Short Story Review: "The Night of the Satellite" by T. C. Boyle

Tweet

This story opens with the narrator and his partner, both drunk, arguing in a field in the middle of the night. Their argument centers on an incident that occurred some 12 hours earlier, when they disagreed about how to react to a couple they came across in the midst of their own argument. Their disagreement over strangers’ disagreement has just gotten worse with time. The dialogue ends with his partner, Mallory, referring to him with a crude anatomical metaphor. “You’re the [crude anatomical metaphor],” he answers. “I hate you,” she says. “Ditto,” he replies. “Ditto and square it.” Even accounting for the alcohol, this kind of talk signals a crisis in a relationship. When a piece of mesh hits the narrator in the shoulder while they're arguing in the field, he believes it's from a satellite. Mallory is certain it's from a more mundane source. That it later sits on their shelf only exasperates her. The narrator and Mallory are on summer break from grad school. They’ve been together for a number of years. They are relaxing, going out dancing and drinking with friends before school starts up again. Nobody is working, because, “jobs were a myth, a rumor—so we held on in grad school, semester after semester, for lack of anything better to do. We got financial aid, of course, and accrued debt on our student loans… Sometimes we felt like we were actually getting somewhere, but the truth was, like most people, we were just marking time.” Author T. C. Boyle has a superb ability to describe time and place. He mentions mosquitos, a truck on the interstate, a glance up at the sky—and the reader is immediately in the field with the quarreling couple. He can also create mood. Mallory looks up, or fails to look up, and the reader knows something big is going on. His failing, though, is that he doesn’t tell a story, or at least not one that I see here. I found the ending especially weak. Just the same, moments in the story delight or smite reader with understanding. According to Wikipedia, Boyle had published fourteen novels and more than 100 short stories. He grew up in upstate New York and is currently Distinguished Professor of English at USC. The text of story is available at the link below. _____ Title: “The Night of the Satellite” Published in: The Best American Short Stories 2014 First Published: The New Yorker April 15, 2013 Author: T. C. Boyle (b. 1948) Source: Wikipedia _____ *An earlier version of this review appeared on another site. It has been expanded and updated for its inclusion here at myLot.*