A WRITER'S WIT
As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.
Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
Born November 7, 1952
no harm Done
Jon Contino November 10, 2014, Antonya Nelson, “Primum Non Nocere”: The teenage daughter of a psychiatrist is home alone when one of her mother’s ex-patients shows up at their door. ¶ I love this story. I’m a fan of Nelson’s earlier collection, Female Trouble, but I’ve had difficulty appreciating her New Yorker stories of late. This one, however, by comparison, seems more complex, more nuanced, and more sophisticated in ways that others from the last five years are not. ¶ Nelson loves lists, it seems: lists of a character’s likes, lists of traits—which carry the reader to a deeper understanding. She provides a list of characters, though this time only nine: Jewel, the daughter who’s shocked when the patient suddenly materializes in their kitchen; Claudia, Jewel’s psychiatrist mother, a woman who loves retro so much that their New Mexico home is furnished with nothing but rotary phones; Robby, Jewel’s brother, is off at college but is also a buddy to Jewel; Zachary, Jewel’s stepfather, thirty-three, nine years younger than her mother, a misplaced surfer wearing old band T-shirts; Kenny, Jewel’s “gentleman caller,” giving a nod to every high schooler’s chore of reading Tennessee Williams’s fine play; Anthony, the boy Jewel really likes, someone who lives down the block; Joy, the disgruntled patient who shows up with knives, a gun, and a bullet, to square some kind of slight perpetrated against her by the shrink; and finally, Lester, the gray-haired man Claudia comes rushing home with to end the fracas Joy has caused in her house. Turns out, he’s indeed not Dr. Lester as he asserts, but one of the doctor’s patients, whose session has been stunted in media res, so to speak. ¶ Nelson cleverly toys with Latin to provide a certain texture to the story. The title, familiar to physicians, means First, do no harm. The words Ad astra per aspera come into play, as well, when Jewel’s classmate Kenny ends his screened message with those words. It is the Kansas state motto (where Nelson hails from): To the stars, through difficulty. Jewel thinks it means "failure," and she’s sort of right. Kenny is failing to win her over. Jewel senses somehow, that her mother has done some harm, perhaps not to Joy, but to everyone in general, with her abrupt, know-it-all, have-it-my-way plowing through life. The story ends with everyone standing in the kitchen, frozen, waiting for the good doctor to do no more harm. Nelson’s most recent collection is entitled Funny Once.
Jon Contino, Illustrator
Jon Contino, Illustrator
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