Transformations

Abstract

Fondation continuedfrom previous page sity Press of Mississippi—bills the novel as "part mystery, part love story." Parker does embrace the thriller aspect of his narrative. We are drawn along by drama and suspense. Still, even in such terms, the story undermines readers' expectations. Parker gets carried away at times with his ability to get inside Ray's head. Chapter 5 largely revolves around whom Ray calls on the phone, and whom he chooses not to, while he nurses his wounds. Chapter 10 treats us to ten pages devoted principally to Ray's taking a shower and relocating to its rightful place outdoors a bird that has accidentally wandered inside the house. I understand the need for backstory, but here it's evident that literary notions are actually interfering with the more suspenseful aspects of the story. Anumber ofpoets have made successful transitions into fiction. The best of them—Denis Johnson, Kim Addonzio, Charlie Smith—have maintained their focus on compression. For most of Cry Uncle, Parker remains focused. Only occasionally does he lose his way. One clue to these momentary lapses can be found in an interview with the author featured at the University of Mississippi website. The anonymous interviewer asked Parker about the differences between writing poetry and writing fiction. Parker's reply: "Mostly, when I rewrite and edit poetry, I do so by subtracting—cutting and polishing. When I work on fiction, as someone accustomed to dense language and intensified imagery, I tend to rewrite and edit by addition—fleshing out and exploring further." Hemingway was correct. Good writers are good notonly because ofwhat they write,but also because of what they leave out. Cry Uncle is an excellent novel. It simply could have left more to the readers' imaginations. Larry Fondation is the author of the novel, Angry Nights (FC2), andCommon Criminals (AsylumArts), a story collection. Transformations Willful Creatures Aimee Bender Doubleday http://www.randomhouse.com/doubleday 221 pages; cloth, $22.95 I've only tried absinthe once. It was in college, at a party, and in fairness I was pretty deep in my cups already when they handed me the bottle, so maybe it was just a joke somebody played. But let's figure it really happened, and let me say this: that first swig was like nothing I had ever tasted, this flash of cold licorice and electricity gusting like wind throughout my body and into my brain, equal parts chemical reaction and radiation, working its transformative magic. The rest of the night shined. When I discovered Aimee Bender, the feeling was comparable. Her writing is so unlike anything else being practiced or preached in today's literary scene that her modest output—one novel and two collections (the latter occasioning this review) — should be understood as a little universe unto itself in which physics and truth may be malleable or mutative, but for all that, no less real. She's like Marilynne Robinson ghostwriting for Raymond Carver while on a whole lot of really clean acid. Take "The Rememberer," the opening story from Bender's debut collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1999). A woman's boyfriend is experiencing fast-acting reverse evolution—becoming an ape, a turtle, etc.—but instead of making self-evident jokes about immature men, Bender forces the near-farcical premise to yield some unexpected humanity. "This is the limit of my limits: here it is," the narrator tells us as her boyfriend (lately a salamander) loses interest in a dribble of honey she has poured into his pan. And: "Because I cannot bear to look down into the water and not be able to find him at all, to search the tiny clear waves with a microscope lens and to locate my lover, the onecelled wonder, bloated and bordered, brainless, benign, heading clear and small like an eye-floater into nothingness." She drives to the ocean and sets him free: "Sometimes I think he'll wash up on shore. A naked man with a startled look. Who has been to history and back. I keep my eyes on the newspaper." No surprise then, that "magic realism" is far and away the most common description of her work...