Long Distance (Criticism)

Criticism

Ryan D. Poquette

Poquette has a bachelor's degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette discusses Smiley's use of narrative technique, imagery, and symbolism in"Long Distance" to enhance the story's dismal mood.

Smiley has become a successful author in part because many of her works contain characters that, while not very flashy, usually elicit sympathy from readers. As Thom Conroy notes in his entry on Smiley for Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Often passive and usually sympathetic, Smiley's characters salvage self-knowledge out of the intricate histories and traumas of their inner lives." Yet in "Long Distance," a story that New York Times Book Review's Anne Bernays calls "the most compelling" of the short stories in The Age of Grief, readers are given a main character with whom it is difficult to sympathize. It would be very easy for Smiley to condemn Kirby, commenting on his selfish actions and pointing him out to her readers as an example of bad behavior. Instead, Smiley tells Kirby's story without making value judgments. As Roz Kaveney notes in the Times Literary Supplement, "Smiley's refusal to get angry with her protagonists, and the way this tolerance never becomes saccharine, are her most attractive virtues." That does not mean that Smiley has no opinion, however. In fact, by using a specific narrative style, as well as imagery and symbolism, Smiley amplifies the dark mood of the story.

The mood of a literary work refers to its defining emotional qualities, which reflect the author's attitude toward the work and its subject matter. Though Smiley does not condemn Kirby's behavior, she does work hard to show how this type of behavior can lead to unhappiness and despair. Even in the beginning of the story, before he has had the revelation that makes him regret the selfish choices he's made in his life, Kirby is not a happy man. He is emotionally distant, a quality that Smiley highlights through the narrative style she uses to describe Kirby's thoughts. In the first paragraph, readers go inside Kirby's head, while he is in the shower, and "hear" four short, simultaneous thoughts about the lack of hot water in his apartment, the abundance of hot water in Japan, the impending arrival of Mieko, and his inability "to control Mieko's expectations of him in any way." When he gets out of the shower, the phone is ringing, and when he answers it, it is Mieko, as he expected. Smiley describes Kirby's reaction as follows: "Perhaps he is psychic; perhaps this is only a coincidence; or perhaps no one else has called him in the past week or so."

This use of short, disparate thoughts in Kirby's mind, none of which register much emotional value or importance, continues throughout the story. When Mieko tells him, with regret, that she knows her sacrifice — not coming to America — could be pointless because her father might die, Kirby apologizes, but his thought patterns betray his indifference to Mieko's pain. "He understands that in his whole life he has never given up a pleasure that he cherished as much as Mieko cherished this one." He does not feel bad for Mieko, who is obviously in pain, and, as Conroy notes, "he offers her no consolation on the subject." Instead, Kirby feels "a lifting of the anxiety he felt in the shower" at not being able to live up to Mieko's expectations. Now that he is "off the hook" and Mieko's pain is clearly "her father's doing, not his," he feels he "can give her a little company after all." As this short, dispassionate style of narration illustrates, Kirby is only able to help others through their pain after he has determined that he is not the cause of it, and after his own needs have been met.

In fact, barring his drunken episode, it is only when the events of the story threaten to cause Kirby physical or emotional harm that he exhibits anything other than casual concern or annoyance. And even then, the emotions are not that powerful. When he is faced with the prospect of his own death as he is driving through a terrible snowstorm, he feels only "self-pity." He is depressed at the idea that if he died on the road, Mieko would never know about it. "He can think of no way that she could hear of his death, even though no one would care more than she would." Mieko cares about Kirby, but it is obvious from these self-serving thoughts that he could not give her the same emotional support, and, if the situation were reversed and he learned of her death, his reaction would be different. As Conroy notes, later in the trip, "Kirby calls up pleasant images of his stay in Japan in order to divert his mind from a treacherous snowstorm, but he does not give a second thought to Mieko's emotional state."

This emotional indifference shelters Kirby from experiencing the type of pain and loss that Mieko feels, but it also limits his ability to experience some aspects of humanity to their fullest, a fact that becomes clear during the conversation with Leanne at the end of the story when Kirby realizes he has wasted his life and falls into a bitter despair: "it seems to him that all at once, now that he realizes it, his life and Mieko's have taken their final form." As Conroy notes, unlike other Smiley protagonists, Kirby's "emotional trauma is not brought on by naiveté, but by indifference."

