Narrowing Valley Jonathan Lethem

WIDE LOAD / "MR. BLUE SKY"

The characters ride into the story aboard a 1976 Winnebago Minnie Winnie, one driven breakneck across broiling asphalt, overspilling its lane on both sides. Though the story's characters are themselves oblivious, the story acknowledges that it is being written on stolen Tongva and indeed, the same Tongva land toward which the recreational vehicle now barrels. The story gives respect and reverence to those who came before it, which ought to be absolutely everyone, even you, the reader since the story does not yet and may never exist. Yet here it seems to come to the story, and the recreational vehicle the Winnebago like a breadbox rumbling westward on fat half-melted tires, a monster's breadbox with its bragging orange stripe, side-view mirrors flying-buttressed a full foot from its cab to make it minimally navigable. The story already occupies too much space, and demands too much attention. What the fuck, watch where you're going! Who's driving that thing? A dad in mirrored aviator shades? Why, of course. He's R. Crumb's Whiteman, he's Albert Brooks in "Lost in America,"he's the Exhausted Normative Protagonist our movie's leading man, there's no way to avoid him. Or maybe there is. Maybe one of his kids or his long-suffering wife can provide us with a marginally impr point of view, a parallax position from which to operate. Some fucking oxygen here, though it may be that all the oxygen is recirculated within the tightly sealed Winnebago. They all breathe the same air, surely. At least we can't hear the music that's playing inside: Electric Light Orchestra's "Greatest Hits," on an eight-track tape.

THE STORY'S WRITER/ "TURN TO STONE"