July 21, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments
I think I was twenty-three at the time, having a ginger ale with Kaylie Jones and Nick Mamatas, talking about my favorite books. We went through the list: The Death of Artemio Cruz, Rosa, Rules of Attraction, Notes from Underground, The Great Gatsby, Tell Me a Riddle, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A Moveable Feast, Portnoy’s Complaint. Mamatas picked up on the theme throughout. It seemed I preferred narratives that had, what he called, “alienated monologues.” After some thought, I realized he was probably right. Not all the books used the techniques, but a fair share of them did. I think what draws me to them is those unique voices, how the the writers create a person out of nothing but words, and they still fascinate me, which is what makes “Here is a Place to Be” by Joseph Graham such a disappointment.
I don’t remember where I read it, maybe Gardner’s Art of Fiction, but there was a comparison of two different first lines from Melville. One was a novel that wasn’t very successful or good, according to the author; the other was from Moby Dick. The lines showcased the importance of establishing a strong voice from the get-go, as Ishamel does in one, simple sentence, compared to the other, which takes several lines to convey almost nothing. “Here is a Place to Be” falls into the latter category: “Todd holds me under.”
I’ll admit that this sentence introduces a problem, an urgent one for the character, but it’s the kind of problem we often find in bad prologues to bad genre novels. It’s meant to create excitement and concern, but how can the reader feel for something he or she knows so little about? Who is being held under water? How did they get here? Why? These questions are raised, but their answers are so delayed, it’s a struggle to reach them. It doesn’t make the story more interesting because we’re not invested. Instead, it feels dishonest, a cheap trick to capture our attention. And what’s worse is that the following sentences fail to clarify much of anything, choosing to focus on the immediate details of the protagonist’s surroundings, descriptions of the water and the muscles of Todd’s forearm like “snakes slithering beneath his skin.” I will give the author credit though. It’s good imagery which befits Todd’s character. It is a shame then that more of that craftsmanship didn’t spill over to the rest of the story.
The body of the narrative is the protagonist’s psuedo-stream-of-consciousness thoughts as he dies in the unknown body of water, where we get a full taste of that “alienated monologue,” and the results are disappointing at best.
The first thing that stands out is the style. It lacks variety. Most of the sentences are around the same length with the average size of about fifteen words long. There are, of course, a few sentences on the beefy side, but on the whole, they mostly look and sound the same. Even in construction the style seems one note. Graham seems only capable of writing typical noun-verb clauses and tries to use conjunctions or fragments to vary the rhythms (though there are a total of three imperatives early on). Graham writes:
I am in the business of forgetting. I am in the business of creating. Todd tells us our whole lives are a work of plagiarism, all of it is derivative. He tells us that there are two ways to make a difference in this world. He says one way just happens to be a whole lot easier than the other. He has us all read Oliver Twist, as if we are his students, his children. He tells us that he is our Fagin. I never read the book so I have no idea what he means.
The repetition and use of parataxis here doesn’t enhance but detracts. Aren’t there other forms of sentences, other rhetorical techniques at your disposal? So why use only one? Now, the case could be made that the prose is meant to feel deadening, as a reflection of the character’s state of mind, and I’ll grant you that. However, I don’t know that anaphora and repotia is the best way to do it. Those first two sentences are meant to be read to together as the reader should notice the repetition, yet Graham uses a period over a colon, which seems like a mistake, making the prose disjointed and cumbersome. Wouldn’t that do a better job establishing their connection? I know it seems nitpicky, but these things are important. They’re the invisible part of writing, what lulls the reader into the fictive dream as they unconsciously process the story’s theme. Here, the style is impeding that process.
Furthermore–and this is far less excusable–the story seems purposely vague. I understand that this is a character study, a portrait of Todd and his little cult of personality, but just because it’s using an irregular form does not mean shouldn’t be crafted for clarity or unity. The details of the narrator’s life in the cult lacks specificity of its events, focusing instead on the insignificant.
