The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (short story)

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"The Largesse of the Sea Maiden"
Short story by Denis Johnson
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Publication
Published inThe New Yorker
Publication dateMarch 3, 2014

"The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" is a short story by Denis Johnson. The work appears as the lead story in Johnson's short story collection of the same name, published posthumously by Random House in 2018.[1]

Story structure[edit]

"The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" is the lead story, from which the collection The Largesse of the Sea Maiden takes its title.[2][3] The work is presented in a series of 10 individually titled "vignettes" or "anecdotes", each several pages in length. These vignettes are narrated by a man of "late middle-age", the advertising agency man, Bill Whitman.[4][5][6]

Vignettes[edit]

Silences

A middle-class couple, Bill Whitman and his wife Elaine, invite a few suburbanite pairs and singles to a dinner party at their home. The self-complacent guests exchange stories about "the loudest sound" they ever heard. A young war veteran remarks in passing that he lost a leg while serving in Afghanistan. When a young woman requests that he display his stump he assents, on the condition she kisses it. The company, embarrassed, watches as he presents his wound to her and she prepares to comply, then abruptly declines. Six months later the two are married, with the same group as wedding guests.[7]

Accomplices

Bill recalls a dinner that he and Elaine attended years before at the home of his former ad agency boss Miller Thomas and his wife Francesca. The couples freely imbibe fine liqueurs. Inebriated, the two men engage in drunken tests of physical strength, with the encouragement of the women. Miller removes an expensive painting by Marsden Hartley from the wall, and in a gratuitous demonstration of his right to dispose of his own property, thrusts the artwork into the fireplace where it burns to ashes.[8]

Ad Man

Whitman, a former New York City producer of TV commercials, now writes brochures for resorts in San Diego. He regrets his lost youth, and suffers from mild memory loss and back pain. His personal secretary, Shylene, attempts to raise his spirits by accompanying Whitman to a company event where he is presented with an award for an animated commercial. Whitman escapes to a local museum where he witnesses a group of mentally disabled adults he terms "zombies, , but good zombies, with minds and souls..." He has an appointment with his chiropractor, where the staff is dressed in Halloween costumes. Whitman remarks: "The masquerade continues."

Farewell

In his kitchen, Whitman answers the telephone. The caller is his first wife, Virginia, or Ginny. She informs Whitman she is dying from cancer. "Ginny" seeks a reckoning with him, contingent upon his acknowledgement that he abused her decades ago, so she can die without bitterness. Whitman is gripped with anxiety when he suspects that this is actually his second wife, Jennifer, nicknamed "Jenny", rather than "Ginny". When Whitman puts her on hold the woman hangs up. Whitman realizes that his apologies would serve either of his former spouses, as "both sets" of his abuses "had been the same."[9][10][11]

Widow

An investigative journalist, Tom Ellis, conveys a curious story to Whitman. Ellis interviewed a convicted murderer, William Donals Mason, on death row. Mason informs Ellis that during his incarceration, a cousin of a fellow inmate, married Mason (identified merely as Mrs Mason). During their marriage, she improved Manson's literacy and comforted him in his last weeks before his execution. Ellis meets the widow, and discovers she has always been a sex worker. She presents herself in the nude during the interviews. Ellis and the widow are sexually attracted, and the journalist regrets not pursuing a relationship with her.

Orphan

Whitman attends a memorial service for his recently deceased friend and painter Tony Fido, a case of suicide. Whitman is dismayed at the news. Fido, an excentric painter, created religious-themed works including lurid depictions of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. Whitman recalls Fido's improbable encounter with the 22-year–old Caesarina, through the chance discovery of her recently deceased husband's cell phone, which the spouse lost in a fatal car crash. The forty-something Fido personally delivers the phone to the young widow.[12]

Memorial

During the memorial service for the deceased Tony Fido. Whitman learns that the attendees are almost entirely strangers to one another. Whitman gathers a few details about Fido's personal history (his mother also committed suicide). Whitman reaccesses Fido's often bizarre pronouncements, now appearing to him as "ominous, prophetic." An attendee bestows a huge binder of Fido's mother's recipes on him, informing the astonished Whitman that Fido "spoke very highly of you" and considered Whitman his best friend.[13]

Casanova

Whitman arrives in New York City to collect a medallion at the American Advertisers Awards. He is in good spirits, and reminisces about his early career in advertising. While suffering a restroom stall from indigestion, he is propositioned for sex by a note from a man in adjoining stall. He ignores the note. When Whitman emerges, he recognizes a former colleague at the wash stand, Carl Zane, and greets him. The man informs him that he is Marshall, Zane's son. The elder Zane is deceased. Whitman, unable to grasp Zane's passing, remarks to the departing son, "Tell your father I said hello."[14][15]

Mermaid

Whitman retires to this hotel room after the award ceremony. He rises from his bed at 1:00 am to walk the city, blanketed in snow. Whitman delights in observing the denizens of the night, In a tavern he has a strange and moving encounter with a weeping woman who informs him "I am a prisoner here."[16]

Whit

The nearly sixty-three year old Whitman reports with satisfaction the most notable advertising creation of his career, a highly effective 30-second animation depicting a bear and a rabbit promoting a banking chain. The production is his claim to fame in the industry. Whitman notes his satisfactory marriage with Elaine: "We've gotten along." His two grown daughters he rates as "harmless citizens." Whitman has made his peace with the quality and quantity of his life: "I note that I've lived longer in the past, now, than I can expect to live in the future..."[17][18][19][20][21]

