Today, April 30th, is the official release date for the Interfictions anthology. I just reviewed eighteen interstitial stories in (some close approximation of) eighteen days. Phew! I am exhausted. Can’t say I’m sad it’s over, either. Don’t get me wrong–I really enjoyed doing this, I learned a lot, and I’m still not sure what I’m going to read with breakfast now that I’m out of interstitial stories–but when I started this, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

“The Utter Proximity of God” was my first pro sale ever. I was wildly excited. I wanted people to read it! What better way to build anticipation, I thought, than to take advantage of my advance reader copy and post a whole bunch of reviews? Also bubbling up and over in the unwatched pasta-pot that is my head was the question of what it meant that this, my first pro sale, had been chosen for a place among the eerie and intriguing “interstitial”. I’ve often used my blog to puzzle out this sort of thing–once, I spent several months and several thousand words attempting to convince myself it was all right for me to try writing magic realism. I figured this interstitial mystery wouldn’t be much different.

It wasn’t until the politely-worded metaphors for severely injuring myself started rolling in from all quarters that the realization hit. With my snazzy new WordPress technology flinging links to my blog far and wide, and a brand-new, breaking-news, cutting-edge anthology to blog about, the writers I was reviewing, in every likelihood, would find their way here and read what I’d written!

“First, I’m gonna blow his toes off.
::boom::
There go his toes.” –Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

After that it was all I could do to keep from running in unholy terror from the whole idea. I managed it somehow–told myself I would just feel like more of an idiot if I quit in the middle. And I know it’s too late to take back now, and maybe the whole notion was suicidally misguided from the outset, and maybe I’ll never sell another story as long as I live…but I think I’m still glad I went through with it.

Of the eighteen stories in the Interfictions anthology, I was genuinely impressed by fifteen, absolutely loved nine, was bowled over with jealousy and admiration of five, and found zero to be a waste of my time. That is hands-down the best record for any collection of stories by more than one author I’ve ever read–magazine, anthology or otherwise. Which is saying a lot. It means, whether or not I manage to write another interstitial story ever again, that I like reading interstitial fiction–that in fact, I prefer interstitial fiction to any of its mundane genre-adherent alternatives. I want there to be more interstitial fiction, frankly, and less of everything else. To that effect, I think I’m done trying to decide what is and what isn’t. As AsphaltEden pointed out in a discussion of the Interfictions cover art, names and definitions are traditionally assigned to a movement in art only externally, from a critical perspective, long after the movement is established. It’s almost a shame that Theodora Goss and Delia Sherman ever had to cross that boundary, to try to identify (and thus isolate) what they do in the work of others. Art doesn’t need borders–only the distribution of it does.

Another great thing I’ve learned in the course of my bumbling: interstitial writers are reasonable, thoughtful people, inward-looking, capable of recognizing their own flaws and forgiving them in others because it’s the flaws that drive them to write what they write.

Hmm. There were other things I meant to get to here…something about the function of experimentation in fiction, the balance between strangeness and familiarity? But this is getting long, so I think I’ll leave that for comments, and end with the index, for those people getting their copies and wanting to know what I’m babbling about.

My eighteen Interfictions Reviews:
“What We Know About the Lost Families of — House” Christopher Barzak
“The Shoes in SHOES’ Window” Anna Tambour
“Post Hoc” Leslie What
“Pallas at Noon” Joy Marchand
“Willow Pattern” Jon Singer
“Black Feather” K. Tempest Bradford
“A Drop of Raspberry” Csilla Kleinheincz, translated from the Hungarian by Noémi Szelényi
“The Utter Proximity of God” Michael J. DeLuca
“Burning Beard: the Dreams and Visions of Joseph Ben Jacob, Viceroy of Egypt” Rachel Pollack
“Rats” Veronica Schanoes
“Climbing Redemption Mountain” Mikal Trimm
“Timothy” Colin Greenland
“Hunger” Vandana Singh
“A Map of the Everywhere” Matthew Cheney
“Emblemata” Léa Sihol, translated from the French by Sarah Smith
“When It Rains, You’d Better Get Out of Ulga” Adrián Ferrero, translated from the Spanish by Edo Mor
“Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom” Holly Phillips
“A Dirge for Prester John” Catherynne M. Valente

