‘Office Hours’ by Ling Ma

Office Hours by Ling Ma, 2022

The magic trick:

Weird melancholia

Best short story of the decade so far? It’s on the short list.

I love this story. It has a great feeling of melancholy. It does this, I think, by moving slowly and turning every situation toward the quietly sad. There are no peaks or parties. But neither is there anything really horrible happening. But our protagonist is always sad about it. So it doesn’t feel tragic, but it feels melancholic.

Meanwhile, the stoy is exceptionally weird. Ling Ma write very weird so well. There is an element of magical realism in this story. But even it’s magic isn’t clearly useful or obvious. It’s weird.

Weird and melancholy. A great combination for our times.

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

The selection:

How she used to smoke in his office, back when the University allowed that in campus buildings. He didn’t smoke, but allowed her to as she sat on the sofa across from his desk. Or rather, he didn’t object, and even set out a little dessert plate as an ashtray. Maybe because it gave them both a pretense for talking longer, for the extra duration of a cigarette, then two, then three. So that by the time she graduated, she was a chain-smoker.

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