Smiley adds power to this final, revelatory scene by employing imagery and symbolism that work together throughout the story to increase the tale's dark mood of despair. The most powerful of these images and symbols are related to the cold weather in which the story takes place. Winter is a season that is often used to symbolize, or represent, the idea of death. The story is saturated with winter imagery, beginning with the phone call between Mieko and Kirby. As Mieko is telling Kirby that she cannot come to America, "Kirby is looking out his front window at the snowy roof of the house across the street." Although this may seem like merely a casual observation, the timing is intentional on Smiley's part. The relationship between Kirby and Mieko is dying, just as the world outside is going through a season that traditionally symbolizes death. Snow and cold are also often used to describe somebody's lack of passion, as when the term "frigid" is used to describe a passionless person. Given Kirby's emotional indifference, the cold weather is an effective symbol for his own dispassionate state.

Later, as Kirby is driving through the blinding snowstorm, the winter elements take on even stronger associations with death: "The utter blankness of the snowy whirl gives him a way of imagining what it would be like to be dead. He doesn't like the feeling." This thought leads to several vivid images that he calls up from his memory of people either dying in the cold or overcoming great odds to survive the elements. Then he imagines himself in such a scene. "Were he reduced to his own body, his own power, it might be too far to walk just to find a telephone." Kirby not only lacks emotional drive; he also lacks the lively spirit and lust for life that others, such as his brother Harold, possess. When Kirby finally arrives safely at Harold's house, he does not mention the bad driving conditions because, "Compared with some of Harold's near misses, this is nothing." Harold has lived an adventurous life, and even though some of his adventures "show a pure stupidity that even Harold has the sense to be ashamed of," there is no doubt that his emotional strength and vitality would help him survive a storm. The most that Kirby can manage is self-pity, which, in a survival situation, would not be enough to save him.

Besides the weather imagery and symbolism, Smiley also uses domestic images to symbolize Kirby's isolation and lack of emotional fortitude. At his brother's house, he can't bear to get up one morning to face all of his relatives, so he lies in bed, thinking. "As always, despair presents itself aesthetically." In this case, he thinks about images of furniture. On the surface, he is just comparing the various interiors of the homes of his family and friends to his own place. Symbolically, however, Kirby is weighing each lifestyle — as represented by the furniture — and trying to find one that fits him. Unfortunately, none does. He thinks of Harold's living room, with "matching plaid wing chairs and couch, a triple row of wooden pegs by the maple front door." The image is one of frontier, manly coziness and warmth. Indeed, when Kirby thinks later about the meaning of being a man, he says that Harold would define it as somebody who "can chop wood all day and f — — all night, who can lift his twenty-five pound son above his head on the palm of his hand." This robust lifestyle is one that is alien to the emotionally unavailable Kirby.

Yet, Kirby also cannot relate to the pretentious lifestyle of Eric and Mary Beth, which manifests itself in their furniture: "antique wooden trunks and high-backed benches painted blue with stenciled flowers in red and white." The image is one of comfortable, responsible stability. When Kirby imagines how Eric would define manhood, he notes that Eric would say it is someone "who votes, owns property, has a wife, worries." Kirby does not relate to this other extreme either. These thoughts leave him in an unhinged state because he realizes that even the image of his own apartment, with an "armchair facing the television, which sits on a spindly coffee table," does not bring him happiness.

The fact that Kirby lives in an apartment is an important symbol in itself. Whereas Harold's house has sturdy furniture, a symbol of permanence and stability, Kirby's apartment lacks this stability as the "spindly" coffee table indicates. When he thinks about Harold's house, he realizes that "it is the house of a wealthy man." Though Kirby means material wealth, Harold's spacious house also symbolizes the emotional and familial wealth that Kirby does not possess. Kirby might be able to buy a house someday, but what he lacks — a warm, caring wife and children to fill it — he will never have, unless he learns how to put his selfish feelings aside and care for others. As Conroy notes of the conversation with Leanne at the end of the story, her comment about Eric not taking advantage of others reveals Kirby's shortcoming, which is much worse than any flaws the rest of his family, even Eric, may have. "Though Kirby's brother Eric may be overbearing and narrow-minded, he does not value his own pleasure over the feelings of others," Conroy says.

