{"id":11898,"date":"2014-04-07T00:17:55","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T04:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=11898"},"modified":"2014-04-21T12:03:11","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T16:03:11","slug":"roddy-doyle-box-sets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/04\/07\/roddy-doyle-box-sets\/","title":{"rendered":"Roddy Doyle: “Box Sets”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here<\/a> to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker<\/em> webpage. Roddy Doyle\u2019s \u201cBox Sets\u201d was originally published in the April 14, 2014 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a>
Click for a larger image.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trevor<\/strong><\/p>\n

I sometimes have a so-what reaction to the stories in The New Yorker<\/em>, and sometimes I am sure I’m missing and other times I’m sure it is because the story is just relatively blah. One that I feel was blah was was the last one Roddy Doyle published in the magazine, “Ash,” from 2010 (my brief thoughts here<\/a>). I can chalk up another this week, with Roddy Doyle’s “Box Sets” (people\u00a0assure me that Roddy Doyle’s novels are better).<\/p>\n

Here we meet a couple, Sam and Emer,\u00a0on the brink. They’ve suffered through what appeared to be the worst of\u00a0the Irish economic decline. And just when things started to look better nationally,\u00a0Sam lost his job. His sense of identity is shaken.<\/p>\n

When the story begins, a fight “nearly” breaks out in a bar when a man and woman argue over which is better, “House of Cards,” “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” or the Danish version of “The Killing.” Emer sticks up for “The Killing.” Sam, with time on his hands, catches up with “the golden age” of television drama.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, he’s trying to establish himself again, but nothing is materializing. “They’d be fine. Emer said it, and they said it together.” But not only do these words not make things better, they also do not heal the wounds that are already there. Wounds that, in this story, become quite physical.<\/p>\n

It’s not a terrible story, but it certainly doesn’t go anywhere new, anywhere insightful. It’s, well, blah. But I’d also feel that way about a heated argument over the merits of television box sets. The point is elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Betsy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trevor, I find myself at odds with your opinion regarding Roddy Doyle!<\/p>\n

First of all, Irish author Roddy Doyle is the author of the novel The Commitments<\/em> and also one of the screenwriters for the movie of the same name. As a light entertainment, that movie is one of my favorites, so I am predisposed to give his work a sympathetic read.<\/p>\n

Then, on Monday, we were unexpectedly delayed for twelve hours at the airport in Austin, and so I passed the time reading not only this week\u2019s story but the also the other\u00a0 ten or so stories that Doyle has published with The New Yorker<\/em>. (Almost all of these stories are free, so the time went fast.) Read in a group, the stories have an oddly feminist slant, odd given that they are often written from the point of view of a man.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk Me, Ask Me, Ask Me\u201d first appeared in The New Yorker<\/em> in 1996, almost twenty years ago. Paula, the main character, tells her story. A Guard has appeared at the door to inform her that Charlo, her estranged husband, has killed a woman and has himself been shot dead. In the meandering course of the story, Paula slowly reveals that Charlo beat her repeatedly and that she never told anyone the cause of her bruises and broken bones. After one of the beatings, she says, \u201cHe hit me. He sent me across the kitchen, and I hit the sink and fell. I felt nothing, only shock. A spinning in my head. I knew nothing for a while. I saw nothing; I was empty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, in the manner of these marriages, Paula tells us she loved Charlo from the minute she laid eyes on him, and that she still loved him. Paula\u2019s a mess, and the story is a tad out of fashion. After all, men don\u2019t beat their wives any more, do they? The story\u2019s title, \u201cAsk Me, Ask Me, Ask Me\u201d alludes to the wall of denial that people often raise against having to stand witness to violence or bullying. Of course Paula should have stood up to Charlo. Of course Paula should have defended herself and her children. Of course she should have asked for help. But she was \u201cempty.\u201d Doyle is convincing. I am reminded of the true story of New Yorker Hedda Nussbaum, beaten into a\u00a0 senselessness so profound it is hard to imagine. So to me, in \u201cAsk Me, Ask Me, Ask Me,\u201d Roddy Doyle breaks the silence.<\/p>\n

In the ten or so stories that follow, Doyle tells about men who have difficulty with sadness, anger, intimacy and illness. His interest in men\u2019s psychology is sympathetic, though. \u201cBullfighting\u201d is a terrific portrayal of men\u2019s friendships. \u201cThe Dinner\u201d is a tale of a father of four girls, one of whom has brought a boyfriend home for Sunday dinner, the problem being that the boyfriend is from Africa, and the father is all mixed up about what he is going to do and say and very mixed up about why he is so mixed up.<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Dog,\u201d a childless couple\u2019s marriage is temporarily revived when they get a dog. But without the dog, the husband feels like the marriage is dying. He wants the marriage, but he has no idea why \u00a0it\u2019s failing and no idea of what to do.<\/p>\n

Doyle balances the conflict in his stories with throwaway dialogue that mimics life. To me, the silences in the dialogue mirror the silences of some contemporary playwrights. But the silences in the dialogue are founded in the silences within the characters; these are people who work hard to keep emotions buried, people who work hard to keep understanding at bay. This is the opposite of Henry James country, and I like Doyle\u2019s work just precisely because of that. This worries Doyle — that people resist thinking things through. Doyle\u2019s dialogue, however slight, creates a casual verisimilitude that balances the violence and denial beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

