I'm slow to this story: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's strange tale in The New Yorker was the source of a good deal of buzz when it came out awhile back, packaged with Bynum's listing as one of the magazine's twenty writers to watch. I wrote before about how I was ambivalent about the list -- a rather unsurprising collection of admirable, talented writers -- but Bynum's name especially caught my notice. I've been circling around her work for years now, ever since I paged through her debut novel Madeleine is Sleeping during slow afternoons as a bookseller in St. Joseph, Michigan. I have long been intrigued by her work, but I've never delved in, never so much as read a story of hers beginning to end. "The Erlking" was my first.
The story moves between the perspectives of Kate, a young mother, and her daughter Ondine (who only responds to the name Ruthie). They are navigating a lush Elves' Faire hosted by an exclusive Waldorf-like magnet school that Ruthie does not attend. Kate is subsumed with guilt (is that the right word for what she feels?) about what schools she has and has not applied to for Ruthie -- and the schools that have rejected them. Also: Kate and Ruthie are not white, and Kate is consumed with anxiety about guiding her child through a world that doesn't reflect her. Kate is fixated on finding a brown doll for Ruthie, even as Ruthie gives no indication that she particularly wants one. And so we are here: Kate is playing enthusiastic host for Ruthie in a landscape filled with fir trees, kettle corn, candlemaking, and mandolins, while distracted by her own regrets. Ruthie herself is lured in and out of the imaginary worlds she is pointed towards.
This is a dense, inward-directed tale that has a surprising expansiveness packed into its paragraphs. With a disconcerting agility, the story pivots among fairy tale types. There is the one popularized from Goethe evoked by the title, of course; "the erlking" was a malevolent creature from folklore that haunts forests and kidnaps travelers, taking them to their doom. While never marked by name, this creature is indicated by a strange man Ruthie fixates on, that may or may not be an object of her fevered imagination, that may or may not be an actual predator.
But beyond this, the story also pivots on fairy tales emerging out of Hollywood (Kate believes she spies John C. Reilly carrying a guitar at the Faire; Ruthie's dance class is performing "The Wizard of Oz"), as well as the fantastical possibilities a parent envisions for their child, the make-believe of the self (see: Ondine/Ruthie), and the inner life that is unhinged from one's surroundings (dramatic stories unfold for Ruthie at the Faire, particularly in relation to the 'erlking,' of which her mother is privy to none). The story even opens with the line, "It is just as Kate hoped." But her hope becomes haunting; she never appears happy in this story. Kate's hopes in themselves become a sort of fairy tale; she believes in them, but they are not true.
"The Erlking" is also a story of partings. There is the threat implied by the title, as well as the perspective shifts, sliding from mother to daughter. While the easy, sliding perspective shifts might seem to align these two side-by-side characters, it instead affirms their disconnect: their minds are fiercely wandering elsewhere, and the small bridges between them -- their dialogue, their hand-holding -- is limited by them saying things they don't mean, or don't care about, or not caring what the other says in response. This is not to say that their disconnect is a hostile one. It is just that the fairy tales obsessing each of them don't have much room for the actual person of the other, even as they fear disappointing the other. And like any fairy tale worth its salt, this isn't merely some wavering rumination of parent-child ennui -- the stakes are ferocious.
My intrigue continues.
"The Erlking" will be published in an anthology this fall that collects contemporary fairy tales. It's called My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum lives in Los Angeles and is also the author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles. She taught seventh grade in Brooklyn for a few years and was a finalist for the National Book Award with Madeleine is Sleeping.The New Yorker, as part of her prestigious listing, asked her what she thinks it takes for a piece of fiction to work. She responds:
In answering this question I’m going to borrow Joan Retallack’s idea of the “swerve”—an unsettling transfiguration of once-familiar terrain. I’m always looking and hoping for the swerve.
Thank you to Nels, an Isak reader, for pointing me to this story and prompting me to review it.
Image Credit: The New Yorker
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