“The Flier”
by Joseph O’Neill
from the November 11, 2019 issue of The New Yorker
This week we get a new story by Joseph O’Neill. I’ve said it here a number of times over the years, but it’s worth saying again for those who don’t know or don’t remember. I read Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland in July 2008, the first month of this blog. Hearing his name always takes me back, particularly because I was reading it at the hospital when my second son was born, my son who happens to be named Holland (I promise it wasn’t in homage to O’Neill’s book, but I like how it all lined up). I thought the book was tremendous. I haven’t read it since, but I still think back on it fondly.
Unfortunately, I haven’t really liked O’Neill’s work since, and that includes a number of his stories that have appeared in The New Yorker in the ensuing decade.
“The Flier” might be different. Here’s how it begins:
The whole business led my wife to suggest a conference with our dear friends Pam and Becky, who were discreet and worldly and kind. She wrote them:
Hey wonderful people! Can we drag you over for dinner Wednesday? Short notice — but there’s something we’d like to talk over with you.
I prepared the meal — cucumber soup, grilled chicken breast, and a lentil-and-scallion salad. Cooking had been Viki’s thing, not mine, but I’d been stuck at home for months and the kitchen had become a place of recreation. Also, my relationship with my body had changed.
Pam and Becky arrived on the dot, at seven. My illness had made me very small and very light, and they embraced me gently.
I’m immediately intrigued. What is the “whole business”? What might require a conference with friends who were “discreet and worldly and kind.” What is going on with the narrator’s body. I’ve read enough to know the answers to those questinos, but I don’t know the answer to this question: Will the story pay off?
As you can see from when I post this, it’s another busy week that has distracted me from doing even minimal work here on the blog. I’m truly hopeful this is all going to change and I can get back in rhythm. I need it!
But, in the meantime, take it away! What do you think of “The Flier”?
Very impressed in general. The parallels with Kafka’s Metamorphosis are obvious and surely recognised also by the author. I think it would have been a stronger piece if it had stayed fully committed to the can-fly conceit. It seems a really weak get-out to reveal at the end that the narrator is “unsure that it happened.”
How about some more comments on this story, please? I have to facilitate a discussion on it and could really use some insights!
I wonder if we are all too busy, consumed, scared to notice unique, magical, illuminating events such as man in flight. As the narrator shares his new ability, others suggest getting insurance so he wastes precious time filling out forms. No one is really in awe of this spectacle. The police don’t even bother to interview him once they enter the scene. Since it is not acknowledged or celebrated the ability to fly disappears like children’s toys tossed under the bed. There is more focus on threats and fears rather than on discovery and curiosity. This is symbolic of anti science in a police state.
Lynne Foltz. Isn’t it that they are “not in awe” because they simply don’t believe him? However, when he actually demonstrates the flying, so that disbelief is no longer possible, the guests look on “in horror”.
MAH. In what context do you have to facilitate a discussion on it? Are you teaching a creative-writing class? Maybe a connection with dreams could be explored. Flying dreams are common, and the uncertainty about whether this happened is suggestive of a dream.
One thing that I find surprising about the creative-writing world is that teachers almost never encourage students to read and discuss their own work. That seems a ridiculous state of affairs. At a major US university, a creative-writing teacher is likely to have had a fair amount of acclaim and to have been published in places like the New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic etc. So these teachers conduct classes in which each class focuses exclusively and exhaustively on one student’s work. And yet the teacher, the only person in the room who has actually contributed to literature, doesn’t get their work discussed at all. That doesn’t make sense to me.
Paul – just an informal group that read and discuss NYer fiction.
I liked this. The idea that the magical will be smothered in the mundance is amusing and drolly conveyed. The tying together of the two stories with the appearance of Becky was pleasurable in the way of a well-constructed payoff. I don’t think, though, that the character can be blamed for doubting what happened. If time passes and it goes away, I think this is how many people would cope. But…I don’t think that he doubts deep inside. He “takes out” his memory occasionally like the children’s toys and here the word “wistfully” is nicely used.
An intriguing bit of prose, exposing both the realities & fragilities of aging, while at the same time remaining accepting of the oddities to be faced and even appreciated, in the everyday, today. So much of the social disconnect we face is related to our predetermination of the world around us; our likes, our beliefs, our ability to find calm, the continuum notwithstanding. Mr. O’Neill challenges us with both the facts of our existence, and the beckoning possibility of happiness we might have, should we decide to be more daring in our approach to some of the many matters we have yet to completely understand. This was especially pleasant, having had the author reading and inflecting his own words !
The “gift” of flying is neither sought nor enjoyed by the narrator. His theory of stupidism reinforces the uselessness of his newfound capacity – unlike the comic book superpowers he is unable to rescue a friend in trouble. Instead it’s the somewhat flaky sister Maya whose ESP enables her to intuit the problem and take
action that rescues them all. A similar image appears at the end with little Molly rescuing her combative toy animals with a “giant hand”. Perhaps a reference to the divine that Vicki has alluded to earlier in the story.
Several interesting themes – of agency, work and bureaucracy in our daily lives – are woven into the narrative.
Okay, I’m a bit hesitant to post a novice question but, why does he end with his daughter, Molly, having “a flier”? Because she still has the suspension of disbelief rarely found beyond the boundaries of innocent childhood?