Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall — 𝓓𝓲𝓪𝓻𝔂 𝓸𝓯 𝓪 𝓟𝓸𝓭𝓬𝓪𝓼𝓽 𝓙𝓾𝓷𝓴𝓲𝓮, Steven Dybek reads "Miracle Polish" by Richard Millhauser ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Review of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, Nov. 1 2018 episode, ≈400 words

The story starts 4:27 into the podcast, and continues to 47:00

Text version of Miracle Polish courtesy of the New Yorker.

A new world is only a new mind. — William Carlos Williams

    Once upon a time, a man looked into a mirror and saw something that redeemed his cautious, timid, disappointing life.  What was that something?  All the telltale defects of age and weight were still there, but the message was different; the bags under his eyes were not haggard emblems of futility, but the mark of "someone in the habit of facing and overcoming obstacles."  He decides the change was probably caused by cleaning the mirror with the bottle of Miracle Polish he bought from a door-to-door salesman he felt sorry for.

    But he also entertained the possibility of nervous breakdown.  He tested the mirror on his girl friend Monica, a woman habitually dissatisfied with her appearance, "a woman sinking slowly into defeat" — there was a good reason 

Richard Millhauser, 2011

why these two were a couple.  Monica preened before the mirror, where "she gave forth a fine resilience." Ergo, it's the polish, not a breakdown.

    He put at least one Miracle mirror in every room in his house, and when Monica visited, he preferred watching her reflection to looking at her.  Monica rebelled, and told the man he needed to choose, her, or — pointing at a mirror — her.

    Mirrors, as we know them, lead a triple life. All three shine in Millhauser's story.  As in fairy tales, they show us our souls. In hurried, practical moments that we neglect at our peril, they prevent social disaster by showing correctable flaws in appearance. And in private moments, they are the premier medium for conducting the illicit love affair the self: we can be coy, brazen, vindictive, etc., whatever our secret hearts desire from us.  And we can get lost in our reflection.

    Why, you may well ask, did the man not do the obvious thing, and apply what the mirror told him to improving his real life?  He did try.  The scene where he and Monica go for a picnic is so intensely beautiful that you might need to hit the pause button to catch your breath. And yet the scene being described is completely ordinary!  It's as if Millhauser is doing with words with the Miracle mirrors do with images. Are the redemptive, transformative powers of language one of his themes?  Thinking about it must have at least been part of his pleasure in writing this uncanny, powerful story.

- µ  2018