Summer 2005

 

KAFKA ON THE SHORE
by Haruki Murakami
Alfred A. Knopf (2005) 436 pages, $25.95
ISBN: 1-4000-4366-2, Fiction

Murakami brings his pen to the page in the same way a jazz musician steps to the stage with his horn. He knows his keys and scales, but he isn’t quite sure where he or the drummer will end up until the first few measures are underway. And don’t worry, Kakfa on the Shore as a novel isn’t nearly as pretentious as its title. No ennui here—Murakami’s novels always seem to involve middle-aged men who walk out of stagnant lives and end up wandering out into the world to find the beautifully bizarre. In this case the plot is split between a fifteen-year-old runaway named Kafka Tamura, and an aging man named Nakata, who while a child has an ambiguous otherworldly experience that leaves him without intelligence but with the ability to converse with cats. From here Murakami’s song becomes even stranger as the chapters spontaneously change rhythm and tone. Nakata stumbles upon a plot to collect the souls of cats and turn them into a mystical flute hatched by none other than whiskey’s own Johnnie Walker. Kafka finds himself living in a room of a library haunted by a fifteen-year-old ghost of the still living caretaker. And yet somehow, through the quality of his prose and dialogue, Murakami masters the suspension of disbelief and keeps his plot plausible while his characters manage to remain gently human and comical.

Kafka on the Shore is existential while managing to avoid boring or depressing his reader; he lets sensation simply be sensation: the strange appears throughout the novel without foreshadowing or explanation. Unlike Beckett or Kafka, Murakami’s novel highlights experiences of unusual (and sometimes cartoon-like) friendship and curiosity that leads to surprise rather than disappointment and despair.
I
n one section of the narrative, Murakami unabashedly addresses his thematic content and also his own existential influences when Kafka Tamura discusses the writing of Natsume Soseki with a librarian he befriends; Oshima asks Kafka what he likes about a novel called The Miner and he replies, “You have a strange feeling after you finish the book. It’s like you wonder what Soseki was trying to say. It’s like not really knowing what he’s getting at is the part that stays with you.” Murakami’s novel does the same with characters and plot twists that are as disorienting as they are entertaining.

While the plots of previous Murakami novels seem to go out while never coming back in, as Kafka on the Shore progresses the two sub-plots intertwine and eventually intersect leaving the reader to puzzle over the thematic repercussions produced by this collision. Murakami moves brilliantly from having the reader examine the events in the lives of his characters first as random occurrences, while later suggesting that fate has played a part in his plot all along.

So if you’re expecting Murakami to neatly fold the meaning in his pages into a pristine piece of origami, look elsewhere. The structure of Murakami’s novel is similar to that of haiku poets who leave the beginning and closing of the piece open, rather than the modern bursting open and slamming shut that has become conventional among western writers. Murakami’s writing suggests rather than shouts: “The dozing bee wakes up and buzzes around me for a while. Then, as if finally remembering what it’s supposed to be doing, it flies out the open window. The sun shines down.”

Michael G. Cole

 

DRIFTLAND
by Michael Macklin
Moon Pie Press (2004) 24 pages, $10
Poetry

In Driftland, carpenter-poet Michael Macklin opens his collection of free verse narrative poems with “Alchemy,” the poem’s title an allusion to the ancient art of turning base metals into gold—a feat that was never accomplished except in myth and folklore. Yet, in this poem, the author comes close, with graceful imagery in which . . .the moon/ silvers rails into parallel/ knives of light streaking away and The low chuff of the coming 9:05/ shakes the frost from the skeletal/ heads of Queen’s Anne’s lace. The characters in the poem stand shivering at the siding / . . .eyes fixed on the pennies,/ awaiting transformation. Not that we expect the weight of the train to roll copper into gold, but as legend has it, for each flattened penny, a wish comes true.

Well-grounded in the world of work and, according to his bio, “often covered in sawdust and words,” Macklin gives us no indication that he puts his faith in wishing. But, in the nostalgic “April 23, 1962,” he recalls a boyhood wish involving fast cars and rebellion in a dusty Midwestern town. The main characters in this piece are Buddy Johnson and a souped-up 1940 Willys coupe. (Willys was the automobile company that originated the Jeep and built them by the hundreds of thousands during World War II.)

