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IN THIS ISSUE
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| Book Reviews Fiction & Nonfiction & Poetry |
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ALL SAINTS' DAY
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ALL SAINTS' DAY is slice-of-life writing. It shows us incidents in the lives of a Louisiana family, the only thread between them being the acceptance of tragedy. Think of it as taking cores for geological samples. Ulysse/Russell (his name changed in rejection of the family's French heritage) has his sight permanently damaged as a child, from a beating by his father. The death of her mother leaves Doreen to take care of her father and brother. When Russell and Doreen marry and have a family, their son Clayton accidentally kills his twin. Russell, trying to run away from himself, takes jobs out of town, and Doreen, fighting cancer caused by the town's main industry, is left to take care of the two remaining boys, Clayton and Whitaker. That's only the first part of the book, but it gives you the idea.
Reading ALL SAINTS' DAY is like being able to see only what is in front of you, detached from feeling, through a fog, with tunnel vision. "No one ever leaves Maringouin," says one of the residents, voicing the opinion of all. None of the characters can really believe that there might be anything else. They sometimes leave, but always come back and accept failure.
Three quarters of the way through the book there is a major change. The viewpoint acquires imagination. In a typical idiosyncrasy, the first person through whom we see clearly and broadly is Clayton, on tentative release from a mental hospital. We see his delusions, but there's no fog blurring them. Next to be seen unobscured is the family's relative Ferdinand, an old man taking his daily walk. Ferdinand remembers with appreciation a friend, now dead, who used to talk as if there really was a world beyond the one they know. Ferdinand plants a grove of trees after all his friends have died, so the trees will reach into the future for him. Ferdinand is such a refreshing and endearing change from all the other characters that I will remember him with fondness.
But in ALL SAINTS' DAY even broadening perception goes sour. Author Brent Benoit describes the settings of his events so vividly that it's a real accomplishment to have surrounded that brightness with a predominating mental fog, and give it the toxic twist that denies even the reach for hope. Benoit's accomplishment suggests a general writing principle: It is not the description of what is in front of you that creates a living environment, it is the suggestion that there is more outside, surrounding but unseen.
You've heard of "regional" books? The kind where it is assumed only people from a particular region would like it? Well, I'm talking about more than the region of rural Louisiana, though that would be the obvious answer. It is also a mental region called defeat and depression. ALL SAINTS' DAY was published as part of the Sewanee Writers' Series, which indicates there are people who can relate to it. You may be one of them. If so, it's all yours.
Joy Calderwood
ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES
William Gibson
Ace Fiction
Cyber Punk Fiction
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All Tomorrow's Parties is the follow up to the incredibly creative Idrou. Like most of Gibson's stories Idrou was about something and about nothing; about how everyone is seperate but at the same time inseperable; and most importantly, how the determination of what constitutes a living being is up for grabs when you're world includes cyberspace. There is an ambiguity to Gibson's stories that mimics life. I honestly don't think he with holds information as much as he tells us everything he knows but does not know everything, even about the worlds he has created.
Idoru was about a woman, a Japanese artificial life form built to entertain and seduce.When she begins to take on a life and wishes of her own her handlers become distressed. When it's announced that she is going to marry a famous American rock star, fans of both celebrities become enthralled. But how will the marriage take place? This is when we are introduced to the mysterious object accidentially picked up by a young American fan and transported to Japan. Along the way we meet the tradiditonal Gibson character, Colin Laney, a man who feels at home in cyber space. By the time All Tomorrow's Parties comes along he is living in it so deep that the homeless are taking care of his body while his mind wonders the net feeling a change coming, a big change. But because Gibson is Gibson, it's a change that can't be described. We also meet the other Gibson staple: the star crossed lovers, Rydell and Chevette
All Tomorrow's Parties picks up where Idoru left off. We discover what the mysterous object is, what is has to do with the Idoru. We also see the big change Laney has predicted start, but we don't see it finish and we don't know where it's heading because Gibson is Gibson and life has no easy answers, but Gibson as with life is always an interesting ride.
