if she was possibly supposed to be his girlfriend, that they might have married and had a son and daughter? And his whole definition of life is totally redefined and he fully understands what he couldn’t before and what a huge loss he has sustained for no discernable reason. Everyone else just said he should let the doctor pull the plug, and he should let it go. But he tried so hard to allow for her to wake up and in the process discovered a purpose he was otherwise totally unaware of. It is kind of a fragile thing and maybe I am straining, but it may inversely, in a bored way, very indirectly, very darkly and very ironically explain two character’s search for meaning where very little of anything can be found. I think that is brave and courageous of Camille Bordas even if intermittently observable through a bored and disinterested randomness.
William:
More bad news. “GLIMMER TRAIN” quarterly is no more having pulled into the station for the very last time last month or this month. What is going on with the demise of these short story venues? I think we should be happy THE NEW YORKER keeps going. A story you like is bound to show up in the rotation at some point.
Larry B.
Yup, I think we should be thrilled “New Yorker” has retained its commitment to short fiction. Of any of the national pubs of those few that still exist is it the only one that does? I’d venture that next to zero of their readership is reading for the fiction. The editorial board to be admired! (And the editors should salute the Mookse for invariably stimulating the discussion!)