|
Gary
Lutz's new collection, Partial List of People to Bleach,
carries the subtitle Fictions By. This seems more appropriate
than the word "stories," a concept which informed his previous
work, Stories in the Worst Way—a groundbreaking
collection in which Lutz successfully steered his amazingly
crafted sentences to take on the swells and lulls of days
in ordinary lives.
Partial
List of People to Bleach is a great novel with all the
momentum taken out of it. This collection, with its points
of extreme specificity, does not tell stories of real people
so much as theoretical ones; there are no distinct identities,
only distinct details. Lutz writes in such an idiosyncratic
style that it is impossible to say whether these fictions
are good or bad; the writing is extremely high quality, but
readers may feel lost.
Most
of the stories are curiously inconclusive because of Lutz's
tendency to leave judgments out of his storytelling. This
is the case in the creepiest and possibly weakest piece, "Tic
Douloureux," in which two brothers live with their aunt, who
occasionally, while the parents are out, becomes physical
with one or the other brother (the language during these parts
is never explicit, always euphemistic). At the end of the
story, the parents return home and ask the three of them,
"Which one of you?" Without explaining at all what is meant
by this, the narrator physically stops the aunt from answering.
There are a multitude of interpretations possible here, but
none of them quite occur in the universe we're used to inhabiting.
The characters
are piecemeal and frozen in time, the result of a writer trying
to create as specific a universe as possible. Lutz uses invented
words and phrases that are inserted for effect rather than
real purpose; he, at one point, describes a handful of wet
handkerchiefs as a "dank fraternity." Love affairs handled
by Lutz are truly confusing, because, as there is no clear
difference between men and women narrators, one is always
guessing who is in what relationship, whether the narrator
is male or female. "I Was in Kilter with Him Awhile" is a
good example of this; the narrator begins by describing his/her
husband, then recounts affairs had with young women. It isn't
that such a situation is impossible or even unrealistic—Lutz's
reluctance to pin down the identity of the narrator means
that the piece is not meant to represent gay relationships,
or marriage, or anything under such a broad heading. It's
simply experience, related in a nostalgic and resigned tone.
In effect, he has escaped labels, while maintaining the style
that makes these pieces worth reading.
Lutz,
not a typical writer by any means, has no interest in linear
plotlines or even chronology. Rather than the rich post-read
feeling of having experienced an event, the pieces in this
book leave the reader with a stark, cool, and even creepy
feeling. Unlike many story collections, Lutz's newest requires
the reader to pause and contemplate between stories, rather
than moving immediately from one story to the next. The meanings
of these pieces are in the aethetics rather than content.
Gary
Lutz has created a new use for text—one that is not quite
storytelling or rhythmic conveyance of beauty, as in poetry.
There may be lines that make the reader want to read aloud,
but these crowded sentences are best kept as prismatic word
constructions; they lack the musicality of poetry. The narrative
voice tends more toward rhetoric with constant questions:
"A family? That was where you got crooked out of childhood."
Or, "Shall I admit that more than once I wanted to share that
kid's sleep—i.e., to be fucked and fucked and fucked
by him until I bled?" The constant questions give the dry,
professorial voice an odd liveliness.
What
Partial List lacks is a unified voice that carries
through all the stories. Strangely, even though they seem
like the same people, their purposes are not apparent. The
narrators in Stories in the Worst Way were interchangeable
but had a basic premise— a person detached from his desires
finding the most complicated ways to make his appearance seamless.
All the details in that collection seemed to build toward
a realization of self that was remarkable; however, most of
the people in Partial List are far too lost in their
detailed lives to come to any strong conclusions about who
they are.
The exception
to this is the last piece, "Six Stories," which is at last
told by a narrator whose purpose is put up front: The fable-like
first part ends, "I kept waiting for someone to say something
in a language that wasn't shot." Here is where readers can
at last get a glimpse of a real person speaking. In the third
part, "Employment," the identity becomes stronger, as the
familiar process of applying to a job is told in a self-aware
and recognizable voice: "I'm looking for work in this room,
naturally. I'm desiring lots of work in this room. I'm very
serious about my desire." At moments like these, Lutz is original
while still being accessible.
It's
interesting, and wonderful, to be able to pick up a book and
dip into it anywhere, without feeling lost in events; but
it's a strange feeling to read straight through an entire
chapter and wonder what actually happened between the first
sentence and the last. Lutz removes himself from traditional
storytelling mechanisms to create new forms of expression.
Readers accustomed to scene-by-scene, protagonist-centered
storytelling will be either refreshed or alienated by this
unique collection.
(August,
2007)
|
