Emerging Writers Network

National Short Story Month - "Classic" EWN Review - Dog on the Cross by Aaron Gwyn

Starting off the weekend with a visit to an old favorite. This collection, Dog on the Cross by Aaron Gwyn, was published by Algonquin in January 2004 and was originally reviewed by the EWN on April 9, 2004. Since then we've had the pleasure of reading a couple of pretty fantastic novels by Aaron, The World Beneath, and Wynne's War. This was back during a time when the EWN was much more prolific. Re-reading this review makes me want to dig this book back up to read again.

 

Aaron Gwyn’s debut story collection, Dog on the Cross, is the type that readers should be willing to wait for once they hear about it.  Eight stories, linked together by place and time, and occasionally characters, that are all complete little gems by themselves, and when combined, only become more powerful.

There are none of the occasional missteps that debut authors make.  Gwyn knows what he wants to say, and how he wants to say it, and does.  Each story has a connection to a rural Oklahoma town during a week long stint that a Pentecostal preacher, who is fifteen years old, is holding a revival.

Throughout the eight stories, Gwyn examines faith and sin and the ramifications of each.  He does so with dark overtones as well as a dark wit.  The preacher, known as Brother Leslie, and his seemingly sweet grandmother, Mrs. Snodgrass, are in each story, but never appear as the main characters.  It is the ongoing revival though that moves through the background of each story and keeps the steady reminders of sin and faith.

Characters frequently are viewed as either sinful, or causes of sin in others.  In “Backsliders,” a group of men and their boys are camping.  The boys hike off and stumble upon two young men engaged with each other in a physical manner.  When the boys run to get away, one hurts himself and passes out. When the adults find him, and the two young men, they quickly come to assumptions that the injured boy is unable to deny, until it is too late.

“Against the Pricks” has teenaged Gabriel consumed by the yearnings he has for his friend Amy.  While he wants to be as close to Brother Leslie in spirit, he cannot stop his desires for his friend.  During a marvelously described revival meeting, filled with the glee of those being saved and the clamoring of those wishing to be, Gabriel believes that the devil is seducing him through Amy.

When Gwyn isn’t mining sin, he’s examining faith.  The pattern here is typically having a faithful individual lose whatever it is that has helped them believe up to that point.  In “The Offering,” a congregation member, Kathy, loses her voice, described as “unparalleled in the congregations of Oklahoma.”  The story “In Tongues” has the Reverend Hassler losing his ability to speak in tongues.  His faith is tested to the point of attempting to fake such speaking.

The title story will draw forth comparisons to Flannery O’ Connor as there is an actual dog, a beagle puppy, splayed on a cross.  The quick assumption is that a recent outsider to the area, a “scientist from back east,” must be guilty.  It may be Gwyn’s best story in the collection as he introduces a Deputy Martin, who left town for Minneapolis, and then came back.  He also was not a regular at the revival tent. These facts give his struggle over whether or not to believe the easterner more credence. 

Gwyn, having been raised in just such an environment, allows the sin and challenges to faith win out regularly through this collection.  The ways that he does so are believable and the characters he has created are oddly recognizable, or at least traits of theirs are.  Gwyn is certainly a writer to watch in the future.

National Short Story Month - "Classic" EWN Review - Born On a Train by John McManus

Again, the word "classic" for these reviews refers to the age of the reviews, and of the books in question, not the writing within. This time around, John McManus' second collection, Born On a Train. This review originally appeared May 14, 2005.

 

In his second go-around, John McManus brings to his readers a collection of thirteen stories, four of which have been published in literary journals including Night Train and Tin House.   While McManus brings forth is another collection of varied locations, varied character types and wonderfully unique story ideas.  Even though his debut collection brought forth his being named the youngest ever winner of the Whiting Writers’ Award, this collection feels more complete.

Each story is written in McManus’ nearly manic style – rushing forward at fairly breakneck pace, his characters speaking with their own special cadences.  The collection starts off with a bang with the story "Brood."  In it, a fifteen year old girl has helped her thirty year old mother find a man via the internet.  Once arriving, it becomes clear that his own son near the daughter’s age has been the one online, helping his father find a potential wife.  The tone of the young girl’s conversations and internal thoughts show just how unsatisfying this life of constant search for a partner on her mother’s behalf has been.  The story moves smoothly from the beginning of the online relationship towards an apparent ending. 

