The eleven stories in Garen Drussai’s “Triptych” tell us one thing regarding her Forteanism: she left that philosophy behind, even as she continued her interest in other topics. A couple of the stories reiterate her pacifist stance—in particular, “Selection,” which concerns an Earth driven to near destruction, saved only when a race of aliens came and put the remaining humans on reservations. While they tried to rebuild civilization with the peaceful types, the rest were divided by races and kept entertained by violent pastimes. The stories also emphasize the power of imagination. For example, in “The Smell of Ice Cream” merely a whiff of the dairy dessert make a couple remember a bad day; in “Touching,” a lonely man finds satisfaction in his ability to, well, touch. And in “Caring,” a sensitive girl wills herself to become a dying bird when after she fails to save a broken-winged seagull.
The stories reflect, broadly speaking, a liberal attitude. Even the most reactionary (and predictable), “The Fifth Window,” about a man in long ago China trying to arrange his marriage, is liberal in the sense that, as Drussai explains in the introduction, she tried to understand the man in the context of his time, not measured against some timeless ethics. Others are more obviously so: “Leopardus,” for instance, concerns a woman who comes to hate what fur represents.
But her critics would still probably take exception at her vision of women. She mentions in the introduction that women are essential to civilization—but makes the argument in essentialist terms, seeing women not as potential explorers, say, but as those who build churches and hold societies together. The four hundred page novel which she wrote was about a pioneer woman, “Harriet” and one vignette makes it into the thesis as the story “snare.” Harriet turns out to be a selfish hedonist, who resents her husband, hates her children, has an affair, but cannot find it in herself to feel anything but trapped. The main character in “Knowing It All” is a woman who relies on the help of men to make her way through the world.
The stories reflect, broadly speaking, a liberal attitude. Even the most reactionary (and predictable), “The Fifth Window,” about a man in long ago China trying to arrange his marriage, is liberal in the sense that, as Drussai explains in the introduction, she tried to understand the man in the context of his time, not measured against some timeless ethics. Others are more obviously so: “Leopardus,” for instance, concerns a woman who comes to hate what fur represents.
But her critics would still probably take exception at her vision of women. She mentions in the introduction that women are essential to civilization—but makes the argument in essentialist terms, seeing women not as potential explorers, say, but as those who build churches and hold societies together. The four hundred page novel which she wrote was about a pioneer woman, “Harriet” and one vignette makes it into the thesis as the story “snare.” Harriet turns out to be a selfish hedonist, who resents her husband, hates her children, has an affair, but cannot find it in herself to feel anything but trapped. The main character in “Knowing It All” is a woman who relies on the help of men to make her way through the world.
