With Great Experiment, his short story in the March 31 issue of the New Yorker, Jeffrey Eugenides furthers his reputation as one of the most pitch-perfect authors writing today. The story focuses on Kendall, a former literary up-and-comer whose arc has atrophied, but it isn’t an examination of art and compromise. Instead, it’s rooted at the ground level, with concerns about time and money and health insurance—all of which Kendall and his family lack—and the sense that some fundamental inequity lies behind these unmet needs.
With small details—an open oven providing a brief respite from a fixed thermostat, a mound of laundry that expands organically—Eugenides conjures an unbroken sense of strain. Underlying the unease is the prevailing belief that normal moral codes have stalled in the face of larger, unpunished misdeeds.
The example set on high wasn’t one of probity and full disclosure. It was anything but.
When Kendall was growing up, American politicians denied that the United States was an empire. But they weren’t doing that anymore. They’d given up. Everyone knew about the empire now. Everyone was pleased.
And in the streets of Chicago, as in the streets of L.A., New York, Houston, and Oakland, the message was making itself known. A few weeks back, Kendall had seen the movie “Patton” on TV. He’d been reminded that the general had been severely punished for slapping a soldier. Whereas now Rumsfeld ran free from responsibility for Abu Ghraib. Even the President, who’d lied about W.M.D., had been reëlected. In the streets, people took the point. Victory was what counted, power, muscularity, doublespeak if necessary. You saw it in the way people drove, in the way they cut you off, gave you the finger, cursed. Women and men alike, showing rage and toughness. Everyone knew what he wanted and how to get it. Everybody you met was nobody’s fool.
One’s country was like one’s self. The more you learned about it, the more you were ashamed of.
The agonized tone seems to mirror Eugenides own disquiet, but it’s also subsumed to a larger narrative, one that builds to a queasy ending. Overall, the feeling is one of resignation, lending the story an understated, desperate tone. No one believes things are going to get better; the safe bet is that they’ll only get worse.