Dendroica coronata
Mt. Toby State Forest, Sunderland, MA

“A Dirge for Prester John”
Catherynne M. Valente

I have to admit I went into this story with a general feeling of dread. I have read Catherynne Valente’s work before, and even heard her read aloud. I had formed the opinion that she writes with more attention to how words sound than what they mean. Style over substance. And this story certainly supports those earlier impressions. As far as phantasmagorias go, “Dirge” gives “A Map of the Everywhere” a run for its money: style-heavy, ponderously lyrical and at times just plain freaky. Both her vocabulary and her menagerie of mythical monsters are daunting. I’ve noticed, in this and other of her works, a strange, obsessive romance with words for gemstones; in particular an unhealthy appreciation for ‘onyx’ and ‘chalcedony’. She also seems to like things that are creepy-crawly and erotic at the same time. Can’t say I’m with her there, either.

That said, having struggled past her decadent, indulgent prose and nightmarish, erotic imagery, I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a depth of meaning in “A Dirge for Prester John”. I find it has a lot of the same innocently predatory sensibilities of Through the Looking Glass, but with a less tyrannical protagonist, who ends up getting destroyed by his fantasy world, rather than destroying it. And, you know, a little bit of poignant sex between a priest and a lady with no head thrown in for flavor. A medieval holy man, lost in a hellish world of illuminated manuscript marginalia-come-true, finds comfort in the familiarity of ritual. Hell’s fantastic citizens pity him his inflexible worldview while doing their best to accommodate it. And from that perspective–that of an alien culture observing the tragic collapse of the lonely imperialist–the decadent prose really does serve the story’s purpose. It makes the world surrounding John seem even stranger, and allows us to react to his slow adaptation simultaneously with sympathy and disbelief. This story fills me with newfound respect for Catherynne Valente–and I think those of you who shared my original opinion would do well to give it a try.

…though I have to admit I still don’t get the section headings. Some kind of astrological reference? No idea.

“Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom”
Holly Phillips

I really wish I didn’t have to resort back to grumpy ranting for this, the next-to-last of my reviews of the stories in the Interfictions anthology. Unfortunately, I’m afraid “Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom” rubs me every way but the right one. Its protagonist, waiting helplessly in an apartment in what I think is Paris for the release of her hostage boyfriend, seems to think that being a fictional writer of fantasy grants her carte blanche to ramble on for four pages about writing before revealing the essential catalyst that allows her rambling to be termed a story. On page two, we see her actually trying (and failing) to begin a novel. In most situations, I would have stopped reading right there, this being a personal hangup of mine. Then we come to the talking animals. Two of them. Neither seems to have any impact on the character or plot; their purpose appears to be that of signpost: “Look! Look at the fantasy writer! See? She hallucinates talking animals. What else could she be, except a fantasy writer?”

I admit that it is possible to write an engaging, successful story about a novelist encountering difficulty. Stephen King does it all the time. I have seen Neil Gaiman not fall on his face attempting such. And Hemingway. But maybe there’s a rule to be gleaned from these examples: that it shouldn’t be attempted unless you are already a novelist? I have googled Ms. Phillips. According to her site, she has a first novel forthcoming. I just hope it isn’t about a writer trying to write a novel.

In her author’s comments, Ms. Phillips mentions that she wrote this story all in one sitting, and by hand no less. She discusses the difference between typing and handwriting in their effects on the resulting prose. I agree that a change of media can be a useful tool. But whenever I write by hand, I am always careful, when typing up the prose later on, to edit with a firmer hand than the one I used to write–since pen and page don’t have a delete key. My problems with the obviousness of the metafiction aside, this is a subtle, quietly emotional story. The ending is a little abrupt, but I think it more or less gets across what it needs to. I think I would have enjoyed it quite a bit more if its protagonist had been, say, a hairdresser vacationing in Paris, whose boyfriend has been taken hostage, and whose government handler makes a subtle attempt to pick her up while she’s vulnerable. Assuming, that is, that hairdressing as an occupation precludes the hallucination of talking animals. I guess you never know what hairspray fumes might do.

