Audition | Katie Kitamura
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My dad used to tell me a joke. I nodded and waited for him to continue. He said that he had a friend who was no longer in love with his wife, no longer took joy in his children, but who nonetheless did not want to leave his family. He only wanted to feel the way he used to feel. He asked his therapist what to do. She told him to pretend he was in love with his wife. To enact it as fully as possible, and then eventually, he would be in love with her again.
Why is this a joke? I asked irritably and checked the time. [..]
Oh, he said. Because he was talking about himself. My mom was the wife he was no longer in love with, and me and my brother and my sister were the children who no longer gave him joy.
The whole of our subjective realities is constructed through narratives. The stories we are explicitly told, especially when growing up, the stories we absorb through osmosis, by inferring what others are believing and living, and finally those we tell ourselves: I'm no good with music, I am a writer, this date went well, we are a happy family. By changing these stories, we are able to quite literally change reality. Reframing anxiety as excitement, for example, is a common tip for combating stage fright or similar performance anxieties: you aren't scared of failure, you are excited to go out there and perform!
The success of such reframing, of changing reality by changing the narrative, depends on the believability of the narrative. If it runs counter to other experiences, it's difficult to maintain. The subject has to explain away these experiences and entangles themselves in conspiracy theories. What's helpful, on the other hand, is to get your narrative confirmed by other people. Together, a shared reality is built and upheld.
In the "Diner Wink" sketch of the brilliant series I Think You Should Leave, a father in a diner reaches out to a man at the neighbouring table to corroborate his story of ice cream stores being closed when the weather gets cold. The man agrees, lending additional credence to the story, enough to convince the child that it's not the father deciding against ice cream, but a higher power preventing them. In this demonstration of narrative power, the stranger now spots an opportunity for himself: he can create a reality in which he is rich, collects classic cars, and one where his wife is still alive. The comedy of the sketch lies in the contrast between the triviality of the original ice cream store lie and the raw grief the stranger suddenly exposes.
Another example would be the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and its 1966 film adaptation. Without spoiling too much, it shows us a couple that has spun its own fairy tale and maintained it for seemingly decades, only for it all to come crashing down in the end. As viewers we have been roped in by their narrative as well, and the reveal leaves us dumbfounded and shaken.
Finally, we come to Katie Kitamura's Audition. The story revolves around the nameless narrator, a revered actress at the end of her forties, her husband Tomas with whom she leads a shaky marriage, and Xavier, a 25-year-old who shows up during her rehearsal one day. Placing an actress at the center of a story about living—enacting—a false narrative seems like a good idea at first. But more themes are attached to her character: being insecure and self-conscious, being afraid of her fading youth, and lacking artistic inspiration. She is written well enough not to be a cliché, but the constant self-doubt still makes for an exhausting read. The rest of the plot is no relief either, as it is similarly overladen with themes—jealousy, maternal instinct—resulting in a very confused story where each constituent part works against the others.
As a whole, the book is structured around the experiment of a pretend reality: part one sets it up by explaining how the eventual participants come to decide for it; part two takes place in this pretend world, which finally implodes on itself. But even ignoring where the other threads interfere and confuse this main storyline, it does not hold its own. In part one we eagerly await the characters making some decision; in part two, knowing the characters are pretending, we wait for this reality to break. Both leave us hanging too long, failing to maintain suspense throughout.
The payoff, the moment the pretend reality bursts under its own weight, provides limited catharsis. Some of the other themes play into it in an interesting way, but on the whole it's not drastic enough to counterbalance the stretched-out anticipation. It's further undermined by an epilogue, which restores almost complete order to the lives of all the characters, undoing all that's come before, resulting in a deeply unsatisfying read. That is the narrative I have spun about this book, the reality that I live in.
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