"Crackling Skulls" by Roger Van de Velde

 

Crackling Skulls by Roger Van de Velde

Our Strangers: Stories by Lydia Davis

 

Our Strangers: Stories by Lydia Davis. Review by Tosh Berman

"Another Ventriloquist: Stories" by Adam Gilders

ISBN: 9780982964200

There is something wonderful being in a bookstore and picking up a book due to its cover, and then buying it because you read one of the short stories while standing in the store.  At first, Adam Penn Gilders reminded me of Lydia Davis, but only superficially due that both authors wrote short-short stories.  They also write/wrote strange narratives in a minimal style that becomes maximum in texture and emotional reflection.  Gilders has a dry sense of humor, and the fact that these small narratives are about married couples or the workforce in an office, there is something desperate that is not spoken.  It's tragic that Gilders died in 2007.  I would have liked to see more books by this excellent writer.

I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner)

ISBN: 978-1-5011-4435-6

Success is nice, but it's failure that draws us to the flame so we can get close to that landscape to taste it.  F. Scott Fitgerald is in many ways the Jim Morrison of early American literature.   Sexy, beautiful, and gets fascinating as his demons/alcoholism takes over the body and mind.  The two sides of Fitzerald is the young successful, brilliant prose writer, who was at the top of his profession and world.  Over a short period things crashed into the ground, and me, being me, is fascinated with the ruin that is Fitzgerald.  The truth is, once a writer, always a writer.  He didn't re-write "The Great Gatsby" or any of his early novels, but he did produce the magnificent "Pat Hobby Stories."  One of the first to convey a cynical, even noir attitude toward the Hollywood dream machine, Fitzgerald never lost his talent.  He lost perhaps his luck, and of course, his health.  Still, his prose talent never failed him.  It's interesting that there is now an excellent compilation of stories and film treatments that were unable to sell.  Fitzerald's primary income (and he was paid very well) was magazines and Hollywood.  Still, he had to struggle with getting works completed, as well as getting them published, and he often didn't succeed. 

"I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories" is a fascinating set of short stories/film treatments that he couldn't get into print, and when offered the chance to change the narrative, he refused to do so. His attitude, and rightfully so, was either publish it as it is or sends it back to me (Fitzgerald).   What makes this book swing are images of Fitzgerald that I have never seen, and the short introduction to each story by its editor Anne Margaret Daniel, who did a superb work of editing and detective work.  Beyond that, there are only two stories that I like a lot:  "The Pearl and the Fur" and "The Couple."   Both are classic narrations on class difference and wealth.  Even though a flawed fellow, Fitzgerald was a fantastic observer of American culture and its citizens. Overall I would recommend this collection to the Fitzgerald fan, but also to writers who struggle with their work. I tend to read literature about writing, and Daniel's mini-introductions exposes Fitzgerald's world at a tough time and place for our prince of American Literature. 

"Henri Duchemin and his Shadows" by Emmanuel Bove (Introduction by Donald Breckenridge) Translated from the French by Alyson Waters

978-1-59017-832-4, $14.95, nyrb classics

I have never read Emmanuel Bove, and now, I feel like I have a good new friend.  On the other hand, do I need him as a friend?  The short stories all deal with a main character who feels misplaced or not connecting on a human level with others or their settings.  In many ways, they are totally self-destructive figures who seem to enjoy their fall from grace to embrace emotional failure.  Most of his fiction was written between the two world wars, so it's a world that itself is in conflict, and i think Bove is commenting on the nature of that landscape and how one lives on that mental state of depression and fear of the future.  Relationships seem to be built on quicksand than on pavement and ground.  Bove captures these moments that are totally believable, yet they are basically insane people.   Right now, I feel we are going through an age of intense anxiety.   "Henri Duchemin and his Shadows" expresses the culture of the 20s, and makes perfect sense in the year 2015 as well. 

Emmanuel Bove