Carlye Archibeque
DARK OPTIMISM
Selected Short Tales 1989-1998
Alex Stein
Emerson's Eye Press
Sardonic Humor
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This is a wacky, fun book full of humor, wit and insightfulness. The stories vary from barely a page to three pages. Aimless subjects that see unrelated at one moment and interconected the next are piled one upon another until the dark optimism of the title is realized and the personlity of the author is as familiar to you as your own.
In Upwards of a Thousand Roses Stein bemoans:
"I am a physicist. I believe in molecules...My wife she is a poet. Yesterday she sent me this letter: I wil bury your strong chest in rose petals." it said."
He goes on to sell everything he owns so his wife will have enough rose petals for the job, but her reaction is not what he thinks it will be:
'Dunce! Imbecile! Fool! That was just a figure of speech.'
To covver me with kisses takes approximately seventeen minutes. Two layers.
To bury me is but a moment's work of poetry. I do not understand."
Stein may not always understand but he sure knows how to explain his ignorance with panache.
Carlye Archibeque
BREAKFAST AT NOON
Robert W. Witt
Xlibris Corporation
Gay Fiction
BUY THIS BOOK
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Paul and Charles are gay pals - just buddies, thanks. They work together every summer for an outdoor theater group. The group star, Linda, loudly and profanely wants Paul. Charles wants Jim, or failing Jim, just about anybody else will do. Jim wants Carla, who conveniently wants Jim in return. Jake wants center stage, anywhere and everywhere. Tom's wants are a deep dark secret, but they must be bad, because he is so moral.
Paul, our hero, wants Mike, a new young actor in the company, whose sexual proclivities are unclear. Paul has been plagued with writer's block for years, on the verge of earning his doctorate in literature. Charles decides that an affair with Mike is just the medicine Paul needs to revitalize his creative urges. Paul likes the idea, so much that daydreaming interferes with his job; and it seems Mike likes it, too. But Paul is convinced that love and lust cannot coexist in the same relationship, and he will choose love every time. Why doesn't taking the high road work?
BREAKFAST AT NOON is not a murder mystery, despite the mention of a murder on the cover. It is a psychological romance. The murder merely serves to heighten the tension this particular summer, just as stage performances, an actor's obsessed father, and the director's strict rules do. The sharp-tongued Linda, talented actress and established friend, doesn't make life any easier. No matter what lubricious scenarios Charles is urging, Paul would like simply to discuss Shakespeare's sonnets late at night with the innocent, na•ve Mike. It seems the Fates have more complicated ends in mind. What Mike's parents will say if their minor child returns from a summer workshop with a homosexual lover twice his age, is something the author is not willing to contemplate.
BREAKFAST is a study of the relationship between spirit love and body love. Looking at the issue from a gay viewpoint gives it an angle that seems fresh in our day. Author Robert Witt, a teacher of literature, shows that this was a major interest of Shakespeare also. In addition, Witt seems so familiar with the world of theater that he does not need to dwell on the details; in fact, he has had several of his own plays performed. He has adopted the advice to "write about what you know," and has made it work well for him. I read BREAKFAST AT NOON in just a few hours, late at night, when I had a cold, which proves its ability to hold a reader's attention.
Joy Calderwood
EVIDENCE OF THE OUTER WORLD
Janet Bohac
Paradigm Publishing
Lesbian Short Stories
BUY THIS BOOK
The cover of EVIDENCE OF THE OUTER WORLD describes this collection of short stories as "feminist and woman centered." I will also add, so no one is taken unawares, it is discontented with femininity and the condition of womanhood. Author Janet Bohac roots her series of twenty-three bite-sized stories on a sense of solidarity among women, then isolates her main characters in a stratosphere of disconnected alienation.
The most frequent character and connecting thread of the book is Dory, whom we meet first as a young girl. Dory's mother is a beautiful and successful actress and Dory adores her. The author gives Dory a special, even telepathic understanding of her mother, which creates the sense of solidarity she feels against her father. The thrust of the first three stories is that men can dish out all the crap they want and women are helpless against it. "My Mother" is a well written, well constructed story which, in spite of the unpleasant message, carries the momentum to hurtle the reader into the next few stories.
