New Yorker Fiction Review #256: "Rainbows," by Joseph O'Neill
This is the third short story I've read and reviewed from Joseph O'Neill in the pages of The New Yorker since I started this project back in 2013. His short story "The Referees" from the Sept. 1, 2014 issue and his "Pardon Edward Snowden" from the Dec. 12, 2016 issue both failed to impress me and even seem to have been so bad they pissed me off.
Not so with "Rainbows," a short story about an Irish immigrant to the U.S. (modern day) who lives in Manhattan. What is this story "about"? It's hard to say, specifically. On one level, it is about a young woman who comes to the U.S. who takes to a (purely platonic) liking to one of her hip college professors, also a woman, who advises her to just "get over" an incident that sounds like a sexual assault, and then years later has to go through a somewhat similar experience with her own daughter.
One could also say it's "about" the difference in attitudes between Ireland/Europe and America. After all, the story opens with paragraph about how the main character, Clodagh, never heard of the concept of a "mentor" until she came to the U.S., in fact, she is sure that in Ireland the very idea of a mentor would be promptly dismissed with sort of cavalier Irish suspiciousness. This sets up the idea that the story is going to deal with Clodagh's process of adapting to American social norms or, putting it bluntly, that America is "precious" where the Irish/European sensibility is pragmatic and frank.
What's cool about this story, however, is that it doesn't try and cram this idea down your throat. Rather, it presents a seeming patchwork of memories and emotions, and a current-day incident, which leave the reader with more questions that answers. But not the bad kind of questions, like: "Uhh, what the hell was this about?" or "Why did I spend the past 45 minutes reading this?" No. In this story, Joseph O'Neill gives us pretty much all we need to figure out what the story "means" on our own, but stops well short of pulling any gimmicky punches or preaching. That, my friends, is an accomplishment.
To me the most instructive passage in the story (the "key" passage, as it were), comes near the end, when Clodagh bumps into her mentor -- the hip, Spanish (like from Spain) professor from her undergrad -- and has a conversation with her. The professor, Paola, says:
"'Have you noticed...how degenerate the so-called Irish and Italians are in this country? It really is quite interesting.'...How tenaciously, Paola said, Irish- and Italian-Americans clung to their so-called heritage, and yet how little resemblance their mores and outlooks bore to those in the old countries."
The passage goes on from here, but the basic idea is summed up in that part, above. Now, it may seem like Joseph O'Neill is sneaking a bit of sociological sermonizing into the story here and...well...he is. But in my opinion, it works. Furthermore it's not so heavy-handed as to put the story out of balance. It's just one of those food for thought type paragraphs that makes you want to read and re-read it, and re-read the story.
I'm not a huge fan of stories or works in which foreigners cast aspersions on American culture and society in a cute or tongue-in-cheek way; criticize this country and it's people all you want, but if you want to say something, come out and say it. However, I think "Rainbows" goes further beyond that. What Joseph O'Neill is looking at here are some broad societal changes that have come about throughout time and waves of immigration, that may have no positive or negative charge, they just are what they are, at least in the writer's eyes.
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