In the short story "The Readers," Ben Lerner explores parasocial connection through writing and reading in the way only Ben Lerner can—with extreme neuroses, narcissism, and a commitment to writing as the primary subject of writing. This may sound like a criticism. It's not. The story brilliantly explores the curious relational structure built by the written word. And somehow, Lerner shows us, this impossible structure is both a barrier and a path forward.
The story’s plot focuses on an unnamed narrator's interaction
with a female therapist while experiencing a health crisis that requires
surgery for a life-threatening heart condition. The initial conflict for the
narrator revolves around whether the therapist, whom he addresses directly
throughout, will or will not read his writing.
"Early in my treatment, we decided that you wouldn't
read my work,” he says. “If you had an intense reaction to my writing of
whatever sort, I'd worry it might influence how you related to me, but if you
were more or less indifferent to it, I would feel devalued, misunderstood,
rejected. Your response, from my perspective, could only be too much or too
little."
As in most of Lerner's fiction, the narrator is a thinly
veiled version of him. In this case, Lerner has thinned the veil to the point
of nonexistence, as the story references many real aspects of his life,
including the central health episode and the essay he wrote about it.
In perhaps the peak metafictional moment, the narrator speculates
that his therapist must surely have seen his work in "this magazine."
The reference to being in the New Yorker in the New Yorker feels
solidly anchored in reality, yet highly constructed. After all, a reader can't
help but pause and wonder, How did this author/narrator know he would get this
story published in the New Yorker? Was that line going to be written
differently if the story were published elsewhere? As a result, the very
distinction between fiction and nonfiction seems to collapse, as the writing
here asserts its reality at the same time it reminds us that this is all a
meticulously constructed metafiction. This may be the peak moment for this in
the story, but this simultaneous demolition, and reminder, of the wall between
fiction and nonfiction is near-constant throughout.
And that’s all for good reason, as it underscores the
narrator's central concern. First, he doesn't want the therapist to read his
writing because its simultaneous proximity to, and distance from, his real life
could interfere with their therapy. "It would be one thing if I wrote
fiction about Cromwell or aliens,” he says, “but, given that my protagonists
resemble me, how could I know you weren't mixing us up?"
Later, however, he worries that her not reading his writing
amounts to some sort of insult or dismissal of his talents and achievements:
"I thought a psychologist around my age interested in literature living in
New York would have read at least one of my novels. I must have had an
exaggerated sense of the reach of my literary reputation. … It seemed
improbable to me that you hadn't at least tried to read some of my prose. 'I've
never read your fiction' must mean 'I find your fiction unreadable.'"
Lerner works these anxieties into a rich lather throughout
the first third of the story, and several passages become a comical portrait of
authorial neuroses. It’s also comically undercut by the fact that he addresses
the story directly to her, referring to her as “you” throughout. Also, after
discovering that she is a published author as well, he does exactly what he
asked her not to do and reads some of her work.
But there's something serious here as well. Early on, the
narrator defines one of his central problems as a kind of all-or-nothing
attitude toward relationships and connection. "This structure of
feeling—the sense that everything is too much or too little,” he explains, “that
the only options are overwhelming intimacy or abandonment, that you can only
merge with a person or be rejected by them—characterized many of my
relationships."
Every personal relationship for him dangles precariously
over the threat of “overwhelming intimacy or abandonment.” There is no
in-between. Writing, however, offers a solution. It is that in-between. It
promises that people can connect without ever touching, that they can construct
an intimate “structure of feeling" that exists in some liminal space that
isn't just between these extremes but somehow also beside it, separate but
parallel, touching but not touching. And as the story goes on, this version of
connection becomes the central subject.
When the narrator goes through his health ordeal, he
temporarily drops his obsession with the therapist reading or not reading him.
Their sessions become focused on his fears of death, and their relationship
ramps up to the point of potential inappropriate frequency and intensity. He
sees her multiple times a week and emails her every morning, receiving
encouraging responses that help carry him through this period, which he
describes as an emotional collapse:
"I would extract myself from bed and take my
beta-blockers and write you a message of despair and you would write back
within an hour, write something simple and steadying. 'I hear how hopeless
you're feeling, but there is every reason to be hopeful, and I can help carry
hope for you right now, even if you can't access it. I will see you in the
office on Tuesday, but call me if you need to speak to me before that.' "
Oddly, though we know the ordeal was real, this seems like
the most fictive aspect of the story. It's hard to believe a therapist would
offer this level of care. It seems both unsustainable and unhealthy. But also,
who knows? Perhaps this is exactly what happened. And just like that, once
again we're questioning what is truth and what is fiction here—just in time for
us to return to the matter of writing.
After the surgery, the narrator writes an essay about the
experience that, as this story tells us, was published in the New Yorker.
In reality, the essay was published in the New York Review of Books, and
I can't help but wonder why Lerner made this change. Either publication would
work just as well for the story, so the mistruth here might seem arbitrary.
