I was suitably entertained by Sam Lipsyte's 'My Apology', published in The New Yorker on June 28, 2021. It's extremely relatable. It's so urban, so real-world, so full of the dilemma, and the nonsense of existing in this world within a society focused on social graces and people-to-people relations.
The flawed and self-righteous protagonist and narrator had to craft an apology deemed acceptable by his co-workers. He had offended them with words and in his actions. They wanted him fired. His bosses deemed his initial apology insufficient and wanted him to redraft it, be sufficiently remorseful so that he didn't have to fire him. His family knew because they had been filled in by his ex-wife Melissa. It especially affected his daughter Sophia. They all checked in with him to see how he was doing, redrafting the new apology.
Beekman and Leffler have given me the remainder of the week to refine my apology.
The problem now is all one of nuance. From a certain distance, the nuance is complex, but coherent. Close up, it splinters into myriad fragments of subtle distinction.
The events themselves—the words, the acts, the intent—are a blur, a frantic smear. A certain phrase, once quite common and, by my lights, benign, was uttered, I admit, by me. Its lesser-known and brutal associations, to which I was not privy at the time, choked the office like a poison gas.
Currents of history pushed this gas, herded it, prevented it from dissipating or exiting through vents. My history seeped into that of the offended party, which collided with the history we’d all been taught in school, as well as the revision of that history we knowing people knew, as well as the revision of that revised history, which had recently gusted in with the force of a reckoning.
The narrator listed out the whole history of apologies — of what he did and had to apologize for, and the things that people needed to have had apologized to him. Yes, the story stated what he did to his colleague to require said apology. It's almost hilarious. You gotta read it for yourself. I don't know if we're supposed to feel sorry for the narrator or condemn him as mean. It's the readers' call. Whichever way he lies on our sympathy scale, the fiction corresponds to what we experience in our lives.
I never think about people who did me wrong. I can't quite remember them or what they actually did. I don't think I've ever been offended that often. I'm not sociable enough to make horrid acquaintances who piss me off. I never needed an apology because it doesn't set things right. I simply walk away and move on. If I dwell on it, then I'll be sucked into a whirlpool of anger, vengeance and I won't have enough energy to get on with what I need to do.
We would have offended many people in our lives. I have. And I will continue to do so. It's impossible not to. To some, I would apologize to unreservedly. The others, I wouldn't even bother, and it doesn't matter that the offended think me a total dastardly scamp. Who cares. Life is too short for me to be angsty over matters or humans whom I don't care about.
Thing is, I am sorry and I am also not sorry. It’s all so nuanced. The nuance itself is highly nuanced.
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