"Torch Song": 03/02/25

"Torch Song" by John Cheever (1947) appeared in the October 4 issue of The New Yorker. It follows the thirty-year friendship between a man and a woman from the same small Ohio town as they navigate through life in New York City.

Jack Lorey the protagonist marks points in his life with his encounters with Joan Harris. When they are young and newly arrived they have fun together, dining out, drinking out, and staying up too late. But as they age they being to diverge.

Jack, though not actively conscious of wanting a domestic life, choses one. He gets married. He takes a job. They have a child. But they also sometimes attend parties held by Joan or attended by Joan.

Through these social encounters, Jack notices how hard her life seems to be and yet how resiliently cheerful she seems through the various sick and abusive men if her life.

Throughout all of this story, though, is the narrator's observation of how wrong the spaces that Joan occupies feel. Her piece of the city, her apartment especially, is described with a similar tone to the one Shirley Jackson would use to describe the wrongness of Hill House's architecture. Here, the wrongness is equated with that feeling that a death has recently occurred.

By the end of the story when Jack's many futile attempts at a normal domestic life backfire and he finds himself sick, poor, and lonely, Joan makes one last appearance. In her black attire, her desire to care for him, the way Jack has now become one of those men who have Joan's attention, he sees her as his Angel of of Death.

As with many John Cheever stories, there's no cut and dry ending. Joan may or may not be a harbinger of death. She might just be a woman who fell into a series of abusive relationships that have taken their toll. The final interpretation is left up to the reader.

Likewise, this story sits on the Road Narrative Spectrum. John who clearly has the better, easier life (until the end) is a privileged traveler (00). His destination is the city (00). His route there / through there is the labyrinth (99), represented by how he always seems to spiral back to Joan and how each time he does his luck is a little worse.

Five stars

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