“Arizona”
by John Edgar Wideman
from the November 25, 2019 issue of The New Yorker
One New Yorker trend I have enjoyed over the past year or so is their publication of writers who are getting old and who have not gotten much attention as they’ve aged. One such writer is John Edgar Wideman. Wideman is nearing 80 years old. In 1984 he won the PEN/Faulkner award for Sent for You Yesterday. A few years later, in 1991, he became the first person to win two PEN/Faulkner awards, this one for his book Philadelphia Fire. But I suspect many of us have not followed his career and may be seeing his work for the first time only at this late stage of his life. The first time he had a story published in The New Yorker was last year, and folks here seemed to have liked “Writing Teacher” (see the post and comments here). He received a lot of praise for his 2018 collection, American Histories. In 2019 he won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.
I’m excited to see what he brings us this time around! “Arizona” takes the form of a long letter to Freddie Jackson:
Dear Mr. Jackson,
Thank you for your music, and thank you for reading this far in a letter, if it reaches you, from a stranger. Though we have never met face to face, I could say that I’ve known you since I was a teen-ager growing up in Pittsburgh, Pa., in the fifties, born fifteen years or so before you were born, Mr. Jackson, and I wanted to be you, or rather wanted with all my soul, a soul real to me as the faces of people in my family, to sing like you would sing the music we both inherited and you would keep alive in the eighties, nineties with your talent and gifts.
I like the cadence here. I’d type the next sentence to show more, but it runs for twelve lines and is best discovered on your own. As is the rest of the story. Here is a tantalizing line, though, from a few paragraphs later:
Point of this letter is not exactly to ask permission to put you in a story I’m writing, Freddie Jackson. Rather, I’m letting you know (informing/fessing up/sharing) I have no choice. You are in it already without being asked, without any exit offered, like the color we share, which this country assigns to us before we are born.
I must say, I think those of us who have been neglecting to read Wideman’s work are the lesser for it. I’m very excited to continue onward and will be checking out American Histories soon.
And how about you? Let us know your thoughts on this story and on Wideman’s work in general.
I went through an era when I read a lot of John Edgar Wideman, and I enjoyed much of his work. Novels I remember reading are ‘Sent for you Yesterday’, ‘Rueben’, ‘Philadelphia Fire’, and ‘Cattle Killing’. I suppose one reason I got out of the habit of reading him was because he has only published one novel in the 2000s until now. I’m looking forward to ‘Arizona’.
“Arizona” skillfully delves into the lack of control anyone can have over unfortunate events that can occur in life all entirely through a fan letter from a father tormented by his son’s predicament addressed to famous R & B singer Freddie Jackson. It explores the power of art within the well sung song or well written letter/story. The father’s torment allows him to write almost anything and everything he is struggling through very bluntly but quite realistically. The father’s thoughts and conclusions logically arise out of the story details. Art and life are seamlessly interwoven. Wideman gives witness to the barriers, possibilities and sometimes impossibilities and unfairness found in life.
“Arizona” skillfully delves into the lack of control anyone can have over unfortunate events that can occur in life all entirely through a fan letter from a father tormented by his son’s predicament addressed to famous R & B singer Freddie Jackson. It explores the power of art within the well sung song or well written letter/story. The father’s torment allows him to write almost anything and everything he is struggling through very bluntly but quite realistically. The father’s thoughts and conclusions logically arise out of the story details. Art and life are seamlessly interwoven. Wiseman gives witness to the barriers, possibilities and sometimes impossibilities and unfairness found in life.
Larry–That’s actually pretty durn elegant what you wrote. I think this is the work of a very thoughtful, bright guy who has much to say but I found it kind of tedious and long. I think more of a “plot” and less of the philosophizing would produce a better balanced work. The questions asked are universal and timeless and this is certainly of merit though, I just got sort of tired of his voice after awhile. I have a feeling Freddie Jackson’s song (which I don’t know) is a bit more terse.
Ken, thanks for the compliment. I think your assessment of “Arizona” being a little too tedious and long is correct. A little too much “tell” (philosophizing) and not enough “show” (plot) as you mentioned would “produce a better balanced work.” In some ways it could be like a potato at an expensive restaurant that tastes almost brilliant and was on the way but fell slightly or so short of highest expectation after the initial taste. But overall it was a really great “potato” (story). This said, some people don’t like potatoes or only particular ones fixed in a certain way. They could be suspicious of a good tasting well-cooked potato and only like nouveau French food. Also there is the Catch-22 of using a Freddy Jackson song to make a fictional short story seem more real but might not well match the overall world of the story or limit or slightly take away from the overall effect. Still there is more good than not and a good editor in tune with what Wideman attempts in the story that with some tweaks or some kind of plot sort of available or possible than it might have been better. Maybe in another story Wideman will attain that best balance or has attained it in other books or stories.
I actually do like potatoes cooked this way, but I’ve thought that they were cooked better in this way in other stories. Just to continue the metaphor. I’m fond of the first part of Notes from the Underground for instance which is almost all tell and 0 show.
There are probably stories that in some ways
are technically more proficient than “Arizona” in the kind of story the author seems to want to tell. It all depends on what the reader is looking for. And there are stories or parts of stories that are all “tell” that grab the reader without any “show” like the first part of “Notes from the Underground.” There is even a famous book by writer and teacher Phillip Lopate called “To Show and To Tell” which discusses literary nonfiction, but also the borders between nonfiction or reality made into fiction and what (as he says) works best (for him). So all of this is up for discussion in books about writing. I think you probably read what you like very carefully so that you are very aware of how well and why a particular story seems so much better than another.
I read this story three months after it came out and found it a tremendous piece of writing, for the reasons Larry and Ken mention. Coincidentally, I had been reading about varieties of “vamping” in cabaret music and in classical music (ostinato) and it struck me that there is some similarity here in that Wideman goes into some vamping occasionally just waiting until the next idea emerges…. so it may seem a bit tedious but when you think of the piano player down in the pit waiting for the “plot” to “show” well he/she has to keep circling with variations of the melody.