“The Fellow”
by Joy Williams
from the September 30, 2019 issue of The New Yorker
I‘ve been very busy this last month, and I’m hoping that will change soon, but for now I will just have to post a place for folks interested to discuss “The Fellow,” by Joy Williams, an author I admire greatly.
This story is quite short, so hopefully a lot of us will have a chance to read it and see what mysteries it holds.
Here is how it starts:
I had been the assistant to the director for less than a year. The important qualification for the job was to have no fear of water. None. And I did not. Only one thing moved me: the appearance in my head of the river horse. The guests, the Fellows, weren’t supposed to have any fear of water, either, but often they lied. This hadn’t mattered for some time, because the creek was dry, the creek was ashen. Children, having collected pretty stones from the wetness in the past only to see them grow dull on a shelf, thought that all the stones, everywhere, had died, even the ones they’d left behind.
Please feel free to comment below!
Magic realism. Talking dogs. Reincarnation. Metacommentary about writing. Wordplay like Anamnesis/Amanuensis. Surly artists on residency (who disappear). Not just Williams’s usual canine fixation but a capuchin monkey who adores art. Aphorisms aplenty. Musings about love and its ineffability. And about creation and destruction. Conclude with a religiously tinged metaphor.
Joy’s up to some of her old tricks of compaction and flash-fiction-making but is trying new things with form and invention. I’m glad she’s still writing and publishing, even if this one felt a bit gripey on one hand whilest trying too hard to be profound and philosophical and plaintive on the other.
The character of Philip never feels like more than a pretense, and I’m not quite sure just how convinced I am by the first-person protagonist’s maleness (he seems like a not-all-that-well-knitted avatar for Joy). Still, language is wielded with great facility by Williams, and it’s almost always a pleasure to inhabit her human + animal + nature (+ occasionally some God) microcosms for a brief while.
Though, that said, and lastly, to be properly skeptical for a moment, I’m confident there’s no way in hell The New Yorker publishes this if it’s from a lesser-known writer.
Sean’s comment, especially his last paragraph seems very accurate. She lost me in her first paragraph. How many first time short stories get rejected instantly because there is too much undeveloped detail in the first paragraph? There sometimes seems a bit of celebrity once earned grants the writer the privilege of more easily getting by, than before before when they were unpublished. I am sure she earned the privilege so it may seem harsh to begrudge her this first paragraph. But I wish some of the more frequently published New Yorker writers would try to take their art to a little higher level rather than seeming to coast on prior achievement, even in the first paragraph. A more focused first paragraph would get a reader into her story rather than throw them out of it. Complexity may be more valued than simplicity which may be too old school or fundamentally ignorant in allowing too little to appear in the beginning. But simplicity can master complexity by giving one definite place to look at rather than complicating the environment with an unwoven scattering of slightly unrelated fragments in a short space. Maybe I should let it be so others can enjoy this story.
Don’t feel you have to self-censor your criticism, Larry. I’m sure Joy would be the first to say she can take it. And your derision or dislike should not affect a serious reader’s own objective take on a given story. This is the freakin’ New Yorker. They’re the premiere venue for short fiction in the country. They have a circulation of over one million. They charge nine dollars for a single slim issue when buying it at the newsstand rate. If you think they’ve been lazy or overly impressed by a writer’s previous accolades, that’s not at all some extreme position. And with a story this brief, every word matters and certainly every paragraph matters. In a piece with a word count this low, it’s absolutely a fair critique to go hard after the opening paragraph.
Sean,
Thanks for your positive post. There is so much negative criticalness in the literary world (or even in the real world) some of it very petty, I tend to want be more supportive than negative. And Mookse and Gripes brings out some of the best of domestic and international books and films compared to any literary or cinematic review platform still in existence. But as you suggest, Joy Williams has probably had to deal with it and more that probably goes with the territory. I didn’t know that The New Yorker has 1 million subscribers. Keeping them all happy must be a challenge.
I was thinking maybe Joy is working on a novel and short stories are a workout or exercise to keep one’s brand continuing. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote excellent short stories with pretty good payment but nowhere near what a really successful writer like Stephen King is paid and The Great Gatsby never made much money until way after Fitzgerald’s death.
