Joy Williams (1) (1944–)

I have not read this author before but recognize her abilities in these sentences that are both fascinating and frustrating. We are presented with a world after the apocalypse, seen mostly through the eyes of a young girl named Khristen. After her boarding school closes down, her mother disappears, and she finds herself at a retreat of sorts where we are introduced to various octogenarians who plan suicide missions against those that have caused this despairing existence. “They were a show more gabby seditious lot,” Williams writes, “in the worst of health but with kamikaze hearts, an army of the aged and ill, determined to refresh, through crackpot violence, a plundered earth.”
There is also a child judge who is frustrated trying to dispense justice for the multitudes and wrestles with the meaning of life. ( I think). But, and I thank D. Gardner of the NYT for this, there are these fragments of wonder:
“What came first in your opinion, Lola, the rabid rain or the birdless dawn?”; “Future humans, such a reckless concept”; “There aren’t meteors in meteor showers anymore. It’s just space junk from rockets and satellites”; “Have you ever seen anything stiller than a ham?”; “Something definitely had gone wrong. Even the dead were dismayed”; “That light show at the corner of your eyes is not a celebration in your honor, it’s the tumor moving in.”
“The world’s heartbreaking beauty will remain when there is no heart to break for it.” show less

To read a Joy Williams story is to devote yourself to a study in contrasts, to be challenged, confronted, unsettled.

Surreal yet grounded, bleak yet funny, straightforward yet abtruse. Many, if not all, require immediate second readings, long mid-story pauses, as well as long hiatuses in between stories. I suspect that rereading her will be a pleasure that matures with age.

I'm so upset with myself that I've not read Joy Williams before. Think of all the years I could have been enraptured by her work! On the other hand, I now have the opportunity to dive headfirst into fifty years of work by one of the best writers now living.

The stories in this collection are dark- filled with loss and a sense that any effort to ameliorate the wrongs humans inflict on the world and each other is, at best, absurd. The characters long for connection, but cannot communicate with show more each other. And yet these stories are also laced with biting wit and an absolute refusal to give up hope. What is longing after all, but the stubborn ink of hope resurfacing through the palimpsest of present despair?

Williams's word craft is impeccable. Over the course of only 155 pages, I've marked more than twenty passages to revisit simply for their economy and evocative power.

This is a collection that will support multiple readings. It's also ruined me for any other book today. My heart is full with sorrow and tenderness and amazement at Williams's artistry.

There are now twelve books on the shelf that holds the works that have most deeply affected me across my nearly six decades. show less

I like the particular way in which Joy Williams observes the world then creates her own reality from fragments of the real world. A lot of what she writes hints at the deeper reality below the surface and the further you get into this collection you sense that it’s not all good under there.

The characters are careless with their own lives and with the lives of their children and those they’re supposed to love. You worry about their future. In some cases children are treated – to their show more detriment - as adults. Oh, lost youth. One intelligent little girl, who may actually be an adult, asks herself “what is the dread that women have?” Many have this same dread, anxiety and the fear they have no proper place in the world.

In the title story, which comes last, a pastor seems to try making up for the previous characters dereliction by taking care of his granddaughter while her mother wanders in Mexico at the same time his wife is seriously ill and about to come home from the hospital. He clings to the goodness of the child and attempts to keep hope for his family and for the other sick people he ministers to. There’s no indication any of it is going to turn out well. show less