James Elkins’ Novel of Ambition: “Stories, Like Illnesses”

“You’re lucky if your life is like a story, because then you can just watch movies or read books and find out how to live.” Beneath a blurry photograph of some spindly trees and tall grass, the story begins. “A picture lit up in my mind’s eye.Years ago, so many that it felt like someone else’s life, I stood in the yard behind my parent’s house, looking at the sky. At the air itself, I think. Its invisible currents, its white glare.” This is Samuel Emmer, the narrator, main character, and “author” of James Elkins’ new book Stories, Like Illnesses (Unnamed Press, 2026). Samuel is remembering when he was “little Sam” in Watkins Glen, New York. He’s “always grateful” to imagine that scene again, but he tells us that “I no longer know who that boy was.” It’s 2019 and Samuel is now about forty, a scientist who works for the Water Management Department of Guelph, Ontario. His life has pretty much fallen apart. His wife has left him, his alienated daughter has gone off to college, and he is…