I have been reading Joyce Carol Oates long enough to be prepared for just about anything when I dive into her work. Her latest short story, “Suicide by Fitness Center,” is as strange as the title implies. Oates, who lost her husband of over 45 years earlier this year, has not lost her touch at all. Her short story collection Wild Nights! is frightening at times, bizarre at others, and entirely without a dull line. “Fitness Center,” which appears in this month’s Harper’s, follows a lanky fortyish woman who obsesses over a failed attempt at flirtation with a married gym employee, and worries about a stray black cat that appears only “to those who will die.” She is suicidal, obviously, and decides to exercise her heart to death. The treadmill throws her off as she races towards death, and the row press, set at sixty pounds, has no opportunity to kill when the narrator abandons the machine to save Chuffer, a gasping overweight man in the midst of a heart attack. Her attempt at suicide foiled, she returns home to her balding husband, who asks where she has been “all this while.”
Within a week of reading this strange and very Oates-ish tale, I was sharing Naughty Cherie, Oates’ latest picture book about a selfish and spoiled kitten, with my daughter as a bedtime story. Cherie discovers first hand how her actions affect the feelings of others, and her behavior changes, much to the pleased surprise of her mother, brothers and sisters, and owners.
As usual, JCO is all over the place. And it’s all good.