For example:
We whisper about his age sometimes. We think he is about forty. He’s got this violent grin, and the minute he meets anyone he can tell exactly what they want and how much they are willing to give in return. He plays jangly pop songs on his electric guitar, flakes of blue paint chipping away from the body of the guitar as he twists and swivels his feet around the compound, singing, a high-pitched squeal. He tells us that he found the guitar in a dumpster behind a church. The guitar is missing two strings now and I remember when he showed me the bodies of the two boys in the back of his trunk. Deep, red lines circling their throats, pale skin. He squeezed my shoulder when I was on my knees vomiting into the toilet. He told me there were only four strings left on the guitar.
Graham is more interested in local color than rendering an accurate and comprehendible idea. When you’re writing in such a limited form, why bother with lengthy descriptions? Furthermore, this cult is so ill-defined. Why exactly does Todd kill these kids? What’s his master plan? We’re really not given the right information here. If the point of the piece is draw Todd as a person, why isn’t he depicted as little more than a slightly benevolent psychopath? Or is it show the types of people who can succumb to such “safety,” like the narrator? Worst of all, the story doesn’t answer any of the questions it raises.
Even the ending is ellipitical and forced. As the narrator drowns, he says, “for the first time in a long time I feel clean.” Why exactly? Because his suffering is over? Because he has graduated as a “Lost Boy”? And what’s with the Oliver Twist reference? Is that supposed to enhance our reading of the text, some insigificant allusion, put there to parallel a similar situation without any of the context to clarify?
This story is a frustrating one to say the least, and I wouldn’t say that’s a good thing. The characters aren’t well-developed here, and the narrative seems needlessly framed by the narrator’s death. Sure, you might say that people are ultimately unknowable, but fiction attempts it nonetheless. The problem with this one is that it doesn’t bother to try.
July 19, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments
I was introduced to Spartan via Twitter. I’m not sure how exactly, but I’m glad I was. The magazine’s aesthetic is clean and sparse, both in prose and in design. It’s clear the editors want to put the stories at the fore, and that’s an approach that is much appreciated, not too mention rarer than ever.
One of the stories I read was “Going, Going” by Anton Rose. It’s a slice-of-life, maybe a little over one-thousand words, and for the most part, it’s flash fiction done well. I know I’ve been critical of the form in the past, but this story reminds me that there are people who recognize the strengths of the form, like Rose. The problem with most flash fiction is that it often serves as a good opening to a much fuller and richer story that’s buried beneath a pile of description and exposition and typically forces profoundity onto the unprofound. Most writers of flash fiction subvert the elements of fiction not out of necessity but out of ignorance as they present their trite moments of reflection. “Going, Going,” however, largely succeeds in proving my bias wrong.
At first, it seems as though it’s one man’s struggle with cancer, but quickly, it devolves (in a good way) into something else entirely, tapping into magic realism and surrealist traditions. The twist is a unique one that surprises as much as it excites.
The structure too is pretty smart. Rather than dwell on one scene for its entirety, Rose chooses to use a series of snapshots to depict the enormity of his nameless protagonist’s situation, and though there’s no real sense of cause and effect as they bleed one scene to another, there’s still an overall sense of progression.
Rose’s primary conceit, the loss of hair and appendages, serves as the ticking bomb of the story, creating a sense of dread in the reader as the protagonist nears closer and closer to nothingness.
The prose has a Kafkaesque flair to it, not necessarily in the length of sentences or the complexity of their construction, but the flatness with which the narration presents the character’s situation.
He was sitting on the toilet one afternoon when he felt an itch at the tips of his toes. He pulled his feet out of his socks and shoes so he could scratch them, but his toes weren’t there anymore. He checked his socks, but they were empty.
There’s an uncanny aura to everything, as the reader is denied access to the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings. We are left to our own devices and wonder if the character is disturbed by his metamorphosis as much as we are.
