‘Economics’ by Aryn Kyle

Economics by Aryn Kyle, 2010

The magic trick:

Building a coming-of-age story around a lesson of privilege

I like reading Aryn Kyle short stories. My only wish is that there were more to read.

“Economics” find us meeting a fairly typical Kyle protagonist: a young woman, equal parts defiant and self-loathing about her underachieving. Here, it’s a college freshman living with her older sister.

Her entire mood is pouty. She doesn’t like much of anything, especially not her job at a cheesy local gift shop. It’s not an obnoxious entitlement. At least I didn’t take it that way. She’s an enjoyable narrator to spend time with. But there’s no doubt that her perspective in every sentence is layered with a suburban slacker’s “Can you believe this isshhhh?” attitude.

So it’s very interesting when the story surprises us by slyly turning the tables and demonstrating our narrator’s privilege. Others, it turns out, have more reason to be annoyed, if not downright hopeless.

It shakes the reader’s sympathies and leaves our narrator only further confused about identity. Not nearly enough coming-of-age stories hinge on this kind of lesson.

And that’s quite a trick on Kyle’s part.

The selection:

Alone in the apartment, I watched my sister’s TV and smoked her pot and ate the food I thought she would be least likely to miss – canned beans and frozen corn, instant oatmeal that I mixed with water and ate cold. In the evenings, I sat on the balcony and smoked cigarettes, watching people come and go on the sidewalk below, looking for someone I could imagine myself falling in love with. The boys were all narrow-hipped and broad-shouldered, wearing baseball hats and T-shirts advertising sports teams and brands of beer.

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