Certain American States
by Catherine Lacey
First Posted Nov 2018
Wow I even embedded an image. Consistently inconsistent, goodreads tried to tell me I read this in 2021. This is still a phenomenon I do not understand, but I know I lived not in NYC by 2021, so where on earth did this date come from?? Anyway, a seemingly good short story collection that I barely remember reading, I wish I had noted how or where I discovered this book. Probably greenlight books.
The Flatbush I think of when I hear “Flatbush” is a very long street in Brooklyn that I walk on nearly every time I take the subway into that borough. My idle assumption that a reference to Flatbush in the first story of the twelve within Certain American States might be lost on a lot of people is predicated on the assumption that it is a reference to Brooklyn—yes, it is a big street that cuts through a lot of neighborhoods, but outside of those neighborhoods, that specific metropolitan readership, is Flatbush known?
Then I shifted into self-flagellation: There are, there must be, other Flatbushes—Avenues or Streets or Boulevards appended—in other cities. Is my unconscious assumption that it was my Flatbush simple narcissism?
Well, yes, he did remember at least once moving her shoes from the living room to the closet while she was away, an incident that sparked their first serious fight, which ended with her storming out and being gone for half the night, coming home near dawn, at first not telling him where she’d been, then confessing that she’d just been at that diner on Flatbush, drinking bad coffee and writing something that she was sure was terrible, but by the next morning they had the good sense to make fun of this fight, both of them accepting some weight of the blame so it could be lifted, though perhaps neither of them actually believed they’d been in the wrong.
Later, no, I would see that it was the Flatbush of New York City: a number of stories in Certain American States are set in the New York that I know and love, the New York of middling affluence, of hope and transition and internal errors, cosmetic scars that cannot dig deeply enough for permanent damage. Stories of relative hardships, of ennui unmoored from deadly consequences of aimlessness. No threat of survival within these certain American states, only danger to potential, to the lack of the stunning success that was promised, a failure to reach the "better off than your parents' generation" fealty to which we were sworn.
Everything is so specific, so lived in. Nostalgia drips from pages sodden with the aimlessness of driving—a suburban necessary luxury jettisoned decades ago by those of us that sold our cars for a subway card—present in at least two stories. Flip the page, and the casual sociopathy of law students confronting an adjunct with self-importance and utilitarian arguments opened in me the self-inflicted wounds I had forgotten outside of Bar Association dues and student loan reminders. For all the literary-minded once-and-future lawyers, these pages will dredge up wads of hubris so thick one might almost choke on it.
The bits and pieces of leaving your, well, bits and pieces for other people to take yanked me out of the past and back into the present, when books and chairs and tchotchkes flitted from the street into my life:
<blockquote>My neighborhood is one of those where you can leave all manner of things to be taken, leave things on stoops or flung over shrubs, leave household crap or books stacked on curbs, what have you, what has anyone—and passersby will take these things.</blockquote>
I would not have taken this photo had I not read the above passage that very morning:
And, well, I can’t say it better than the picture. This cannot be a phenomenon unique to Park Slope, but it is ubiquitous here in a way I’ve never experienced elsewhere:
So I folded the clothes in stacks and stacked the stacks on the steps, draped the coats on a fire hydrant, lined the shoes at the street, and left a sign: PLEASE TAKE. Two days, no rain, everything gone. Piece by piece, then a van came.
Certain American states, sure, but New York City, but Brooklyn, above all.
Short stories are not my thing. Within Certain American States, each distinct story is almost a change in circumstance for the same core narrative voice—a “what if” scenario for a particular essence rather than a brand new experience to parse. Far from being a negative, this makes each chapter flow into and out of the reader without the harsh breaks necessitated by vast tonal shifts. And while I—Brooklyn-based and literature-adjacent—likely found more to connect with than a reader from uncertain other American states, there is life here no matter which street “Flatbush” brings to mind.