Joy Williams shows the dark side of the short story

“The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories” by Joy Williams (Alfred A. Knopf, 490 pages, $30)

Years ago when Joy Williams couldn’t locate her glasses at a speaking engagement, she donned her prescription sunglasses to read her lecture notes. Apparently she found the effect gratifying and has continued to wear them on a regular basis, day or night. This method of being engaged but obscured seems an apt description of her writing.

Williams’ first novel in 1973 was a finalist for the National Book Award and her most recent novel in 2000 (“The Quick and the Dead”) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Now in what her publishers are terming a definitive collection, one section is composed of 33 stories from three previously published collections. In the second section, 13 stories appear for the first time in book form.

The author’s stated views of the short story format give us clues about what traits she finds successful in her writing. Pulling a line from a Wallace Stevens poem, Williams has said, “What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophe.” She feels the short story form excels in “the depiction of solitude and isolation.” Indeed, short stories may be the best format for showcasing Williams’ writing because that structure allows a little breathing room for the reader between bouts of fictional bombardment.

If you’re looking for uplifting fiction to brighten your day, be forewarned that “The Visiting Privilege” is not a ray of sunshine. Bad things happen, to everyone. Destructive thoughts and actions proliferate in this gathering of stories. Male-female relationships are almost always fraught with difficulties and inappropriate actions by at least one of the pair.

Williams’ writing is dark, magical, captivating, poignant, sometimes overwhelming and occasionally disorienting. In short, it is life, in all its odd cosmic mystery. It is life and no one escapes unscathed. Couples are divorced; children are abandoned; alcohol is frequently a problem; and pets (especially dogs) don’t fare well at all. Scenarios can verge on the absurd; characters and plot lines are frequently bizarre.

Many of the stories in this collection are set in Florida, Arizona or Maine. Williams has had homes in Key West and Tucson and lived in Maine as a child, the daughter of a Congregational minister. Her stories show a keen understanding of the personae of these locales.

Several of the stories are written about children (“The Train” is a standout) or sometimes adults who think and act like children (“The Girls” who are 31 and 32 but behave more as 11- and 12-year-olds). Williams’ fictional children can be frightfully precocious or bewilderingly ethereal.

The first and last entries of the collected stories are bookends, dealing with the same characters at different times in their lives. These two stories are among the most tender, centering on a preacher named Jones (the only name given in either story), who in “Taking Care” is caring for his ill wife and his 6-month-old granddaughter “born in wedlock but out of love.” The baby’s mother has casually left her child with her parents on her way to Mexico to discover herself. As Jones contemplates his wife’s illness, he regards her as waiting “to be translated, no longer a woman, the woman he loves, but a situation.”

“The Bromeliads” takes place in the life of Jones and his family several months before his daughter gives birth. She is seen in Jones’ mind as a “thin, hasty, troubling girl with exact and joyless passions.” Her most recent passion is the study of bromeliads, a family of tropical flowering plants. She explains to her father that they live on nothing, sustained by air and wind and rain. She is fascinated by the plants and tells her father, “They must be one of God’s favorites. One doesn’t have to do anything for them. They require no care whatsoever.” These are words that sadden her father immensely.

In contrast, Jones cares most lovingly and with great thought for his wife as she becomes ill and for their young granddaughter, as oblivious to his concern as she is to her abandonment by her mother. We see Jones’ concentrated world through his eyes, alert as he is to color, pattern, season and the physical details of his loved ones. Even with sad scenes of illness and abandonment, these two stories stand out as a soothing antidote to the unsettling, fantastical realms of many of the other selections.

“The Visiting Privilege,” for which the collection is titled, centers on Donna, who regularly visits her friend Cynthia, being treated for depression in a special wing of the hospital. Donna, who needs psychiatric care perhaps even more than Cynthia does, comes to depend on these visits and in truth they are more meaningful and important to her than they are to Cynthia. Sometimes visiting several times a day, Donna “could scarcely imagine what she had done with herself before Cynthia had the grace to get herself committed.” When Cynthia accuses Donna of being part of her problem, she asks Donna not to visit anymore, whereupon a nurse informs Donna that she has lost her visiting privilege.

Amidst Williams’ dark writing will come a story employing unexpected humor, rendering the comic aspects even stronger for the contrast. Williams’ flashes of humor are often surprising in an otherwise bleak tale. In “Charity” the main female character remarks about her husband, “Richard had only one mental key and it didn’t open all locks.”

Most of the stories are abrasive and uncomfortable. The story lines are unexpected, off-kilter and occasionally absurd. But they are addictive and fascinating. No cozy read here, but razor-sharp writing lacerating the landscape of what might have been an everyday scene. The writing is elevated, even brilliant, and the reading experience unforgettable.

This story was originally published December 6, 2015 at 10:39 AM with the headline "Joy Williams shows the dark side of the short story."