New Yorker Fiction Review #248: "Heirlooms," by Bryan Washington

Review of a short story from the August 3 & 10, 2020 issue of The New Yorker...

Another novel excerpt masquerading as a short story. I feel like before I read a short story in The New Yorker from now on I need to have a checklist of data-points: Is the story a reprint? Is it a novel excerpt? Does the author have a book coming out within the next six months? Etc. Etc. I used to just jump right into a story (as I think you ought to be able to do) but I feel like I need more context now if I'm going to write anything meaningful about stories which I approach just looking for the best contemporary fiction, but which are clearly often placed in The New Yorker for a variety of reasons other than that they're the best of the stories that have been submitted to the magazine. The idea that The New Yorker gets short stories in the mail and decides on which one is the best of the lot, and then publishes that one, is laughable. 

I wasn't super impressed with any one element of this particular novel excerpt and, frankly, I doubt much if anything about it will stay with me after I write this review. However, I think there is something valuable to be found in Bryan Washington's style of "close realism" that can somehow make us reflect on the mundane in our own lives and how we might make meaning out of it. Unfortunately, Washington doesn't seem to provide us a lot of pointers in that direction. 

On a micro level there is not much of "story" here, it doesn't open and shut quickly (naturally, because it's not a short story), though one can see how it might fit into a broader 200 page narrative. There is a good deal of tension, however, which keeps it going and gives it a backbone, at the least. The central character, Ben, is a gay man living in Houston with his partner Mike. Mike has left for Japan in the middle of the night to be with his father on his death bed and appears in the story only as a string of text messages or in Ben's memories; he is "off-screen" for the entire story. In his place, Washington gives us Mitsuko, Mike's mom, who is staying with Ben while Mike is away. Only it wasn't meant to be like this; Mitsuko was visiting in order to spend time with her son, not his gay lover. 

Mitsuko is a direct, no-nonsense character who won't brook vagueness or indecision and seems very much the stereotypical middle-aged Asian woman in fiction: small, fierce, and yet somewhere, deep down, possessing a tender side. Yawn. But the tension between this bizarre pair of flat-mates -- Ben and Mitsuko -- does make set up some pretty uncomfortable situations. And uncomfortable situations make for compelling fiction. 

The relationship between Ben and Mitsuko is the most interesting part of the story, but the story isn't really supposed to be about Ben and Mitsuko. It's about Ben and his lover Mike and their relationship which seems to have reached one of those forks in the road -- which we've all experienced -- in which things could kind of go either way: more serious or kaput. Except it's not even that interesting because neither character seems to feel very strongly about the other one. If tension and uncomfortable situations make for compelling fiction, then indecisive and apathetic characters make for extremely dull fiction. 

In "Heirlooms" (overly grandiose title, IMO), Bryan Washington sets up a very tense situation -- between Ben and Mitsuko -- but doesn't push it very far. Meanwhile, he underwrites the story with the relationship between Ben and Mike, two lovers who seem almost pathetically disinterested in each other. Perhaps that was Bryan Washington's intention: to point out the spot in a relationship in which things start to fray and ultimately come apart. But neither of them seemed to care too much, so it didn't seem that significant.

If you're going to write a hyper-realistic story, you probably need to load the actions of the story, the physical plot, with much bigger significance. Give me an emergency, a suicide attempt, a car wreck, give me a plate crashing against a wall, give me some crying, even.  Or make the characters feelings about what's going on so significant that I understand the importance of the story's subtle action. Bryan Washington doesn't really do either in "Heirlooms," but perhaps he does (I hope he does) further into Memorial, the forthcoming full novel from which this excerpt is taken. 

Having said all of that, I think what Bryan Washington demonstrates is a very deft skill at writing realistic characters and how they interact. In fact that seems to be Washington's forte. Even the fact that I'm able to sit here and pull the story apart makes me think there is a lot here worth criticizing and a lot to like about Washington's style. Maybe it's just a matter of figuring out how to infuse a story like this with deeper meaning. He has good characters and he's put them up on the stage, now what to do with them? But, since this is a novel excerpt and not a short story, I guess Washington has a lot more space than what's contained here in order to make something happen.