The next ten stories involve unfulfilling heterosexual relationships. In the world of Janet Bohac, men don't bond with women for understanding, passion, shared interests, and teamwork, they do it for underhanded and usually odd reasons that have nothing to do with the woman. In one of the most understandable, Dory's married "lover" tells her why he visits her: "It's a relief. I'm needed everywhere else in my life." When finally one of Bohac's characters is allowed real love, it is a short-lived "mismatch made in heaven."
The last story grouping is about various types of bonding, primarily between women. In "Jemina," two teenage girls form an unshakable tie when one is raped. A husband tolerates a lesbian lover. Dory, entangled with three women, tries to discover if her admired aunt is lesbian. The author then makes unsuccessful forays into the thought processes of other ethnic groups and two states of insanity. At last, in what is meant to be a culmination, Dory attempts to connect with herself, with her father, and the rest of her large and noisy family. We have never even seen this family before, so the attempt only emphasizes Dory's isolation, making the culmination fall rather flat.
Bohac does write well, smoothly and colorfully. She has a talent for the zinger ending, suddenly bringing the point of her short story into sharp focus at the end. The catch is that the zing will be hollow for the reader who doesn't share the author's attitudes. Also, the points being made contradict each other as the book goes along. The only way I could make this collection make sense to me was if the stories were written over a period of decades, causing us to watch as experience changes the author's ideas. EVIDENCE OF THE OUTER WORLD is very much a limited-appeal publication, but it has literary merit.
Joy Calderwood
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GREAT AMERICAN PROSE POEMS
I've always enjoyed prose poems. I like their hybrid nature. A good prose poem, rather than being merely a halfway point between the forms, utilizes the best tricks and techniques of each form, and becomes something more than either alone. It can be a story whose plot turns on poetic logic, or an abstraction which maintains a linear flow. There is also the seductive, almost cheating aspect of a prose poem. As James Tate (quoted in the introduction) says, "People do not generally run for cover when presented with a paragraph or two." Yet I never realized the full scope of what a prose poem can do until I read this wonderful collection. Great American Prose Poems makes it clear that a prose poem can do anything a more traditional poem can do. They run the gamut from short stories (as exemplified in this collection by W.S. Merwin and Robert Haas) to surrealism (Russell Edson and David Ignatow) to abstract word play (Gertrude Stein) to pure imagery (Robert Bly and James Schuyler). But what the form is best for is a sort of poetic commentary. These poems are like little essays, where the conclusion is reached through poetic logic, rather than the stricter rules of rhetoric. Merwin's stories actually fit in this mold, as do pieces by Ernest Hemmingway, Czelaw Milosz, Kenneth Koch and Margaret Atwood. This collection not only serves as a great introduction to this underappreciated form, but serves as a powerful defense of the form and its capabilities. G. Murray Thomas
HOW I FIND HER: BUY THIS BOOK
Author Genie Zeiger began writing HOW I FIND HER as therapy, as she watched her mother's drawn-out decline through Alzheimer's dementia to death. She offers this memoir to other adults who are attempting to deal with similar experiences, because members of the therapy groups she leads have found its beauty, honesty, and pain help reconcile themselves to their own feelings. In addition to chronicling the period from her father's death, when it becomes clear to the rest of the family that her mother's mind is deteriorating; through foster care and nursing home to death, Zeiger resurrects detailed memories of her childhood and family. She was her mother's favorite child, to the extent that even as an adult experiencing divorce, she and her mother can still feel the invisible umbilical cord between them. Genie finds her mother, the closest person in the world to her and the strongest influence, regressing to childhood and even infancy; and the images on which her world is built shatter beneath her. Genie's capable, controlled mother learns, in her return to childhood, how to express the love she has always felt but kept inside. It is difficult for Genie to feel this as a triumph, accompanied as it is by mental confusion and stains of spilled baby food. Genie's memories of growing up are also colored by the sorrowful present. Each detailed picture, completed with a poet's skill with sound, smell and texture, carries a cloud of grief which was not a part of the original experience but has now become a part of it. We can see for ourselves how important it is to appreciate the true value of parts of life which have not been sufficiently celebrated. Genie Zeiger is an award-winning poet, writing teacher, therapist and crisis counselor. All these active skills come together in HOW I FIND HER, combining love, guilt, pain, revulsion and wonder. Genie does not spare herself or gloss over feelings she is ashamed of, and this is what makes her memoir so valuable. She shows clearly that these are inevitable feelings in the situation, and we must accept them to live with ourselves. My personal experience was so different that I found Genie's pervading grief and guilt to be completely alien, but this book will help many people for whom it speaks the previously unspeakable. Joy Calderwood
