The Trouble with Language by Rebecca Fishow

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Trouble with Language by Rebecca Fishow Erin H. Davis (bio) the trouble with language Rebecca Fishow Trnsfr Books https://trnsfrbooks.com/store-1/n2kftobvk50qvbh94t4g5uyfviup1r-xscse 192 pages; Print, $18.00 In an interview with Rob McLennan, writer and artist Rebecca Fishow states that fiction is, among other universal occurrences, subject to “change and [End Page 110] randomness.” She goes on to ask the age-old and forever unanswerable question: “So I wonder if, and how, fiction might represent . . . reality. I wonder if it even should.” The reality of which she speaks here is one of simplicity, of the laws of causation that make up the universe as we know it. In literature, however, especially in fiction, there is ample legroom for the speculative and, quite frankly, incoherent. Fishow’s debut collection of stories, The Trouble with Language, is born from her wild and artful imagination, which is mirrored in both her visual art (check out her collection at rebeccafishow.weebly.com) and her previously published chapbook, The Opposite of Entropy (2018). This collection of haunting—yet addictive—stories comes to life in the midst of a similarly haunting and confusing world. With the continued spread of viruses, of unknown futures, it’s almost counterintuitive to find comfort in Fishow’s world of the equally unsettling. The stories in The Trouble with Language are never repetitive and walk a different plane from that in which we read. They are always fresh, always short and sweet and easily digestible, though their topics may be (at first) grotesque. Take, for example, the second story in the collection, “Timothy’s Severed Head,” which anchors the reader in a quasi-Frankenstein world. In this story, as well as throughout the collection, Fishow explores the infinite wisdom of death and its pervasiveness even within the moments that make us, as humans, feel ironically alive. She writes, What has the severed head shown me? Do you know how important people are? How good. How they matter, even after they are dead. What Mary and the others did to protect the head. There’s so much good in people, and in me too. I want to make it grow. This severed head, representational of so much—death’s constancy, the human fascination with death, the universality of death—echoes the writing of George Saunders and Sabrina Orah Mark, creating dark fairy tales to fit into the speed of today’s society. The stories follow the footsteps of the Brothers Grimm—the writers, as well as the adjective—but rays of hope shimmer through and show the resilience of the human condition. The fact that the severed head never fully decays but circulates, the ways in which blood brings about healing, are just two examples of Fishow’s sense [End Page 111] of salvation within her collection. Perhaps, in today’s COVID-19-wracked world, the political upheavals that have us each on the edge of our seats, and the alarming severity of our planet’s survival, the reminder that death is imminent is freedom. We are, after all, here for only a blip on Earth’s grander time scale. What then, do we have to lose by living fully and unapologetically? Fishow writes, in her story “The Last Day of School,” “We are not here. We never were. If you have an emergency or someone is in immediate danger, ask yourself: What is the value of danger?” Of course, Fishow is not calling for readers to strip themselves of all caution. We can’t throw it all to the wind, especially not when our wind patterns are circular. But there is growth in trauma, and healing that can be found in the numbering of our days. If we are here for only a short time, what is the point in keeping silence, of shuffling through repetitions without rearing our heads? Interestingly, it takes something as absurd as a child prison guard, or ghosts at the kitchen sink, to hoist humanity up out of its languor. Not all that Fishow writes, however, centers on the ghoulish. Her stories—averaging about two to three pages each—highlight the golden edges of the mundane. In a very Lewis...