Buddy sits a moment, lights a Lucky,/ . . .and pushes the starter button:/ domed pistons slam fuel toward the heads,/ recoil from the explosion, cams twist,/ the flywheel spins. . . and Buddy is going zoom-zoom through the middle of town, car verbs and auto parts a-thunder. We almost don’t care that Buddy’s father was a drunk or that he leaves football and American history,/ . . .blowing away in the exhaust. Instead, we are with Doug and Randy and me wishing/ him luck, wishing it was us. . . .

And some wishes do come true. To the Tom Sawyer-esque character that inhabits much of the book, finding a rusty hand pump on a blistering hot summer day was as good as a genie in a bottle. In “Baptism,” the boy relates, in language that again invokes the workman’s world of earth, machines and tools, that I pumped up and down/ until leather gaskets shrieked awake/ sucking and singing the cold up./ Suddenly a waterfall,/ an ocean splashing across baking feet,/ filling the pearled tin cup, spilling from my mouth,/ streaming across the bare hills of my chest. . . . As a writer of the same generation (Baby Boomer) as Macklin, I can vaguely recall a similar experience at my grandfather’s house, a poor farm cottage with no electricity or running water. I doubt that my children ever saw a hand pump or experienced the pleasure of bringing up cold water from the ground by flexing one’s biceps. Not that I would ever want to go back to that world, but as Macklin reminds us, it did have its simple pleasures, and turning on a faucet is not nearly so poetic.

The Boy appears again in “Flicker,” a short, didactic poem that sketches a line from thoughtless action to tragic consequences to guilt. He launches a small stone/ thrown with no intent but/ the humming of young muscle. The rock strikes a flicker (a variety of bird seldom seen in my urban neighborhood) on a wire. The bird turned a bright eye to his death, then fell/ into the oat-stubbled field. . . . Cupping the dead bird in his hands, the boy learns that a pebble thrown without concern/ . . .comes to rest like a mountain in my heart. . . .

The book ends with “Toll Call,” a very grown-up poem whose title plays on the various meanings of “toll” (price, cost, the ringing of a funeral bell) combined with “call”—in this case a phone call that has become a recurring nightmare—in this lament for a friend killed in Vietnam. Perhaps he had been remembering Michigan when the mortar hit/ the long whine in my ear could have been the dial tone/ of disconnect or the whistle of an incoming round/ It has never left me that silence. . . .

Despite an occasional image that comes across as too pat—”black-robed crows,” for example—the author writes with language that is rich, earthy, and hung at eye level. These poems are not particularly profound, but they are perceptive and enjoyable and, like a good carpenter, Macklin seldom leaves a ragged edge.

Richard Allen Taylor

 

WHISPERS, CRIES, & TANTRUMS
by Jay C. Davis
Moon Pie Press (2004) 24 pages, $10
Poetry

Rarely do I continue reading a book when I don’t like the first poem. In this case, when I tossed aside Jay C. Davis’ Whispers, Cries, & Tantrums it fell open to “Potatoes,” a thoroughly delightful piece reminiscent of Naruda’s “Ode to an Artichoke.” After reading “Potatoes,” I was hooked. A family of potatoes lives under my sink./ They huddle there like wretched immigrants/ in the hold of my kitchen, eyeing anyone/ who peers down there with suspicion./ Despite the language barrier, they persist./ The more industrious put down roots./ They wear the same brown shabby coats/ they brought from the old country. . . .

“Potatoes,” thankfully, with its clever metaphor and wry outlook, is more representative of the poems in this collection than “Untitled,” the only poem I don’t like in this book and a poor choice to put on page one. “Untitled” is a story about a little girl who comes to the screen door as a strange man arrives, tells her he is her father, and gives her a doll. Ultimately we learn that the little girl is the speaker’s mother and the point of the poem is to curse his grandfather for being a miserly bum. Anchoring the center of the poem is a stanza that is so un-poem-like, I found it troubling: The little girl would not see the tall man/ again for almost ten years, and then/ only because she made the trip to Portland/ to ask for money to help with school/ which did not seem like asking too much. . . . Isn’t this passage prose that has been formatted to look like poetry on the page? I found this stanza so off-putting I nearly passed on the book. Yet, I sympathize, as it is ever the lot of narrative poets to strike a balance—which we don’t always get quite right—between telling (moving the story along) and showing (pausing to smell the roses). The offending stanza in the middle of “Untitled” errs on the side of dull and explanatory, and seems to have little purpose other than to shoo the reader down the path to the good final stanza.

