E. L. Doctorow, author of Ragtime
(1975), Loon Lake (1980), and Billy Bathgate (1989), has
died at the age of 84. Although he is much better known as a novelist, he did
publish a number of short stories, his best collection, in my opinion being Sweetland Stories in 2004
Acknowledging
that the novel has always been his typical rhythm, Doctorow, in an interview
after the publication of this collection of stories, said that while editing Best
American Stories: 2000, he discovered that many authors were not writing
the tight epiphanic Chekhovian story, but rather were going back to the more
leisurely plot-based story typical of the nineteenth century. The result of
this realization are these five long stories, most of which originally appeared
in The New Yorker.
I have discussed one of the stories in this
collection, "Jolene," along with the film version of that story, in
an earlier blog. I offer the following
comments on other stories in Sweetland Stories
in Doctorow's honor.
The stories are primarily plot-based,
recounted in a seemingly artless, casual tone--three told in first-person by
deluded male narrators and two narrated in third person by ironic
storytellers. What is arguably “sweet”
about these stories is the naiveté and innocence, thus ultimately the
self-delusion, of the central characters as they seek to achieve the American
dream, find transcendence in a savior, or uphold their ideals in the face of
political chicanery.
“A House on the Plains” is a comic/horror,
con artist story, told by the slow-witted son of a “merry widow” mother. After
the father, who the mother says was pretty smart, “for a man,” mysteriously
dies, the widow thinks it best that she and her son leave Chicago for a small
town in Illinois where no one will jump to conclusions. Once settled, she takes in three orphans from
a New York social organization and ominously declares soon after that if they
don’t come up with some money before winter the only resources they will have
is the insurance she took out on the three children.
The mother, a bigger-than-life, pragmatic
believer in the American Dream, advertises for immigrant men, particular Swedes
and Norwegians, to join her in a partnership in a bountiful farm in the
Midwest. However, one by one the men who
visit her disappear as her bank account increases from their insurance policies. When the brother of one of the missing men
arrives and begins to ask uncomfortable questions, the mother, nonplussed,
formulates an escape plan that, despite its appalling results, is treated as
blithely as the rest of the horrors in this comic tall tale. Quite simply, she cuts off the heads of the
nosey brother and her housekeeper to make it look as she and her son have died
in a fire and frames her handyman for
the arson.
The story ends with the handyman in jail,
Mama in California, and the narrator son reunited with his sexual partner from
Chicago. The fact that three orphans, several innocent men, and the housekeeper
are all dead is, of course, just part of the comic tone of this tall tale that
makes us admire Mama for her achieving the American Dream of financial
independence.
Doctorow has said that “Baby Wilson,” chosen
for Best American Short Stories 2003, was inspired by his seeing
a young woman in a long paisley dress walking along the Coast Highway in
Southern California. Although Doctorow
says he is not sure why he made her into Karen Robileaux, the kidnapper of a
newborn baby, he thinks he must have decided as a premise for the story that
while a man would kidnap a child for ransom, a woman would want the child for
herself.
The story is told by Lester Romanowski, Karen’s
shiftless boyfriend. When she brings the
stolen baby home, she declares it is her own newborn child that she is giving
to Lester to be his son. Lester decides
he is going to reform himself into a person who makes executive decisions. He wins some money at gambling, procures six
fake credit cards and goes to sleep thinking what a “great country this was.”
In a
family van he buys with an American Express Gold Card, Lester and his
“imitation wife and child” head west, of course, to California. With the sun lighting their way like a “gold
road,” he has a revelation of a new life for himself, where he will become a
dependable father with a full-time job.
However, his dreams are dashed when he hears on the radio that the
family of the kidnapped child has received a ransom note. Can you believe the
evil in this world? he asks Karen, who articulates the theme of the story by
saying that she has faith that people can be redeemed.
Lester
and Karen drop the baby off at a church and head to Alaska, another place where
people live and let live, a place where nobody asks too many questions. When Karen gets pregnant, Lester declares
himself alert and “ready for inspiration.”
“Walter John Harmon” is also a story about
self-delusion. The narrator, a former
lawyer who has joined a religious group lead by an uneducated garage mechanic
named Walter John Harmon, insists that he and his wife are not cult victims,
and allows his wife to take part in a “purification” sex ceremony with the cult
leader.
The Community survives because many of the
followers are lawyers, accountants, public relations experts, and computer
specialists, who know how to keep the outside world at a distance. The story focuses on the means by which
Harmon maintains his charismatic hold on the Community and how the members
protect themselves from the outside world.
The followers’ need to believe is so strong
that even when Walter John deserts them with the narrator’s wife, the Elders,
using the vague language and zany logic of philosophic sophistry and Messianic
Christianity, argue that this immersion in sin and disgrace is a beautiful
paradox of a prophecy fulfilling itself by means of its negation. The narrator basks in the glory of his
unfaithful wife who has been chosen to join Harmon.
Discovering half-burned papers in which
Harmon has laid out plans for a wall to be built around the compound, a task
the Community finds difficult since all their estates have been placed in
Harmon’s name in Swiss bank accounts, the destitute group undergoes a harsh
winter. The story ends ominously with
the narrator planning to build the wall, noting that the plans, in spite of
Harmon’s lack of military experience, provide the Community with a clear and
unimpeded field of fire.
“Child, Dead in the Rose Garden” follows the
conventions of a political mystery. Told
by a White House Special Agent, B. W. Molloy, the story recounts the
implications and effects of the discovery of a dead five-year-old boy in the
Rose Garden of the White House. Only
five months from retirement, Molloy, a twenty-four year veteran of the FBI,
gets the case. Suspecting a symbolic act
by terrorists, the administration wants the investigation to be kept secret,
and Molloy finds himself running into obstructions from the head of the White
House Office of Domestic Policy, who insists that the body was never found,
that the event never happened. Molloy,
however, perseveres and flies to the boy’s home in Houston, only to find out
that the child’s immigrant parents are being detained by the INS. Further investigation reveals that the boy’s
father was a gardener for a wealthy Texan, been a strong supporter of the
President.
The source of the mystery turns out to be the
man’s daughter, Chrissie Stevens, who engineered the placement of the boy, who
died of natural causes, to shock those that run things into some sense of
responsibility. After warning the Office
of Domestic Policy at the White House that if the boy’s parents are not
released by the INS, he will give the story to major newspapers, Molloy resigns
from the Bureau and writes a letter to the Guzmans telling them that their son
will lie in an unmarked grave in Arlington National Cemetery among others who
died for their country.
These are entertaining and diverting stories
that explore the nature of individual human hopes and the national mythos of the
American Dream told by a master storyteller.