A couple of stories in the middle of the collection help show McManus’ range as a storyteller.  "Eastbound" involves two very elderly women whose car breaks down on an expressway bridge.  While they are virtually trapped in the car on the barely wide enough shoulder, they begin to worry, panic, and even hallucinate the past while looking down upon the land underneath the bridge.  It is a fantastic look at aging, as well as how things have changed in formerly rural areas and the effect those changes have on people who’ve lived through them.

The follow-up story is "The Earl of Crediton."  This story involves a family (Dad, mom, grandmother, older brother, two sisters and a baby boy), as well as the teenage boy of a neighbor, attempting to take back a pair of pants for trade at a local store.  The family is of a very rural, say redneck, nature.  While this story could very easily been written strictly for laughs, McManus brings many subtle additional storylines into it.  He slides facts about the death of the neighbor boy’s father, the relationship between the mother and father (and grandmother), and the family line that explains the story’s title.

Throughout the collection McManus does this – gives the reader more than just a straightforward story.  It is this addition as well as the real lack of any stories that end too abruptly, that exhibit a true advancement of the level of McManus’ writing.  Another minor leap forward and he’ll be producing nothing but year end anthology level work.

National Short Story Month - "Classic" EWN Review - Compression Scars by Kellie Wells

Blink blink. At times it is hard to believe that it's been a little over 17 years since I first scribbled together a book review and began what would be the Emerging Writers Network (hard, that is, until I see my youngest lumber by me towering over me). Classic in the title is in quotation marks because there is nothing at all classic about how any of these reviews are written, no stunning insights, or pearls of wisdom. As I dig into the archives, they will be classic for me in recalling different times in the EWN's history. The following, a review of Kellie Wells' debut collection, Compression Scars, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award, was originally distributed November 6, 2002. It's a book I love, have re-read numerous times, and allowed me the knowledge of a writer whose work I've continued to follow (and anxiously await her new UND Press short story collection forthcoming later this year!).

 

 

For the first time in some years, this year's winner of the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award writes fiction that evokes the writing of the award's namesake.  Kellie Wells, with the eleven stories within Compression Scars has captured the combination of religious confusion and the beautiful grotesque that O'Connor nailed better than anybody.

In the title story, Wells gives her readers the budding relationship between Ivy and her best friend, Duncan.  Instruments utilized to move the story forward include Ivy's neighbor having his leaking septic tank pulled from his backyard, bats suddenly invading a tree in Ivy's backyard, and finally the admission by Duncan that the moped crash he had the year before has led to his having compression scars--scars that were not only external, but internal as well--potentially leading to an extremely quick demise.  While the story is essentially about the budding young relationship, and how the young pair gets over this major event in their lives, Wells has tossed in many interesting side stories to pull the narrative forward until Ivy and Duncan give the reader what she wants them to.

The compression scars of the title story are an indication of what to look for in Wells' writing—an affinity for the goings on beneath the surface of the skin.  She frequently writes of blue skin, veins, organs deep inside the body, blood flow, and other biological terms.  Combining this with an awesome vocabulary, Wells will send many a reader to a dictionary at the very least.

Another story, "Secession XX," is written from the points of view of two fraternal conjoined twins. These points of view are expressed simultaneously by having them appear in column form--the girl on the left, and the boy on the right.  The story is fascinating in form, idea and the writing is excellent--as good as the rest of the collection is--it's almost as if Wells tried extra hard on this piece because of the structure of it.

Besides the O'Connor comparison, this collection reminded me quite a bit of another short story collection released earlier this year, By the Light of the Jukebox by Dean Paschal.  Both writers share a willingness to take chances with their writing and not fall under any writer's spells or suggestions.  While their stories may not be enjoyed by all, they should certainly at least be begun by those interested in seeing what one can do with the form.

National Short Story Month - Collection story by story - Colin Fleming - Country Miles

"Country Miles" is the second story in Colin Fleming's collection, Between Cloud and Horizon. The subtitle of the collection is "A Relationship Casebook in Stories," and each story takes a look at a different type of relationship--where the first story was that of a father and son, this story looks at the relationship of classmates. In particular, two kids in the last year of middle school whose last names are close enough to each other that the girl, Summer, sat just in front of the boy, known as Hutch, the protagonist of the story, in a few of their classes.