The nameless protagonist seems purposeful too. I think Rose wanted him to be a everyman-type character, one whose situation is relatable to anyone, a physical manifestation of the human condition. Rarely, does the protagonist react with horror or shock but, instead, with bemused indifference, recognizing the inevitablity of his fate, even as he watches others around him disappear:
A couple of days later he was sitting in the clinic again. The guy who normally sat to his right wasn’t there. Hadn’t been there for a while, now he thought about it. He tried to remember the man’s name, but he couldn’t bring it to mind. He only saw the chair, empty.
It’s a beautiful piece, even if a bit depressing, executed with a subtle grace. And even though it’s short, it still abides the governing laws of story. It has the structural elements we expect from fiction and succeeds in using them: It just uses a unique form to express them–which I think is what we should all strive for as writers. Experimentation is important, but it should never come at the cost of the story. They are one and the same, a part of a whole that must be manipulated as a choice, not a mistake.
Unfortunately, this story isn’t perfect, but few rarely are. The last scene feels like a missed oppurtunity, where the protagonist strips in the park and “melts” in the sunlight. I’m not sure what to make of it. There’s a sense of acceptance in the description, but we never had any real resistance earlier, making the character’s transformation seem dishonest and not earned. Furthermore, I think that last scene probably should have been the story’s fullest, rather than its most slight, and I’d probably attribute that to the story’s lack of interior. The narration is so distant throughout, and this is a place where that change would be justified and appropriate. It would enhance the overall thematic argument. I’m not saying that I don’t like the subtlety of the story–in fact, it’s one of its strengths–but sometimes that subtlety makes things more opaque than clear.
So other than those two minor flaws, this is a very good short story and well worth your time. And most importantly, it reminds us that there are writers who still partake in the tradition, even as they actively revolt against it.
July 8, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments
Truth be told, I’m not very familiar with the work of either Matthew Doffus or The Buffalo Almanack. The most I could find about the former was a poem he had published in Barrelhouse, and as for the latter, the most I can say is that I submitted to them once in the past. But that’s about all I know, and frankly, I prefer to keep it that way–at least, for now. I can’t even tell you how much the magazine awards the winner of their Inkslinger contest. But I’m trying to stay purposely ignorant, with as few biases as possible, and bring you an honest critique of the story.
“Shadowboxing” follows the life, career, and death of artist Sara Frye as seen through the eyes of her sister Anita. The story deals with themes of mental illness, youth, and artistic integrity. The most obvious and abundant strength of the story is the prose. For example, when the older sister Anita, visits Sara after her first suicide attempt, Doffus writes:
Back at the hospital, she flapped her bandaged arms at me and called me Auntie, as though nothing unusual had transpired. Dark circles ringed her eyes like bruises, and her normally pale skin looked translucent. She’d lost weight: her collarbones and sternum stood out beneath her gown. Her blond hair, shoulder-length when she’d colored it with markers years earlier, had been hacked into a lopsided bowl cut that called attention to her pointy ears.
The prose has a clarity and beauty that is rare even among literary writers. Although a simple description, Doffus seeks out le mot juste and paints a striking image in the fewest words possible. Furthermore, the sentences, aside from being lean and muscular, don’t necessarily draw attention to themselves. He’s not attempting to push his sentences to the breaking point or trying to be as elliptical as possible. Neither choice seems particularly important to the author, not that I think that those moves would improve the story. As I said, his prose is simple–but recognize that it isn’t simplistic. Just because most sentences are variations of the typical noun-verb construction does not limit the writing. It still has a clear and distinct rhythm and never once does it feel like a chore to move from sentence to sentence. Doffus adds enough variety with introductory prepositional phrases, complex, compound, compound-complex sentences, and appositives that his prose has a momentum that beckons the reader to read on. His descriptions are probably the best part of the story.