In the end, Smiley chooses not to condemn Kirby for his selfish behavior, instead employing techniques in the story that illustrate the loneliness one risks when acting the way Kirby does. The story also ends on a positive note when Kirby "feels a disembodied kiss on his cheek," a message from Leanne in the dark that, although she does not approve of Kirby's callous behavior or absolve him of his guilt, there is hope for him yet. Even the events immediately leading up to this kiss are presented in a symbolic way. Kirby is stumbling in the dark, "unable to see anything." Kirby is in the dark because he wants to change but does not know how. When Kirby stumbles, Leanne takes his arm "in a grasp that is dry and cool, and guides it to the banister." Leanne serves as a symbolic guide to help show Kirby to the stairs — which symbolize the emotional challenge that lies ahead of him if he truly wishes to change his ways — but he must make his way up these stairs himself.

Source: Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on "Long Distance," in Short Stories for Students, Gale, 2004.

Catherine Dybiec Holm

Dybiec Holm is a freelance writer and editor. In this essay, Dybiec Holm traces the protagonist's journey toward discovering his personal identity.

At first glance, Jane Smiley's "Long Distance" appears to be a story about a long distance relationship and its implications. Kirby learns immediately in the story that his girlfriend in Japan will not be flying to meet him in the United States for Christmas. A deeper read, however, shows that "Long Distance" is actually about personal identity. Distance is both metaphorical and actual, as in the distance that Kirby needs to travel to define his own identity. Identity is a theme that runs through this story. Kirby searches for his identity, and other characters either lose part of their identity (Mieko) or clearly assert their own identities (Kristin, Anna, and Eric).

Kirby is a protagonist who often acts uncertainly or passively; who practices avoidance; a person with low-level fear; a person unsure of his identity. He cannot deal with the expectations that Mieko has of him, and he wishes the shower would wash his anxiety away. When Mieko calls on the phone, Smiley portrays Kirby's natural uncertainty in his thoughts: "Perhaps he is psychic; perhaps this is only a coincidence; or perhaps no one else has called him in the past week or so."

Kirby is uncertain of how to act on the phone when Mieko breaks down. "This attentive listening is what he owes to her grief, isn't it?" he wonders. Kirby is sure he would have disappointed her, no matter what he did, and would have failed to live up to her expectations. His own personal uncertainty outweighs the slight relief that he feels at her cancellation. As it turns out, the cultural divide between them shows Kirby another personal shortcoming that he didn't anticipate — his listening to her grief on the phone violated the unwritten rule of privacy that Japan values so highly. In one of Kirby's most revealing moments — at the end of the story — he realizes that in this unwitting, inept move on his part, he somehow lessened Mieko's identity.

During Kirby's road trip to Minnesota in the midst of a blizzard, he works himself into a state of fear, imagining all the things that could go wrong, all the ways he could die. Again, his uncertainty reveals itself: he cannot decide whether to pull off at the rest stop or to keep going; he wants to do both. Yet he still doesn't believe in himself or the essence of his own power. He is still not sure of his identity. "Were he reduced to his own body, his own power, it might be too far to walk just to find a telephone." When he gets through the storm and arrives at his brother's house, Kirby's thoughts sound extremely passive, as if he had nothing to do with getting himself safely to Minnesota. "His car might be a marble that has rolled, only by luck, into a safe corner." We get the sense that Kirby floats through life without identity — waiting for things to happen to him rather than directing his life.

Kirby's identity, or lack of it, is further tested once he settles in at his brother's home. Kirby doesn't dare talk about his dangerous experience driving through a blizzard on the interstate, simply because it could never stand up to some of the dangerous escapades his brother Harold has been through. "The last thing he wants to do is start a discussion about near misses. Compared with some of Harold's near misses, this is nothing."

