It's common for us to question what our lives would have been like if we'd taken a different path at a certain point or if events had unfolded in a different way. It feels like an intrinsic aspect of human nature to imagine what form this alternate self might take. Perhaps the past year of the global pandemic has provoked us to ponder this question even more intensely and reflect on the collective fate of humanity. What would our society look like if the virulent virus hadn't indelibly changed our lives? Enduring questions such as these expand to more ponderous queries regarding fate and destiny. These are the poignant issues at the heart of Joyce Carol Oates' new collection of short stories “The (Other) You”. The book is divided into two distinct parts which elegantly mirror each other to say something much larger and more meaningful about these metaphysical questions.
The first part of the book includes creative and dramatic stories which primarily present characters caught in the question of alternate destinies. An American woman finds her solitary sojourn in Paris is disrupted by a man in an emergency. An adolescent girl twists her ankle and painfully makes her way home to find an ominously curious gathering of people. A husband who doesn't like to wear his hearing aid calls out to his wife and tragically can't hear her response. A professor embarking on his retirement revisits the Italian city he spent time in during his formative years to discover it's darkly altered. A woman uses her anonymity to assassinate a prime minister. These tales often include a psychological twist where the real world slides into the surreal and time is skewed so the protagonists suddenly find themselves in a markedly altered reality. It makes these stories thrilling to read both in their plots and the ingenuity of their narrative techniques. But they are also meaningful in what they imply regarding unexpected consequences if we were suddenly allowed to inhabit a different potential life.
A single location called the Purple Onion Cafe appears in three of the stories. Friendly meetings at this spot are troubled by a much larger event when a demoralized teenage boy detonates a homemade bomb here. Yet time often shifts so at some points of the stories this horrific event has already occurred and at other points it is about to occur. It's as if the enormity of this tragic disruption which introduces the larger problems of the world into everyday local reality ruptures the very fabric of time. The way in which this plays out in the different narratives is fascinating. In 'The Women Friends' a chance delay or a moment spent away from a regular luncheon changes the fate of one or the other of the friends. A man waiting for his lifelong friend in 'Waiting for Kizer' finds himself confronted by less-successful alternate versions of himself. It's brilliant how Oates captures a particular kind of masculine competitiveness: both in how men compete with each other and with themselves. The Lynchian vibes of this tricksy story are reminiscent of both Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' and Paul Auster's novel “4321”. The cafe also appears in the story 'Final Interview' where a famous author grudgingly grants a meeting with a presumptuous interviewer. Here we get a disturbing glimpse into the frustrated perpetrator's mind as he decides to bomb the cafe. It's striking how different representations of this location and incident say something about the way monumental events can mark and steer the lives of a group of people whose lives are otherwise only tangentially entwined.
The second part of the book primarily includes stories about characters who are confronted with the stark truth of their reality rather than being caught in meditations about alternate lives. In 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' an affluent couple find their liberal, non-religious community is under threat from the insidious intrusion of the deteriorating environment and the ravages of ill health. Questions of holy vengeance are rephrased to include more practical concerns: “It's Andrew's (half-serious) opinion that in the twenty-first century damnation isn't a matter of Hell but not having adequate medical insurance.” Three stories which are narrated in the second person differently approach the longterm effects of grief and the propensity for denial to avoid living with the reality of death's aftermath. It's bracing and heartbreaking the way these tales portray specific moments when truth disrupts the flow of time: “For this is not a story, and not a fiction. This is actual life, that does not bend easily to your fantasies.” The story 'Nightgrief' portrays how simply living has become a gruelling task for parents who have lost their child. They prefer to become nocturnal beings to avoid crowds (especially children) and they find they are inextricably caught in the arduous flow of time whether they want to or not: “the worst that might happen, that had happened, had the power, or should have had the power, to stop time. Yet - time had not stopped. Not in the slightest had time stopped. What a joke, to imagine that there was an entity – Time – that might choose to stop.” These stories meaningful show the way we are forced to accept the circumstances of our own lives because the past, the present and the inevitability of death are all concrete fixtures of our reality.
It feels like the opening and closing stories of this collection must be extremely personal to Oates herself. Again, the second person is used to give the sense that the main character is both inhabiting herself and viewing herself from the outside. The titular story 'The (Other) You' portrays a woman who recalls a significant instance in her young life when failing an exam meant she wasn't able to progress to university or leave her provincial hometown of Yewville in upstate New York. Though she idly dreamed of becoming a famous writer and moving away she got married, had a child, became a local poet and bought a used bookstore. Descriptions of how at a young age she created stories with pictures are similar to anecdotes Oates has given in interviews about her early compulsion for storytelling before she learned to write. Though the protagonist of this story is very content with her life she still wonders about what her other life might have been like. It's remarked how “For your lifetime, this is the sentence. A life-sentence.” I admire the double meaning of these lines which describe how we create narratives about our lives but also how we can become imprisoned within a certain state of being.
The final story 'The Unexpected' presents the imagined “other” life of the woman from the opening story and it's also about a character very much like Oates herself. A famous writer returns to upstate New York to receive an honour from a university and give a talk at the Yewville library. Here she glimpses the used book store in town which has closed down in this alternate reality. Oates described going back to her hometown library in a poignant article in Smithsonian Magazine. Though it can be presumed the final story in this collection is inspired by autobiographical experience it is quite clearly about a fictional character. The narrative darkly morphs into the surreal as the haphazard talk and signing she gives at the library results in barely recalled figures from her past coming forward with accusations and demands. It's an eerily rendered reckoning with the past, but also a meditation on the way we can persecute ourselves by believing that if we'd made other choices those other selves might have lived a differently fulfilling and meaningful existence. Oates evokes the longing and wonder of this duality with tremendous verve. These entertaining and enlightening stories also show that it’s important to keep humour and humility in mind when mulling over the mystifying experience of inhabiting a self.
