Near the edge: Ann Beattie's stories take on a more menacing tone

By the late 1970s,after Ann Beattie had published her first book of short stories (Distortions), the stories in her 2nd collection (Secrets and Surprises) become darker in tone. From the group collected in "The New Yorker Stories," you can see this, particularly in Colorado and A Weekend - we still have Beattie's sharp wit and her wry, off kilter use of dialogue in which the characters aren't quite listening to one another, the same complex web of friendships and relationships that's sometimes dizzying. But where as the earliest stories were sometimes jaunty or even flip, this second group is more menacing - broken relations in the first group seemed to be just part of the kaleidoscopic nature of late-adolescent life, but not divorce and abandonment become highly consequential, devastating. A Weekend, for example, is pretty much from the point of view of Lenore, a young woman living with an older ex-professor, denied tenure, living in a rural outpost - every weekend former students come to visit, and it's evident he's having affairs with many of the young woman - he's a horrible narcissist, and Lenore just lets it happen, let's him walk all over her. In Colorado, after multiple trading of partners and some lots of alcohol and marijuana, a young couple head off for Colorado where they plan to stay with some equally aimless and impoverished friends, only to learn on arrival that the friends are near divorce - they're all at a dead end. I've said a few times before that Beattie's characters are lucky in friendship, unlucky in love, and I think that's generally true of her work, but in the Secrets and Surprises stories the luck in friendship is very tenuous as well - these characters are near the edge.