Kirby may not be quite sure of his own identity yet, but he is sure of what he doesn't want to be. His alienation from the mannerisms and the lives of his extended family become obvious as the holiday gets underway. Kirby doesn't like the "sweet and savory Nordic fare" that is served at dinner. His brother Eric and his wife have molded their self-identities with a Nordic theme. As Kirby observes, Eric has developed "each nuance of his Norwegian heritage into a fully realized ostentation." All the furniture in Eric's house is "pretentious; they have antique wooden trunks and high-backed benches painted blue with stenciled flowers in red and white." But Kirby doesn't even care for the house of the brother he is closer to, and he finds that the image of Harold's and Leanne's living room is like the "interior of a coffin. The idea of spending five years, ten years, a lifetime, with such furniture makes him gasp."

The children of Kirby's extended family show a better sense of identity than does Kirby. Anna's "No!" is "glassy and definite" when she refuses to go outside and play with her brother. Kirby's self-assurance continues to waver. Instead of confronting Eric and Marybeth about their gossip regarding his politics and his life, "he knows that if he were to get up and do something he would stop being offended, but he gets up only to pour himself another drink." Drinking is one way to avoid his feelings of discomfort with himself and his family, and Kirby continues to drink through the rest of the story.

Kirby studies his brother Eric, whom he's never liked, and begins to make an internal judgment, noting that Eric is a "jerk," acts like an old man, and has put on weight. But ultimately, Kirby is uncertain of this opinion, and "his bad mood twists into him." Kirby wonders whether the definition of a man resembles the more traditional Eric or the more adventurous Harold, "someone who can chop wood all day and f — — k all night." Notably absent from Kirby's musings are what Kirby thinks. How does he define a man? Kirby cannot know, because he has not defined himself. Kirby realizes that his brothers are similar to each other and he is the odd person out: "Kirby's being does not extend past his fingertips and toes to family, real estate, reputation."

But finally, the beginnings of possible identity make an appearance in Kirby's actions. Interestingly, this is spurred by younger family members who assert themselves and are sure of their identities. The argument that arises at the dinner table concerns a question of identity. Three-year-old Kristin refuses to eat her ham and, with cognizance that seems beyond her age, tells her father "I mean it." Older Anna defends Kristin and defies her rigid, traditional father by saying that Kristin can put whatever she wants into her own body, an issue related to one's concept of self and identity. "She should have control over her own body. Food. Other stuff. I don't know." Anna asserts her opinion, exposing her own identity by taking a risk. Anna is also defending a question of identity: Kristin should be allowed to make choices for herself, regardless of her age. Anna falters under her father's rage, and this is where Kirby begins to assert some identity by verbally defending Anna and Kristin.

During this interchange, something else happens that eventually leads Kirby to his biggest realization. While Eric is angrily airing his opinions about the function and purpose of the family unit, Kirby looks at Anna and sees a look that he has seen "on Mieko's face, a combination of self-doubt and resentment molded into composure." This is a huge wake-up call for Kirby, who seems to gain an understanding of the issues women face in patriarchal social systems.

During and after the argument, however, there are still subtle hints of Kirby's uncertainty. Smiley puts careful sentence construction and selection of words to good use to illustrate Kirby's hesitance. Kirby realizes "from the tone of his own voice that rage has replaced sympathy and, moreover, is about to get the better of him." Again, we have the sense that Kirby really is not yet in control of his own identity, that he's a passive observer watching himself spring into action, that rage could overtake him and he'd have no control in the matter. After the argument, "he cannot bear to stay here he cannot bear to leave either." This resembles earlier instances of indecision in the story, such as his wanting both to pull off the highway and to keep on driving. In a way, the highway, or the long distance that Kirby travels to see his family, can be seen as a metaphor for Kirby's journey toward defining his own self-identity. All roads lead to his final, illuminating conversation with Leanne.

During this last scene, Kirby reveals more about himself and utters more dialog than he has at any previous point in the story. It seems that Kirby is beginning to crystallize his understanding of himself. Appropriately, perhaps symbolically, the conversation starts with Kristin, the little girl with a well-established sense of identity. Leanne also displays her own strong identity and her strong feelings for Kristin; Leanne has gone to some trouble to rewrap gifts so that Kristin will have a good Christmas.

