Print This Post
The New Yorker: Wakefield
by E. L. Doctorow
“People will say that I left my wife…”
A completely engaging first sentence, but I found it hard to continue reading. Maybe I was simply distracted the day I tried to read it or maybe not. Finding myself half way through the story on the following day, I started to think about Henry David Thoreau. Did anyone else find themselves remembering that house in the woods?
Okay, so maybe the narrator isn’t in the woods far away from any neighbors, but there seems to be a semblance in Doctorow’s use of descriptive language.
“Squirrels travelled along the telephone wires, their tails rippling like signal pulses. Raccoons lifted the lids off the garbage pails left at the curb for the morning pickup. If I had preceded them at a pail, they knew immediately that there was nothing there for them. A skunk each night made its rounds like a watchman, taking the same route past the garage and through the stand of bamboo and diagonally across Dr. Sondervan’s back yard, and disappearing down his driveway. At the preserve pond, my occasional swim was observed by a slick, slime-covered rat-tailed muskrat. His dark eyes glowed in the moonlight. Only when I had climbed out of the pond did he dive into it, silently, with no apparent disturbance of the water.”
And there’s even a pond. Here’s a snippet from Walden.
“This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being, shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. From a hill-top near by, where the wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven’s own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this point, I could not see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me.”
I rest my case. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying this work deserves the prestige of Walden. It doesn’t. It just seems rather obvious that the writer recently discovered the work of Thoreau, okay maybe he rediscovered them, and chose to emulate this work. I think attempting to write like writers you idolize is a great exercise for beginning writers, but as you gain the experience the New Yorker looks for, you come to develop your own style.
Deus ex machina- god out of a machine
Wakefield lacks it’s own style. This becomes very obvious further into the story. The writer has started this story and can’t seem to figure out how to end it. So what happens? The narrator decides to return to his old life of brandy clothes and rat races, leaving behind everything he may have learned on his hiatus, only because he is jealous. This little green-eyed monster appears and saves the day. I was wondering how the narrator would ever get home.
Overall, the story line is great. It’s interesting when a prestigious lawyer decides to lock himself up in an attic over a garage and grow a beard like Cat Stevens. Plus, Doctorow’s use of descriptive language is exceptional, but in my opinion the conclusion lacks sustenance. The narrator didn’t go home because his wife and children needed him. He didn’t go home to share his new-found wisdom with his wife or even tell her he wasn’t happy with the life they live. He returned only to engage in the ongoing competition for his wife between he and his former best friend. Seems rather shallow for a story about a man who leaves society to find himself don’t you think?
Read Wakefield for yourself and tell us what you think.
About the Reviewer
Katie Cummings has been writing and editing for several years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Southern Oregon University in 2005 with an emphasis in creative writing. She has worked as editor of the West Wind Review and actively runs a creative writing group online.
on this post - (1) Posts 
3 responses so far ↓
1 Chris Prigg // Jan 23, 2008 at 3:23 am
Whilst your green-eyed monster theory is certainly one interpretation, I think there is a much deeper one at the core of the story.
Rather than, as you suggest, the author not knowing where his story is going, I think it is very clear that he does. The protagonist never really left his wife. This is obvious throughout the story. He stays, watching over his family, looking out for them, caring for them, rediscovering his love for his wife.
It is when it becomes a very real possibility that his family might leave him, that he decides to rejoin his life, his family.
With this interpretation, he loses nothing from his hiatus. Indeed, what he gains from the hiatus is a new joy, a new vigor, for the life that was previously numbing him.
But, like yours, this is only one possible interpretation.
I would agree with you about the beginning, though. I found it difficult to become engaged, but once it got me, it really got me.
2 Editor // Jan 23, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Great interpretation, thank you. I can see that and it gives the story a whole new light. Sometimes it takes the threat of losing something before we realize what it was that we had.
“Indeed, what he gains from the hiatus is a new joy, a new vigor, for the life that was previously numbing him.”
I like this point of view. I just think it was possible for the author to communicate this better, make us feel what the narrator feels.
There are parts in the story where you begin to get this feeling i.e. when he is watching his wife and he can see her silhouette… just needed a better follow through in my opinion.
Thanks for sharing,
The Editor
3 Rimas // May 13, 2008 at 11:56 am
I stumbled across my first version of Wakefield at the writer’s block podcast in a reading by Andrew Sean Greer (of his version of Hawthorne’s tale). In this podcast, Mr. Greer tells us that the original Wakefield was written by Hawthorne; writers have taken their own crack at the same story since then. Doctorow has clearly done this and it the editor of this blog is astute in noticing the 19th century style in his prose, a nod from Doctorow to Hawthorne, I assume.
The three versions of this story I have read have all been about a man who abruptly leaves his family and are told in the first person. Since Doctorow’s Wakefield was published four months after this podcast, I wonder if he heard it and also decided then to do his take on it.
Leave a Comment