January 8, 2008
E.L. Doctorow in The New Yorker this week
E.L. Doctorow, who turned 77 on Sunday, has a short story in the January 14, 2008 issue of The New Yorker.
It’s called “Wakefield,” named for the New York City lawyer who leaves his wife without actually leaving her. Instead of coming inside his house after work one evening, he goes into hiding in the attic space above the garage. A sort-of suburban ‘Castaway’ story ensues, with Mr. Wakefield taking on the habits of the raccoons that used to rummage through his garbage. No, Wilson does not make an appearance but Mr. Wakefield finds similar companionship among the mentally handicapped kids living in a neighbors’ house.
Here’s more:
I felt the stubble on my chin. Who was this fellow? I had not even thought about what I had left behind in my law office—the cases, the clients, the partnership. I became almost giddy. There would be no more getting on the train. Below me in the garage was my beloved silver BMW 325 convertible. Of what use was it to me? I felt uncharacteristically defiant, as if I were about to roar and pound my chest. I did not need the friends and acquaintances accumulated over the years. I no longer required a change of shirt or a smooth, shaven face. I would not live with credit cards, cell phones. I would live how I might on what I could find or create for myself. If this were a simple abandonment of wife and children, I would have written Diana a note, telling her to find a good lawyer, taken my car out of the garage, and been on my way to Manhattan. I would have checked in to a hotel and walked to work the next morning. Anyone could do that, anyone could run away; he could go as far as he could go and still be the same person.
There was nothing to that. This was different. This strange suburb was an environment in which I would have to sustain myself, like a person lost in a jungle, like a castaway on an island. I would not run from it—I would make it my own. That was the game, if it was a game. That was the challenge. I had left not only my home; I had left the system. This life in the glittering eye of the prehensile raccoon was what I wanted, and never had I felt so absolutely secure, as if the several phantom images of myself had resolved into the final form of who I was—clearly and firmly the Howard Wakefield I was meant to be.
If you enjoy the short story, you may also like The New Yorker podcast of Doctorow reading John O’Hara’s short story “Graven Image,” which was published in the New Yorker in March, 1943. In addition to reading O'Hara's work, Doctorow discusses the story with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.
O’Hara’s story can be found in the Modern Library Classic’s “Selected Short Stories of John O’Hara.” Doctorow’s most recent novel is “The March” and he also wrote one of my all-time favorite books, “Ragtime.”