NYSSD: "Wes Amerigo's Giant Fear"

I want some of Pill's cake!

We ALL want some of Pill's cake!

I loved it too, I adore Magical Realism in little doses, especially from children. I'm also well-acquainted too with caterers and know just the hell they were going through. I adored seeing the family with their children serving and I liked the fact that one of the characters was such an interesting dog.

The dog was fantastic.

I also loved it from a more prosaic viewpoint -- a parent watching a child and wondering just what is going on in the child's brain, just what he or she can accomplish. The sozlet will occasionally do things out of nowhere that give me a very similar feeling to Wes' in the story. On a smaller scale, of course, but I really identified.

I have a bunch of questions. Like, did Wes know that something was going to happen with Pill, and that was the source of his fear? The absence that was going to be a presence? Or was his fear from some outside source, and Pill stepped up to assuage it?

And the name really niggles at me. I think all or at least many of us Americans have felt that general, all-pervasive but not readily identifiable fear since 9-11. I think Schickler captured that really well, and in that context the story was such a wonderful release and relief -- one could identify so much with the mounting tension, and then to have it resolved in such a lovely way. The name makes me wonder if those parallels were intended, if this is a story that came out of the inchoate fear we all feel.

Really good points, Sozobe. Amerigo is not exactly a name you'd pick out of the hat, is it? Wes = the West, Amerigo = America???

You are right, too that No one in America can write right now without having an overlay of 9/11 fear.

I haven't read the story yet--I don't get the NEW YORKER but someone in my family does, so I don't read it immediately--but I have to disagree about the 9/11 fear. I recently completed a short novel which is entirely unshadowed by 9/11 fear, just the normal existential angst of characters in and out of love. We are not ALL at the mercy of our environments, Piffka!

Oh, hi Larry. The story can be reached on the internet. Google the New Yorker and look for fiction. The current story is available for one week, which makes this a quick read for most of us.

As to the other, do you mean you wrote or you read this novel? If you wrote it, how can you be sure? You may have underpinnings there of which even you aren't aware. If you read it, how can you be sure the novel wasn't completed before 9/11 and took a while to get published???

Just wondering. I'd like to hope you were right, but my friends and family seem in the midst of a mindset of political angst brought about by the violence in New York... or else we are reacting to it by living as though it didn't happen and pretending things are just as before.

Piffka, I wrote the novel in question. And I assure you there are no 9/11 undertones or overtones to it. Doen't it seem ridiculous to assume that all creative people have to be tyrannized by public events? Joyce wrote ULYSSES during World War One, and I defy you to find one reference conscious or unconscious to that boodbath in his text.

Hmmm...

Meanwhile, I find that the parental aspect of the story really resonates with me -- I'm curious as to how parents and non-parents react to the story. Larry, do you have any specific commentary on this story? If so, I would be interested in it.

I have never been a worrier, but that has changed since I became a mother. I can think that things will be fine for myself, but then I think about my daughter's future and I am seized with dread.

Hi all, I'm glad I happened on to this tonight. Schickler has certainly given us an interesting story. I read all your posts, and am trying to think it through. Sozobe, the questions you raise were something I kept in mind while reading the story.

I have an idea that Wes's fear is based in a long standing inkling that Cecil, his old rival for Helen, who is now rich (he can put on a flashy wedding and offer five grand for a receipt) while he,Wes, is poor, is going to make a play for Helen. Cecil still calls her by the pet name he used when he courted her. So, as the wedding catering job approaches, he has this unidentified fear.

Pill fixes all this by first making the situation evident. She sets Cecil on the path to confrontation with Wes. And then magically gives the victory to her father, Wes. Eventually, Wes finds the courage to tell Cecil to leave Helen alone. It seems to me that an important part of this part of the story is that Wes had to have faith in Pill just at a time when as a father he might have been tempted to put her to bed without her supper.

In the meantime, Pill, in Pied Piper fashion, has assembled everyone on Second Mountain at her parents home, where they all wait in a big camp-in, in expectation or a new infusion of the wonderful food, pills, which although temporarily satisfying, have left everyone with a craving for more.