I’m glad I kept reading. Otherwise, I might have missed some of the funniest poems I’ve read in years. In “There’s Safety in Groups,” Davis reflects on a documentary film in which a woman with multiple personalities tells how over the holidays there were gifts/ hidden all over her apartment which/ her many inner people had bought for each other. She couldn’t look/ anywhere or she’d ruin the surprise/ for someone. By comparison, the author concedes that all his inner people—The thinker,/ the poet, the child/ the lecher, the thief/ . . .all crowd around inside my head// . . .When someone from the outside asks,/ ‘What do you think?’ I have to pose/ the question to that crowd,/ who promise to get back to me/ with an answer, pretty soon now.

The best humorous writing is layered over one or more serious points, and this is one of the strengths of “Hansel Explains Their Dilemma to Gretel,” a retelling of the fairy tale with a twist of reality at the end. “Gretel, my love,” says Hansel, “you must murder the crone—and with her blood/ on your hands you can free me—and know/ that I’ll again be able to lead us out of/ this current danger, but surely not to safety.
In “Why I Want That Dump Truck,” Davis provides some insight on how childhood memories can fuel obsessions later in life. It sits for sale by the road I drive on every day,/ and each day I notice it/ tall and solid as a Tonka truck/ from my childhood, when it was easy/ to desire a dump truck with all its promise/ of power, and noise, and something definite to do. After describing the truck in all its glorious detail and possible uses, Davis concludes, For some jobs a dump truck’s the only tool that’s right. /. . .I want, for once, to know I have exactly/ the tool I need at the right time finally/ to get the job done, if one of those jobs comes along.

Davis’ poems generally are written in plain, conversational language that, curiously enough, pays little attention to sound. There is not a rhyme to be found anywhere (if any rhymes occurred by accident, they were removed) and the poet appears to make no effort to use alliteration, assonance, or any other “audio” tools to influence tone or mood or perception. Yet, these poems, for the most part, are very successful. They have a certain rhythm that adds pleasure to their reading, and the pacing is excellent. Davis writes to his strengths, applying his cleverness and wit to interesting ideas and situations. He creates artistic tension, and then releases it, often with end lines that are funny and memorable.

In “Dear Barbie,” the author speaks directly to the famous doll shortly after she passes her fortieth birthday. You’re an inspiration for me to put/ on a pressed shirt in the morning/ and find a tie with nice colors. Today/ I want to look good, and maybe/ you’ll notice me.// . . .You’d do well to ditch Ken, that pig.

This is a very competent and entertaining collection, the kind you might want to think twice about lending to friends. You might not get it back.

Richard Allen Taylor

HAIRSTYLES OF THE DAMNED
By Joe Meno
Akashic Books (2004) 270 pages, $13.95
ISBN: 1-88845170X, Fiction

A depiction of growing up punk on Chicago’s south side, HAIRSTYLES OF THE DAMNED is a gritty coming-of-age novel that takes a close look at the disturbing truth of the teenage experience. Joe Meno paints a landscape of frustration, a world in which his characters must overcome challenges of life, love, fear, self-doubt, and uncertainty. It’s a landscape that is disturbingly familiar, evoking the ache of adolescence with unflinching honesty.

The story follows the exploits of Brian, a high school burnout, and his best friend Gretchen, a punk rock girl fond of brawling. Brian, who is somewhat nerdy, is surprised to find himself in love with Gretchen. Gretchen is violent, is not pretty in a conventional way, and is overweight, but Brian finds her beautiful. Much of the first part of the book shows Brian agonizing over his relationship with Gretchen, driving around in her car listening to punk music and trying to decide which songs he should select for the mix-tape he’s making to tell Gretchen how he really feels.

Gretchen rejects Brian numerous times, choosing instead to involve herself with an older boy who is sleeping around with other girls from their school. Brian is gloomy and frustrated. He spends much of his class time making lists: a list of possible names for his own punk band, a list of reasons why his classes suck, a list of songs for the mix-tape for Gretchen. Things are not so good at home, either. Brian’s father has taken to sleeping on the couch in the basement, and his mother is generally absent. Brian spends more and more time outside of his house, borrowing his dad’s combat boots when he can get away with it, and hanging out with Gretchen at the mall. Eventually Brian finds a girlfriend, sleeps with her, and life is looking good for a little while. But then he finds out that his girlfriend is dating someone else, and she dumps Brian for the other boy. Around the same time, Brian’s parents get divorced.