Once again, Fleming captures specific aspects of this story perfectly, especially the internal dealings of Hutch as he tries to work up the nerve to act upon his crush on Summer. His interactions with the slightly older next door neighbor boy, who he uses as his "expert" to bounce things off or just listen to (who it is pretty clear has ZERO experiences to be sharing or giving pointers) are both perfectly, and sadly hilarious.

Fleming uses this inept relationship between Hutch and the neighbor, Snocker, to help push along another narrative--the idea that Hutch is losing out on any chance with Summer because of her relationship with his father. And he pushes this idea slowly, and expertly in a manner that allows the reader to hold onto just enough of it being possible to allow the idea to rumble around in their head.

It's interesting to see another Father/Son relationship in a story that isn't specifically about that relationship, and the differences in how Fleming approaches that with this second story. While in the first story there is some usage of an outsider to the relationship to help it move forward from a pretty big incident to their lives---and in this story, the relationship between Hutch and his father has an effect on how Hutch progresses with his feelings toward Summer.

Two stories in and the combination of accuracy with smaller details, and the deftness with how certain things are explored are making this a collection that is difficult to put down.

Book Review 2017-005: Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke

Book Review 2017-005

Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke

2017 by Pantheon, 278 pages

(I received a galley of this months ago, have read it about seven times, and have purchased at least two copies of the hardcover final version that is just out—it appears three copies as I pre-ordered one that I forgot about, heavily implied to a comic store that I’d be buying a copy there, and when I saw it in the store I could not walk out without a copy)

 

 

Maybe as recently as a year ago, I’d have told you that a graphic work didn’t have a chance to be my favorite read of the year—and I was one that read more than my fair share of comics, and on occasion even larger graphic works. There are moments now that I wonder if it’s fair for books without illustrations to have to go against those that do. On the positive side, I’ve learned to appreciate both types of written works even more this past 8-12 months. A long lead-in to note that Kristen Radtke’s graphic memoir, Imagine Wanting Only This, is my favorite read of the current year.

Memoirs written by fairly young individuals, to me, have always seemed tricky—I think we consider a higher age yielding a better possibility of a life lived that is can capture our interest. However, Radtke has combined an important death in her life, and a genetic time-bomb leading to her to examine the world around her more closely than she might have in a way that is more than simply interesting, it’s compelling. At one point, in maybe my third or fourth reading of Imagine Wanting Only This, I thought maybe my own heart-related scare of a few summers back might have drawn me to in, but I really don’t believe that’s it—I simply believe that Kristen Radtke’s plungings into her own life and thoughts, and the combination of her spare prose and varying styles of drawing, are interesting, thought provoking and beautiful.

The prologue has Kristen at a young age, revering her uncle—he’s her “favorite person that I knew in real life”—and finds out that he’s got something wrong with his heart. That many in her family have something wrong with their heart but the doctors are watching him and he’s okay (for now). There’s a jump in chapter one to Kristen as a sophomore in college. She and her boyfriend, Andrew, take off at 5 a.m. from Chicago (the scene drawn shows the two of them from the front windshield point-of-view and behind their faces, through the rear window, we see the Chicago skyline. They are heading to Gary, Indiana, and do so at 5 a.m. because they’ve been told to leave that early, “while it’s safe.” One of the first images of Gary that Kristen gives us is that of the Palace, a run-down theater of some sort where the names on the marquee are not complete, and falling apart. The combination of these two images, as well as the writing about safety, is a fairly subtle commentary about the haves and have-nots. It’s followed up by the two going into an abandoned cathedral where Radtke finds a collection of photographs, dirty and moldy. She packs them away, planning to someday use them in a collage or triptych. What she finds out via the news shortly thereafter is that the photographs were of another young person, a male that went looking through ruins that had been hit by a train recently—his friends had scattered his ashes in that cathedral along with the photos of him.

