Nice Big American Baby (review)

Though the American short-story tradition begins with Poe and Hawthorne and their allegiance to the tale and the fable, most American short fiction of the past century has developed out of the tradition of realistic writers such as Anton Chekhov—with exceptions, of course. In her excellent collection Nice Big American Baby, though, Judy Budnitz explores the dimensions of the short story made possible by tales and fables and their intersections with realism.

As the title suggests, the stories in the collection investigate what it means to be American, both in the individual sense and in terms of our larger culture. In the story "Where We Come From," where the book's title also comes from, a pregnant woman tries and fails many times to immigrate to the United States (knowing she will likely be deported) so her son can be born there and thus be a citizen. She ultimately carries her baby for a term of four years, adamant that he have the benefits of being an American. She is eventually allowed to give birth in the U.S., and her son is adopted by an American family. Ultimately, though, as the large child adapts to his family, the fine lines between family and country are unclear, complicated by grief and love, the comforts his mother desired for him and the love she desires to share with the son she has been separated from.

Budnitz's interest in politics pervades the stories, but her politics rarely shape them. These stories are not overt responses to contemporary political issues but more investigations into how the personal and the political shape each other. In "Saving Face," a woman mistaken for the prime minister of an unnamed country tries to defend herself by telling how she became the literal "face" of the country, painted and shown everywhere, hated and loved by the citizens.

Another moving story, "Immersion," demonstrates the author's skill as a realist, as a young white girl narrates how a group of black kids overrun her neighborhood public pool at her cousin's invitation. As the narrator and the other white kids avoid the pool, polio invades the area, and we ultimately see the that narrator's dislike of the black kids (some of whom she secretly identifies with) mirrors her dislike of her outsider cousin. The narrator's racism is nothing more or less than her fear of the unknown—a fear complicated by her occasional compassion and her overbearing spitefulness.

At times Budnitz's interest in politics tends toward the heavy-handed, as in "Preparedness," in which a countrified American president with a penchant for malapropisms tries to prepare his country for an impending attack. Sound familiar? The caricature of George Bush, while amusing, is hardly fresh, even when Budnitz's story ends with her fictional president sliding down a pole to the other side of the earth. "Preparedness," though, is the exception; the political and personal complications of most of the stories are handled with more originality.

I haven't mentioned or quoted Budnitz's prose because the simplicity and precision of her writing are so compelling. Tales and fables are often notable for the tight prose with little adornment; Budnitz's writing is not as spare as, say, Raymond Carver's, but her directness makes the moments of surprise even more moving. While her prose style may not dazzle as much as that of another politically conscious writer, George Saunders, her stories engage with the possibilities of short fiction in new and gripping ways that place her as an important writer who is extending what the short story currently can do.