The Stuff Joy Is Made Of

A WRITER'S WIT
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.
Elias Canetti
Born July 25, 1905

New Yorker Fiction 2016

Keith Negley

July 25, 2016, Joy Williams, “Stuff”: Henry, aged sixty-three and columnist for a newspaper called Zephyr, learns from his doctor that he has lung cancer and a short time to live. ¶ This information comes to him by way of a sour irony when the doctor apparently sees he is staring at the file of a “Henry” who is eighty-five:

---

“‘You have lung cancer as well, a bit more advanced, actually.’ The doctor stared at him again. ‘Sorry about the mixup’” (55).

The mixup! Really? Befuddled, Henry buys an enormous Christmas tree, but when he can’t get into his assigned parking slot at his condo, he tears off to visit his 100-year-old mother living in a facility he refers to as Ambiance. The caregivers there blow off a bit of steam by sticking their heads in a patient’s door and asking, “Who’s the President? Who’s the President?” Williams’s characters have a way of saying two things at once:

“‘It may be one of those rolling heart attacks. Won’t kill you but makes you queasy. But, on a lighter note, here’s my question: Do you think there’s a moral weight to our actions?’” (59).

The character speaking here, Henry’s mother, is most probably not the one asking the question—it is actually author Williams—but because it is attributed to Henry’s mother, the question ends up being both profound and dull. When Henry says it is time for him to leave, one feels he is not talking about getting in his car with the Xmas tree stuffed in it. Likewise, when his mother asks him if he will be able to find his way out, she is not speaking entirely of the entrance/exit of a place called Ambiance. Williams’s collection, 99 Stories of God, came out this month.
Illustrated by Keith Negley.

NEXT TIME: My Book World