This gets into Radtke’s head—what is ours? What remains ours? When places are no longer used as the places they were originally intended to be, who do they belong to? At age 19, Radtke has it verified that she too shares her family’s heart-related genetics. Pushing through pretending to be a journalist interested in her doctor’s studies, she gets him to explain that “It’s like mush. The heart beats itself to much.” It’s not long after this that a close friend and Radtke go on a summer trip to visit as many countries as they possibly can. Between this and other trips throughout the book Radtke visits Corregidor, Philippines—site of an old US Military base during WWII, the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia (where there’s a lovely comparison between candles list outside a cathedral with candles lit for Radtke’s grandmother), the devastation in Myanmar (formerly Burma), a vacated mining company in Colorado, and a lava-covered Icelandic village to name a few places. A trend jumps out when reading the list. The sites are ruins, they are abandoned, and they have strong histories. They are all places that were once a place of action that are now a place where something used to happen. A line is penciled in near the end of this book: “We forget that everything will become no longer ours” and the last line is “You will have touched nothing on the Earth.”  

While many of those sites listed above had man-made reasons for the changes over time, that wasn’t the case with the Icelandic village being swallowed by lava, and another similar place was Peshtigo, Wisconsin (Radtke is from Green Bay, Wisconsin, originally). The same night of the great Chicago fire, the city of Peshtigo also went up in flames—a simply monstrous fire that freak scenarios with the weather caused that destroyed the entire town. A bridge perhaps, between Radtke's looking into places that disappeared organically vs those that had man’s nudging them out of the way is this fire. The US Government studied this fire extremely closely—looking into, and developing ways of creating the same type of firestorm for usage during WWII in Germany and Japan. This section is fascinating and shows Radtke’s various skills within the graphic medium—using photos, newspaper articles, reports, different styles of lettering, black space, and more in her storytelling.

I’m going to end this shortly and try not to rabidly explain every single panel in this graphic memoir. Suffice to say, I think it’s an incredible book; one that uses the best techniques in drawing, lettering, shading, and the writing itself is strong, confident, and spare. There’s a question that drives Radtke and the last few pages of the book are full of strong images of where she imagines our world is headed (and Easter Egg—take the dust jacket off of the cover to see a slightly different, and futuristic, view of those drawings as well). It’s well worth your time (or times if you’re at all like me) to give Imagine Wanting Only This a read.

Book Review 2017-003: sugah. lump. prayer by Momtaza Mehri

Plans are that before April 4, I will have read and commented upon all ten of the chapbooks within the forthcoming (Akashic Books) box set:  New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (NNE). I've spent a lot of time with multiple readings of many of them so far and am really enjoying them (to the point that I plan to go backwards and read the three earlier annual box sets). The set was selected and edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani and there's an eleventh chapbook included which includes an essay from each about the series and their selection process. One of the specifics is that nobody that they include has published a collection prior to their inclusion. The second such chapbook I'll be reviewing here is sugah. lump. prayer by Momtaza Mehri. It is 30 pages long with 18 poems included and a preface written by Tijan M. Sallah. The cover is by the artist, Ficre Ghebreyesus who was born in Asmara, Eritrea--he passed away in April 2012. His work adorns all eleven chapbooks in this box and they are gorgeous.

The first poem in the collection is "Call it something other than strength," however, it falls into a small section of poems under the header Fajr. One of the things I've enjoyed digging into these chapbooks has been learning new things. I've gone to Google or Dictionary.com frequently and this time it was to find out that Fajr refers to the morning prayers of Muslims. There are four other sections in the book and they move through the Muslim prayer day with Dhuhr (afternoon), Asr (late afternoon), Maghrigh (evening) and Isha (night). I'm not exactly sure how that fits into the collection; there does not appear to be anything overly religious in the individual poems within.

Lines from within this poem that caught my attention:

In the beginning there was life, then death.

We're still having the middle parts decided for us.

A reminder that we all have similar beginnings and endings and maybe there is something there with that follow-up, which in the poem is a couple of lines later--that the middle part is being decided, almost implying we don't have much to do with what happens throughout our lives. That sentiment continues:

In the meantime, the dream time, our arrogant cells multiply

in spite of themselves, tear each other apart in their soft millions.

There are a trio of poems titled "transatlantic," along with these lines from "I believe in the transformative power of cocoa butter and breakfast cereal in the afternoon":

Here, in the country of your birth, we cross the Persian Gulf,

and

I know even less,

except our feet hanging off a hotel bed;

a geologic upheaval.

show a concern regarding immigration. Very little, however, is stated directly by Mehri in these poems. Instead, multiple readings unearth layers, and greater enjoyment each time through. Both those layers, and simply coming across lines that I loved, such as this couplet from the final poem, "To Him, We Belong,":

If I can't hvae this beauty, let me have namelessness.

