AVERY #5 (BY) VARIOUS AUTHORS

Published 2010, 185 pages
Characters: B+
Writing: A
Plot(s): B-
Pacing(s): A-
Poignancy: B

Avery caught my eye a couple weeks ago while browsing through literary magazines at a bookstore on St. Mark's Place, and being impressed by the clean, interesting layout design, I decided to give it a blind buy.  Though it's a twice-a-year literary publication, Avery looks and feels like a genuine book of short stories, which is why it bills itself as "an anthology of new fiction."  Unlike most literary magazines, Avery is all short stories — no poems or essays or interviews here, and the only artwork is a series of (very nicely done) watercolor and pencil sketches on the title pages.  I'm often let down by short story compilations, whether by one author or various, but Avery was clearly put together by editors with a consistent vision, and managed to genuinely impress me.

The differences between Avery and other anthologies are probably not all that great — literary fiction usually covers a sadly narrow range of subjects, but collections like the extremely hit-or-miss Best American Short Stories 2009 are so disjointed and imbalanced that even the successful pieces are dragged down by the many flat ones.  Most short stories just don't feel very imaginative or meaningful to me.  Authors tend to rely too heavily on a subdued, ambiguous ending, or they put all their stock in over-written sentences packed with too many analogies, similes and metaphors.  The stories in Avery sometimes suffer slightly from these problems, and in retrospet, none of them are particularly surprising or innovative.  But the writing is fresh, exciting to read, and consistent.  Considering that there are thirteen stories here by thirteen different authors, Avery #5 manages to establish a running tone that never really slumps or feels stale (with maybe one exception).  The editors should be congratulated for their skill at matching these pieces together, as this collection has a distinct personality, even more so than many I've read from a single author, but without the redundancy that most one-author collections face.  The level of writing all around is excellent, and the plotting, while somewhat unadventurous, is nonetheless tight and interesting.

The best of the collection is possibly "The Boy Who Jumped and Lived," by Steve Almond, and as the first story, it gives a good indication of what will follow.  It's neatly plotted with interesting, enjoyable characters, but Almond's voice is what truly carries the piece, as he casually drops fantastic lines without getting bogged down in his own abilities.  Almond's story never feels pretentious or self-important, and though the subject matter is somewhat serious, it manages to be quickly-paced and fun to read.  Other stories in the collection have similar strengths, though perhaps not to the same degree.  "Devices" by Chelsey Johnson is possibly the most experimental story here, and does a good job of pushing the pace of the collection while adding to its originality.  Most others are simply solid, carried by a strong, consistent voice, all working well with their neighboring pieces.  The only story that felt somewhat out of place to me was "Beyond Any Blessing" by Stuart Nadler, in part because of its length, and in part because it felt like a wearingly typical "literary" story, unlike the others here.  It's almost twice as long as anything else in the collection, but never really earns it.  The writing itself is still solid, but lacks spark, and for a relatively long story, I never felt that it went anywhere interesting.

Overall, Avery #5 is certainly one of the stronger short story collections I've come across.  Despite lacking a unifying theme or thesis, the stories are so consistent and well-chosen that each makes a better impression than they would have on their own — the real test of a short story collection, in my opinion.  So, well done, Avery House Press, and all involved.  You've helped to restore my faith in the genre, and I'll be picking up issue six.

INTERPRETER OF MALADIES (BY) JHUMPA LAHIRI

Published 1999, 198 Pages
Characters: A
Writing: A-
Plot(s): B
Pacing: B+
Poignancy: B+

In the title story of Jhumpa Lahiri's short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, an Indian tour guide guides an American-Indian couple around the historical sites of their native land, a country they associate with but have never visited before.  He begins to take an interest in the wife of the group, projecting his own marital problems onto this stranger's relationship.  Yet as a guide, he can do no more than observe from behind a social wall and go home with no real revelations except some faint disappointment.  In a way — and likely for good reason, as it is the title piece — this short story works as an abstract for the collection as a whole, and maybe even this whole subgenre of literary fiction.  Lahiri writes beautifully crafted, endearing character pieces that tug at a few melancholy emotional strings before fading away, with no clear lessons learned.  Like the interpreter in question, Lahiri plays the role of a listener as well as narrator, and refrains from explicitly stating her judgements. 

Lahiri is far from alone in realizing that subtlety leads to a more organic relationship between reader and character.  But unlike the many, many who attempt this style — the ending so ambiguous you might not even notice it's over, the depressed, doomed protagonists — Lahiri's prose is exceptionally strong and her characters more vivid than average.  There's a healthy amount of variety and creativity in the plots of these shorts, putting her ahead of peers like Lorrie Moore, as far as I'm concerned.  There are, of course, the multiple stories about doomed marriages and mid-life romantic failures, but Lahiri attempts a few more experimental pieces, and is much better than most at letting her characters stand out through their own personalities, rather than seeming mere avatars of the author.  Almost every piece is based around Indian culture in some way, but never to the extent that it becomes the primary driving force of the story.

