New Yorker Fiction Review #214: "The Itch" by Don DeLillo

Review of a short story from the Aug. 7 & 14, 2017 issue of The New Yorker...

While I'm not the universe's biggest and most loyal Don DeLillo fan, I have always enjoyed what I've read from the pen of this literary mapper of the anxious, post-modern human condition. "The Itch" doesn't have much of a plot and frankly reads more like a collection of "blurbs" but I don't care. I still found value and entertainment in Don DeLillo's ability to simulate the inner neurotic workings of the mind of a middle-aged man who is beset by an inexplicable itch that only affects exposed parts of his skin.

The magic of this story was the main characters attempts to rationalize his condition through conversations with his friend, and when he had to face the difficult task of explaining it to his new romantic partner and hope that she'd not flee in disgust. Also funny and completely inexplicable in the story was the main character's "problem" of hearing words (actual words, in English) coming from the splashing of his urine into the toilet bowl.

Is the itch a metaphor for some deeply agitated part of the human condition? Perhaps it is a form of "restless leg" syndrome, wrought on a person by an over-active mind, too much spare energy, some sub-clinical nervous condition, built-up stress from living in the crazy world we inhabit? Ultimately, no one knows exactly what or how to cure it. Ultimately, the itch is just there and the main character has to deal with it the best he can; he has to understand it through his own language, his own history, and live with it.

If the characters and ideas in a story are interesting enough, it does not always have to "go" somewhere. Which is convenient here, because this story really doesn't. Luckily, writing is "immediate" enough that it could have kept me going for about twice as long.