Black Box

by Jennifer Egan

This year's New Yorker summer fiction issue (which came out a few weeks ago - I'm behind on things once again) has a 'science fiction' theme, although it is full of stories by writers not normally associated with that genre, like Jennifer Egan.

Egan's story, 'Black Box', works on a number of levels.  To begin with, it's written as a series of short instructions, none longer than a Twitter posting.  The story is then divided into 47 short chapters, which can consist of as few as four of these 'tweets', to more than ten.  Consequently, this story looks very unique compared to most other pieces I've read in this magazine.

The instructions are designed to assist their recipient, a 'beauty', in her mission to infiltrate a crime or terrorist organization in the south of France by getting close to her 'Designated Mate', a violent man.  The nameless beauty (the instructions are written in second person, and addressed to 'you') is part of a new movement of citizen heroes, who volunteer for dangerous work out of a sense of patriotism.  The 'beauty' is outfitted with various hidden devices, such as a recorder in her ear, a camera in her eye (complete with flash), and a data port in her foot.  She is also trained in survival techniques, such as 'Dissociation Technique', and the 'Primal Roar'.

The story unfolds through these instructions, as our hero makes contact with her prey, and is later escorted with him to a remote seaside location, where he meets with another man, before she creates a distraction so she can photograph some drawings, and that has a number of consequences.

Egan gives us a James Bond like story, but without the egotism and identity of the hero getting in the way.  There are cool gadgets, mysterious evil-doers, and a palpable sense of danger.  Written in a more straight-forward way, this could have been a good story, but in Egan's hands, it's much more than that.  Egan's writing first caught my eye in this magazine, with a short story that was a part of her terrific novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, and I'm now more curious than ever to read more of her work.

A Visit From The Good Squad

by Jennifer Egan

A couple of years ago, I read a short story in the New Yorker called 'Safari' by Jennifer Egan, and I loved it.  I started watching for Egan's name, and soon found some other stories by her in the New Yorker and Harper's.  Because the stories were sporadic and wide ranging in their subject matter, I didn't notice that some of the character's names overlapped, or that the stories were all chapters from the same piece of work, which became A Visit from the Goon Squad.

This is a great novel, although in many ways, it's more of a collection of interrelated short stories.  Characters recur throughout the book, as different aspects of different peoples' lives are examined in a non-linear fashion.

At the centre of the novel are two people - Bennie Salazar and Sasha Blake (if her maiden name is given in the novel, I've forgotten it).  Bennie ends up being a powerful record producer, although we visit him at different phases in his life, from his time as a teenager struggling to get his band noticed, to his attempt to regain some of his past glory, after being fired from the label he started, and getting divorced.  Sasha was Bennie's assistant for a time, but she is many other things in this book - a thief, a prostitute, a college student, and finally, the mother to autistic children.

Egan also spotlights other characters - the aforementioned Safari is about an older record executive's trip with his new girlfriend and his children to Africa.  This same exec had previously been dating one of Bennie's friends when they were teenagers.  We later see this guy at his deathbed.

Starting each new chapter is a bit of a mystery, as the reader tries to place things in the book's chronology, and figure out how the story is going to connect to the others.  Egan returns again and again to themes of insecurity and powerlessness, as she shows us her take on time periods ranging from the  1970s to the 2020s.  For most of the book, she writes in highly polished prose, but there are sections where she experiments with other forms.  One chapter is written as a magazine article for Vanity Fair (detailing how Bennie's journalist brother-in-law ended up in prison for assaulting a beautiful young actress).  Another is a series of PowerPoint-like slides, which make up the journal of Sasha's twelve-year-old daughter.

Having finished this book, I strongly feel the need to track down more of Egan's work.  She is a very talented author.  This is highly recommended.

Safari

by Jennifer Egan

Every once in a while, I read a short story and partway through it come to the realization that it is just about perfect. This is one of those stories.

Egan gives us a tale set on safari in Kenya. Lou is a divorced record executive, who has taken his two children, Charlie (Charlene, 14) and Rolph (11) on this trip, along with his girlfriend Mindy (just into her twenties), and a strange entourage of musicians, an actor, and his travel agent.

Egan packs the story with complex relationships: Lou and Mindy have not been a couple for long; Rolph worships and despises his father in equal measure; Charlie is trying to become Charlene, a grown-up in both her own eyes and her father's. Mindy catches the eye of Albert, an employee of the safari company. Toss into this mix some amusing side characters, like the old birdwatching ladies and the obvious-stating actor, along with a good lion mauling, and you have the makings for a great story.

What makes this piece perfect though, is the way in which, towards the end of the tale, Egan jumps through the rest of the main characters' lives, demonstrating how this trip was such a turning point for each of them. It's a powerful and emotionally resonant piece of work.