So, what we have here is a story of personal triumph over a fear. This is accomplished with the help of a little benevolent magic.

The problem for me is that I can see how some parts of this evoke a 9/11 feeling, I can't so far turn it into a consistent allegory of the whole 9/11 saga.

I'm eager to see how you all can take this further. If you think I'm wrong about the source of Wes's fear, please let me know.

I'm tired.

Sometimes a story is so cleverly written that it clearly, or at least after some thought, lends itself to two or more interpretations. I would site Joyce Carol Oates "Where are you going? Where have you been?" and Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" as two examples. So far, I'm having trouble doing that with this story, even though the possibility seems to be there.

Having children gives you lots of worries. When my children were small there were some things I was so worried about that I was afraid to think of them for fear of creating them out of whole cloth. There were so many things that could go wrong in so many ways.

In this story when Wes enumerates his worries, the biggest one (one that is great in the minds of almost all caterers) is money. While caterers can enjoy an amazing run of good business, they never have long-range job security. It is truly a hand-to-mouth career... each party is a make-or-break event where a lawsuit, a complaint, a whispered rumor can ruin a reputation and eliminate future work. I don't know why anybody does it. I think that the old rival is a problem, but not the main one. He is a festering sore, but nothing more than someone to compare Wes to... someone with Money and a retirement plan. Cecil is married, so he is not really a serious contender for Wes's wife's affections. He could alienate them, by showing Wes to be a loser... and that is a big fear. Meanwhile the business must maintain the family while Wes & his wife raise their children, which as we pointed out is a huge worry. Wes has heavy responsibilities and no security -- nearly a panic situation.

The 9/11 dread or fear is not, to my mind, necessarily a worry that the terrorists will get you. It is a nation coming to grips with its own mortality, just as each human reaches a moment when he or she comes to the conclusion that death will come and each one must face it alone. It is a growing up and an awful realization that this, "THIS" is all there is. It does not seem enough, yet even this can be/ will be taken away someday, sooner or later. It is a sobering thought and leads to panic attacks. This country had a major dose of reality in one short morning.

I am not going to debate you, Larry, about a novel you wrote. Almost everyone in this country WAS seriously affected by depression, emotional upset, fear and/or dread following the large terrorist attack which took place on 9.11. Many people have made major changes in their lives, having felt this as their own brush with death. I am amazed you say you weren't affected but if that is how you felt, then obviously you wouldn't put it into your creative writings.

I can't speak to you about Joyce's Ulysses because I haven't read it. I am surprised that someone living in Europe during WWI would not be affected by that, but if you say so, then I'm sure it is so.

Good morning Pifka, to tell you the truth, I went to bed last night thinking what a dunce I was not to address the question of fear of bankruptcy. Then I thought, Oh well, Pifka and Sozobe will point that out in the morning.

It seems to me that the fear Wes was addressing when he got the family out of bed in the middle of the night was something he could not identify. Maybe I ought to read it all over again, but didn't he say that his fear was something other than money problems. Although, the Magical Pill seems to have solved that problem along with everything else.


Of course Wes had a specific fear about each of the children, too. However these fears were not specifically addressed or resolved in the course of the magical dinner and its aftermath. Except that Pill may be confirmed as a sort of magical nun.


On the subject of 9/11 fear, I think it affects different people different ways. Personally, I have never been one to worry too much about random dangers like tornadoes and lightning strikes. I generally take comfort in the thought that they are not likely to strike me or the children or the grandchildren, or my friends, or anybody on A2K. So far, so good. I look at terror attacks the same way. I was in Washington on 9/11 and heard the Pentagon hit. Somehow, it did not make me afraid. Make no mistake, I want to live as much as anybody, but in things like this, I play the odds--the gut feeling that they are in my favor, yours too.

I lived in Italy during a far more dangerous period, in the Seventies, when there was Red Brigades and right-wing terrorism and people were getting blown up by random bombings. That atmosphere was infinitely more disturbing than anything that the US is experiencing since 9/11 with the possible exception of the sniper attacks in the DC area, and even they didn't last very long. I agree with Hazlitt--my gut feeling is that the odds are on my side and so I refuse to get worried.