The theme of this novel, in short, is teen angst. No one quite feels like they fit in, and most of these characters drift toward punk music as a mode of self-expression. They are sexually frustrated, are tired of meeting the demands of parents and teachers and society, and are trying hard to figure out who they are. There’s a sense that they want to find a feeling of belonging in their lives but keep falling short of the mark. As Brian tries hard to forge a romantic relationship, it seems that much of what he truly seeks is a sense that someone else understands him, that there is someone out there with whom he can be himself. In the end, Brian begins to find certainty in being who he is, and being unafraid to do so without posturing, without a girlfriend, and without using punk rock to define him.

This book is raw, edgy, spirited, and captures the essence of the teenage experience. The language, the list-making, and the musical references push this text toward the postmodern, but not overwhelmingly so. It’s a book that holds a touch of levity and a touch of the disconcerting, but at all times gets at something quite real.

Andrea Quarracino

 

BULLETPROOF GIRL: STORIES
by Quinn Dalton
Washington Square Press (2005) 207 pages, $12
ISBN 0743470559, Fiction

Quinn Dalton’s first collection of short stories, Bulletproof Girl, quickly follows the publication of her first novel, High Strung. Of the eleven stories, ten have been published in such places as Emrys Journal, StoryQuarterly, the Baltimore Review and the Kenyon Review. In these gritty stories, Dalton explores the contemporary heart with the precision of a laser surgeon, and her insights are cutting-edge.

My favorite story is the last one, “How To Clean Your Apartment,” a clever tale about housekeeping as therapy for failed love. Here, Dalton’s sophisticated wit is at its sharpest as she directs the reader to the best method of dealing with an oversupply of clothes, books, magazines, knickknacks and other superfluous items in an attempt to start over once again. Her lover, the “man who is smarter” than she, has balked at looking at apartments for them to share. Here’s how Dalton suggests handling things: There are women you know who would decide to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro at a time like this. Or join the Peace Corps, or start a foundation for a new cause. You happen to believe haircuts are life-altering events. So you’ve decided to clean your apartment.

The underlying sense of humor gives the story a lift, a sort of bounce that keeps the reader hoping and laughing as the writer moves the story along by continuing to give instructions.

But this example also points out one of the problems with Dalton’s work. Perhaps this is a niggling complaint, but sentence fragments that pile up on each other into towers of uncompleted thoughts bother me. Every once in a while, a fragment can be used to great advantage, but to sprinkle them haphazardly throughout a story is irritating. And, while this is a small matter, it leads to a more important issue: clarity. In several of these stories, Dalton adds an amusing aside to the story, a little excursion that often leads the reader to confusion rather than further understanding. And these meanderings are frequently rendered in sentence fragments.

Though I might wish to differ about such stylistic choices, I cannot object to Dalton’s range as exhibited in this collection, nor can I quibble about the insights she offers about life in the 21st Century. Dalton flays the outer skin of her characters until we can see into their very hearts and this quality makes the stories compelling. The longest tale in the book is the title story, weighing in at 43 pages. It’s the story of three generations of women who must deal with men who abandon them, with society’s expectations, and with each other. This is the only unpublished story in the book, and while the three women are interesting and fun to get to know, I hope Dalton will expand this one into a longer work. These characters deserve a fuller treatment.

Bulletproof Girl is a fine debut. You can expect to hear more from Quinn Dalton.

Anne Barnhill

 

BOOK OF RESURRECTION
by Mark Hartenbach
Pudding House Publications (2005) 54 pages, $10
ISBN 1-58998-339-4, Poetry

Mark Hartenbach’s book of resurrection contains twenty-nine interconnected poems. Like a novel-in-stories, they at once stand-alone but also create a larger narrative. Set in a mental ward, the book starts by relating how the speaker ended up there through his drug use. These early poems pull the reader in with some wince-inducing moments, as when the speaker in a rage pulls his catheter out. The rest of the book takes place in the ward with descriptions of the daily experience, the people he encounters, and the thoughts of the patient.

Hartenbach is at his best when characterizing the other patients. For instance, there’s Roger a lifer . . ./ a holy roller slash schizophrenic/ with a sweet disposition for the most part. Or Harry, a sixty-year-old who plays air guitar while confined to his wheelchair, singing words & humming riffs/ from led zeppelin, ac/dc, van halen. Hartenbach’s eschewing capitalization and his lines of drastically varying lengths reflect the disordered perspective of the speaker—clear-eyed about the people around him but troubled by his own mind.

Unfortunately, the poems immersed in the speaker’s mind don’t have the same energy as the observational ones. They rely too heavily on overused phrases and abstractions. In “XI,” Hartenbach meditates on the tired idea of schizophrenics having a direct line to God. While in too many poems, we get the likes of “off the beaten path” or “the cards we’ve been dealt.” And though, the poems try to earn these generalities by playing with them, there are too many and too often not used to any moving effect.

