{"id":12278,"date":"2010-11-15T11:23:45","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T15:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=12278"},"modified":"2016-06-23T17:45:20","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T21:45:20","slug":"e-l-doctorow-assimilation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/11\/15\/e-l-doctorow-assimilation\/","title":{"rendered":"E.L. Doctorow: “Assimilation”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Assimilation\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby E.L. Doctorow<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the November 22, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span><\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
I was quite surprised by this story.\u00a0I didn’t particularly like Doctorow’s “Edgemont Drive” when it appeared in the magazine earlier this year, and for the first few columns “Assimilation” wasn’t doing it for me either. But, shortly, Doctorow’s skillful development had me taken.<\/p>\n
In the beginning, Ramon is washing dishes for a restaurant when Borislav, the owner, comes to give him a promotion:<\/p>\n
Ramon’s hands were cracked and peeling from the hot water, but he was wary of the promotion because the owner was selling it to him like there was a catch.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It doesn’t take long to prove Ramon’s intuition correct.\u00a0Borislav asks to see Ramon’s birth certificate. Soon Ramon is married to Borislav’s niece in an effort to get her to the United States.<\/p>\n
Some sort of city functionary married them. He mumbled and his eyes widened as if he were having trouble focusing. He was drunk.\u00a0When the photographer’s flash went off behind him he lost his place in his book and had to start over again. He swayed, and nearly knocked over the lectern. He clearly didn’t understand the situation because when he pronounced them man and wife he urged them to kiss. The girl laughed\u00a0 as she turned away and ran to the heavyset fellow and kissed him.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The girl’s name is Jelena, and, due to an affidavit that she is Ramon’s wife and he is in hardship without her presence, she is soon living with Borislav and working at the restaurant.<\/p>\n
The story is made more interesting because Ramon is not as dumb as he might appear. First of all, he knows that legally he has certain rights with regard to Jelena.\u00a0He also knows that, though he might get in trouble for what he has done, so will Borislav and his family, so they can’t hold that over him.\u00a0And\u00a0Ramon’s brother Leon has just been released from jail. It is apparent from Leon’s wealth and the respect others pay to him that Leon is in the upper echelons of some criminal organization. When Jelena asks Ramon to beat her, Leon won’t stand idly to the side to see his brother take the rap while Jelena becomes a legal citizen and can bring her boyfriend.<\/p>\n
I’m hoping this is a part of a new novel because in the end I wanted to keep going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is E.L. Doctorow’s “Assimilation.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18847,"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":"E.L. Doctorow: \"Assimilation\"","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":[514,94],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-12278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-l-doctorow","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Assimilation.jpg?fit=1200%2C393&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3c2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12278","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=12278"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18855,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12278\/revisions\/18855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12278"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}