Trampoline | ||||||||
edited by Kelly Link | ||||||||
Small Beer Press, 336 pages | ||||||||
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A review by David Soyka
Ed Parks's "Well-Moistened with Cheap Wine, the Sailor and Wayfayer Sing of their Absent Sweethearts" (the title is what the anti-Tina insists
the Feather character actually represents) is perhaps emblematic of the meta-fictional aspirations of many of the tales in Kelly
Link's Trampoline anthology. The pop culture mockery ("Tina" is presumably a reference to Tina Louise who played the sex goddess
castaway marooned with Gilligan's Island crew) combined with "lit-crit" speculations about the relative meaning of the words on the page
you are reading that comprise the story you are trying to decipher. Add into the concoction the strange title, the absurd fantastical
situation, the profundities of the closing paragraph in which the reader can ponder his own psychological island and whether he should move
off or move on. Not to mention the feminist slant to a story presumably written by a man.
As they used to say in the 60s, "Heavy, man."
While I happened to like Parks story, sometimes there's a fine line walked between the portentous and the pretentious. Most of Link's
selections manage to leap in the right directions, though there are a few that thud.
Take for example the lead-off story, Christopher Rowe's "The Force Acting on the Displaced Body," a tall tale about a guy from the Kentucky
backwoods who travels to Paris by the somewhat circumspect route of connecting backwaters on a boat made of strapped together corks. I suppose
there's some meaning here about self-identity and destiny, but it all strikes me as something that might be handed in to an MFA writing
instructor particularly appreciative of abstruseness.
Next is the aforementioned Parks, which I think better and funnier, though perhaps a bit too clever for its own good. Those with similar
reactions are urged to hang in there. Shelley Jackson's "Angel" packs a wallop, one of the best stories here. This macabre stitchwork
concerns a taxidermist with failed artistic aspirations for his craft, spurned by both an unloving father and a Goth girlfriend, now
employed in the aptly named "Wine and Spirits" shop. When the taxidermist stumbles upon the corpse of a boy, he employs the tools of his
trade to create an unnatural angel. Exquisitely creepy and disturbing metaphor on claiming redemption.
"Impala," by John Gonzalez, follows, one of two straightforward SF stories, this one rooted in the cyperpunk-land of the Matrix, something
that could conceivably have appeared in a more mainstream publication such as Asimov's. It's a bit more than cyber-junk, however, in
providing an archetypal depiction of a doomed father-son relationship. Then we're back to MFA-land with a triptych by Samantha Hunt
concerning various characters in search of significance (literary and personal) cast in a series of fables. Only the first, "The Periodic
Table of Liquids," about a boy saved from the sea who as a grown-up Reverend does a belly-flop into the dangerous waters of love works for
me. Alex Irvine's, "Gus Dreams of Biting the Mailman," takes on the issues of fictional meaning in a meta-story that is more obvious
than Park, but, to my taste is more successful. The narrator is an intellectual whose girlfriend kicks him out of their apartment because
of an argument over Charles Bukowski. The story concerns debates with his buddy Eli and fellow employee at the Doug's Bakery about the
nature of reality, and by extension, the reality of narrative. In mimicking the philosophical discussions of college sophomores, it is quite funny.
This brings us to the real doorstop of the collection, both in terms of page count and prose density. "A Crowd of Bone" by Greer Gillman
invokes Celtic myth concerning a young girl who seeks to escape a witch by duping a young fiddler into thinking she loves him and that
the child she bears is his. From the beginning we know the girl has suffered great punishment, but the child is alive, though in
danger. At novella length, this is the longest story here; it is also the hardest to read. It probably helps to have some knowledge,
if not affection, for the various tropes of Celtic and wicca mythology. English majors who've ploughed through Beowulf in the original
Old English may find the language fascinating. This English major found it tedious, and at one point just stopped reading it and went
on to the next story. I did eventually go back to finish it, but still considered it rough going. Whether you will depends on
what you make of such exposition as this:
"To pipe and drum," the traveller said.
Thea and the traveller took the coat between them, lofting it and laying upon the sprining heather, so it makde a bed. They stood at head and
foot of ti, as in the figure of a dance; the taveller spoke.
"What thou gets here, though mun leave betimes."
"I must bear it," Thea said.
"And will."
"Undone and undone."
The traveller crouched and tweaked a corner of the coat aside, tucked something in, and rose. "What is ta'en here, cracks t' glass. What
is tinder s'll be ash. Go lighter of it, until dark." She flung a pair of shears on the makeshift bed. They lay there open, like a
striding stork. She turned and gathered up her pack. "I's off."
They saw her go. They lay together on the coat, of leaves as deep as hallows. After a time, unspeaking, they undid her hair, and
went into another night.
If, like me, you do skip ahead, don't be dismayed by Alen DeNiro's "Fuming Woman," which swings from the existential high trapeze without a
net, and willfully falls. It's another one of those, "I'm not sure if this is truly profound or just pretending to be" ponderables. But
it's also less than four pages long.
