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“Evolution”
by Joan Silber
from the September 12, 2022 issue of The New Yorker
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[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″ hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” text_color=””]J[/fusion_dropcap]oan Silber is an author I have heard a lot about, but I have not read any of her work. Her debut novel, Household Words, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award back in 1981. Her 2017 novel, Improvement, won both the PEN/Faulkner and the NBCC Award. That year she also won the PEN/Malamud for excellence in the short story. I want to get to know her work! This is the second piece she’s published in The New Yorker, but it’s been a while. Her first was “Lake Natasink,” back in 1991.
Here is how “Evolution” starts:
I was ten when my mother had to take me to the emergency room. I’d sort of skidded on our fire escape while I was recklessly dancing around on it, showing off for the kid in the apartment across the way. I’d done a bump-de-bump, and I was singing “whoopty-whoopty” and starting a foxy little move while waving the ends of my bathrobe sash when I slipped on the rusted flooring that was splashed with snow, and collapsed on its see-through slats in an unnatural crumple. The back yard was three floors below, too visible.
Please let us know your thoughts on the story! And if you’ve read any of Joan Silber’s work, I’d love to hear about that as well.
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The contents here are quite familiar–rebellious sex struck teenage girl runs off with shifty older boyfriend who ends up abandoning her–but the telling shows a strong narratorial voice which I was tempted to attribute to Silber herself. The narrator looks back on two major events–breaking her leg while dancing on the fire escape to impress a friend across the way at age 10 or so and then running away withe the older guy and hitchhiking to Arizona–but shows a clam, thoughtful perspective.
She exemplifies the smugness, somewhat earned somewhat not, many have when they compare themselves to those who have not “experienced” as much as them. But…she keeps it in perspective and is open to the ambivalence of her feelings at various points in her journey and at present.
Quite readable.
Ken’s perspective provides a good synopsis of Silber’s story although this type of story I haven’t read though there are probably a number of them. The protagonist seems not so adversely effected by what could have been otherwise somewhat disturbing. I think the story kind of defines evolution as going with the flow or whatever possibilities the flow might present. The mutually admired physical attraction of these two for each other trumps emotional, mental or spiritual compatibility so that one (the gal) is often more invested in the other (older guy). But there can be satisfying takeaways even if they aren’t long lasting. Silber seems to define evolution through her protagonist as a kind of bare bones tourist excursion through life with physical sensation prized more highly than more abstract, aesthetic or cerebral qualities all in the cause of procreational survival. It is observable in today’s younger generation that could be evolved out of the aftereffects of the life experience of the Woodstock generation (with less preoccupation with psychotropic, hallucinogenic or street drugs). Although the dance at the beginning on the fire escape is an inspired foreshadowing motif for the overall theme of the story.