This book is not to be read in a vulnerable state. The problem is,everything the American novelist and short-story writer Joy Williams produces reveals that we are always in a vulnerable state,always ready to"foolishly die". If you are a child in a Joy Williams story,you may choke on bread;if you are a fish,you may freeze in the quiet of your river. Party scenes,driving scenes,scenes from a careful marriage – every situation hums with mischance and malfeasance. Outright murder occurs only in a couple of these stories,but you'll never guess which ones.
Each makes you feel an apocalypse is right around the corner,that just-punched,startled feeling that accompanies some hangovers. Normalcy is troubling. Change is troubling. Choices are troubling,as are dreams,which may deliver dark birds flying from a toilet bowl.
The Visiting Privilegecontains 46 stories from 1966 onwards,most drawn from three cult hit books and 13 previously uncollected. Anyone looking to find a bad story will be thwarted. If Williams was ever a developing writer,she wasn't publishing at the time,and you could easily gulp this whole fat thing cover to cover. But you could also do worse than begin withTrain,a nice,extended showcase of the author's social venom:a perfect poison,balancing notes of humour and horror.
Two young girls encounter strangers on a train,eliciting a barbed monologue from a man many years their senior,a lot like the famous speech in Katherine Mansfield'sHer First Ball. But in that story,the monologue is a rude jolt from the future,which works because the protagonist is a naive girl. In a Williams story,children are as children really are – possessed of limited but serious knowledge,and liable to spookily express it. At age 10,one is already tiring of the other's"effervescence";to girls like that,a pompous monologue can't tell them anything they don't know – only confirm that old men can be helpless and revealing.
Williams'stories can't be grouped by theme or demography,but if you went to a barbecue and her characters were there,you'd leave educated,chastened,sickened,shaken,and amused.
In a terrific story,Congress,a woman comes out of nowhere and says,"I used to be so afraid of losing control. I was afraid of going insane,embarrassing myself. I was afraid of getting sick or doing something frightening or dying. It's hard to believe,isn't it?"In a different story,Williams writes of another woman who,when she had been a little girl walking to school,had once found an envelope on the street with her name on it,only to find there wasn't anything inside.
It would be a stretch to call this anecdote a unifying metaphor,but it's perhaps a common animus behind these peoples'behaviours. The envelope may not contain the thing you're looking for,but still,you'd better open it. It already bears your name.