New Yorker Fiction Review #277: "To Sunland" by Lauren Groff

 Review of the short story from the July 4, 2022 issue of The New Yorker...

Lauren Groff is one of those writers whose work I just can't get into, but who is also (apparently) not going away any time soon. So I guess I would do well to shut up and accept her as part of the contemporary literary landscape. 

But that doesn't mean I have to pretend to like short stories such as "To Sunland" which I thought was shallow and mailed-in. Furthermore, Lauren Groff's attempts to write dialogue in the "down home" accent fall flat, giving the story an artificial feeling. The "down home" accent -- and you know what I'm talking about -- is probably the most commonly attempted (and most commonly done badly) accent in history. 

Furthermore, as Lauren Groff loves to try an do, she claims influence from a much more famous -- and more talented -- writer to try and "explain" her work and give it another leg to stand on. In this case it's Flannery O'Connor, and Groff does this in her This Week in Fiction interview with Cressida Leyshon of The New Yorker. But I've personally heard her attempt to position her work alongside the likes of Homer and Shakespeare. 

I have a major, major problem with this and it's difficult to explain, but I'll try: You can say you like reading Flannery O'Connor. You can say that you aspire to have the same effect on readers as she does. But I think it's pretty egotistical (and a few other adjectives) to position your work as somehow "in conversation" with the work of a much more famous (and more talented) writer/artist in order to (to what? I don't know) make your work seem more culturally relevant or to give people a reason not to think it sucks. Your story is a story. It's not in conversation with anything or any one, let alone a writer who died before you were born. The story should stand on its own, always. And this story doesn't.