The details of popular culture — the pub, the talking about television, or, as in \u201cAsh,\u201d using the volcanic explosion in Iceland to talk about marriage — are also his means of creating a world. The stories are quick and slight, but I think there\u2019s more there than meets the eye.<\/p>\n

(Trevor, I just read your review of \u201cAsh\u201d; I guess you didn\u2019t like it! Was it the din of being all day at the airport that made me welcome it and all his other short stories?)<\/p>\n

As for \u201cBox Sets,\u201d Trevor, I can understand your impatience with people whose primary cultural experience is TV. Actually, given that Doyle has been a screenwriter, I sense some impatience from him as well, as if he is using The Wire<\/em> and The Sopranos<\/em> as code for people who, having nothing else to talk about, use those titles as code. That the characters seem to speak in code speaks to the inchoate nature of their thoughts.<\/p>\n

As a whole, \u201cBox Sets\u201d has a bitter tone that is most similar to \u201cAsk Me, Ask Me, Ask Me,\u201d given that both stories have men\u2019s frozen emotions and volcanic anger at their center. In \u201cBox Sets,\u201d a couple has almost made it through Ireland\u2019s cataclysmic Great Recession, but in the end, after all, the man loses his job. What I like about this story defies a simple explanation. For one thing, my own life has been affected enough by the Great American Recession that I am interested in the story\u2019s setting. I want to know what Doyle thinks about how we cope with the anger that this thing has caused.<\/p>\n

Essentially, this character is enraged by the way society has sandbagged him. I must say I understand that rage. What interests me, though, is his comatose emotional state, comatose, that is, until he explodes. The men in Doyle\u2019s stories have difficulty understanding and communicating with their own feelings. It\u2019s not a far leap to say that this inclination puts them in danger in a crisis. Worse yet, not only do they not communicate with their interior selves, they can\u2019t communicate with their wives, either. Perhaps this is also old news. But I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

The man\u2019s initial reaction to losing his job is to freeze in place. Thus frozen, he doesn\u2019t particularly notice what a corner he has painted himself into. While his wife is boiling some water, the man himself also suddenly boils over. He has already clammed up; then he decides he doesn\u2019t want to go out; then he picks a fight with his wife over \u201cher friends,\u201d and then, suddenly, he hurls a hot coffee mug.<\/p>\n

What Doyle so deftly does not do is explicitly explain that this mug was most likely aimed at his wife, and not for the first time, either. We know it was, because she cries and because he leaves the house. What Doyle also so deftly does is show the man\u2019s stubborn refusals: at the end, he doesn\u2019t admit that his wife has probably left him; he says only that her \u201ccase\u201d is not in the hall when he returns. We learn, too, that the coffee mug has been broken where it\u2019s been broken before.<\/p>\n

While out on the walk, the man has cleared his head: his wife is probably right; he\u2019s going to take her advice; he\u2019s going to shape up. What he doesn\u2019t realize is that it is probably too late. There is something odd in his clear thinking — as if threatening his wife had made him suddenly feel like \u201call\u2019s right with the world.\u201d It\u2019s an epiphany, but it\u2019s a cracked epiphany, like the cracked coffee mug, like people saying that television is where Dickens would be if he were alive today. (Is television where Jonathan Franzen is? Jeffrey Eugenides? Donna Tartt?)<\/p>\n

The way the man feels relieved after threatening his wife reminds me of Charlo in \u201cAsk Me, Ask Me, Ask Me,\u201d the way Charlo beats Paula up and then expects her to take care of him.<\/p>\n

Doyle enjoys the territory of marriages that are boxed sets<\/i>; <\/i>where one or both people are locked inside themselves, where violence is just beneath \u00a0the surface, where miscommunication is the match to the tinder.<\/p>\n

So, Trevor — you and I disagree on this one. There may be a generational difference here. Doyle\u2019s concerns about men reflect quintessential twentieth century (feminist) pre-occupations. So they interest me. What I do like is Doyle\u2019s interest in the way some men get locked in. It isn\u2019t that Doyle is unsympathetic. \u201cBullfighting\u201d is clear enough evidence of his empathy for men. Whether he fairly represents the weaknesses of women\u2019s psychology, though, is really another discussion. Surely Paula, in \u201cAsk Me, Ask Me, Ask Me\u201d is deeply flawed.<\/p>\n

I noted that you thought the writing was vapid. I see that possibility. I think there is more artistry than vapidity, though, and I think the vapidity is a device to allow the reader to consider the violence beneath. Reading the ten stories at a go makes me think that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trevor and Betsy feel differently about Roddy Doyle’s “Box Sets.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,511],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505,504],"class_list":["post-11898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-yorker-fiction","category-roddy-doyle"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Roddy-Doyle-Box-Sets.jpg?fit=233%2C311&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-35U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11898"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12212,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11898\/revisions\/12212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11898"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}