At least then, I can name my dead in the kind of peace they deserved.

 

Book Review 2017-002: Sabbatical by Famia Nkansa

Plans are that before April 4, I will have read and commented upon all nine of the chapbooks within the forthcoming (Akashic Books) box set:  New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (NNE). I've spent a lot of time with multiple readings of three of them so far and am really enjoying them (to the point that I plan to go backwards and read the three earlier annual box sets). The set was selected and edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani and there's a tenth chapbook included which includes an essay from each about the series and their selection process. One of the specifics is that nobody that they include has published a collection prior to their inclusion. The first chapbook I'll be reviewing here is Sabbatical by Famia Nkansa. It is 32 pages long with 15 poems included and a preface written by Dawes. The cover is by the artist, Ficre Ghebreyesus who was born in Asmara, Eritrea--he passed away in April 2012. His work adorns all ten chapbooks in this box and they are gorgeous.

The first poem, "Welcome," opens with:

 

I am trying to explain my intact clitoris,

the Jill Scott nestling against Obrafour

in a crevice of the shelf.

 

and ends 9-11 lines later with:

 

                       Why

have I never seen a war? Is my

family civilized or tribal?

 

and has Nkansa's first I--all fifteen poems are written from the first person--looking at what it means to be African, and maybe especially so when having moved to the United States, and from the eyes of non-Africans who have only heard specifics of what life is like there. It reminds me of an earlier poem of hers, "The Soundtrack to an Ovary," (not included in this chapbook) with it's lines:

 

The voices say when you have failed. The voices say,

"to be female and Ghananian is to be doubly African."

 

To be doubly African is to be even more defined by journalists and history books.

To live with having footnotes the world shows no interest in learning to read.

 

The various I's--and I did my best to try to determine, and came to the conclusion that they're not all the same, that they're not all Famia Nkansa speaking--hit on many topics just as deeply as they do this idea of what is an African. They hit on sex, on relationships, on inter-racial relationships, on mothers, on abuse, and so on. Nkansa's poetry holds onto information, letting little bits go with each subsequent reading, and especially when reading aloud--I found the poems had a different rhythm when I read them aloud than when I simply quietly read and that the rhythm helped me dig into each just a little bit deeper.

There is much going on with the body in these works--good and bad. "How to Honor Our Illnesses" begins:

 

I stick my tongue out. You box my chin.

I hold my breath. you split my lip.

i crack my knuckles. You laugh at me.

 

while "it is from my need to matter that I ask you this," includes:

 

your knees tickle my eyelashes

your soles azonto on an iris

i swipe the tip of my nose

breathing your taste

into my fingers

I cup fireflies as they flicker

                                           on and off...

                                                                on and off...

 

The poems touching on inter-racial relationships do not seem to lead the I's involved toward positive thoughts. Even though early in "Aftermath" the lines:

 

Your mother said that I was cute.

It let me know that she is both perplexed and proud

she raised the kind of child

who could think

I was attractive.

 

it winds down toward:

 

I am deciding between Merlot

and a potted indigo orchid--

which of the two I will bring to meet your mother,

the politest way to demur

when she starts to pet my hair.

 

and from "Forty Acres and a Mule," comes:

 

My toes tangle

in the cloud of carpet,

 

beige as a

dune in Namibia,

 

cashew-colored

like our child,

 

the inside of a tree;

 

what shame looks like

when you slice it in two.

 

The chapbook ends with "Moses," and comes full circle to this reader in once again looking at what it means to be an African, this time not from an American's standpoint as in "Welcome," but from the standpoint of those that never left their homes upon one's return:

 

I was not kidnapped

or sold. I was banished out of love

so I could be molded

and returned. Now I am back.

Silence snores in every room.

 

I don't think there's a poem among these fifteen that I've read less than four times now and I foresee reading them all many more times in the future. Famia Nkansa is a writer that I'll be looking for more work from in the future and Sabbatical has been a great way to start reading this box set.

