Monkeybicycle Front to Back - Part 7: Valentine by Michael Czyzniejewski

Michael Czyzniejewski is a wonderful writer. I previously blogged my love for his story, "On the Other Hand," which appears in Best of the Web 2009.

One of Czyzniejewski's favorite topics is the gulf between married men and women. He often uses irreal and/or absurd devices (for instance, the title story in his collection "Elephants in our Bedroom," in which a husband literally houses an elephant in the bedroom he shares w/ his wife, then waits for her to say something about it) to expose and explore couples' miscummunication, lack of communication, as well as male insecurity. In "Valentine," a husband becomes suspicious of his wife's yearly visits to the gynecologist and goes to ridiculous lengths to assuage his concerns. Gynecology becomes a big 'ole symbol for everything the narrator finds mysterious about his wife, everything that threatens him, everything he fears will expose his own inadequacies. It is difficult for me to evaluate "Valentine" apart from the context in which I originally read it, as one of several thematically similar stories in Czyzniejewski's collection. "Valentine" is funny, well-written. I believe we are meant to sympathize with the narrator, yet also remain critical of his outlandish behavior, and in this sense I believe Czyzniejewski is successful. He writes wonderfully comic, three-dimensional clueless dudes. I feel a bit more alienated, however, by Czyzniejewski's treament of the wife characters in his stories, most of whom remain aloof, impenetrable and a bit cipher-ish. I feel a little bit depressed wondering if most heterosexual men and women really do remain this foreign to one another at the most basic of levels, and I'm also reminded of all those sitcoms where married men behave badly, and we spend the entire time yelling at the television -- "Just talk to her already!" I think what Czyzniejewski does, he does well, but I would love to see him use his considerable talents to dig deeper, explore relationships w/ greater complexity. I believe intimate relationships are just as fraught with dramatically compelling miscommunication and misunderstanding when the couple actually speaks with one another, and when both individuals are gnarly, three-dimensional characters worth getting to know.