It would be interesting to try to compare this story with “Pallas at Noon”, which is also about love and frustrated creativity, but which I loved. I’m not sure what the difference is–except for something about the conventionality of the approach? I’ll have to think about it.

“When It Rains, You’d Better Get Out of Ulga”
Adrián Ferrero
translated from the Spanish by Edo Mor

At some point in the early history of the Interfictions anthology, apparently, it came down to Adrián Ferrero or me. Though it eventually turned out that there was room in the anthology for both of us, for a moment, at least, the editors were forced to debate whether we both were necessary. I can understand that, I think. These are both stories about place, about the magical nature of place. They also both begin with several paragraphs of abstract ruminations that make you go “Get to the story already!”

From there, though, for me at least, the parallels diverge. I’m not sure I would even have recognized “When It Rains” as magic realism, had Adrián Ferrero’s name and language of choice not given away a hint as to his origins. When I think of García Marquez and Allende (the magic realists invoked in the Afterword with reference to Ferrero), I think foremost of character. Ferrero’s characters to me are mostly vessels for his prose. His story feels…blurry to me. Atmospheric. Ostensibly, it’s about a prophecy of flood, a retelling of the deeds of Noah in the days before the rain. But there’s no real chronology to follow, no plot, just more of a mood, a series of expressionistic studies of the emotional and prophetic significance of water. My writing messes with narrative structure a bit, but overall it’s much more conventional and straightforward in its conveyance of events and themes. And much sillier. That in mind, I can see how the editors might have chosen him over me. Heck, I might have done so myself. He’s the one, of the two of us, who’s pushing the edge, challenging convention. I guess I’m just glad they didn’t have to choose.

“Emblemata”
Léa Sihol
translated from the French by Sarah Smith

This story goes way the hell over my head. Like “Rats” and “Pallas at Noon”, “Emblemata” makes me wonder what a ho hum writer like me is doing in this anthology at all. It isn’t just that I have only the most rudimentary grasp of the concepts of buddhist philosophy. This is a story whose content transcends its form. These are themes that, if you handed them to me and said “write a short story to encompass them”, I’d tell you they are too much for such a small form, that it couldn’t be done–except maybe in the style of Borges, where the story ceases to be a story, the character ceases to be a character, once it has served its purpose and revealed the true immensity of its ideas. And “Emblemata” does follow that Borgesian structure. Certainly its main character, Iacovleff, dissolves into the whiteness of the page by story’s end. And yet there’s something that makes Ms. Sihol’s writing more approachable than Borges’, more immediate and contextual. Maybe it’s just the fact that I am in an anthology with her that makes me think somehow I might be able to learn from this, to do this. I know, it sounds like catching flies with my fingertips. But I’ve tried the Borges thing, and I can’t do it. This is a story worth studying, worth taking apart to see what makes it go.

“A Map of the Everywhere”
Matthew Cheney

I have been seeing Matthew Cheney’s name all over the place of late, but had yet to figure out who he was–so I was glad of this chance to read his work and see what he’s all about. This story is hands-down the weirdest one I’ve seen in the anthology. I would go so far as to say weird for the sake of weird, which Cheney seems to confirm both in his author comment and in the story itself. As his main character puts it:

“‘Look, I already have enough surrealism in my life, and I really don’t have the patience for more.’”

