I’m starting another of my real-time reviews. This time it is of ‘ANONthology’: an anthology of fiction stories by various authors (Fourth Estate - HarperCollinsPublishers 2009), an experiment in the tradition of 'Nemonymous'. I shall attempt to draw out the stories' leitmotifs and mould them into a gestalt for the whole publication. I shall then give here my personal attempt at assigning the stories to the random list of authors' names given on the front cover.
Do
"The air has a coppery tinge, as though the whirling leaves have stained it..."
A beautifully touching story of bereavement and of a half-felt religion mingled with the watching for a palimpsest: a quest for the dear departed amid, I infer, a shaken snow-globe type of device, but instead of snow, there are falling autumn leaves. The symbiosis of abrasive nature and heartbreak, of a child's memorabilia and emotion's attempted neutralisation. But then a tutelary ancestor gives the best advice...(16 July 09)
Pavilion
"He was a singer, and he sang for them every morning..."
I feel this is a fascinating fable concerning the coming 'flu pandemic. An interesting contrast between the different permanences - with the possibility of young people dying before old. And, like the first story, the reader needs to impute death as a refined palimpsest of the spirit. But not really palimpsest this time, but karaoke.
And I wonder if 'pavilion' is rooted in 'papillon'? The women to whom the man sang were kind enough archetypically to safeguard the chrysalis until he flew away and left its 'tent' behind...? (16 July 09 - 3 hours later)
The Hypnotist's Wife
"Subtle threads tug her back."
A truly wonderful story (reminiscent of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' in some unaccountable way) where a wife keeps watch on her husband whose (often female) patients visit him for his skills in hypnotism. Like the previous stories, we still have a 'mimicry', but no metaphor by palimpsest or by karaoke this time - but more a possible mutual cancelling-out by symbiosis. Anything more would be a spoiler. Except perhaps the books on the shelf with spines turned inward. (16 July 09 - another hour later)
The Political Obligations of the Lover
"Be assured that it is better to die young and ecstatic than to suffer impotence, irrelevance and bureacracy..."
As one of those at least partially in the latter category of encroaching age, this is an uplifting set of legalese or 'commandments' to liberate the lover in us all, possibly 'echoing' the paradoxical optimism of 'Pavilion' about dying young (even when one is old?). It proposes a sexual Gaia to set me gambolling like a centaur across the hills. But it takes shadow from its irony, perhaps, with wit mirroring a hidden despair. I hope not. It takes a positive note, for me, in the end, from the implied advice of the 'tutelary ancestor' in 'Do'. (16 July 09 - another hour later)
The Approach
"...you never know how it is going to pan out..."
A new day, and a new approach, for me. But I can't get away from the leitmotif so far, cuminating in 'mutual cancelling-out by symbiosis' most obvious so far in 'The Hypnotist's Wife'. And the sex drive in the previous story. The treatment in 'The Approach' is a plain staccato English monologue addressed to an inscrutable 'you' who sometimes answers (spoken off-stage as far as the reader is concerned). The piece is driven along effectively by the reader's gradual realising of the scenario, potentially 'spoilt' by the publication's illustrations for the story. The definite 'pavilion = papillon' entymological / etymological root / route is also still at the back of my mind here. (17 July 09)
CONTINUED HERE: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=136537694&blogId=500728386