If I have any criticism of Lahiri's style, it's that she is perhaps a little too passive in too many stories.  Few writers are as skilled at pulling themselves back as a narrator and letting each story reach its end with no real conclusion or catharsis, but even so, Lahari doesn't quite escape the trap of this type of story.  Though this is a short collection, under 200 pages with just nine stories, only a few of them left any real impression on me.  Lahiri falters in most of the pieces set in India, where she attempts to mix a more traditional-sounding narration with quirky literary character pieces.  Other stories simply feel too small.  With such vivid characters featured in the best stories here, those in between feel more arbitrary in comparison, and lacked 'punch' in some important way.  Still, this isn't so much a criticism as a result, and in any short story collection, a reader is going to focus most on the stories they connect to.  I wasn't able to fully connect with everything here, but this isn't really Lahiri's fault.  Interpreter of Maladies deserves a solid recommendation as a collection full of natural characters and sophisticated literary craftsmanship.

BLOOD MERIDIAN (BY) CORMAC MCCARTHY

Published 1985, 335 Pages
Characters: C+
Writing: A
Plot: D
Pacing: D
Poignancy: B

Reading Blood Meridian isn't so much like reading a traditional novel as watching hours worth of old historical footage spliced together with no narration.  Set around the US / Mexico border in the 1850's, during a series of violent raids and military skirmishes, there is never enough focus or plot to seem like, well, a novel.  Like those old sepia-tinted movies, it's all wide-shots, jumpy unclear footage, sudden cuts from one scene to the next.  You can tell you're following the same group of characters, but the camera rarely ventures close enough to learn anything about them, and most of the time all you see is one big mass moving about the screen.  And like watching three hours of historical footage, it becomes increasingly tedious and disorienting the longer you stick with it — even if the scenery is nice and individual scenes, taken on their own, seem interesting enough at first.

Blood Meridian was probably one of the most difficult books I've ever tackled.  It is a novel, technically, but the actual experience is more akin to reading a 300 page prose poem about gratuitous violence and desert landscapes, written in a sort-of stylized Biblical language.  Blood Meridian follows a group of Americans wandering throughout Mexico, stopping at a dozen towns that all start to sound the same, fending off wildlife, Indians, angry Mexicans and ultimately killing lots and lots of people.  That's it: there's no overall plot, no sense of momentum or purpose or change.  Every chapter feels the same as the last, but with a few details changed.  The group wanders, kills, rides, fights, kills.  Characters join the group and soon leave, rarely staying long enough to be given a name.  Without a plot, the book is disorienting enough as it is, but Blood Meridian lacks even a main character to center itself around — and this, ultimately, prevented me from every really becoming immersed in the story.  Some summaries and reviews will try to tell you that "The Kid" is the protagonist of Blood Meridian, but that's bullshit.  For the first 50 or so pages, The Kid is the driving force of the story, which at least seems like it's going somewhere in the early stages.  Blood Meridian would have made for a fantastic novella, as it could have made its point without repeating itself over and over.  But after the first few scenes, The Kid quickly fades from the picture, never amounting to more than a passive participant, just another member of the group.  McCarthy goes for entire chapters without mentioning him at all.  Open up Blood Meridian to a random page in the middle and the most common pronoun you will see is "they."  "They" are the main character of the novel. If you wanted to be really flippant, you could boil the plot of Blood Meridian down to McCarthy's favorite pronoun + verb combo: "They rode...."

It's hard to review Blood Meridian for its various merits, as they are ultimately so lopsided.  McCarthy clearly had a very specific goal in mind when he wrote the book, and its "thesis" is interesting enough: this is an anti-Western, an exploration of the endless cycles of violence that actually made up the Old West, rather than heroics and clear-cut gun duels.  But as with performance art, your reaction will likely depend on how far you believe a 'statement' can sustain art.  Is the mere statement or idea enough, without anything developing overtop of it?  Blood Meridian is not a particularly deep book; maybe my attention-span was just so shot that I didn't notice its layers, but it seemed pretty one-note to me.  They ride, they kill, people die.  Violence is bad but unlikely to change, see?  Do we need 300 pages of interchangeably gruesome events to make this point?  Or at least, why couldn't McCarthy make this point while still crafting a plot? 

