A Relative Stranger
By Charles Baxter
Norton, 223 pages, $17.95
A Place I`ve Never Been
By David Leavitt
Viking, 195 pages, $18.95
If novels bring us the news, then short stories deliver the headlines. Charles Baxter, an underrated master of the genre, and David Leavitt, a gifted but inconsistent writer, illustrate the varied art of storytelling in two new collections that struggle to interpret a world that is increasingly puzzling and alien.
Characters in both collections seek to discover ways to ”connect” with each other, their families or their communities, and most of all to wrest some meaning from the muddle of their vaguely discontented lives. A lucky few find answers; most do not.
Charles Baxter has written three other short story collections and a novel, ”First Light,” yet he has not won the reputation he deserves. ”A Relative Stranger,” his newest work, confirms his talent and his vision.
Baxter`s strength as a writer derives from his mysterious, haunting tone, his razor-sharp imagery and the slightly surreal quality to his characters`
conversation. Throughout his work, small, slightly absurd gestures come to stand for larger conflicts that will never be resolved: In ”Snow,” for instance, a teenage girl stands barefoot on an ice-covered lake in order to impress a cold-hearted suitor. In ”Scissors,” thousands of coupons, dumped from a hot air balloon, waft through a deserted street as a barber gives his ex-lover`s little boy his first haircut.
Baxter`s dialogue alone can make you pause and smile with nervous recognition. In ”Fenstad`s Mother,” the collection`s arresting opening tale, an irascible old woman, fighting to hide her vulnerability and hold on to her identity, becomes the star pupil of her distant, middle-aged son`s writing class. ”What I hate about being my age is how nice everyone tries to be,”
she laments. ”I was never nice, but now everybody is pelting me with sugar cubes.”
Well-intentioned do-gooders figure prominently in Baxter`s tales. But in the disoriented and disorienting world that Baxter describes, even the most ordinary acts of decency can backfire. In ”Shelter,” a baker who volunteers at a shelter for the homeless shocks his family by bringing a homeless man to their house; instead of teaching his son charity, however, the visit plants fear. Similarly, in ”Westland,” the attempt to help a troubled teenager forces a social worker to confront his inability to effect even the smallest, most symbolic change.
These and other stories pose troubling questions in a vivid way: What does it mean to do or be ”good” in a society so fearful that decent citizens are taught to ignore the homeless? Is it righteous, or only foolish, to risk your own well-being to help a stranger? And even if you dare, will it make any difference at all?
Baxter`s characters go in search of something that will reach beyond their ordered, ordinary lives. In story after story, they hope beyond hope that they will discover a sense of attachment or connection to another person, or a reason to have faith in the universe. Baxter portrays these quests as both peculiar and noble, even when they fail or yield inconclusive results.
In contrast to Baxter`s comparative obscurity, David Leavitt received both critical and popular acclaim for his first published book, ”Family Dancing,” and for his two subsequent novels, ”The Lost Language of Cranes” and ”Equal Affection.” But despite Leavitt`s considerable facility as a writer and deftness as an observer of the contemporary scene, his latest work, ”A Place I`ve Never Been,” yields mixed results.
Levitt is best known for stories that skillfully and touchingly portray what it means to be gay in a straight world, and that dramatize the poignance of loss and the fragility of love. Often, as in the current collection`s fine title story, these themes converge.
Celia and Nathan, who also appeared in some of the stories in ”Family Dancing,” have been best friends since college. Now in their late twenties and working in New York, they share a sense of fearful, lonely self-consciousness. But their Platonic companionship no longer provides the substitute for romantic love that it once did. One reason is AIDS.
Nathan is gay; Celia is not. Nathan`s former lover has tested positive for the HIV-antibody and, unable to confront his fears of personal loss directly, Nathan becomes increasingly irritable and self-centered. Wishing to be sympathetic, yet at the same time eager to get on with her own life, Celia realizes that ”where Nathan had been exiled was a place I`d never been,” and that the distance between their two worlds could no longer be bridged.
The collisions, conflicts, and misunderstandings between the worlds of the gay and the straight are a major concern throughout Leavitt`s work. In
”My Marriage to Vengeance,” Ellen must endure the cruel explanation that her former lover, Diana, gives her for marrying: ”I was just not prepared to go through my life as a social freak, Ellen. I want a normal life, just like everybody. I want to go to parties and not have to die inside trying to explain who it is I`m with.”
In ”Houses,” a similar choice is faced by Paul, a married real estate broker torn between his affection for his wife and the passion he feels for a male lover. He concludes that ”while it is possible to love two people at the same time, in different ways, in the heart, it is not possible to do so in the world.”
Only in ”Gravity,” a haunting evocation of a young man suffering from AIDS who is being cared for by his stalwart mother, do the two worlds meet, in pain and in compassion.
Leavitt`s stories themselves range through both worlds. In ”Spouse Night,” the collection`s most moving tale, a grieving widow and widower find solace in each other. And the romantic adventures of Celia, the narrator of
”A Place I`ve Never Been,” are the subject of ”I See London, I See France.”
Because the best of these tales-”A Place I`ve Never Been,” ”Houses,”
and ”Spouse Night”-are among Leavitt`s most ambitious and most touching, it is all the more frustrating that they make up only half of an already slim volume. The others too often reach for epiphanies that don`t quite work, meander, or end prematurely.
A story that has been cut, Kipling wrote, is like a fire that has been raked. Baxter`s compressed tales spark flames; Leavitt`s too often smolder when they should burn.
