Colum McCann, the author of the novel Let the Great World Spin, did a “Talk of the Town” piece for the September 12 issue of The New Yorker. Actually, there were a number of “Talks” in the issue by fiction writers—among them Lorrie Moore, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran-Foer, and Edwidge Danticat. McCann’s piece, “Dessert,” was about an Upper East Side woman ordering a piece of chocolate cake the day after the towers fell. “It arrived in front of her, and the waiter spun away. A slice of two-layer cake. Dark chocolate. A nipple of cream dolloped on top. A sprinkling of dark powder. The woman was elegant fiftyish, beautiful. She touched the edge of the plate, brought it toward her.” In an odd way McCann’s vignette recalls Chekhov’s famous story "The Lady with the Dog." McCann is intruding into the life of the woman he observes in much the same way that Chekhov’s unhappy Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov spots Anna Sergeyevna with her dog. McCann conscripts the woman into his story just as Dimitri brings Anna into his life, extracting her from history for the sake of both his fantasy and his guilty desires. “I still have no idea—after a decade of wondering—whether I am furious at the woman and the way she ate chocolate cake, or whether it was one of the most audacious acts of grief I’ve seen in a long, long time.” Chocolate lovers, lovers of Chekhov’s great story (set in Yalta over a hundred years ago) and all those who had the luxury to hear their own hearts beating back in the days following 9/11, when the skies were overcast with dust, should take note of McCann’s little jewel.