What comes next is another major highlight. "Eight-Legged Story" by Maureen McHugh, is one of several stories without overt fantastical
trappings, instead being a chilling depiction of the uncomfortable plight of the step-parent who lacks affection for the child of her spouse.
Dave Shaw's "King of Spain" presents a guy and his pet monkey. The guy has terminal cancer. The pet monkey is not well-behaved and acts, well,
like an animal. While I'm not quite sure what the point of the monkey is, I can forgive that and the pun of the title because of the lovely
last paragraph, a very nice comment on the meaning of life. If there is any.
Susan Mosser contributes the one other piece of outright science fiction, "Bumpship." Somewhat reminiscent of the New Wave in that it
provides a condemnation of the darker aspects of capitalism with a narrator who exhibits classic symptoms of identification with the aggressor.
In "The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet," Vandana Singh provides interesting insight into a husband's insensitivity in a long standing
and sterile, marriage. Though written from the viewpoint of Indian culture, the depiction could easily apply to any Western married couple
stuck in their habits and hierarchies. I thought the Twilight Zoneish ending a little bit sloppy, though; I'd rather Singh had come with
a different comeuppance for the husband than what turns out to be the obvious, and easy, one.
Another one of the marginally fantastical stories is "Shipwreck Beach" by Glen Hirshberg. A young girl just out of high school flies to
Hawaii in response to a strange summons by her endearing, if sociopathic, cousin. Together they travel to a ghost ship whose real possession
emanates not from the spirit world, but the faults of the human soul.
Jeffrey Ford is one of the more recognizable names here, and his "The Yellow Chamber" is another example of his wonderfully funny
contraptions for pondering reality. In a scientific institute called, "The Center for the Reification of Actual Probability," three
researchers aren't allowed to talk to one another, as conversation might unduly influence the outcome of their contemplative studies. An
inadvertent meeting among the three, however, leads to some highly unexpected results.
Beth Adele Long's "Destroyer" depicts a similar pondering in the case of a woman who meets a young girl claiming to be a "black hole" and
who seems to know a lot about the woman's problems. "Aren't you afraid of anything" Ruth asked. "Do you ever agonize over anything. Do
you never feel the world is your enemy." The black hole Ruth stumbles in to leads her to understand that, as Pogo used to say, "we have
met the enemy and he is us."
Carol Emshwiller provides another of her modern morality tales in the "God and Three Wishes," in this case, the admonition that you shouldn't
rely on the prospect of Luck alone to get you out of a tight spot. It helps to be plucky.
"Dead Boy Found" by Christropher Barzak and "Insect Dreams" by Rosalind Palermo Stevenson touch the borders of magical realism. The former
concerns a boy whose classmate is murdered and his obsession with what it must have felt like. The latter is a much longer meditation on
erotic attraction and an assertion of female identity. While it suffers a bit from such sentences as, "She is infected now with the malaria
from the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes have infected her with malaria" -- which I suppose is supposed to symbolize being a victim and being
victimized -- and odd paragraphing of short descriptive vignettes that takes up most of typography, it's an evocative contemplation of
how a repressed woman cannot unshackle herself despite her best efforts.
At this point, what you need is a good "making a deal with the Devil" story right? Richard Butner in "Ash City Stomp" manages to put a nice
little spin on a very old motif. Aptly, the volume concludes with Karen Jay Fowler's "King Rat," which concerns the stories we choose -- or
choose not -- to tell.
Needless to say, as this hardly comprehensive overview may indicate, there's a little bit of everything here for those whose taste strays
to the off-beat. No one is going to like everything here, and probably people will have arguments over how favorites are someone else's
least-liked. Which is as it should be if you want to do something truly interesting.
Editor Kelly Link should be commended, not only for an intriguing compilation (even if perhaps criticized for not including a story of
her own), but that she manages to stay out of the way of it. The only thing that intrudes here is Link's taste in the story selection
and ordering (I have to think there is some forethought to starting the collection with on odd journey and ending it with the Fowler
parable on authorial propensity). There's no tiresome manifesto here, no chest-beating about movements or genres or rants against publishing
mediocrity and how some merry band of rogues is going to revolutionize anything. Link understands that the role of editor is to let the
work speak for itself. The only comment she seems to make is to provide on the cover the definition of a trampoline: "an elastic
mattress-like contrivance on which acrobat, gymnasts, & c.leap." I'm not sure what the "c" refers to, but I suppose it means children,
though why it should be abbreviated I don't know. In fact, this very sort of puzzled reaction is what is intended by many of these stories
to get you thinking. Even if all the stories in Trampoline don't always bounce back successfully, at least they take the risk of making the jump.
David Soyka is a former journalist and college teacher who writes the occasional short story and freelance article. He makes a living writing corporate marketing communications, which is a kind of fiction without the art. |
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