“Future Selves”
by Aysegül Savas
from the March 29, 2021
I don’t know much about the work of Aysegül Savas. A couple of years ago she published her debut novel, Walking on the Ceiling, and later this year we will get her follow-up White on White. I do not believe “Future Selves” is an excerpt.
Here is how “Future Selves” starts:
Some years after we moved to the city, my husband and I started looking for an apartment to buy. We were renting a small place past the southern boulevard that marked the end of the historic neighborhoods. On weekends, we’d usually take walks, always in the direction of the finer quarters that had first lured us to the city with their Old World charm. We lived on an unremarkable street, without cafés or shops. At the corner was a large glass building, on whose steps teen-agers congregated at every hour, smoking, laughing, playing music. Those with skateboards rode up and down the boulevard, dodging out of the way of old women who frowned at them. During our first year, we learned that the building was a youth center, founded by a journalist couple whose own daughter’s suffering had gone unnoticed in the midst of the parents’ careers.
This is a short piece, at a little less than half the normal New Yorker story. Unfortunately, it was a busy day so I haven’t even had a chance to skim, let alone read, the story. But I’m hoping to do that tonight. I will share my thoughts below once I have them!
Please feel free to share your thoughts too! I’d love to hear from you!
I hadn’t read this author before and the story rounds into shape pretty well by the end, but the first half or so is one of the most boujee things I’ve ever come across in my life. Even by New Yorker standards. It’s not a satire either, though the level of privilege is all but absurd at the outset — A “real” kitchen. “Quality” materials. Walks on the weekend. A friend named Sami. At a freakin’ wine bar. Aye yai yai. Cheeses and cured meats. An “impeccably restored” eighteenth-century apartment, the kitchen of which elicits the adverbs “tastefully and resourcefully.” It was hard to push past the eye-rolling stage. That said, the writer’s actual chops are somewhat impressive in the story’s back end. And there is some deft plotwork as the story progresses. It even manages to be philosophical and probing without being heavy-handed. The author seems like she was born with a silver spoon the size of a hunting rifle, but hey, that’s only an issue if it seeps into the work (here I think it does). Separating the art from the artist is crucial. Curious what others thought of this tale.
why in the New Yorker !
Yes, it’s very bourgeois but I also found the story trite. The observations seem so obvious–that we change, that life is in stages, that sometimes we imagine what the next stage might be and make decisions to possibly influence the next stage–i.e. pick the right apartment so as to create an image we want. Then you have the late-20 something recalling college and how “things change.” I found all of this very familiar.
I’m weighing in with a contrarian opinion. I liked this story. It doesn’t have topical drama. Prior stories with that quality have struck me as artificial, manufactured (“Cat Person”, “Resident Poet”). It does have a quiet simple depiction of young people beginning to make their way in the world. What’s most prominent is the unpredictability of this process. It’s nicely rendered through the characters’ actions, I think. Particularly effective is the use of an apartment search as a through line holding the story together and reflecting different aspects of the two primary characters’ personalities. I have no problem with the middle-class aspirations or values or desires that the two central characters sometimes display. That’s realistic for their situation. It seems humorous and ironic to me that people commenting on this literary blog would criticize a story for being bourgeois.
I really enjoyed this one. I found it highly relatable. The loss of innocence. The years after college when you seem to be in-between life stages and are faced with the hard-reality that life is not quite what you planned it to be. The bourgeois details in the beginning did not annoy me. I find they lull you into the story and then you receive a punch in the stomach.
William’s review is spot on. His final paragraph
is so true! The irony is hysterical.