TNY weekend reader: strange brew
This week’s TNY fiction is available online. (image: carolita johnson)
This weeks fiction, “Innocence,” by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, presents a rather conventional contrast to many of the other pieces in the magazine which seem to be vying to top Larry Doyle’s Shouts & Murmur’s piece, “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” in surrealness and whimsy. Louis Menand’s Talk of the Town piece, “Name that tone,” actually kind of freaked me out at the end, with its strange middle-aged nihilism with regard to young people who can still hear certain frequencies better than the over-twenties:
For all intents and purposes, if you’re under twenty, this page might as well be blank.
(NB to Louis: I’m 41 and I can still hear that damned squirrel’s heartbeat. The little bugger puts a megaphone to his chest and leans against my window, that’s why.)
After this, and David Sedaris’ piece, “What I learned” (something like the “And now for something completely different” moment in Monty Python’s Flying Circus), I latched onto the age-old story of inappropriate love, jealousy, and domestic intrigue that “Innocence” offered. One of my favorite moments is when Kay, the “emancipated” westerner is on the radio, reading the personal messages for listeners, amongst which are her fellow tenants at Bibiji’s house:
She read these messages in a seductive voice—“This is for Bunny, and a million billion thanks, darling, for the fabulous timesâ€â€”which made Sahib nod and smile in some sort of recognition, while Bibiji looked down shyly, as if she were the one being addressed.
But my big discovery this week was the Ian Frazier piece on Co-op City: “Utopia, the Bronx, Co-op City and its people.” I never thought I’d become so absorbed by the history of this chunk of real estate that I’d always assumed had never been more interesting than any other crime and mold-infested tenement.
A roller coaster ride that spans hundreds of years, and ranges from scalpings and genocide to the suspense of a good old rent strike involving thousands of Davids against the Goliaths, you’ll never think of Co-op City the same way again. You’ll discover the Indian artifacts underneath it, the dreams of Young Americans (in Young America of New Netherland days), in contrast with the dreams of the builders of that giant monument to both greed and idealism gone terribly awry.
I’m sorry it’s not online, but it’s certainly worth the price of the magazine. In keeping with the whimsical (whimsical, yet grave, somehow) tone of this week’s issue, Frazier gets a little loopy himself when using punctuation (or the lack thereof) to represent one long stream of reminiscences spewed forth by a tenant.
