Full disclosure: I have known Gordon White for about 18 years. We met in our dorm and shared many friends and acquaintances. Towards the end of our time, I heard he was pretty serious about his writing, but I had no occasion to peruse his work. Then, about six years ago, I think, he invited me to be part of his friend's writing workshop, which was conducted online via Google Hangouts. I wrote a long 2-part story about my experiences in city government that I will probably never unearth again. I was trying to find old edits from that workshop on files saved from old computers, but I cannot at the moment. However, I am relatively sure that I saw early versions of two, or maybe three stories in this volume. Those are: the story that opens the collection, "Hair Shirt Drag;" the title story; and "Birds of Passage." (Note that I am only positive on the middle one.)
A note on genre: if anything, this review should be an exploration of the divide between so-called "speculative fiction" and so-called "literary fiction." Because I almost never read "speculative fiction." When I entered the writing workshop, I thought I might try my hand at one story in that genre, but I couldn't. Certainly, there are many inexplicable things that happen in the world that inspire awe and possibility; however, as I've gotten older and more cynical, I am less apt to believe in things such as aliens, to say nothing of witches, vampires and ghosts*. There are no aliens here; this is not science fiction. These are horror stories, but some of them are not supposed to be scary at all, but rather, wide-eyed at the mysteries of the unseen world.
This is put to greatest effect in the story that closes the collection, which I have to believe most people think is the best, "Birds of Passage." The story is a memory of an overnight camping trip a 10-year-old boy takes with his father, canoeing through a stream of shifting features, ending up in a sort of otherworldly place that is completely silent and subsumed totally by nature, without a shred of humanity in view. Something happens over the course of the night that changes the way both feel about the world (though it seems as though the father is not very surprised, and has experienced something similar in his past, camping in the same spot with an old friend). The story is written as a remembrance, after the father has recently passed away, and it is hard to see this as anything but an elegy. It's extremely powerful. The problem I have with "speculative fiction" is the unbelievability factor, but this piece has to be autobiographical, to one degree or another. It's written with such a convincing sense of reality, portraying the way strange alien things can only be glimpsed for a moment, obscured by a veiling effect to dissemble the truth that there is more to the world than it seems. It is also a heartwarming story of bonding with one's father. I believe it won an award or two, and it is, if anything, the real beginning of his career as a serious writer of fiction.
Or a serious writer of speculative fiction? There is a great deal of snobbery around genre fiction, and I am well aware because I am one of those snobs. Romance novels? Please. Science-fiction? I've enjoyed it in the past, it's probably my favorite "genre," but I don't ever reach for new ones (certainly I loved H.G. Wells and Kurt Vonnegut when I was younger; but never really read Isaac Asimov or Douglas Adams, or Octavia Butler, for that matter). Mystery novels, whodunits or true crime? Just this, from another friend. Horror? Maybe when I was younger. My mom used to say that the book of The Exorcist was quite good, and that the scariest book she ever read was Ghost Story by Peter Straub. Yes, I read a fair amount of Stephen King growing up, too. But also, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which probably had the biggest effect on me, and which feels closer to some of the stories in this collection (albeit less "adult," though these stories are not especially lurid or exploitative, despite often gruesome subject matter).
A few of the other stories worked for me. After "Birds of Passage," "The Buchanan Boys Ride Again" is probably my favorite, because it feels like a true "blockbuster" that could easily be made into a movie, or at the very least a short film in some one-off Black Mirror-like anthology series. It concerns a son and a father fighting off monsters coming out of plumbing fixtures in an old, cheap motel. It sounds ridiculous, but the pacing and descriptive language of the action made it both very frightening and compelling.
***
Two of the stories feel more ambitious: "Mise en Abyme" and "Eight Affirmations for the Revolting Body Confiscated from the Prisoners of Bunk 17." The former is more interesting than the latter. The latter reminded me of The Power, except the sequel to it where the woman-ruled world is invaded and overtaken by aliens that seemingly resemble humans and have a taste for flesh. "Mise en Abyme" is a deeper sketch of a dystopian society wherein several citizens are executed live on television each night, and the editor assigned the task of "censoring" the videos, which involves putting a black box over their eyes, deals with a rogue agent that is broadcasting the videos uncensored. She is also involved with (married to?) the Overseer, who seems to be the dictator of the society.