Supposedly, Stephen King threw away the first 15 pages of Carrie because he didn’t think the idea behind it worked. So his wife, (also a novelist) fished them out of of the waste basket and gently told her husband, “I think you may have something here, dear.” And there are probably only a single digit percentage of Stephen King strata authors out of the entire lot of successful writers. Many need to teach creative writing at colleges or universities or have other side jobs for the duration of their writing careers.
So maybe I will look for another maybe longer story by Joy that I might enjoy.
Devastating story. Each time I read it, the awful disappearance of Craig Arnold becomes more and more central to its meaning for me. Joy says all writing is about loss, and fear of loss. “The river of indifference flows through the country of forgetfulness.”
What does Craig Arnold have to do with this story? Please explain.
I don’t know who Craig Arnold is either. I was going to Google him, then decided it wasn’t necessary. If a reference doesn’t work within the story, it doesn’t work. This one doesn’t work. The whole story doesn’t work. It’s not creative, just lazy. I too agree with Sean’s last graf.
As for the NYer being the premiere venue for short fiction, I don’t agree. I’ve been looking for the new NYer for a while, and though I had found it in Tin House. Then they folded. Right now my money’s on Granta.
In this issue of the NYer, there are three documentary articles that I enjoyed reading. That seems to be their focus right now, under David Remnick. One of them, by Anna Weiner, is better written than most of their short fiction.
I know Craig Arnold was a poet who disappeared while hiking on a volcanic island in Japan. I have not be able to find the river horse in his poems. I wish Janet would say more about his connection to the story.
I am a fan of Joy Williams (and a quiet follower of this blog), and I very much enjoyed the three years it took me to read her collection The Visiting Privilege. Williams is at her best when she uses absurdity to underpin the humor and cruelty of modern life (see “Congress,” “Dangerous,” “The Little Winter,” or just about any story from her oeuvre).
That said, this story didn’t really do much for me, and I’m not sure why it was published in the magazine. Having re-subscribed to TNY this past May, I’ve found the majority of the fiction to be middling, with a few good stories sprinkled in (only the Strout story would I call great). Hoping next week’s story is an improvement.
Thanks to Dave for clarifying Joy William’s writing and to Janet for explaining the focus of “The Fellow.” William’s notes about the New Yorker focusing on expert nonfiction seem accurate. And good nonfiction makes shows its relevance to fiction and vice versa. And also it demonstrates attributes that make both relevant to what exists, what is happening and individual responses to it.
“And also it demonstrates attributes that make both relevant to what exists, what is happening and individual responses to it.”
Nicely said, Larry.
I really like Williams stories but I agree this is not up to her standard. Throwing in magical elements like a talking dog (unless it’s a hallucination of the main character who I agree does not come off as male but a Williams avatar) is tricky stuff. “Don’t try this at home kids,” as David Letterman used to say. Here it feels completely unearned and abrupt. There’s some great writing here and imagery but this particularly weakens at the end. One doesn’t need a grand climax, but this just felt like she’d decided to put her pen down. I want to thank Larry for his perceptive comments about the opening paragraph. Interestingly, when something is difficult I often give it the benefit of the doubt becuase I allow for the possibility that I’m just not getting it and since, after all, difficulty is the marker of much great literature. Larry, though, expertly nails why this opener is off-putting. After the opener, though, I was quite engaged until the “magic” started.
I have been enjoying Williams’ writing for many years and, while this story may not be one of her best, it still has the quirky yet thoughtful ingredients that make her stories stand out for me. This one had mysteries that I couldn’t completely unravel, but she made me want to know more about the people who are behind this vaguely described organization. Is their purpose benign or malign, and to what end? I also greatly enjoyed the conversations between the incredible dog and the protagonist. Williams has always had a deep affinity for animals, dogs in particular; and in this delightful story, the mutt gets all the best lines. And they’re great lines! Good writers sometimes wander off into uncharted literary territory, as Williams does here. For a more far-ranging writerly wander, check out George Saunders’ recent story, “Elliot Spencer’. I’m still chewing on that one.
When I read this the second time I could only think of Kafka and stories like the Country Doctor (I think that is what it is called) with the talking horses and the surreal nonsense. It’s almost like she just wrote down a dream. My burning question is what the hell is the river horse! I have not read that many of Williams stories (what 6 or 7?), so I’m no expert, but perhaps this is one of the more Kafkaesque. In any case, I think the story is excellent.
James – A river horse is another name for a hippo.