“A, S, D, F”
by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
from the May 31, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
It’s been a while since we had a story from Sayrafiezadeh, though if I think back on the early days of tracking The New Yorker fiction on this site it feels he was a regular. Looking back, I see we had a story from him in 2010, 2011, 2012. His debut story collection, Brief Encounters with the Enemy, came out in 2013 and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award, the PEN America Literary Award for a debut story collection. We got another story in 2014, but since then it’s been slower — at least in the pages of The New Yorker — with just one in 2018.
Sayrafiezadeh has a new collection, American Estrangement, coming out in August. This — along with this week’s story — is great, welcome news. I think Sayrafiezadeh is a great writer, and I am glad to see that after eight years we are getting a new collection. I’m excited to see what we’ll get.
“A, S, D, F” takes place in Aspen where our narrator is employed in an art gallery, essentially getting paid to do nothing.
By the time six o’clock is about to roll around, I’m beginning to wonder if working in an art gallery is taking some sort of toll on my psyche. One part of the problem is that I haven’t done anything all day, since there hasn’t been anything to do, and the other part of the problem is something I can’t quite name yet. This is the moment when the owner emerges from his back office—three minutes before six—holding a two-page handwritten letter that he needs me to type right now, because there’s a collector on the West Coast who might be interested in “Untitled X.”
“One more thing before you go,” he says, as if the list of today’s tasks has been long.
Our New Yorker discussion group has been meeting twice monthly for 14 years. Among the eight of us are three PhDs, a university writing instructor, a retired art critic, and two members who studied English at UC Berkeley. At each meeting, we discuss a New Yorker story, article and poem. Last week, we had a spirited discussion of “A, S, D, F” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh. As we talked, we uncovered more and more instances of “pentimento” in the story – traces of earlier images, memories, letters, and words such as one finds in the paintings of Cy Twombly and Richard Diebenkorn. What had seemed at first a rather prosaic tale showed hidden depths as we delved into it. An example is the very subtle mention of a neighbor’s sexual abuse of the narrator when he was a young boy.
Ultimately, we all liked the story a great deal – with one exception. We found the inclusion of Mimi did not add to the story and actually detracted from it. If one of us had been the New Yorker fiction editor, we’d have suggested to Sayrafiezadeh that he conclude his story more enigmatically (at the top of the middle column on p. 55): “What is it you’re seeing” I ask him. He leans back. He leans close. “I’m not seeing anything,” he says. “Me, neither,” I say.
I liked this story very much, for the same reasons Joan mentioned, although I’m not sophisticated enough to compare it to anything. The hints throughout the story of something traumatic, and his response, which speaks to effort thwarted, meaning sought but not found, worked well on an emotional level.
I agree that the “Mimi” part was less than satisfying. I was glad that something good happened for him, but it was unclear, to him and to us, what attracted her to him, leaving us somewhat thwarted and searching for meaning.
I loved the hilarious description of his typing teacher. His need for a simple, concrete task makes sense in the context of his confusing experience as a small child.
Overall, very glad I took the time to read this.
I appreciate both comments above and don’t know if I’d have been aware that the last minute romance addition really doesn’t work and does feel forced. I was mostly going with the style here as Sayrafiezadeh is quite skilled at showing how mental states and what one observes can shape reality in a way that suggests both the creativity of the perceiver and also some possible dissociative qualities. He is quite good at describing melancholy and rootlessness.