“Joshua Karabish”
The title character of this story is a poet who expresses a strange ambition regarding the trajectory of fame he seeks. He dreams of reaching old age after having composed enough fine examples of verse to be worthy of publication, but the route to that publication would be to “pretend they were written” by a dead poet that he’d discovered. Ironically, that kind of does turn out to be story only it is Joshua who dies young and has his poem “discovered” by his plagiarizing friend, the narrator.
Thematic Irony
The controlling thematic irony of the entire collection is previewed in the author’s prefatory introduction quite explicitly. He locates this foundational irony specifically within the first-person narrators who tell each of the stories. They are all, each and every one, the author declares, “a portrait of torment” who inevitably becomes a victim of his own personality because he destined to suffer. The irony here is that these narrators are destined to suffer for their actions whether those actions actively seek to good, seek to do harm, or even seek to avoid doing anything altogether.
Observational Irony
All of these narrators are at heart voyeurs content to observe the lives of others. This shared of watching leads to the occasional ironic comment that is derived from casting aspersions upon those being observed:
“Her son, Matthew, was also utterly nondescript. A good fit for any job: hamburger-flipper, health-insurance agent, congressman.”
The Plagiarist
One of the finest examples of the ways in which the characters suffer ironic torment is demonstrated through the narrator of “Joshua Karabish.” He is the friend who steals the title characters poems after Joshua’s premature death and, after putting his own name on them, wins a competition with a nice little monetary reward. He is overcome by guilt at gruesome act of plagiarism, however, and actively seeks to find redemption though the forgiveness of Joshua’s mother. This proves to be the location of his torment not because she withholds his redemption, but because she fails to agree that his actions were bad enough to warrant redemption.
The Underlying Irony
That the narrators are all gripped by their role of observer over others around them is fundamental to the structural unity of the stories as a collection. Although the voyeuristic impulse is sometimes expressed in less direct ways in a few stories than in others, the foundation of this unifying element is that these are isolated and alienated people finding some level of interest in their meaningless lives by peering into the privacy of others. The irony is that the people being spied upon also happen to lead fairly uninteresting lives that fail to rise to the level of must-see entertainment even at their peak moments of conflict.