I think that may be part of it -- I haven't experienced anything like this. As Piffka says, I think there is a sort of national loss of innocence among those of us who haven't experienced it, or who did long ago and thought those days wouldn't return. One could say that the innocence was false in the first place, that we shouldn't have been "innocent", but I do think there was a widespread taking stock. There have been many articles about it, from people abruptly changing romantic situations (deciding to get married, deciding a relationship was a waste of time), to quitting jobs to spend more time with their kids, to finally writing that novel -- a national midlife crisis, whereby mortality was glimpsed and changes made. Everyone? No. But I do think it's fair to say it is part of the zeitgeist.

Mind you, I know that despite numerous threats and a generalized unease, nothing more has really happened since 9/11. But there is always something around the corner, such as the impending (probably) war with Iraq.

Hazlitt, I agree that this is not a straight allegory, I see it as more arising from the national mood we are referring to, personalizing it. A couple of things that make me think that:



A war is certainly taking shape, and has been for a year and a half...



This is the fear that I have felt, especially in the days immediately after 9/11, but at intervals since.

I just re-read the story, looking for quotes, and possible allegorical elements aside, I just liked it. The archetypical elements, (the small innocent child astride a massive toothy beast, the loaves and the fishes arising magically), the story, the dialogue, lines like



the image of Pill and Lady Macbeth leaping into the van as the angry villagers (well, you know) pursue them, Pill's equanimity, "the part of me that floats"... just like it. A lot.

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Emergency, that is the watchword of 9/11. We in the Pacific NW have had the looming "emergency" of either a giant earthquake which we've been told is overdue or some mountainous volcano erupting. We learned the supplies to store, the out-of-state plans, the water, the heat, the fires, the gas pipeline explosions, the transportation failures, even the unpleasant aspects of what to do with dead bodies & accumulating feces.

Now that is totally eclipsed by our need to bolster the long border we have with B.C., the need to check every damned bag at the airport, the need to stand in lines, made a stand, define personal allegiance along with all the many worries of a failing economy and it is all packaged up in duct-tape and plastic wrap.

It is an awful new threat: a horrifying combination of a terrorized government and a strange polarization of people. And it is not that I fear for my own life, though I wish something better for my children and worry they might be compelled to join some military. Indeed, I hope to be among the first casualties. It is that I fear the beautiful vision I once had of a peaceful world, one of understanding and kindness, has grown ever further from reality. We have failed. That's the fear of 9/11. And that was, I think, the kind of icy fear which Wes touched.

Frankly, the thought that it can only be assuaged by magic is not too comforting.


** from Wes Amerigo's Giant Fear

Sozobe, I can certainly go along with the idea that the story presents the thought that we are dealing with a widespread fear. But like you, I do not see it as a strict allegory.

One thing I will say is that I do not discount the impending danger. Terrorists are doubtless going to strike again, and the chances of that happening will increase exponentially as we wage war in the middle east.

IMO, When it comes to describing the "fear," the only thing we must be careful to do is to not generalize. We are always tempted to think that everybody feels the way we do. In reality, each person is an individual and reacts according to his/er own experience.

Of course, we have also to admit the reality of the herd instinct which is so easily triggered by the mass media.

Well, I wouldn't call it an allegory either, but I'd say there was a motif going on and the author is attempting to show us a way to deal with our fears.



The Truth is supposed to set you free. But if it doesn't, what then?



In the end it will be ecstacy that saves us? No...




This is where the story falls apart, a little. I'd like a clearer truth, but of course, there is none. At least we have some truth and are otherwise left with our small stake in the world and the affections, if we're lucky, of our family.

Still, I loved the story. This family was so likable. They'd be great fun to know. They do the same things we do and live in a similar way. They work and laugh and argue and have a few moments in the sun.

I wonder if we all should be out buying some maraschino cherries?

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added after... Well, Hazlitt, I understand what you're saying, but I still like magic and am most fond of those two great forces Truth & Serendipity.

I suspect that the magic in this story is not to be taken literally. It is a literary vehicle for conveying a truth and maybe some serendipity.

I've learned something from all this. In the past, if I knew a story was magic realism, I passed it by. Now, I see that I need to mend my ways.