But even these few flawed poems add to the experience of the book as a whole, a trip to what we might at first take as a subculture that as we read becomes more revealing about our everyday life, truer to that life. Hartenbach thankfully avoids what we expect from other mental institute representations, while being aware of those expectations: the speaker awakes glad to not see the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Indian above him with a pillow. And the resurrection is satisfyingly subtle: i felt not purged or purified/ not punished or rewarded/ but human/ in every sense of the word.

S. Craig Renfroe, Jr.

 

THE LANGUAGE OF SHARKS
by Pat MacEnulty
Serpent’s Tail (2004) 224 pages, $14
ISBN 1-85242-849-X, Fiction

The Language of Sharks, a recent collection of short stories by Pat MacEnulty, will make you feel as if you have been on your own 20,000 Leagues, Under the Sea adventure. But sometimes, intensity is a good thing. Water reflects; we need to reflect. This collection, however, does more than just reflect the conflicts of any and all characters…it projects all of the intense and deep-seated emotions, whether it is in first-person, an occasional second, or third. MacEnulty’s style makes the reader experience the narrator’s pain or small hopes. In the stories written in the third-person-point-of-view, you might even find yourself smirking that your life is pretty damn good compared to the decisions and consequences of some of her characters. Moreover, her first-person narration, as well as several interjections in second-person, leaves an emotional impact.
Interestingly, the cover depicts a female swimmer’s leg with an apparent division of muscle. At first, given the title of the collection, and the depiction of the female swimmer, one might have movie deja vu, and hear the classic, distant, Jaws thunder; however, the cover works like the collection does—as a metaphor of the predatory nature of not only humans but their tendency towards shark-isms. Like sharks, we communicate through body language—some of us do it more than others…it all depends upon how frightened we are and perhaps how primal we really can be, whether we admit it or not. This claim is explicit in the title story, “The Language of Sharks.”

In the third-person, we experience Joan’s disdain with the yet-to-be-seen consequences of having sex with a student in her class. This point, however, is miniscule compared to what she should do with Robert, who is stationed in Germany, and how she will fill her emotional bottom. Victor, her supposed friend, asks, “What happens when you reach bottom?” She eventually responds, “I guess when you hit bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.”

So, maybe we’ve all heard that response before; however, Joan’s bottom starts when Victor introduces her to an old friend, and she innately knows that a night with two men, in a beach condo with free-flowing Cuervo Gold, is going no where up, but down.

It’s also of interesting note that MacEnulty begins the collection with “Blue Abstraction,” a short, short story, worthy of Jerry Stern’s short-short story prize. This piece sets the emotional tone, along with the utilization of the future use of first person and third person. We get the rare opportunity to feel the narrator’s emotion, and by the end of the piece, we view their lives from a visual, third-person-view.

In “Floating in Darkness,” we get to reflect on the narrator’s intense, young relationship, and its demise. Sometimes, our high-school-loves, are the most we can ever hope for. Perhaps, it should be added: a high-school-love with an adult intensity. Regardless, what this narrator does is to take us back to our yesteryear loves and then make us see how she knows that things could have been different if only she knew what she knows now. The caveat though, is, as she is telling her story, she does know. Memento, meets now.

“Giving up the Guilt,” another of my favorites, however, does anything but “giving up the guilt.” When the story ends, Francie, the narrator, remains consumed by guilt. Just because she seems to live the American dream, and whatever that means, her guilt is steeped in denial. This is also one of the stories where the narrator reaches out to the reader:

“I ask you how can I be the person I am now—the person you know, who is honest and generous and hardworking to a fault? How can I be the person I am now and the person I was then? But I see I am repeating the age-old question and you want the story. You want scenes and dialogue. There is not much dialogue in the realm of madness where he and I dwelled. I can tell you about the first time he told me in his own weird way that he had feelings for me.” Addressing the reader, at least for this reader, is even more engaging.

No matter what story you dive into, each piece showcases the struggles and intensity of self-over-indulgence. This can be likened to sharks. If they live long enough, they can grow back thirty thousand teeth in a lifetime. This allows them the capability of biting without consequence. MacEnulty’s characters are granted this same biting ability. They bite and are bitten, emotionally, too many times to mention. Some of the characters acknowledge their teeth-biting-resistance. Others, unfortunately, fall victim to its sum total.

Julie E. Townsend