 

Book Review 2017-001: The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf, translated from the French by Sam Taylor

Book Review 2017-001

The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf, translated from the French by Sam Taylor

154 pages, published by Metropolitan Books in 2015

 

(This book was purchased at Green Brain Comics)

 

This graphic memoir is subtitled, "A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984," and the fact that the memoir is narrated by this child, ranging from pre-conception to the age of six years old leaves the reader with the wondering of just how reliable the information they are reading and viewing can really be. While there is some obvious love and admiration for his father, young Riad's descriptions of Abdel-Razak are not what you might call impressive. His father is represented as uncouth (he chews with his mouth open, for instance), horribly racist, and very naive when it comes to his views upon his standing within the world, even when it is pretty clearly pointed out to him.

Riad does refer to his father as brilliant and one that had been awarded a scholarship to the Sorbonne in Paris, and Abdel-Razak did graduate Cum Laude. He never seems to have any difficulties finding good work teaching as the family goes from France to Libya, to Syria, back to France and back to Syria (where they are headed as this memoir ends).

On the other hand, Riad treats his mother in a nicer manner, not perfect by any means as she for the most part accepts the role of woman standing behind her man, but she comes across as wiser, smarter about the world, and strong when it is absolutely needed. She is a French woman, a European with blonde hair, which Riad also has, and in a pretty luxurious manner, through these early years of his life. He is frequently referred to as yahudi, or Jew, by Syrian boys. Riad admits to not wanting a younger brother or sister (though even saying it might be a girl was a jinx according to Abdel-Razak--it HAD to be a brother).

I don't know that I learned much about Libya, nor Syria, at least not in this volume, and that was definitely something I was hoping for when picking this memoir up. Realizing that at least a portion of this might be the result of reading the memoir of a six year old, I do look forward to more from Sattouf as he looks at his later years.

There are many panels in this graphic memoir that not only have the narration, or some dialogue between characters, but will have lighter, cursive, notes--things that seem to point out very specific memories of young Riad. Things like plastic bags blowing around Syria, or memories of what the post office in Syria looked like from a distance. These maybe give the reader a boost in believing in the memory of Riad, no matter how young he was during the years this particular memoir cover.

The artwork itself is strong. It reminds me a bit of Charles Schultz's Peanuts--in that the characters are done pretty basically--strong outlines and not a ton of detail, yet Sattouf is able with just a little work on their expressions to completely allow the reader into their heads. And his usage of color in the background works very well, making sure the reader is aware of changes, or something specific within the panel that needs to be noticed.

Realizing as I bought and read this that there was already a volume two covering the next couple of years might have had me reading this a bit differently than had I not known it was going to be something longer. And actually, reading it in English, allowing for a year in translation, allows me to know that volume three is already out in France and likely on the way here sometime next year. I'm really looking forward to the second volume after completing this one and enjoying it as much as I did.

4 stars

 

Book Reviews 2016-017 and 018 - Chapbooks by A. Kendra Greene

2016-017 - The Anatomy of a Museum by A. Kendra Greene

2015 by Anomalous Press, 39 pages

2016-018 - The Stone Collector by A. Kendra Greene

2016 by Anomalous Press, 27 pages

 

I'm pretty sure it was an email from Small Press Distribution that caught my eye--one of the books in question was by A. Kendra Greene (@akendragreene on twitter) from Anomalous Press--a chapbook entitled The Stone Collector. The description they had, from the publisher, was:

A lyric essay from Iceland's east fjords, The Stone Collector examines, over decades and by degrees, how one woman's daily walk sparked a private collection and public attraction. Most every day of her life, Petra took a walk; and most every walk, Petra found a stone. Petra's jaw-dropping collection of jasper and onyx and agate and amethyst and scolecite and calcite and chalcedony and spar spilled filled the house and spilled out into the garden. Her neighbors fretted over the strangely feminist act of spending so much time in the mountains. Her children grew up with strangers in the garden, strangers who saw the collection from the road and drew close. Tour guides brought busses and Geologists wrote letters and Petra served coffee in her kitchen, as the public pressed her collection into becoming a museum. This is the second installment in A. Kendra Greene's series on Icelandic museums.

