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“My Wonderful Description of Flowers”
by Danielle Dutton
from the December 5, 2022 issue of The New Yorker
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I don’t know Danielle Dutton’s writing work, but let’s just get right to it: I love this opening paragraph.
Last night my husband dreamed I left him, though my husband never dreams, or if he does he dreams of nothing—of sending an e-mail, petting the cat. “I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future,” Rilke, and not my husband, said. My husband brought up his dream over breakfast, but I had an early day, errands, a million meetings. I was almost out the door.
This is my kind of writing these days, and to bring in Rilke, and in such clever way, I’m very excited to see what Dutton’s writing is like.
It’s not too surprising that I’m a fan. Dutton worked for Dalkey Archive for a while and then founded Dorothy, a publishing project, in 2010. I’ve been a fan all these years! And now I’m encouraged greatly to go check out her writing. Catapult published her novel Margaret the First, so that’s where I’m going soon!
Let me know what you think of this story and if you’ve read any of her other work!
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Wow this looks like it would be worth spending one of my monthly NY views on. I have not yet read Margaret the First (and I’ve owned it for years) but can highly recommend SPRAWL which is just wonderfully weird.
That does sound lovely: I’ll have to figure out a way around their paywall. :-)
I really loved Margaret the First. I reviewed it for the TLS back when it was new. I remember fighting with my editor to be allowed to keep the word “scintillating” in the piece because I insisted that, cliche or not, it was apt in this case!
I would recommend this story definitely although I’m a subscriber to the print issue of the New Yorker. The writer effortlessly transitions between levels of reality–the narrator’s present situation (which is filled with memory and worry and foreboding), a story she hears read aloud by an author at a reading, the narrative of a video game her daughter plays, and some of her own stories. Themes of wandering, roaming mix with themes of men as predatory, as harassers. She seems to want to roam transcendentally into another realm yet worry nags at one and there is the danger of being a woman alone at night and a bit of Me-Too referencing here to ground this story. The ethereal and mundane blend here is impressive.