The Eighth Day by Max Apple, 1983
The magic trick:
A narrator who recasts his fairly serious story with a wink and a chuckle
Imagine sitting down to write a story that has love, humor, high-jinx, religious satire, and an underlying anger.
Well, that’s what young Max Apple did back in the early 80s.
The key thing, I think, is the gap between the narrator’s tone and his actions. The narrator tells the story to the reader with a kind of “Can you believe this woman?” gleam in his eye. His girlfriend has a thing for primal therapy, loses interest in it after awhile, but still wants him to drive to Indiana to learn more about his circumcision from the rabbi who did the job way back when.
All for his own self-knowledge and mental health. The narrator gently plays it for laughs with us. But his character in the story – the story he’s telling us – follows her suggestions every step of the way. He might find it a bit amusing as a storyteller, but as a part of the actual story, he’s all in.
It creates a blend of humor and drama that works really well.
And that’s quite a trick on Apple’s part.
The selection:
“I’m not all that into primal therapy anymore,” she said as we started down the interstate. “You know that this is for your sake, that even if you don’t get back to the birth canal this circumcision thing is no small matter. I mean it’s almost accidental that it popped up in primal – it probably would have affected you in psychoanalysis as well.”
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