Ultimately, she is summoned into a world of infinite reflection, with a small dot of light at the very far end; she has some kind of special purpose, and I will not spoil the plot, but I did not really understand it, either.
There is also a smattering of flash fiction here, with several stories weighing in at 2-3 pages. I have zero issues with flash fiction except that it more closely approximates poetry than fiction. One of those very short stories ("The Hollow," which opens up with a lawyer being summoned for testamentary purposes by two sisters who may be drug addicts and/or close to dying and have to do something with the family home, I think) shows a lot of promise, before quickly devolving into the grotesque. These sorts of things tend to happen frequently in this collection, there is some form of terrible transformation.
"Open Fight Night at the Dirtbag Casino" is the last story to highlight, because it also seems to be set up as part of a longer piece. This is a type of "Groundhog Day" story, except it's not the same day, just the same place and the same opponent in a fight to the death, with the main character fighting as different bodies they have overtaken each night. It's a satisfying story on its own, but I think it encapsulates the way I feel about most of the others: these characters are blank slates. They seem to represent "everymen" or "everywomen" and do not seem to have idiosyncratic personal backgrounds/experiences--the lived-in feel, that is present in the best of them. I skimmed around some of the stories when I felt I sensed the general vibe of what was happening, or perhaps because I wasn't being grabbed by the neck.
It is a lot to ask of an author for their first publication to be a masterpiece, particularly when working in this genre, without major funding from an institutional patron. This is a passion project, and for the most part, it is a successful one. There is great promise in it, and talents such as Gordon's (and his "fraternal writing twin" Rebecca Allred, who was also part of that online workshop) seemed destined to blossom into genius, particularly when they are capable of beautiful passages such as this:
"'I feel it,' I said, although the description of it wouldn't come to me for years. But the way I said it, my dad knew. He nodded.
'I don't know what you'd call it,' he finally said. With a slender stick, he prodded the embers on our low fire and sent the shadows skipping like water bugs. 'Maybe the bigness of nature, or a great spirituality. Something, though, you don't feel at home.'
He looked out for a moment at the darkness, at the stars above. 'Sometimes,' he said, 'I think about all the possible worlds we could have lived in, but that we're in the one that makes you my son and me your father and brings us here. It sounds stupid'--he paused--'but sometimes I look at you and I think, 'Are you real?'
'Yeah,' I said. He laughed and I smiled, even though I don't know if he saw me do it, there in the shadow just beyond the fire's light. For a while, we just sat and listened to the world.
'Do you feel it everywhere?' I eventually asked, meaning the thing he had talked about and meaning everywhere outdoors; but even though I didn't clarify, my father knew. He and I shared a wavelength like that.
'Maybe if you try real hard, but I've never felt it quite like I feel it here.' He leaned back, caught between the orange light below and the silver light above. 'Just think,' he went on, 'that outside of our fire light, it's miles to the nearest town. Straight up and out above us, for millions of miles, is nothing but empty space. Beneath our skin, hidden deeper from sight, run rivers of blood and cells and atoms and, deeper still, the empty spaces between them. You and I and everything else are just thin layers between space and distances, just skins between mysteries we could never know.'
He stopped, probably wondering if he'd gone too far or said too much. Then he looked at me and asked, 'Are you scared?'
'No,' I said, 'but it is a little scary.'
'Yeah,' he nodded as he spoke, 'but it's also kind of awesome.'" (160-161)
This is also sort of the way I feel about this collection: a little scary, and kind of awesome. At the very least, it is a portent of greater things to come. And I do believe Gordon has just published his second book, which I hope to check out soon.
*It is possible that aliens exist, and sometimes I think I might believe in ghosts, but I find it hard to believe that witches or vampires are real--though obviously witches could be.
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