“Fireworks”
by Graham Swift
from the January 17, 2022 issue of The New Yorker
I was very pleased with the last Graham Swift story that showed up in The New Yorker, “Blushes,” from exactly a year ago. I’m thrilled that after the large part of his career focused on novels that Swift seems to have re-kindled a love affair with the short story. With “Fireworks” he goes back to the Cuban Missile Crisis:
It was late October, 1962. Russian missiles were being shipped to Cuba. Kennedy was having words with Khrushchev. The world might be coming to an end.
It was a common remark: “Cheer up, it’s not the end of the world.”
But Swift so often is able to find a nuanced interior life even within the larger historical drama. Last year’s “Blushes” is a good example, dealing with a doctor’s life in a pandemic. I was worried it would just go over so much that we get in the news, but I was touched by story. I hope something similar is in store with “Fireworks”!
Please feel free to let me know your thoughts on the story!
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I thought some of the themes/ideas here were interesting. Our main character has survived World War II and dangerous missions on bombing runs over Germany and now is presented with not only the world historical Cuban Missile Crisis but its impact on his daughter’s upcoming wedding. He manages to recall his, typically macho, stoicism from the war which also is based on some pretty high-level disavowal–“there’s nothing to worry about.” Coping mechanism? Disavowal?
At the same time he attends a Guy Fawkes Day celebration (seemingly a British equivalent of the 4th of July) which also reminds him of the incendiary bombs, flares and lights of his old bombing missions.
These 3 levels–WWII, 1962 as year of crisis, 1962 as year of domestic events both major (wedding) and minor (Guy Fawkes) day are all interwoven.
It sounds like I really liked this story from what I wrote here but I was only lukewarm on it, yet the ideas did give me something to think about.
Fiction isn’t for thinking. I’ve been reading a text book on writing good fiction. Here is one imperative: “But in the end, none of these objectives will work to their full potential unless they forge a satisfying emotional experience for the reader.”
William, I would say that’s a bit prescriptive. This textbook’s imperative is one opinion but can’t intellectual engagement be as satisfying as emotional experience. I would agree that a story has to engage but can’t that be cerebral. Again, I’m not saying this story was great, more “pretty good” but I did find interesting ideas here.
Funny you should mention that. Here is another passage from the same section of the same book:
“Now, what jazzes certain readers may be the power of an idea. That works for those readers by gripping them emotionally.
“Take Ayn Rand, for example. She touted a ;philosophy she called “objectivism,” which is based on “the virtue of selfishness.” Her novels are full of speeches on that subject. Even though that’s directed at the mind, those who respond to her feel she’s offering a correct view of the world.”
So, for Ron Paul and Rand Paul and others like them, Ayn Rand is emotionally exciting.
I wasn’t emotionally excited by Graham Swift’s story or its ideas. Is there some problem with intellectual engagement as a satisfying experience one can have with a story? Does it necessitate comparison to someone who is as suspicious as Ayn Rand who, by the way, is not even intellectually interesting although sort of fascinating in the way other sinister demagogue can be. There is a tradition of the “novel of ideas” which of late Rachel Cusk does quite well and the minor Russian writer F. Dostoevsky I believe batted around an idea or two.
Ken —
Good questions. “Does it necessitate comparison to someone who is as suspicious as Ayn Rand?” Maybe. (Btw — I like your phrase “sinister demagogue”.)
Dostoevsky did bat around ideas, but his stories are chiefly about people struggling to find their place. “C&P” even brings us a young man who may be mentally unbalanced.
I dont know Rachel Cusk.
Rachel Cusk is a contemporary British writer whose recent trilogy of short novels are close to autofiction as they feature a character clearly based on her who travels to various conferences or arts festivals and gets involved in long conversations with interesting people who express their thoughts and ideas while Cusk herself does the same. There are wildly different opinions and reviews of her work.
Thanks for the info and intro, Ken. I’ll look up one of her novels.
Ken —
I followed your recommendation and read Cusk’s novel “Outline”. I found it interesting enough to read all the way through. it was well written, and there were lots of intellectual conversations, but I didn’t get an overarching main idea, if there was one. Also, all those conversations and dialogue were so unrealistic, clearly very little of the seeming documentary fiction ever really happened.
In the meantime, I recalled a true novelist of ideas — Iris Murdoch.