Showing and Telling

A WRITER'S WIT
Men who pass most comfortably through the world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.
​Harriet Martineau
​Born June 12, 1802

H. Martineau

New Yorker Fiction 2017

***—Excellent
**   —Above Average 
*      —Average ​​here to edit.

Ortiz

***​June 5 and 12, 2017, Curtis Sittenfeld, “Show Don’t Tell”: Ruth Flaherty, early forties, graduate of a writing MFA program at a prestigious Midwestern university, narrates this engaging story. ¶ Sittenfeld captures perfectly the ambiance of what it is like to be accepted into a graduate department of writers, only a fraction of whom are better than the rest: both the cattiness and genuineness of typewritten crits; food that is either hoarded or wasted; competition for fellowships not quite generous enough to live on, only enough to keep from starving as you teach undergrads (ugh) how to write fiction. As Ruth, the only person remaining sober at an after-party thrown for a famous grad of their program, drives this man to the airport following his reading, he apprises her of the “narcissism of small differences”:

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“‘Freud stole the concept from an English anthropologist named Ernest Crawley. It explains the infighting among groups whose members have far more in common than not. I’ve always thought that if any two students in the program were co-workers at a big company, they’d become close friends. They’d be thrilled to find another person who cares about what they care about, who thinks about things instead of just sleepwalking. But when you’re in the program there’s such an abundance of kindred spirits to choose from that those same two people might be mortal enemies’” (70).

​When Ruth finally arrives home she learns that she has won one of the four coveted fellowships that will finance her second year—$8,800 (1998)—and at one in the morning she screams near her open mailbox. The only person to share Ruth’s joy is a woman she hates, a fifty-five-year-old Lorraine, who, very mother-like, emerges from her door, and gives Ruth a hug. ¶ If you’ve been thrown in with writers anywhere, you’ve perhaps lived this story. If you’re only thinking of doing so, then this story may just convince you that every minute spent would be worth your time. Sittenfeld’s first collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It, comes out in 2018; her most recent novel, Eligible, was released in April.
Photograph by Carlos Javier Ortiz

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