I thought it sounded interesting--a woman walking daily and it turning into a museum. Then I wondered about the "feminist" act? And wondered how the public might have created this museum. And wondered what the first installment of Greene's series on Icelandic museums (Seriously? Icelandic museums?) was about. Turns out that one was about The Icelandic Phallological Museum--which is about just what you'd think it would be about with Phall as the first five letters of the word.

As the titles weren't cost prohibitive, I ordered both of them (unfortunately too late in the process to be one of the 100 receiving special letterpressed covers) and while I had ordered some other short story collections, and had a few ARCs promised to be coming my way, every package I received that didn't say Anomalous Press in the return address space bummed me out a bit--I really wanted to see how these were. They arrived yesterday and I think the reason I woke up at 3:45 a.m. today is that my mind was pushing me to awaken so I could read these two chapbooks.

I decided to read them in order, even though my initial interest in Greene's writing came through the second chapbook. So I began with Anatomy of a Museum: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Icelandic Phallological Museum but Were Afraid to Ask. It's a fascinating 39 pages about the creation of this museum. How it actually began as somewhat of a joke as the curator had received a gift once that was a pizzle, a dried bull's penis used as a whip. He kept this in an office and colleagues found it funny and began leaving other types of animal penises, frequently portions of different types of whales, on his desk, in his chair, in his office. Post-work visits to local pubs led to post-drinks discussions of his "collection," of a possible museum. And then it actually happened. And it grew, and was publicized, and moved to a larger building, and so on.

Greene does a great job of dropping in facts she's learned specifically about the museum, while also dropping in other facts (in 1941, those born in Iceland were still considered citizens of Denmark, for instance), as well as her own thoughts about collecting, and about museums in general. I was very happy I had purchased both books after reading this one and jumped right into the second chapbook without much time at all.

The Stone Collector might be even more specific than Greene's first chapbook in the series (per her bio, this is a series that is ongoing--chapbooks on Icelandic museums). The style is similar though as she writes of the history of the particular museum, and the person behind it and the people behind its growth. She also continues to drop in bits of information she's learned along the way, be it about the area, or something about the contents of the museum in question, as well as her own thoughts on museums in general.

In general, I like Green's writing itself, content notwithstanding. There's a bit of wit behind it, and the thoughts about museums in general are really interesting. A quick sentence example:

Most of the Eastern towns are attached to harbors, and are the kind of towns where there is probably a restaurant to feed you should you stop in, but probably not two to pick between.

I find it a more interesting way of saying it's a small town, and found that her writing frequently took the more interesting path to get points across. In regard to the museum thoughts and questions:

The outside influence used to trouble me. The scattershot randomness of it all drove me to distraction....At best, one of those collections will achieve any prominence, the rest of the collecting eclipsed. Yes, collectors collect. But it's something else that makes museums.

It's an interesting question, and one I hope that drives Greene for a long time to come as I believe it's what is behind this series. Both of the two museums she's written about seem very random--one starting almost as a joke, the other in a woman's home because much of what she displayed was outdoors and visible to strangers. One does not need to be interested in the phalluses of all the mammals in Iceland, or about geology, to find something worthwhile within the pages of these two chapbooks. They are excellent and in neither case am I propelled to suddenly read more on either subject--but I'm greatly looking forward to A. Kendra Greene's third chapbook in this series, no matter what museum she writes about.

Anatomy of a Museum - 4 stars

The Stone Collector - 4.5 stars

Book Review 2016-016: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schmacher

Book Review 2016-016

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

2014 by Soho Press, 2015 (pb) by Anchor Books 181 pages

(I purchased this copy Friday night)

 

Dear Book Review Reader,

That's right--I'm going to review an epistolary novel by writing a letter, though it's going to come off as a poor decision as in no way, shape, or form will this letter nearly be as well written, as funny, nor as necessary as the 67 letters written by Jason T. Fitger, Professor of Creative Writing and English, of the Department of English at Payne University, the protagonist of Julie Schumacher's fantastic novel, Dear Committee Members.

Fitger's letters are the letters you write in your head any time somebody asks you something you consider inane. The letters you wish you could actually pen/type and send before you acquiesce to proper standards and simply give the information you know the requester wants to read. A quick excerpt from his second letter, one to Theodore Boti, the new Chair of the Department of English:

 

...god knows what enticements were employed during the heat of summer to persuade you--a sociologist!--to accept the position of chair in a department not your own, an academic unit whose reputation for eccentricity and discord has inspired the upper echelon to punish us by withholding favors as if from a six-year-old at a birthday party: No raises or research funds for you, you ungovernable rascals! And no fudge before dinner!

