C’ville Residents Stand By in “Onlookers” https://ift.tt/mhEv85e
Ann Beattie’s newest short story collection Onlookers, recently out in paperback, takes place entirely in Charlottesville, Virginia, a town that has, in many ways, come to symbolize some of the issues that have rocked America in recent years. The six stories in this collection are set on the heels of the Unite the Right rally in 2017 and subsequent removal of Confederate statues, as well as after the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.
Both the 2017 rally and the pandemic have left the stories’ characters — residents of Charlottesville, which has a reputation as a liberal bubble in the American South — peripherally aware that something has shifted. But, as the collection’s title suggests, they are merely standing on the sidelines looking on, often shocked and uneasy but largely insulated from any real implications and feeling uncertain of how to proceed in any meaningful way.
While initially I expected the stories to engage directly with the events at hand, particularly given this choice of setting and the politically fraught time, ultimately I appreciated its exploration of a population that often goes undiscussed but arguably constitutes a majority. What, after all, is the most accurate representation of a place: the news stories that characterize it or the more day-to-day look that Beattie offers, in which those charged political topics aren’t so front and center? How much are we really changed by what appear to be transformative events, and how much do we simply continue living in our same self-involved narrative, just against a changed backdrop?
Perhaps as a function of this stasis, the characters in the collection are mostly one-note — largely upper middle-class and late middle-age, with a few exceptions, and mired in their own set of struggles — and the plots tend to feel muted and meandering. Though very grounded in news and current events, none of the stories seem to arrive at any obvious conclusions or apparent shifts. Instead, its characters remain grappling, at a loss for any real answers.
The most salient character is the town of Charlottesville itself, which is the clearest through line in this very loosely linked collection. Beattie truly captures the idiosyncrasies of a place, idiosyncrasies that can only become apparent once you’ve truly settled in as a resident. And the type of place that Charlottesville is, at least in Beattie’s portrayal, perfectly dovetails with the questions she raises through the collection’s characters.
In one story, “Monica, Headed Home,” the protagonist notes about Charlottesville and its performative niceties:
It was too perfect that outside city hall, near the Pavilion, a blackboard had been erected for the townspeople to express their grateful, privileged, PC, positive thoughts, but if you wanted to ask a question about something that was problematic? Or suggest a solution? Then somebody would erase it. That was what really happened inside the liberal bubble that was Charlottesville.
All of the characters, being true residents of the Charlottesville that Beattie perceives, embody this inability to stake out a true stance. They marvel at what once was in comparison to what now is, and they gasp at the events that have unsettled their norm, but they are unable to really confront anything head-on. Instead, they continue to repeat their long-ingrained patterns, like the woman in the opening story, “Pegasus,” who responds to her realizations about her ill-fated engagement by disillusioning herself that a previously disastrous lover will swoop in to save her.
Even after their town is thoroughly shaken up, first by Unite the Right, then by the Confederate statue removals, and finally by the COVID-19 lockdowns, these characters just keep on going without really changing all that much — which, while perhaps a true observation of how things tend to go, does not feel all that heartening.
FICTION Onlookers
By Ann Beattie
Scribner Book Company
Published July 18, 2023
Paperback release: July 23, 2024
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