New Yorker Fiction Review #311: "Hi Daddy" by Matthew Klam
Review of the short story from the Oct. 14, 2024 issue of The New Yorker... Normally I don't love "domestic" stories that take place all within the context of some character's otherwise unremarkable -- usually white, suburban, and upper middle class, for some reason -- family life or day to day life. I do not deny that domestic life can be filled with drama, struggle, conflict, and all the highs and lows of the human experience. I just feel as though its too easy to look around you and try to make fiction out of what you see. I do realize there is a word for this: autofiction. I partly blame it on Ernest Hemingway's perhaps most famous (and in many ways poisonous) piece of writing advice: "Write what you know." Hemingway and others of his time are also famous for writing stories -- and most importantly, having success writing stories -- about his himself and his friends sitting around drinking and talking, seemingly giving every subsequent generation o...
