The New Yorker: "Love Affair with Secondaries" by Craig Raine
Posted on | June 1, 2009 | 7 Comments
It’s about adultery and cancer. Two things that seem kind of overdone especially when combined without beauty in the same story, which is how I felt this story combined them. I wanted to like it, I really did, especially since DH said the story sucked and I wanted to have some sort of cool-kid take on it, some sort of highbrow comeback that I could make in defense of the story.
But I didn’t. There were a handful of really beautiful lines.
“The slow thistledown of stars, for example, their drift and cling, was something that struck her with renewed force whenever she removed her spectacles—and was looking over a lover’s shoulder at the Milky Way.”
And there were some good, if not overstated ones.
“It wasn’t his vanity that drove him—it was his mortality. He didn’t want to remain young. He wanted to be alive before he died. That was all.”
And in between there was a lot of sort of clever, obscure, disjointed storytelling that walked around the action, never quite in it.
Maybe it a story about mortality, or about truth, or about how each one of us feels faced with the fact that we are just here temporarily in a body that is always dying . Like mayflies, etc.
Or maybe it is about excuses, or about women and how they use men, or how men use women, or about how everyone is emotional and foolish because all we do is use each other. But the story doesn’t really commit.
If anything, I liked the element of surprise. I liked that you didn’t expect the walloping over the head with the umbrella, the mother-in-law kiss with tongue, or the reveal at the end, “—our kid” and all that. But even though I was surprised, and I like to be surprised by a story, it wasn’t enough. The ending was predictable. Maybe because given the subject matter there are only a limited number of outcomes?
Go read it, will you? Read it and then come back here and tell me what you think.
I guess I wanted to say it was a good story because it was in the New Yorker and it should be good, right? And it did have that distinct New Yorker flavor. Dry. Sarcastic. Afflicted. But I think Raine was trying too hard. As though he’s saying, Look at me. Watch how I say what this story is about without ever saying it. Except it was so completely vague and disjointed that it almost felt like you needed one those secret decoder rings you used to be able to find in a box of cereal: if you are hip enough your allowed to get it.
That, or maybe I’m still just not one of the cool kids. (One thing I did love about the piece: KENRO IZU, “STILL LIFE 467.” Absolutely Exquisite.)
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7 Responses to “The New Yorker: "Love Affair with Secondaries" by Craig Raine”
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I am Christina Rosalie
Hello. I'm so happy you've stopped by!
I am a multimedia storyteller, digital strategist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, MFA graduate student, and mama of boys. My first book,
will be published by SKIRT! Books in September, 2012.
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June 1st, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
I wanted to like it too, mostly because I wanted to be able to tell you what was great and there are parts that are good, but over all I don’t like it. It jumps around, and the story seems well sort of pointless, I don’t go away feeling anything besides perhaps a bit of disgust. I like stories that touch me, make me think, this doesn’t do that.
June 1st, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
I agree with Alex. I felt sort of like I was eavesdropping hoping to get to the good part, but it never came. We never see any relationship between characters, just scenes without emotion. Even when the umbrella is flung, there was no tangible anger. It was like actors just going through the motions. Robotic almost. Stories that make you feel what the characters feel, and help you walk in their shoes are the ones that touch me, this one was not even close.
Thanks for the assignment
It was fun!
June 1st, 2009 @ 9:26 pm
Oh this IS fun! Such a good point, Megsie, about the emotion. Scene without emotion–that is something I want to consider more.
June 2nd, 2009 @ 7:47 am
I too wanted to love it, but it all felt forced.
June 2nd, 2009 @ 8:19 am
You are right. Yuck. You gleaned the only two lines worth reading!
June 2nd, 2009 @ 9:30 am
The most important part of a story is the ending, and although I really did feel engaged and interested through the entire read, the ending did not live up to the promise. It fell completely flat.
This was wonderful. Thank you for making me take the time to read today. My day will be better already because of this little exercise.
June 3rd, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
It’s funny, I usually hate the New Yorker fiction and I went over to the story ready to dislike the it and to tell you so. But actually, I didn’t mind it. It reminded me of Kundera or Ivan Klima — there’s a similar tone, a similar weight of history, a similar investigation into love and sex and the ways those two things related and do not, make meaning and do not, trap us and free us. I don’t know the work of Craig Raine at all (isn’t he a poet?) so I am clearly not a cool kid either. If I did, I feel like I might be able to come to a clearer picture of what he’s after. I’m a little intrigued though.