Tag: Kafka

  • Short Story Review: “Life with Spider” by Patrick Langley

    (The short story “Life with Spider” by Patrick Langley appeared in the February 5th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photo illustration by Hana Mendel for The New Yorker

    First of all, when I read a story that has to do with a grown man and a large insect, I can’t help but think of “The Metamorphosis” by Kafka. And I have run into more stories than I can count about men and bugs. (Kafka created a secret literary genre that no one talks about.) It’s unfair to Patrick Langley that I immediately made that comparison when I started reading “Life with Spider,” but when I finished the story, I think Langley was counting on me to do that, so he could mess with my head.

    “Life with Spider” is a story about Fletcher Hardy and his bug-like creature called Spider, even though it is not a spider. We are told off the bat that Hardy, not his real name, has given permission to the narrator to tell the story, provided that we aren’t able to figure out who the “real” Hardy is. It’s an interesting framing of the story as everything that Fletcher says and does, in essence, is told to us second hand. Several specific details are given about Hardy; who his family is, where they live, what he does, and what they do, and so on. It made me wonder if the narrator was lying to “throw me off.”

    Either way, we learn that Hardy is being visited by a six-legged insect like creature, which will not leave him alone. Hardy convinces his friend, the narrator, to help get rid of the creature. I don’t want to give away too many details, leave a few surprises, but I am sure you can surmise that Hardy and the narrator survive, as they are telling this story.

    I enjoyed this story even though it did befuddle me. I mentioned the one above about the details and if the narrator was reliable. But the big question for me about this story was, what was Spider? Did it represent something specific? Was it death? Since the two main characters were young men transitioning into adulthood, was Spider a metaphor for their transition? Possibly, Spider was a manifietation of their friendship? Was I supposed to think about Kafka? Am I thinking too hard about Kafka? And the story had a “Dead Chick in the Basket*” ending, which maybe made sense? Or maybe it wasn’t supposed to make sense?

    What “Life with Spider” reminded me of was some of the more fantastical stories from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami. Both had a sense of play, humor, and the humans in the stories react with a relative sense rationalism to their extreme situations. I didn’t need “Life with Spider” to make sense or tie up all the loose ends neatly, because the enjoyment was trying to figure out a mystery that would never get completely solved.

    *  “Dead Chick in the Basket” refers to a clichéd writing device where the final paragraph of a short story contains new information about a character which is meant to make the reader view the actions, statements, or feelings of that character in a different light. The first known use of this device was in J.D. Salinger’s short story “Just Before the War with the Eskimos.”

  • My Insurance Wants Me Dead

    A couple of posts back, I had mentioned that I went to the cardiologist, as I was thinking I was close to death because my jaw hurt and I was short of breath going up the stairs. Sure, being out of shape and having a cavity might have been the easy and logical conclusion for my ailments, but I went to the doctor anyway. Now, I wouldn’t characterize his response to me as flippant, but he did not believe my demise was imminent. He ran some tests, nothing bad came back, but to be safe, he thought I should come back and get a stress test.

    And then my insurance stepped in. Word came from The Castle, via a voice mail from a number that was identified as a “Spam Call” that the procedure that was requested by my doctor was denied. No justification or explanation was given by the AI voice that delivered this information. But, the voice went on, if I felt that this decision was incorrect, I could appeal by calling their automated phone line, or visit their website to use their automated IM chat service. Either way, I was promised that I would not have to talk to a human, and in the reverse, they created a system where the people of the insurance company didn’t have to talk me. Thusly, human interaction is eliminated.

    I find it odd, that the for-profit health insurance industry, specifically the company we have, likes to remind us that they are in the “people business” and that “our health is their business” as well. And the more I thought about it, I don’t think I have ever spoken to a human at the insurance company in the three years we have been with them.

    Then I started to think that maybe this insurance company is headquartered in one of those empty Midtown Manhattan office buildings. That it’s just a building full of computer mainframes, and rows and rows of empty cubicles and offices. That these computers make decisions based on bottom lines and liability probabilities, which in the end, the algorithm decided that seeing if my life was at risk wasn’t worth it. I was just a datapoint. Datapoints for as far as the eye can see…

    Now I have to call my cardiologist and see if he can get this denial changed. I guess he has the phone number that connects you to a person, or a better automated AI system.