Surprisingly, the peripheral characters are well-developed too. Lines like, when Sara marries a fellow artist and brings him home to the family, “For the rest of [Anita and Sara’s parents] lives, they couldn’t understand Ravi’s stuffy, conservative suits were an artist’s affectation, not a sign that he was a member of the Nation of Islam” tell us a lot about the the parents without wasting the reader’s time. And though Sara seems little more than a manic-pixie dream girl taken to her logical end (which I will get to later), Anita, our narrator, is particularly interesting, as the first thing we learn about her after her sister’s death is that Ravi tells her not to make the suicide about Anita. However, this idea never seems to be followed up. In fact, this missed opportunity leads to the story’s overall problem: the structure and story itself.
The tale begins as Anita tells us that she had learned of her sister’s death via the internet. She says, “Like much of what was written about her, the post made up for a lack of facts with innuendo and attitude.” Yet, this idea never seems capitalized on either. There’s no real contrast of the woman the rest of the world sees and the one her sister sees, at least not in a meaningful way. Most of the story looks at things through Anita’s eyes, her private encounters with her sister. While we do have hints and reports of what the rest of the world thinks, like the French critic who labels her elfe terrible or the journalists asking questions about her at the end or the many awards and honors that Sara has been bestowed, there is an obvious missed opportunity here. If, from the outset, we’re promised a juxtaposition of who Sara was and who people thought she was in the Charles Foster Kane-mold, why is it we’re so often sidetracked? It seems like this part of Sara’s character isn’t fully realized, as though the writer didn’t know the answers himself. Yes, people think she’s brilliant and genius, but what else? That outside portrait of Sara is sorely lacking here. And Anita’s experience shows her as mostly irrational and crazy, but that, at least, has some depth to it because it is shown in scene.
Later on in the story, there’s a dispute between Ravi and Sara, an argument over a painting which he stole from her and passes off his own. This feels more like a distraction than anything else, a plot point arbitrarily thrown into the mix rather than thoughtfully considered. It might be possible to say that the theme of perception could be paralleled with Sara’s public/private image and Ravi’s theft, but again, the writer doesn’t really emphasize this. It feels as though the story doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a about who we are and who others think we are or is it about jealously in the artistic world (Sara’s second and successful suicide attempt comes after her estranged husband wins a MacArthur Grant)? Both of these ideas could have served as stories of their own, but here it only causes cognitive dissonance. Even Doffus’s choice of scenes and character interaction, while strikingly realistic, feel wedged into the story instead of arising naturally from a causal series of events. The first scene we get is of Sara as a child, when she gets a Polaroid camera. We get some nice summary, essentially a series of snapshots, that flesh out the character and show her eccentricities, but when the scene starts the conversation is banal and directionless.
Sara tells her sister about why she hangs her Polaroids with nails, “Thumb tacks won’t work…so I use nails.”
Anita replies, “How does Mother feel about this?”
“She made me promise not to hit my thumb…. Like I’d do that on purpose. That’s why they call them accidents.”
These first lines of dialogue should be of extreme importance, but instead, they only add to our confusion. If we fold them into the theme and overall plot, we have to ask, “Are we to question Sara’s death?” Was it an accident? Putting a gun in your mouth seems like a strange accident. Is it to show how Sara has changed by the story’s end? But I would argue Sara doesn’t undergo any change. She has superficial ones but not ones that matter. She’s a manic-pixie dream girl through and through from start to finish. There really isn’t any character here who makes a change, not even Anita. This is what I think does the story in. The prose is wonderful and the characters are interesting and their conversations and thoughts feel meaningful but that meaning is lost on the reader, presumably because the writer was just as unsure himself.
In short, though there are some nice things here and everything here feels cohesive and unified, it ultimately falls apart under careful scrutiny. It’s worth your time if you want a quick and enjoyable read, but overall, it’s a story that’s not worth the analysis because you’ll end up getting frustrated by the ill-defined themes and one-dimensional nature of the protagonist.