Your Duck Is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg (June 2019)
Deborah Eisenberg’s most recent short story collection helped me understand why I immediately tried to get my hands on her newest book despite having spent no time eagerly anticipating the release – I enjoyed the writing quite a bit but I’m struggling to recall many specific details that I liked about her stories. As always, I feel my pseudo-criticisms are self-indictments; she is a master of a form that I’m in a constant (losing) battle to fully understand.
This collection was essentially a series of meditations about aging and the changes brought on by the process. One thought that resonated with me was about how the only true act of ownership is leaving. As we age, we have better control over our circumstances and therefore have less reason to leave anything. However, this might lead us toward developing a lack of agency over life – we drift from the people we’ve known, for example, and rail against it, but underlying the loss is our own sense of impracticality that prevents us from rearranging everything just to keep in touch.
Eisenberg suggests that we make trades with wherever we occupy – a place takes a little from us and we take a little from the place. She builds on this truth later, noting that being forced to wait is an adult condition (I would edit this – I call waiting the adult condition). When we arrive in a place, we do so with certain needs the place will meet, and we simply wait there until either those needs are met or our next needs emerge. Trying to put someone or something out of mind, for instance, is a waiting activity – forcible removal is only going to leave a hole that needs filling. The desire for others to change is the same – we always want someone to be a little different but all we can do is wait until it happens (or even better, until we change).
I liked her insight that older generations cannot relate to younger folks due to certain assumptions about daily activity. There’s something about waiting in this, as well – I notice that a lot of older people struggle to figure out that most of the younger people in their lives are, as adults, already waiting, and likely more so than their elder counterparts. The idea of youthful vigor is probably more myth than fact – it doesn’t take a long time on this planet to figure out that the more you try for something, the less likely it seems you will get it.
One up: The second major theme I pulled out of this collection was about exhaustion and the ways we tire ourselves of our own lives. For many, exhaustion discourages them from figuring out how to improve their condition, possibly because fatigue quickly becomes part of a cycle: recovery, then exhaustion again, then more recovery, and so on.
People can drain themselves not just through physical work but also by mental anguish, especially if they worry when they can do nothing. The most draining thing is pretending to be yourself by allowing the sum of what others see to represent all of your true self. Being seen by others for factors we have little control over is a great path to self-doubt and this becomes yet another discouragement for improving ourselves.
One down: Tough thought coming up – language and conversation gave people the tools to bully each other. True enough, but I don't fully buy it - I’m sure that wordless concepts like weapons, intimidation, and brute strength were also effective.
Just saying: Of these stories, I liked ‘Merge’ the best (and thought it held up well on my second read). ‘The Third Tower’ reminded me of Amanda Stern’s Little Panic and I had to conclude that maybe Stern’s memoir was better. I wonder if this is the biggest challenge to short fiction – when the same story happens in real life, the potential of the skilled nonfiction work is always greater than the fictional account.