A MILLION LITTLE PIECES
This book is an unflinching portrait of addiction and recovery. It is remarkable for its brutal honesty and consistent point of view. From the very first paragraph, where Frey wakes up on a plane in bad shape ("My front four teeth are gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut.") with no idea of what happened, where he's been or where he's going, he plunges us directly into the experience of an addict struggling to face and control his demons. He takes us day by day through his stay at a residential treatment center, chronicling his every fight with the administrators, he fellow patients and, especially, himself. That is, in fact, the most amazing thing about this book: its point of view. Frey manages to tell his story as it happened, without a speck of later reflection or perspective. Everything is told as he experienced it at the time. this clarity and honesty enables the reader to completely experience the process of recovery, as it happens. Although not for everybody (some scenes are quite brutal and graphic), I would certainly recommend this to anyone interested in addiction and the recovery process. G. Murray Thomas
A PORTABLE CHAOS
USA, 1960s Jimmy Whistler grows up in the slums of the USA, dragged from city to city by his self-destructive, nomad parents. His neglected need for order and achievement lead him into the Marines; the demands of people around him that he reach for success, instead of satisfaction, drive him into the hippie underworld. Always, he is ruled by his passion for poetry. A PORTABLE CHAOS could be the story of any number of poets from the hippie era. In fact, it probably is. It reads like the reminiscences of the author and his friends, compiled into one life story. I do not know whether any of this really does tell the author's own story, but it has such an authenticity that I am compelled to think it does. I suspect any of today's former hippies will find themselves transported back in time as they read. The faith that something will turn up to keep them alive, the irrelevant squalor, the true horrors, the momentary victories, the small expressions of personal beauty; all give the inside view of hippie life, not as it was seen by the outsiders of the time but as it must have felt to live it. The central character, holding Jimmy's group of friends together and the closest thing to a father figure many of them have, is the elephantine Marsayas. If you ever meet him you will know him from author Schorb's description, from his hair to his instinct to bond with anyone he meets. Jimmy's poetry-wise friend Denise, who quite inadvertently changes his life, acts out her personal rise and fall before our eyes. Her friend, the fragile Phyllis, demonstrates the triumph of will over weakness. Jimmy hunts temporary jobs with Oscar, shares a woman with Butterworth, and inadvertently changes the life direction of the dissatisfied Niki. Jimmy attempts to form a bond with his father without being sucked into his downward fall, meanwhile dodging his needy mother. Above all, Leilani, Jimmy 's oldest friend, shows love's power to heal. There is one way in which we are, without any question, seeing the author's own life. Above all his other talents, E.M. Schorb is a poet. He has also won awards as novelist and painter, but the reader of A PORTABLE CHAOS is left in no doubt which talent is his driving force. Not just because his own poetry, masquerading as Jimmy's, is sprinkled throughout the novel. His most recent publication was a book of prose poetry, and he has not switched back fully from poet to novelist mode. This sometimes results in an overflow of words meant to be the stream of consciousness of the poet Jimmy, or worse, the bad poetry read by an overbearing sergeant to his squad. It also results in me, the reader who has no particular poetic training, skipping over the longest and densest passages. E.M. Schorb has never to my knowledge duplicated himself. His three novels have all been written in radically different styles. The most obvious difference between A PORTABLE CHAOS and his previous novel, SCENARIO FOR SCORSESE, is Jimmy's feeling of detachment from anything he considers non-essential to his fulfillment. This leaves the reader feeling detached