Publication history[edit]

"The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" was originally published in The New Yorker on March 3, 2014. The story appears as the title piece in Johnson's posthumously released volume of short fiction The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (2018).[22][23]

Critical assessment[edit]

"The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" opens Johnson's volume of short fiction of the same name, and as such, it sets the tone for the stories that follow.[24] Critic Gavin Corbett emphasizes the significance of Johnson's placement of "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" in the volume: "This is the first story in the book and, thematically, the keynote."[25] Social commentator Sandy English considers "Largesse of the Sea Maiden" as "the most effective piece in the collection" and notes that the "self-indulgent free-for-all" that characterized Johnson's short stories in the collection Jesus' Son (1992), are largely absent here.[26]

J. Robert Lennon also recognizes the change in outlook that "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" signals:

These vignettes set the tone for the longer stories to come; they invite the reader to observe without judgment extremes of personality and behavior. There is also the gentleness of the adman's narration, which carries over into the rest of the [collection of stories]; the mature Johnson, while still preoccupied with characters downtrodden, marginalized, angry, and insane, has come to view them with a greater sense of compassion.[27]

Critic Kevin Zambrano issues this caveat: "If a Jesus' Son fan picks up [the collection] The Largesse of the Sea Maiden looking for more of the same, "The Largess of the Sea Maiden" will thwart that expectation, both in its cobbled form and morose content."[28]

Footnotes[edit]

  1. ^ Domestico 2018: "Johnson died last year, and the posthumously published The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is his first story collection since Jesus's Son."
  2. ^ Corbett 2018: "This is the first story in the book and, thematically, the keynote."
  3. ^ Gold 2018: "...the collection's lovely title story..."
  4. ^ Zambrano 2018: "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden," which opens the collection, isn't a story so much as a series of vignettes, each with its own cryptic title..." And: "...anecdotes..."
  5. ^ Lennon 2018: "...vignettes..."
  6. ^ Corbett 2018: "...late middle-age..."
  7. ^ English 2019: "At a party, people talk about the loudest sound they've ever heard. An amputee at the party who lost his leg in the war in Afghanistan asks a woman, a fellow guest, to kiss his stump. She later marries him."
  8. ^ English 2019: "...a fellow adman burns an original painting by Marsden Hartley in a fireplace. None of his guests moves to stop him."
  9. ^ Lennon 2018: "A phone call from a dying ex-wife results in an emotional apology... but which ex-wife was it, the one named Ginny, or the one named Jenny?"
  10. ^ English 2019: "...Whit receives a call from an ailing ex-wife, asking him to apologize for his "crimes" in the marriage. Whit is willing, but not clear which of his two ex-wives is speaking. He apologizes because the crimes are likely the same in both cases, and his ex-wife can die comfortably."
  11. ^ Giraldi 2018: "On the phone with either his first or second ex-wife — he isn't sure — he admits: 'I suddenly didn't know which set of crimes I was regretting.'"
  12. ^ English 2019: "The narrator tells the story of an embittered religious painter friend, Tony Fido: 'This period...coincided with an era in the world of my unconscious, an era when I was troubled by the dreams I had at night. They were long and epic, detailed and violent and colorful….'"
  13. ^ English 2019: "Whit meets Tony's friends at a memorial, but none of them know each other. They assume that he knew the dead man best, when, in fact, Whit feels that he knew him only a little. Whit is bequeathed a cookbook of the artist's mother's recipes that documents a fall into alcoholism."
  14. ^ Gold 2018: "Later, at the American Advertisers Awards in New York City, the narrator mistakes the son of a man he used to work with for his father, but momentarily forgets this lesson and tells the son to say hello to his father anyway, as they part ways."
  15. ^ Zambrano 2018
  16. ^ Gold 2018: "After that the storyteller goes walking through the city, "snow six inches deep," and eventually follows the wafting tune of a piano into a bar, where he listens to a woman tell him her troubles."
  17. ^ Corbett 2018: "In the title story, an advertising copywriter, Bill Whitman, who has "lived longer in the past, now, than I can expect to live in the future", surveys episodes of his recent past."
  18. ^ Gold 2018
  19. ^ Zambrano 2018
  20. ^ Lennon 2018
  21. ^ English 2019: "Whit, an artist in his own way (at one point he describes and ponders the success of the ad that made him famous), relates several incidents seemingly connected by coincidence."
  22. ^ Johnson, Denis (February 23, 2014). "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden". The New Yorker. Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  23. ^ Zambrano 2018: "Originally published in the New Yorker, "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden," which opens the collection, isn't a story so much as a series of vignettes..."
  24. ^ Lennon 2018: "These vignettes set the tone for the longer stories to come..."
  25. ^ Corbett 2018
  26. ^ English 2019: "In Largesse of the Sea Maiden, the world, on the surface, is more stable than in either Jesus' Son or Tree of Smoke. Rather than a self-indulgent free-for-all, or a devastating war, there are in these stories the confines of jobs, rehab centers, even—perhaps symbolically—prison..." And: "The most effective piece in the collection..."
  27. ^ Lennon 2018
  28. ^ Zambrano 2018

Sources[edit]

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