“Blushes”
by Graham Swift
from the January 18, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
In his interview with Deborah Treisman it is noted that Graham Swift didn’t write short stories for around thirty years, only recently returning to the form. I’ll admit, when I saw that he was the author of this week’s story my first thought was along the lines of, My goodness, he just published a novel; how is it he has another to the point that an excerpt is ready for The New Yorker? I’m not sure I’ve ever read one of his short stories, but I often enjoy his novels, so I’m interested.
That said I’m also slightly wary. “Blushes” is about, according to the interview, “a retired doctor [who] volunteers to help at a hospital that’s struggling with the coronavirus crisis, knowing that it may cost him his own health or even his life.” As I’ve said when a few other timely stories appeared in 2020, I’m just not sure I am where I need to be to engage with this in fiction. I don’t think it’s too soon or that anyone is wrong for writing and publishing this. Quite the contrary. It’s just me, and probably not a particularly brave part of me. But I think I’ll be able to read Graham Swift.
Here is how “Blushes” begins:
Dr. Cole eased his car from his garage, then stopped, out of habit, to watch in his rearview mirror the garage door slide gently down and the light above it extinguish itself. This had once given him an absurd, vain satisfaction; now it was his only goodbye. The car was expensive and comfortable, as was the house that went with it: large, sedate, islanded in lawns and leafage, like the others in the discreet crescent.
I hope you are doing well, wherever you are and whenever you are reading this. Please be welcome to share your thoughts below.
Having read “Blushes” I am glad I did. While it is very much about the pandemic, it is also just about Dr. Cole thinking and feeling and living, when he can. My favorite parts here were when Swift moved from Dr. Cole’s early morning drive to his memories. I was less compelled by the memories themselves, or even, really, the early morning drive. It was the confluence of the two, and I thought that worked well. What I didn’t get, and I admit I read this late in the night, was what blushes had to do with anything else going on. Why are they given top billing here? What is their significance? Any help would be appreciated!
I’ve been thinking about this, and agree, it’s not an obvious connection. It seemed to be about Dr. Cole’s early innocence and awakening, and his current position of having loved and lost two women and facing his own mortality, all the more vividly in his work during the pandemic. Comparing his life unfolding, the (to him and his family) innocuousness of the routine childhood illnesses, with the folding-in of old age, a time (I guess) of less blushing and more sadness and world-weariness, and a lethal disease.
This was so beautifully written. After the shallow, snarky touristic tone of the last story, by Andrea Lee, it was nice to re-enter a world of reverence and respect for sadness, for life, to take these things seriously not just as fodder for gossipy amusement. Tone is so important sometimes (and Swift’s style is also impressive). The story itself is fairly conventional and deals with fairly familiar topics, but the ease with which the writer carries you along here is somewhat like how memories and thoughts play through our minds.
Ken —
Nice description of Swift’s writing and his emotional tone. You captured my feelings as well.
The writing is so smooth and humane that one could miss the solid structure. From his old age, the doc is looking back at his entrance into adulthood. His 10th birthday is only weeks away from his last childhood disease. Both events independently signal his transition out of childhood. At the party he becomes aware of the moms as women, something more than mothers. That he could choose girls who would grow into women like these. He wouldn’t know what you meant if you said, “They’re sexy, aren’t they?” But he does sense something piquant about them.
Then with his 4th childhood disease he passes once again from childhood into another state.
In both events his blushes change meaning, shedding innocence and gaining awareness.
Of course this broad view of life, the sense of living, both enhances and is enhanced by the doctor’s work with covid patients, some of whom will die. Perhaps he will be one of them. The only solution is to have an acute sense of life, as he had at age 10 and still has at 72.