A rollercoaster ride through queerness
I’ve been reading the modern masters of short fiction—Munro, William Trevor, Proulx, Chekov, Cheever, Saunders, Strout, Lorrie Moore—attempting, like them, to write in tightly constructed narrative arcs that still manage to feel lively and organic.
How old-fashioned!
Nowadays, many stories remind me of my neighbor’s English ivy that tries to invade and take over my pristine garden. Tendrils warp and intertwine. They ramble, unconcerned with extracting meaning from the story’s soil. Stuff just happens; get over it.
You’ll find that in McSweeney’s 62: the Queer Fiction Issue. A few of the stories stand out for me from the seeming chaos. In “Palaver,” told, as the title suggests, almost entirely in dialog, we eavesdrop on a mother and son contest. It’s clever and funny and has a lot of heart.
“Docile Bodies” is a master class in misdirection, turning assumptions upside down in the clever and affective ending. “The Chorus of Dead Cousins” is evocative, poetic, funny, a meditation on the ever-present past, the complications of lovers, the beauty and destruction of nature.
“Papi” is a fun, bi-lingual romp, a slice of life of modern Bogotá, with an ending that feels helicoptered in, but that still packs a punch. “Short Stack” is another slice-of-life story that shines, a sad one where pancakes and Grand Theft Auto figure prominently. The fable, “Peppersoup,” another exercise in misdirection, sneaks up on you just like the protagonist does his prey.
The “Geodic Body”— a sodbusters tale of madness and longing—is the outlier, only because of its setting out on the bald prairie of yore. It reminds me of a slightly more experimental version of Karen Russell’s “Proving Up.”
McSweeney’s 62 is a rollercoaster. It made me a little queasy, but I’m glad I went along for the ride.