Fifty Books Project 2023

 

Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg

 

One star and then another detached from its place and flamed across the dark.  The skies were dense with constellations.  Whole galaxies streamed toward the porch where she sat with Nonie and Munsen on her nights off, watching the coded messages from her future, light years away.

 

Eisenberg is one of the rare writers to take on mastery of the short story and then stay there.  After writing one play early in her career, she has produced 7 volumes of short stories (and some art criticism).  Her stories are deeply literate, beautifully realized, with a deep sense of characterization and a complex mastery of metaphor.  Most of the five stories in this slim volume contain passages like the one quoted above - in which the narrator or the character takes stock of their tiny place in the vast universe.  It is as if she is drawing attention to the small moments she is elevating in this art form.

 

Her narratives are often fractured – stories told in pieces, sometimes moving among several characters, with a fluid and creative approach to chronology.

 

In “Window” for example, we begin with Kristina checking on Noah, who has been having a bit of a tantrum. The two have recently arrived at Alma’s and we slowly realize that the arrival was unexpected and reluctantly welcomed.  When Alma goes out with her boyfriend, Kristina takes us through a lengthy flashback – her childhood with half-sister Alma, a desultory adolescence as an attractive female resulting in restaurant work in a resort town and then a passionate relationship with Eli.  Kristina seems to develop genuine feelings for Eli and takes seriously the charge of becoming a trusted parent-figure for Noah, Eli’s child by a previous relationship.  The story then begins working us back towards her arrival alone with Noah at Alma’s.  This story has the most conventional narrative arc and the tightest chronology.  Part of the joy of it is how much less we know of Kristina and Noah than we thought we did at the opening.

 

Perhaps at the opposite end of these techniques is the title story, “Twilight of the Superheroes.”  In this story we observe Lucien who remembers his late wife and frets over finding a new apartment for his nephew, Nathaniel.  We also see Nathaniel mourn the loss of the wonderful sub-let Lucien found for him years earlier which is now being reclaimed by its very wealthy Japanese owner.  The apartment, which Nathaniel has been sharing with several friends from college, is almost a character itself, with long passages dedicated to its spaciousness, its views, the fact that – because of the connection through Lucien – its affordability.  While the recent college graduates have been living in this luxurious setting, the millennium has changed (there are references to Y2K, the disaster that wasn’t) and the Twin Towers have been attacked and destroyed.  There is a palpable sense that Nathaniel will have to move out into a city totally different from the one he moved in to, but there is little in the sense of plot – the renters never get around to moving and Lucien never does more than worry about their move.  We end with Nathaniel remembering a pleasant moment from childhood and Lucien remembering his dead wife – who was Nathaniel’s aunt.  One of these has never grown capable of being an adult and the other has lost his motivation for his own adulthood.

 

“Some Other, Better Otto” falls between these extremes – Otto is an irritable and irritating man whose husband gets along better with his in-laws than Otto does.  Otto has a genuine desire to be a kinder person, but can never manage his dyspeptic impulses.  He has his own wonderings about the universe, hoping that in the billions of possible universes there is somewhere another, better version of himself he might someday tap into. In “The Flaw in the Design,” a woman tries to bridge the growing political chasm between her husband and son while also beginning an affair.  In “Revenge of the Dinosaurs” a family visits their incapacitated and very wealthy grandmother and fight over the responsibilities of taking care of her.  In “Like it or Not,” Kate reluctantly takes a tour of small Italian towns with Harry and seems afraid he will construe this as a romantic opportunity, but he sleeps with the beautiful daughter of the obnoxious family they meet at dinner.

 

The characters in these stories are complex and real.  Thinking back on them, I have the vague sense that I really knew them.  I don’t exactly miss them – as I sometimes do with well-drawn characters – because they are so clearly limited:  flawed, angry, pretentious. They are more like neighbors than friends. 

 

The first story, “Twilight of the Superheroes,” begins with the recollection of the hype around Y2K and the memory of what an anti-climax that became is a kind of ironic prelude to the tone of the volume.  These stories are suffused with a sense of loss – Nana, the dying grandmother is recalled as a beautiful woman who took care of her family, though currently she is a physical wreck unable to stop the crisis taking place around her.  Harry collects antiques but finds contemporary people shallow and greedy.  There are several references to the major calamities that have already beset this century – 9-11 and the financial crisis among them.  One wonders what she will produce relative to the pandemic.  

 

It is possible to note a brightness in the ending – the mother who goes off for an affair is at least taking some agency.  At the end of her story, Kristina may be alone with a kidnapped child, but she has at least found something to live for.