But Kirby reveals that he's realized something that will lead to the key to his own identity: he's taken from Mieko everything she needed to protect herself. Kirby says, "I see that, one by one, I broke down every single one of her strengths, everything she had equipped herself with to live in a Japanese way." Kirby realizes, perhaps for the first time, the immensity of what he has done, even over a long distance. He has, without meaning to, lessened or injured Mieko's sense of identity. Again focusing on the topic of identity, Leanne points out that, as irritating as Eric can be, the identity that he projects and possesses is firmly established: "He never tries to get something for nothing. I admire that."

With Leanne's comment, Kirby comes closer than he ever has to understanding himself. He realizes that both his life and Mieko's have "taken their final form." Kirby admits the consequences of his actions, and Leanne reaffirms this when she says, "what people do is important." Smiley reinforces for the reader what the story is really about with the cadence of "And himself. Himself." Kirby has, throughout the story, struggled and journeyed toward identifying "himself," what he is about, his self-identity. Though Kirby feels that his "permanent smallness" has now been revealed, he is many steps closer to understanding himself and being more sure of himself, even if that understanding starts with a sense of sorrow for what he has done. At this point, the reader may not be sure about what will become of Kirby or whether he will ever get over his treatment of Mieko. Reviewer Joanne Kaufman, in People Weekly, calls the ending to this story "a letdown, as if the author had run out of steam." While the ending may raise more questions than answers, it is the termination of a particular road that Kirby had to travel.

In the end, Leanne does grant Kirby a sort of pardon by guiding him to the stairs and giving him "soft and fleeting a disembodied kiss on his cheek." The use of the word "disembodied" is interesting: it recalls the disembodied tone at earlier points in the story when Kirby seemed to be passively watching himself be led through life. Perhaps the usage is intended as a symbolic falling away of Kirby's passivity. Or perhaps the kiss represents forgiveness across a long distance; the forgiveness of Mieko.

In an interview in Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women, Smiley said that for her, the writing process is "akin to having three or four interesting objects on your desk and you move them around until you can see some relationship among them." All in all, this story does a wonderful job of looking at a protagonist's journey toward self-identity, with undercurrents of family, gender issues, and distance (metaphorical and literal) pulled into the mix.

Source: Catherine Dybiec Holm, Critical Essay on "Long Distance," in Short Stories for Students, Gale, 2004.

What Do I Read Next?

• In Family: American Writers Remember Their Own (1997), editors Sharon Sloan Fiffer and Steve Fiffer collect essays from several American writers recalling family members who have changed their lives. Contributors include Edward Hoagland, Alice Hoffman, Jayne Ann Phillips, and Deborah Tannen, and there is also an afterword by Smiley.
• In Joyce Carol Oates's 1996 novel We Were the Mulvaneys, an affluent, seemingly close-knit family gets torn apart after one of its members experiences a tragic event.
• Like Smiley, E. Annie Proulx is an American writer regarded as a critical success for both her short stories and novels. Proulx's short-story collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999) includes a story titled "The Half-Skinned Steer." This story, like "Long Distance," depicts a man trying to make it through a brutal winter storm in the northern United States as well as the man's efforts to deal with his family issues.
• In The Epidemic: The Rot of American Culture, Absentee and Permissive Parenting, and the Resultant Plague of Joyless, Selfish Children (2003), child and family psychiatrist Robert Shaw examines the faddish child-rearing practices from the past three decades. Shaw believes that these practices, along with the effect of the media, are largely to blame for the increase in incidents such as the Columbine High School shooting, and he offers alternative solutions to help stem destructive trends among American children.
• In "Long Distance," Eric has a Ph.D. but does not teach, instead using his knowledge of the family to write for a conservative think tank. In Smiley's 1995 novel Moo, she satirizes life at a Midwestern university during the 1989 – 1990 academic year, incorporating then-current events into the plot, which features a pig as a main character.
• Smiley's Pulitzer Prize – winning novel, A Thousand Acres, first published in 1991, recast Shakespeare's play King Lear in a modern-day rural setting. The feminist revision of the story depicts an Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm among his three daughters. The novel includes elements of sexual abuse and, like "Long Distance," examines sometimes painful family relationships.