This is a debate that I will likely end up on the losing side of, but it's nonetheless a huge beef that I have with the literary world today.  There seems to be an unquestioned bias among literary readers that well-written prose is the primary goal of a story — and that plot, being on the other end of the spectrum, is not only cursory but even unnecessary.  McCarthy seems to agree with this philosophy.  I can't in fairness say that the plot of Blood Meridian is "bad" because he literally made no attempt to craft one.  But why is this excusable, much less preferable?  I should mention, if it's not too late, that Blood Meridian is considered not only the best of McCarthy's books but one of the best works of literature in the last half century by many smart people.  Now, I can understand why some would enjoy it — the writing is absolutely fantastic on a technical level — but really, a landmark of contemporary literature?  Frankly, I don't see why McCarthy's difficulty with plot is any more excusable than Dan Brown's inability to not write like a 5th grader.  Sure, Brown is a truly awful writer, on a technical level, while McCarthy excels at this.  But McCarthy cannot write plot, and Brown — for all his many flaws — knows how to shape a riveting story.  My opinion of Brown as a writer is very low, believe me, but I'm merely trying to illustrate a point — why is there such favoritism for the various elements of a novel?  Why is plot not considered important to a book's worth, when it's so crucial to the actual process of reading for many people?  I found many sentences in Blood Meridian to be utterly stunning; some so well-written that I literally went wide-eyed.  Yet even so, the book remained a chore to work through, and when I would sit down with it again, I was frequently unable to tell whether I had read a certain scene already or not, as they all end up sounding so similar.  There's nothing more frustrating than that sudden, bitter feeling that there may be no point in actually reading a book to its end.  As someone who enjoys the "story" aspect of "stories," a clear, strong narrative would have allowed me to enjoy Blood Meridian as more than a long string of beautiful words.  No matter how beautiful the scenery, no matter how vast and striking the landscape, if there's no path to give you a sense of direction, you're eventually going to get lost.

FAR NORTH (BY) MARCEL THEROUX

Published 2009, 314 Pages
Characters: B
Writing: B+
Plot: B
Pacing: B
Poignancy: B-

If you know me, you know that I'm obsessed with post-apocalyptic fiction.  I've read pretty much everything out there, but it's been a weird relationship, as I'm never really satisfied with what I find.  It's strange, but post-apocalyptic books always seem to lack imagination.  Most of them end up dealing with the same themes, same situations, same stoic but jaded characters.  Far North is the upcoming selection for a book club I joined, so I had no knowledge of the plot whatsoever going in.  But I had hope.  Much like the character of a post-apocalyptic novel, I believed that maybe this time could be different.

It's not that post-apocalyptic books are usually bad. I wouldn't be able to sustain my fascination with the genre if that were the case.  It's just that they're usually "alright", and frankly, I want more.  Even the best ones — say, Stephen King's The Stand — usually end up having some huge, awkward flaw.  Far North doesn't really expand any horizons, doesn't really have any original ideas, doesn't demonstrate anything new about human nature, but it is at least well written.  It's gripping and fairly well paced. But I wish there were something more to stick with me, because the plot is basically the plot of every post-apocalyptic novel.  This time, it was global warming.  A group of pilgrims established a new frontier in northern Siberia, taking advantage of the receding temperatures, and a couple years later the rest of civilization went to shit.  This time, the main character is a woman — except she acts like a man in every way, to the point that other characters spend most of the novel believing that she's a man, so a bit of a missed opportunity there.  This time, there isn't even a side-kick along for her adventure.  This is basically a "road" novel, as most post-apocalyptic novels are, except this journey is shaped in little futile loops, and there's never a clear goal or threat.  True to life, I suppose, as our protagonist just sort of wanders around randomly and deals with the various situations she finds.  This is a book of random encounters, fleeting danger that's inevitably resolved within a few pages, so there's never any great tension or suspense.

Post-apocalyptic novels so often deal with hardship, society's healing or reforming, the cruelty of men cut loose from civilization.  And that's fine, but not when there's nothing else to it.  Here, the side characters never stick around for long enough to develop, and without side characters the book lacks even a sense of danger.  There's a clipped, casual quickness to the pacing of the book. Though well-written, Far North isn't particularly profound.  It doesn't make any great statements about civilization or human nature that haven't been made before — although it does make them better than most.  At times, it actually starts to steer towards something unique, only to shy away at the last minute.  Set in the wilds of Russia, it never takes advantage of its unique scenery or the mystery that is the vast Siberian landscape, which was a huge disappointment.  I assume that Theroux has never been to Siberia, as there's no sense of unique personality to the place, and it could have been set on almost any landmass with no changes but in the names of towns.  Once a mysterious region called "The Zone" is introduced, I was hoping Far North would at least have the good sense to borrow some of that awesome Russian creepiness from STALKER, but alas, this too is barely developed.  The main character wanders.  The main character perseveres, no matter how unlikely. And so on.

All this disappointment does not make Far North a bad book.  I always do this, getting caught up in the flaws of a novel, only to claim at the end that it's pretty decent — but whatever, Far North is pretty decent.  While it lacks creativity, it isn't really derivative or cliche either, and makes up for this in readability.  There's a lot of attempted poignancy that falls flat, but Far North works on a structural level better than most books.  So if you haven't read all that many post-apocalyptic books, this wouldn't be a bad start.  It doesn't cover any new ground, but it nonetheless makes for a reasonably satisfying journey.