 

Or after writing an extremely disparaging letter to the Associate Vice Provost regarding his support of a colleague from the Slavic Languages Department, he signs off:

 

Irritated and restless, but not as fractious as I can be,

Jay Fitger

Professor/Agitator/Slum Dweller

Willard Hall

 

Of the 67 letters of recommendation penned by Fitger, 33, or just under half, are job related. Where one might expect a Professor of Creative Writing to be asked for LORs from students trying to get into MFA programs, or Residencies (and there are some of those), recipients of Fitger's letters include a catering service, a daycare, Avenger's Paintball, and Flanders Nut House to name but a few. Fitger writes letters on behalf of 42 different people (this takes place over the course of a year), with 7 individuals receiving multiple letters on their behalf, with what appears to be his last Graduate Student, Darren Browles, turning into a personal project and seeing 11 letters written from looking for a residency, a fellowship, an agent, various jobs and eventually, sadly, to set up a scholarship in Browles names after Darren passes away.

Fitger's usage of humor, bitterness, and anger throughout his letters of recommendation might hide his very well-intentioned heart in the hands of a lesser writer, but Schumacher has really written a stellar novel here. Instead of simply penning a funny (and it is extremely funny--I received more than an odd look or two for laughing out loud while reading straight through after picking it up to look at a letter or two) novel, she has taken on various aspects of the world that need fingers pointed at them and done just that.

For instance, 27 of the letters Fitger writes are to members of Payne University ranging from ridiculously mundane to things that one has a hard time believing need to be written. A constant note, especially early in the letters, when writing these inter-University notes was that were the amount of time spent on these by the faculty, be spent on research and writing instead, perhaps they could elevate themselves from a Tier-II status. Schumacher also allows Fitger to be her mouthpiece on the current way that universities are being developed--the downsizing or ostracizing of departments (like English or the Slavic Languages) and moving their funding to departments whose alumni are more likely able to make large donations (the Economics Department especially has heaps of love piled upon it at Payne University):

 

A note here--excuse the indecency--on the men's room in Willard: a subtle but incessant dripping from a pipe in the ceiling (perhaps from the Jacuzzi or bidet being installed for our Economics colleagues) is gradually transforming this previously charming depot into a fetid cavern. The tile floor is often slick with liquids and, because desperate citizens have propped the door open, odors now regularly waft out into the hall. I might as well set my desk next to the urinals.

 

And I think, dear reader, that there is also some very subtle commentary here on Ms. Schumacher's part, in her choice of her letter writer. Jason T. Fitger is a 52 year old male with tenure. I don't think there is any doubt that Schumacher had the protagonist be a male, nor a middle-aged one at that, as an accident. Today, only a couple of years since Dear Committee Members was published, we can still see the difference between how a blunt, straight speaking woman--let's say Hillary Clinton, is reacted to in comparison to a similarly blunt, and unfortunately, probably straight speaking man--let's use Donald Trump as an example. One is considered by many to be an unlikable bitch. The other is viewed by many as a straight shooter, just saying what nobody has the courage to say.

This is not at all to compare Jason T. Fitger to Donald Trump. Fitger isn't perfect by any means--he mined his personal life for a couple of his novels, destroying his marriage and his follow-up relationship in doing so. He also shows some misogynistic traits in his letters regarding a female student of his, Vivienne Zelles, referring to her writing as "not very interesting," and "quiet (ie, dull)" in various letters as compared to the wild praise he gives to the writing of Darren Browles throughout the book. However, his straight-shooting letter writing is almost always done with others in mind and not self-serving. Beyond that, there seems to be a slight uptick in his personal character between letter 1 and letter 67. Schumacher has allowed him to develop and change, albeit slightly, in his middle age.

Well Reader of Book Reviews, I could continue talking about Dear Committee Members for about as long as you'd be willing to listen, but I'm guessing somewhere just north of 1000 words is probably your limit. So instead, I simply very highly suggest you track down a copy of this fantastic novel and give it a read yourself.

Sincerely,

Daniel E Wickett

5 stars