New Yorker Fiction 2014

A WRITER'S WIT
The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.
Thomas Wolfe
Born October 3, 1900

Her Other Life

Jason Booher

September 29, 2014, Paul La Farge, “Rosendale”: April P moves from Boston to Rosendale and lives with Dara, a potter, who creates a golem. To make money, April P accepts a job as a lap dancer in a local bar. She makes good money, the job not being too seedy, and it gives April P the cash to buy some crack cocaine. Throughout the narrative April P continues to see the golem, and she wonders what the golem (a she) is trying to communicate to April. ¶ The story is told in the third person limited, mainly by way of April P, but occasionally a “we” seems to creep into the narrative, and the reader senses that the golem herself has taken over the story. At the very end, April P asks the golem to go. She no longer needs her, the golem. April P is now free. This story is a kind of sequel to La Farge's "Another Life" from the magazine's July 2, 2012 issue. His Luminous Airplanes came out in 2011.
Design by Jason Booher.

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Story, with Couple

Tatsuro Kiuchi

October 6, 2014, Kevin Canty, “Story, with Bird”: A youngish couple living in a university-town apartment are occasionally plagued with a bird that enters, presumably, through a skylight (although the narrator claims that this dwelling, located in a northern clime, is “open”). ¶ The bird is sort of a distraction for the couple who seem like they are about to break up. They quit drinking, both getting a lot of work (writing) done, their lives returning to a very regulated boredom. The narrator seems to recall fondly their days and nights of debauchery. ¶ Then the woman goes off to her sister’s wedding with the intent of drinking and screwing (he will later find out). He, too, returns to drinking, and when she comes back, they, for a moment, return to their wild days. In any case, gone is the bird, the wild thing that enters their lives for a short time and then disappears just before they decide to break up. Short but satisfying story.  One of Canty’s most recent books is Where the Money Went.

Illustrated by Tatsuro Kiuchi

NEXT TIME: MY BOOK WORLD

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