most of the time, too - unless, of course, the reader has actually lived this kind of life. On the other hand, when something engages Jimmy's artistic sensibilities, there is no stopping it. There are scenes in PORTABLE CHAOS that I found simply too horrible to look at, because to do so would be to see them with Jimmy's fully receptive perceptions. E.M. Schorb is a writer to watch: among other reasons, for the fascination of finding out what he will be experimenting with next. His novels are published as e-books, presumably for the independence this affords him, and his first novel, PARADISE SQUARE, won Grand Prize at the Frankfurt E-Book Internationals. I don't see him stopping his pushing at the outside of the envelope any time soon. Joy Calderwood THE TWELFTH VULTURE OF ROMULUS THE TWELFTH VULTURE OF ROMULUS refers to a prophetic dream of the founder of Rome. As legend goes, Romulus dreamed of twelve circling vultures, which was supposed to mean that Rome would fall after twelve centuries. VULTURE is set in the twelfth century after Rome's founding, with its rulers trying to stave off its demise. The main character is Orestes, son of a mid-level Roman noble whose territory has been taken over by Attila. Orestes' family has accommodated so well to Hunnish rule that Orestes becomes a valued official of Attila. His plan, encouraged by Roman aristocrats Cassiodorus and Romulus, is to learn everything he can about leadership from Attila and to understand Hunnish tactics so well that he can help Rome defeat this overpowering enemy. When Attila dies, Orestes becomes Cassiodorus' protˇgˇ and Romulus' son-in-law. Cassiodorus was assigned the task, by the last imperial ruler of the Western Empire, of forming a secret group of strong leaders to revive Rome. Rome is now ruled by the kind of self seekers who five centuries ago destroyed the Roman Republic by ignoring its welfare in favor of their own; and today it will be dangerous for Cassiodorus' group to oppose them. While Emperor Valentinian's sister Honora, Pope Leo's secretary Galasius, Secret Service head Cassiodorus, and others groom a leader who they hope will keep Rome from being absorbed by surrounding barbarian civilizations, a string of short-lived emperors seize the Western throne and are in turn deposed by Romanized foreigners hungry for power. Professor Raymond's extensive knowledge of the period provides the strong foundation on which his story is built. THE TWELFTH VULTURE OF ROMULUS follows the development of Orestes, chosen candidate of the secret circle to be their representative on the throne. Author Boris Raymond has put much thought into character development: his large cast of main characters change as life changes them. Throughout the book we follow the stories of Orestes' wife Barbaria, her slave Eugenia, Eugenia's lover Severinus who becomes a great holy man, Orestes' mistress Alexia, his Secret Service heads Carlus and Biglias, and his adopted brother Odovacar who becomes a king. All of these are changed by circumstances in interesting and realistic ways. The subplots are woven together and support each other smoothly. There is a very helpful list of characters in Appendix I, so it is not difficult to keep track of who is doing what even before we are familiar with their names. If you, like many editors, discard a manuscript when you don't like the first page, I recommend you change the habit this time. The first page of VULTURE is gangling, skeletal, with a confusing jump from one scene to another. Ignore that. By the end of the second scene it has taken on an eye-catching color informed by the author's long knowledge of the period. In Chapter 2 it develops a clipping pace, moving into an interesting, suspenseful story line. THE TWELFTH VULTURE OF ROMULUS is self published. Dr. Raymond refers in his Acknowledgments to his efforts to learn "the demanding art of fiction writing." A long time academic writer, he is now a beginner at the style of fiction, and it shows - but a promising beginner. I would have liked to see VULTURE get the benefit of a professional fiction editor, to make the author look like a pro. With a co-author whose specialty is breathing life into the page, this would have been an epic novel of high quality. I can't see such a team happening, not when an author is so independent as to set up his own publishing house; but judging by his lifetime pattern of education and educating others, we can be sure retired Professor Raymond is continuing to learn. He is currently preparing another epic of the disintegration of a civilization, this time the Russian Romanoff Empire. The Roman Empire is a favorite of mine and I have spent relatively little time on the Russian Empire, but I will definitely be reading this coming book. I still hope for that epic novel of high quality. THE TWELFTH VULTURE OF ROMULUS can be pre-ordered at http://is.dal.ca/~braymond for its June release. Joy Calderwood
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