Which isn’t to say the great cacophonous phantasmagoria of cuckoo clocks, jetpacks and plastic-clad molemen isn’t lovely to read. It is. It just makes the lesson of the story (about a man finding himself, in spite of himself) more allegorical than real, makes the whole story feel, not exactly dreamlike, but set in a dreamworld which need not necessarily correspond to our own. As I read it I feel like…I dunno, like I’m watching a ballet or a puppet show, or looking at a collage of magazine clippings mixed in with chopped up sections of Heironymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Yet in spite of that disorientation, I do find a poignant, human story here. I think maybe that story might have come across stronger if there had been fewer earthly delights involved–but it’s pretty impressive that he manages to spin all these disparate madnesses into a story at all.

Oh, I almost forgot. Today is international Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch day (or something like that, see the original post about it by Jo Walton), which I think is some kind of mass protest about the grumpy old man comments of Howard V. Hendrix, the outgoing vice-president of SFWA, on how people who offer up their fiction on the internet are selling their souls for free. Basically, it’s an experiment. We are supposed to give away fiction on the internet and see if we still have souls. I am cheating a bit with my contribution, giving away an mp3 audio recording of a story so that I still retain the right to sell the text.

Odyssey peoples will no doubt recognize this from the TNEO Slam 2006.

William-O the Pirate King in: The Rodent Revenge (10 Mb, right-click to download)

I do not normally write cat mysteries.

“Hunger”
Vandana Singh

“Hunger” is the first story I’ve encountered here that strikes me as showing a modernist, rather than a postmodernist, sensibility. Which is a pretty rare thing on the speculative side of the publishing aisle, though I get the impression it is still much-touted over in New Yorkerland. And despite the fact that “Hunger” is also the only story so far to show even the slightest Science Fiction leanings, I’m also struck by its realism. This is a story that shows me an utterly worldly, mundane series of events, striving to hold my attention only by its prose and attention to character. And it succeeds.

“Sometimes he would tell her stories of his bygone days, and she would nod at intervals although she hardly understood any of it, except a word here or there, like bicycle, or river, or tomato chutney, which, put together, made no sense at all.”

Which I think sets this story in a class apart from all the others in the Interfictions anthology. This isn’t prose that strives for flights of imagistic hyperbole, prose that succeeds by wielding the imagination as a crutch. (Which is the kind of prose I write.) Instead the writing is ambitious in an entirely other sense: it invites me to look right through the words and be immersed in the people, their experiences and thoughts. And on top of that, or perhaps as a result of it, this story makes me aware that Ms. Singh has some real, profound wisdoms to impart about the natures of humanity and story. And publishing.

“Slowly the understanding came to her that these stories were trying to tell her a great truth in a very convoluted way, that they were all in some kind of code, designed to deceive the literary snob and waylay the careless reader.”

I think that may just work as a rallying cry for us all.

“Timothy”
Colin Greenland

I very much appreciate Mr. Greenland’s prose and descriptive skills; the world of this story is quiet and poised, with nothing superfluous. The premise, I’m afraid, annoys me a bit. A housewife has a brief affair with her cat. Are there really stay-at-home housewives left in the world? I suppose there must be, since we still see them all the time in fiction…but my mom gave up professional mothering when I was ten, and I haven’t met another since. This story takes place over three days, and the woman doesn’t seem to leave the house once. How is that her husband’s fault? He’s not even there most of the time. Are there no devoted, supportive husbands capable of fulfilling their wives’ emotional needs? I take exception to that. I’d like to think I am such a husband.

“Pallas at Noon” uses this same situation–smothered housewife tempted to transgress– only there I’m not nearly as bothered by it, since both husband and wife are painted for us as individuals, rather than representatives of a type. In “Timothy”, neither husband nor wife has any past we are aware of. Then again, maybe I’m not supposed to be trying to appreciate them as individuals. Maybe they are “oppressive husband” and “smothered wife” in the way of “bored sorority girl” and “plumber”–though in a less raunchy way. One could look at this story just as a subtle bit of erotic roleplaying, designed purely to titillate and amuse. In which case I think it succeeds admirably, with a hell of a lot better writing than I would normally expect out of a story with that purpose.