Grand Union: Stories
Zadie Smith
Hamish Hamilton, 2019
Review by B. H. Lake
Zadie Smith, the author of such masterworks of contemporary literature as White Teeth, Feel Free, and Swing Time, published a new collection of short stories in the fall of 2019. The stories of Grand Union are both new stories as well as previously published, are tied together by two shared threads: the problem of pain, and the knowledge that outside artificiality is the reminder of death. In a world that teaches people to escape pain rather than handle it, the characters in each of Smith’s stories must assemble their tools for coping and use them on the fly.
Clinical psychologist Viktor E. Frankl poses the question in his own book, Man’s Search for Meaning: how do we react when there is no escape from that which is outside of our control? The book recounts Frankl’s horrific experiences as a prisoner of Auschwitz during World War II. There was no time to grieve those he lost when each day was a struggle for survival. But what makes his book distinctive from all other accounts of daily life in Nazi death camps is that it stands as both memoir and psychological study of spiritual subsistence. Central to the book is his simple yet startling theory on the reality of human suffering:
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
How do we react when there is no escape from that which is outside of our control? Smith takes up this baton in her own work.
The protagonists of each story in Grand Union find themselves in struggles from which there are no escape. Each is forced to confront their pain and, as a result, discover who they really are.
“Escape From New York” is a delightful and compassionate revisionist history of Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Jackson, and Michael Jackson. Set on the morning of September 11, 2001, the three of them rent a car together to flee New York City. Marlon and Elizabeth are worthy supporting characters, but Michael is the focus of the piece. As the city, the chaos, and all that it means slip farther and farther behind them, Michael envisions how his life might have gone had he not been famous.
They make stops along the way and people everywhere watch the events of the day unfold on their television sets. When they are forced to admit that the terror in New York City is not bound to one geographic region, each of them must confront the pain in their own way. For Michael, only two choices remain—fear or love:
“But perhaps this was his only real advantage, in this moment, over every other person in the IHOP and most of America: nothing normal had ever happened to him, not ever, not in his whole conscious life. And so there was a little part of him that was always prepared for the monstrous, familiar with it, and familiar, too, with its necessary counterbalancing force: love … Marlon raised his still-gorgeous eyebrows, sighed, and said, ‘Hate to break it to you, buddy, but you don’t have much choice about it either way. Looks like no one’s gonna beam us up. Whatever this shit is—’ he gestured toward the air in front of them, to the molecules within the air, to time itself—‘we’re stuck in it, just like everybody.’”
At this point of the story, both Marlon and Michael face a moment of choice, and each must decide how to react to what is happening around them. Marlon’s choice of attitude is to face the facts head-on. He decides to be a realist and remain free from overly sentimental notions about the events that took place. Micheal chooses realism as well, but with an addition: he chooses to view the tragedy as an opportunity to wholly express love and kindness to those around him in a way that they may not have fully appreciated otherwise.
The story is magnificently written and unexpectedly heartbreaking—it mourns what might have been while remaining rooted in acceptance of the present moment.
In “Blocked,” the unnamed first-person narrator wrestles their way out of their pain and opts to live life on their own terms: it is suggested that this person has spent much of their life in the public eye and after many years of struggling to maintain an image of personal success, the narrator takes a courageous step to leave pretence behind. It comes at a cost—losing status in the eyes of their peers––but the narrator makes their peace with it:
“That’s what you get left with, in the end: a very precise and intricate sense of how you yourself feel. Which is not nothing. When I started out I had no earthly idea about that. Now I know. People talk about checking back in and maybe reworking some things and adapting others and so on and so forth but those people do not know my mind, they do not know what I can face and what I find too much to deal with at the current time. Only I can know that. It might sound a little nuts, coming from me, but a lot of people could do with being a lot less judgmental.”
The narrator knows that they have no ability to alter the circumstances in which they find themselves, but that they do possess, in the words of Frankl: the freedom “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” In this instance, the narrator demonstrates tremendous strength of character in choosing the reaction that is most difficult and costly to their outward image.
Every character in Grand Union has a choice to make. Some decide the pain and sufferings of their neighbours are not their problem, and look the other way. But others stand up and help strengthen those around them. In a world with Covid-19, it is clear that we have the same choice before us as well––the choice to offer kindness and aid to our fellow humans, or to simply turn away.
B. H. Lake is a Halifax-based writer whose publications include The Furious Gazelle, Write Magazine, and Atlantic Books Today. She spends her days working for The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies and finishing her upcoming novel, In The Midst of Irrational Things.