For a certain kind of teenager, a small town is a prison. For another kind, it is a stage.
At sixteen I was one of the prisoners. Bakerton High was, to me, the world itself: an arena where great events were decided; a theater only in the sense that Vietnam had been, to American generals, a theater of war. The actors were boys and girls who'd grown up alongside me, the athletes and beauty queens who'd blossomed early and fierce. I worked evenings and weekends at Keener's Diner, and on Friday nights after football games, they filled every booth: the girls I envied and the boys I crushed on, coupling and recoupling like square dancers. Having none of my own, I marveled at their inexplicable self-confidence, these playmates who'd fingerpainted with me in kindergarten, now inhabiting new adult bodies with effortless aplomb.
This is the start of Jennifer Haigh's story "Favorite Son." The speaker is looking back on her adolescence from a distance; we might infer that the speaker is a writer, given that she is awkward and uncomfortable. She is an outsider.
The start: an arresting observation. People say you're better off being the type "imprisoned" by high school. No one wants to blossom too early.
I love the image of a cowering writer on the outskirts, surveying mythical figures. It makes me think of gladiators in the Colosseum. I also love that the gladiators themselves might be more complex than they seem: They are inhabiting "new adult bodies," but, really, at heart, there's still a "kindergarten playmate" lurking. We carry our child selves around with us, regardless of our actual age.
Like Elizabeth Strout, Haigh writes about apparently "average" Americans, and like Strout, Haigh has a way with similes. "Coupling and recoupling like square dancers." We aren't yet sure why we're reading this story--it will turn out to be a surprising, twisty account of many people's complicity in miseducating the town's "favorite son"--but we know we want to keep reading, because the narrator is taking such care with her sentences.
I was floored by the ending of the story, where the narrator admits what happened to the favorite son, and also where the narrator shows compassion for various teachers who may have allowed serious matters to "slide." It reminds me a bit of "Spotlight"--which also asks how apparently decent people can turn their backs on an unpleasant truth, a truth calling out for attention.
I envy Haigh because she invented "Bakerton" for her great novel "Baker Towers," then realized the setting was so fertile that it would also yield a full collection of short stories (at the very least). It's fun to spend an hour as a visitor in the world Haigh has invented. It's also--for me, at least--a nice break from the buzzy thriller "Woman in the Window," which has a few corpses, but which lacks a sense of novelty, and lacks Haigh's strange, little, memorable details.
*P.S. Regarding Haigh....I also like that the narrator is *not* the mythical character. The narrator is simply an observer--just as Nick observes Gatsby. This choice gives the "favorite son" an added sense of "status"; the narrator, admiring the favorite son, seems to speak for the entirety of the worshipful town. The narrator also functions as a kind of detective; she investigates an unpleasant scene, and discovers signs of a cover-up, and then, looking far, far back, she discovers the hidden story behind the crime.
At sixteen I was one of the prisoners. Bakerton High was, to me, the world itself: an arena where great events were decided; a theater only in the sense that Vietnam had been, to American generals, a theater of war. The actors were boys and girls who'd grown up alongside me, the athletes and beauty queens who'd blossomed early and fierce. I worked evenings and weekends at Keener's Diner, and on Friday nights after football games, they filled every booth: the girls I envied and the boys I crushed on, coupling and recoupling like square dancers. Having none of my own, I marveled at their inexplicable self-confidence, these playmates who'd fingerpainted with me in kindergarten, now inhabiting new adult bodies with effortless aplomb.
This is the start of Jennifer Haigh's story "Favorite Son." The speaker is looking back on her adolescence from a distance; we might infer that the speaker is a writer, given that she is awkward and uncomfortable. She is an outsider.
The start: an arresting observation. People say you're better off being the type "imprisoned" by high school. No one wants to blossom too early.
I love the image of a cowering writer on the outskirts, surveying mythical figures. It makes me think of gladiators in the Colosseum. I also love that the gladiators themselves might be more complex than they seem: They are inhabiting "new adult bodies," but, really, at heart, there's still a "kindergarten playmate" lurking. We carry our child selves around with us, regardless of our actual age.
Like Elizabeth Strout, Haigh writes about apparently "average" Americans, and like Strout, Haigh has a way with similes. "Coupling and recoupling like square dancers." We aren't yet sure why we're reading this story--it will turn out to be a surprising, twisty account of many people's complicity in miseducating the town's "favorite son"--but we know we want to keep reading, because the narrator is taking such care with her sentences.
I was floored by the ending of the story, where the narrator admits what happened to the favorite son, and also where the narrator shows compassion for various teachers who may have allowed serious matters to "slide." It reminds me a bit of "Spotlight"--which also asks how apparently decent people can turn their backs on an unpleasant truth, a truth calling out for attention.
I envy Haigh because she invented "Bakerton" for her great novel "Baker Towers," then realized the setting was so fertile that it would also yield a full collection of short stories (at the very least). It's fun to spend an hour as a visitor in the world Haigh has invented. It's also--for me, at least--a nice break from the buzzy thriller "Woman in the Window," which has a few corpses, but which lacks a sense of novelty, and lacks Haigh's strange, little, memorable details.
*P.S. Regarding Haigh....I also like that the narrator is *not* the mythical character. The narrator is simply an observer--just as Nick observes Gatsby. This choice gives the "favorite son" an added sense of "status"; the narrator, admiring the favorite son, seems to speak for the entirety of the worshipful town. The narrator also functions as a kind of detective; she investigates an unpleasant scene, and discovers signs of a cover-up, and then, looking far, far back, she discovers the hidden story behind the crime.
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