The status anxiety of the wealthy : Beattie's 21st-century stories

As you look at the table of contents in Ann Beattie's "The New Yorker Stories," you'll see there's about an 8-year gap from 1992-2000 during which either she didn't write stories or The New Yorker didn't publish them. I think it's a time when she concentrated on novels - novels do pay the bills, and they generally are the ticket to real fame, awards, recognition - which is why it took almost a lifetime for Munro and Trevor to get the full recognition they deserve. So by 92 Beattie's incredible records of what looks like a story every month or so (or at least a few a year) in the New Yorker and a regular stream of story collections dries and withers. When she returns to the good graces of the magazine, she's a very different writer, at least in some ways: still the recognizable wit and quirkiness, the quips, the complex network for friendships and partners and exes. But her stories in the 2000s become more capacious (maybe it's from having worked for a decade on novels), the characters far wealthier, more status-conscious: one involves the typical Beattie clan gathering with all the angst that entails, but of a very comfortable, prosperous group, at which a main topic of discussion is fine wines - a bottle of Opus One becomes the totem for this story. Another about a man visiting his very successful nephew and niece who share a house in L.A. In a way, you could say that Beattie matures in these late stories, as do her characters. In another way, she seems to be exploring a new set of social anxieties, and the picture doesn't - at least in the first few stories from the decade - come into sharp focus at first. More to come.