The Latecomer

Jean Hanff Korelitz explores the notion of the outsider from a variety of angles in The Latecomers. In fact, every Oppenheimer seems to be an outsider in their own family, and the triplets feel this situation keenly. Throughout the novel, they all search for that sense of belonging that their family does not offer and, by the end, when they come back together, each has found their place and purpose.

Of all the triplets, Harrison distances himself most fully from his siblings. He is superior, snobbish, and often cruel. As his chapters reveal, however, Harrison’s unlikable behavior masks a deep sense of dislocation. As someone who gets validation from his intellectual superiority, gradeless Walden only exacerbates his sense of being an outsider and frustrates his attempts to form an identity. Upon arriving at Roarke, his sense of belonging is immediate, but undercut by the assignment of a remedial reading list.

Harrison’s belief in his intellectual superiority actually hides a deep insecurity—his real frustration at not receiving grades at Walden was that he was not as smart as he believes. At Roarke, and then later at the Hayek Institute, Harrison feels belonging to the point where it causes him to reconsider the very meaning of family:

[H]e found himself ruminating on the notion of family, and how smoothly the word had begun to slide over these new relationships […] and how fractured and abrasive that same word had always seemed in connection with his actual relations (234).

At the Hayek Institute, Harrison finds the acceptance and validation that he needs.

When Sally leaves home to go to Cornell, she completely cuts ties with her family, to the point of denying Lewyn’s existence, and saying that Phoebe is a cousin’s baby. She rids herself of nearly all of her possessions and adopts a uniform of “blue denim and black long-sleeved shirts” (144). With these efforts, Sally wipes her personal slate clean, and starts to build her life and identity anew. She has trouble finding belonging at Cornell, however, until she meets Harriet Greene.

With Harriet, Sally finds acceptance and purpose. She belongs with Harriet, in the picking world, and in the art world. The final step toward belonging for Sally, however, hinges on her own acceptance of her sexual orientation. Only after years of struggling to accept herself, does she find full belonging in a relationship with Paula, a professor at Cornell. In the end, Sally’s sense of belonging hinges not on anyone else’s acceptance of her, but her acceptance of herself.

Lewyn is the only triplet that ever looked for connection and belonging with his siblings. When he is rejected, however, as he is by Sally at Cornell, he accepts it and steps back. In fact, he eventually sees the upside to Sally’s denial of him, that it “meant that Lewyn was allowed to be somebody else” (207). Although Lewyn does not choose, as Sally did, to abandon his former identity in order to seek belonging, once it is forced upon him, it does not take him long to see the advantages.

After he loses the love and belonging that he found with Rochelle, Lewyn literally roams the country seeking belonging, instinctively returning to the Mormon pageant where he had witnessed the belonging the audience had felt. This leads him to Provo, where his search for belonging coincides with his increasing interest in art. Although eventually he discovers that Mormonism is not where he belongs, while there, he finds a connection to Art that offers him a new way to belong to his family. He is grateful for the journey that led him home again, and back to Salo’s art collection. His belonging and sense of purpose intersect with the family art collection. In the end, each of the triplets finds a place to belong, and a purpose. With Phoebe’s work to reconcile the family, they also find belonging in the very family they tried so hard to leave behind.