However, maybe the mistruth is the whole point. It's another reminder of this
tension between fact and fiction right at the moment that the story returns its
focus to the power of the written word.
Now the narrator becomes fixated on his desire for his
therapist to read this essay. In part, he explains, this is because this piece
is “different” from his other work. It is purely documentary, not fiction
merged with reality—though he does admit that it has some composite characters.
So, wait, why is it different again? Doesn't Lerner do that with all of his
fiction? Never mind the answers to these questions or the true distinctions
that separate Lerner's fiction from nonfiction. The point is we're again
prompted to think about the differences between fiction and nonfiction. We're
again thinking about writing as we're reading, which is exactly where Lerner
wants us to be—especially when we arrive at the end of the story.
But for now, let's stay with this new conflict. The narrator
wants his therapist to read the essay as a way of thanking her for helping him
through this period. He wants to connect with her more intimately than the
therapy sessions would allow—but less intimately than a sincere in-person
"thank you" would. His writing is his way of doing that. It is his
third or middle option for connection, a method for forging an enhanced
intimacy that he can control, that is somewhere between, or aside from, that dichotomy
of complete rejection versus uncomfortable merging he referenced earlier.
The therapist, however, refuses, and most of the rest of the
story revolves around their disagreement and his resulting confusion. This
builds to a moment during which he clumsily tries to force the magazine on her,
and she rebuffs the attempt in a pose analogous to defending herself from a
physical attack:
"I opened my mouth to eloquently inform you of my
decision but instead I heard myself mumble something about my progress as I
rose from the chair. I had never walked toward you before; the exit was to the
right of where I was seated. But now I was suddenly—suddenly but
slowly—lurching toward you like some kind of Frankenstein, like Frankenstein
O'Hara with his heart in his hand and not his pocket, this monster whose heart
had so recently been arrested and re-started ... Something had been set into
motion that I was powerless to stop; I wanted to flee the office but couldn't
alter my path. There was nothing to do but close the distance between us and
give you my heart piece or bludgeon you with it, but as I finally drew near ...
you raised both of your hands, palms toward me. I froze. I stopped, as they
say, dead in my tracks. The blood pounded in my ears. While your expression
remained calm, your face flushed red. You said, 'Let's wait and talk about it
on Friday. Please hold on to that for now.' ”
The way this moment mirrors an assault, with references to a
monstrous physical attack, underscores how it is a breach, an intrusion, an
unsolicited forced intimacy on the narrator's part. Reading, we are reminded,
exists in this third space. It is an intimacy that cannot be forced on anyone.
The story ends with the narrator finally considering the
therapist's side of things, applying what he read in her writing to understand
why she might not have wanted to interact so directly with his health issue.
Her daughter, he read, may have experienced a similar health issue, so perhaps
the therapist was understandably reluctant to engage with something that would
force her to revisit that more intimately.
Whether the narrator's reading here is true or not, this
gives him a new kind of personal intimacy with the therapist. He feels himself
floating ghost-like through her private life. Reading her gives him the
sensation of observing and even inappropriately touching aspects of her life, as
he describes her husband walking right through him, passing through his body, while
he imagines himself floating through her home.
So the narrator now firmly exists in this middle relational
space that writing and reading create. It is highly intimate yet distant, and
this allows him to see her refusal to read his essay as a kindness that—like
his heart surgery—stopped something to enable it to move forward. This gives
him a new reading of that cringe-worthy, palms-up refusal, when he tried to
force his essay on her. And the cryptic final lines of the story are worth a
longer look:
"I've come to understand your gesture differently, how
you stopped me with your palms. Please hold on to that for now. What a
beautiful thing to say. You stopped me so that I'd go on. I left it on the
train."
Somehow, her refusal turns into acceptance and
encouragement. Her palms held up were not just a barrier, but also a bridge.
They stop him so that he can move on, which he does, abandoning the essay on
the subway on his way home.
Lerner himself sheds some light on this ending in his
interview with the New Yorker on the story. "Both the heart surgery
and this fiction involve stopping and going on, stopping in order to go on,” he
explains. “Literally stopping the heart so that a repair can happen, so it can
go on beating, hopefully for a long time. The therapist stops him from
approaching her with his essay—'dead in his tracks,' as he puts it—so that he
can go on with his life after his crisis."
Lerner’s explanation here is helpful in deciphering the exact intention of this ending. However, the “correct” interpretation of this moment isn't the point. The point is the way the therapist stops him so he can go on, mirrors the way writing and reading create a similar kind of relational structure. They are acts that, like the therapist's pose here, both refuse connection and allow it to move forward.
Accordingly, in "The Readers," Lerner plumbs the curious depths of the parasocial relationships, intimacy, and strange “structure of feeling” contained in the act of reading and writing. In doing so, he helps us reconsider the power of literature itself. Writing, Lerner shows us here, offers a solution to this fear of “overwhelming intimacy or abandonment.” It forges a compelling way to connect deeply while still also holding the world at arm's length—palms up, erecting both a wall and a bridge.
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