“The Little Knife” may not necessarily be the best short story that Michael Chabon ever wrote or even the most representative of character and event. It is, after all, one of five which comprise the second half of his collection, A Model World and Other Stories. The five tales grouped together under the subheading Part II: The Lost World are all connected through the unifying device of the same family unit being the center of each story. Part I: A Model World, by contrast, features stories that are not similarly defined by any such associational linkage. Thus, in its role as one singular part of an otherwise cohesive whole, “The Little Knife” stands out as a little more idiosyncratic than fully representative of Chabon’s short fiction overall, but situated within the heart of the story is an element which can be more broadly applied across the swath of his body of work.
Nathan Shapiro is the 10-year-old protagonist at the center of the domestic drama being told in “The Little Knife.” He must bear brutal witness to the sight of his parents arguing pretty much non-stop. He is quite, shy, introspective, a big reader with few friends and no social life. On top of all that, he has a younger brother and the sibling rivalry is intensifying a result of Nathan’s jealousy toward Ricky’s easy popularity. The title cutting instrument becomes the talisman buy which this outsider living in a world forced upon him seeks to gain some small measure of control. He will use it to stimulate the argumentative nature of his parents which cause him such pain. It may be counterintuitive to the point of unconscious masochism, but at least he will finally have a feeling of control over the external forces bearing down upon him. This is heady stuff for a 10-year-old, of course, and that is likely the point of making Nathan the focus of this family drama. It is here, within this story, Chabon seems to be saying relative to his other short stories, where it all begins.
What begins in childhood eventually becomes expressed in adulthood as that existential despair over having no say even in the course of much of one’s own life. A little chunk of little Nathan can be found in Ira in the story “S Angel” who while attending his cousin Sheila’s wedding is all but sexually assaulted by a hot guest and whom he has no trouble rejecting because control over his love life is permanently out of his hands thanks to the institution of marriage and the taboo against incest. The desperation of the little boy who steals a knife as a small screw-you to the world is also found in “A Model World” at moment he opens up the cover of a book titled Antarctic Models of Induced Nephokinesis. It is expressed failed marriage of Bobby and Suzette in “Ocean Avenue” when their divorce is marked by revenge selling the priceless collectibles held so dear by the other.
These are the populating the short stories of Michal Chabon. He is not great innovator in the art of telling a story, preferring the classical approach which has worked for writers from Chekhov to Ann Beattie. He is no creator of characters made memorable by their flawed humanity like a Carson McCullers or Flannery O’Connor. He does not seek to engage the fantastical to make normal human behavior seem a little more explicable like Shirley Jackson. He simply tells stories in a straightforward manner about people living normal lives of quiet desperation. A desperation informed not by exceptional existential crises, but the everyday sort experienced by everyone who wonders if the moment will ever come when they can just get a firm grip on the direction of the rest of their life.
