Delivering on a promise
By Dean Bakopoulos |
July 31, 2011, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ADAM Ross' first novel, "Mr Peanut," which came out last year, showcased blazingly original work by a writer whose influences ranged from Raymond Chandler to Italo Calvino. His second book, a collection of stories, confirms the promise of his first. "Ladies and Gentlemen" is clever in all the right ways, even while paying homage to the most traditional of forms.
The momentum in Ross' stories comes from storytelling itself. A stage is set, and then one character usurps the narrative by telling a new tale, pushing the story in unpredictable directions. These embedded narratives arrive effortlessly, in a page from Chekhov's playbook that has also figured in the work of Alice Munro and Raymond Carver, among others, making the story within a story a standard device of 20th-century fiction.
Ross turns the trick in admirably contemporary fashion. Instead of, say, arriving at a guesthouse and swapping stories after supper, as they might in Chekhov, these characters seem exhausted by stories, often telling them with a strange reluctance. The difference is partly one of structure - Ross' embedded narratives feel organic rather than orchestrated - and partly one of mood. Where Chekhov's stories within stories are frequently presented as entertainments, Ross' tend to come fraught with menace.
"Futures" is the strongest story here, a novella-length tale of an unemployed 43-year-old dilettante waiting out a run of bad luck. When he has an odd yet promising interview at a company run by a beautiful woman, it lifts his spirits enough that he strikes up a friendship with his neighbor's grown (and also unemployed) son. The story feels, continually, as if it's about to veer into the surreal; danger is on the way, but the reader has no idea where it will come from or how. It's a thrillingly unsettling story. When I finished it, I immediately went back and started again, eager to duplicate the rush. On second reading, it called to mind Chekhov's classic story of false hope, "The Kiss."
The other stories in "Ladies and Gentlemen" deliver a less intense variation of this thrill. A particular highlight is "The Rest of It," about a lonely English professor who makes an impulsive promise to the garrulous custodian who fixes his office heating. "We should organize this material," the professor says of the man's nonstop stream of stories. "We could make a book out of it." The custodian is delighted by the idea, soon revealing a dark secret the professor can't bear to keep. He regrets ever chatting with the man.
These are all-enveloping tales, well paced, tense and driven by effortless prose. Reading them, you often want to leave the room before things get out of hand. But the stories are too riveting to abandon, the kind that make you ignore repeated calls to dinner.
The momentum in Ross' stories comes from storytelling itself. A stage is set, and then one character usurps the narrative by telling a new tale, pushing the story in unpredictable directions. These embedded narratives arrive effortlessly, in a page from Chekhov's playbook that has also figured in the work of Alice Munro and Raymond Carver, among others, making the story within a story a standard device of 20th-century fiction.
Ross turns the trick in admirably contemporary fashion. Instead of, say, arriving at a guesthouse and swapping stories after supper, as they might in Chekhov, these characters seem exhausted by stories, often telling them with a strange reluctance. The difference is partly one of structure - Ross' embedded narratives feel organic rather than orchestrated - and partly one of mood. Where Chekhov's stories within stories are frequently presented as entertainments, Ross' tend to come fraught with menace.
"Futures" is the strongest story here, a novella-length tale of an unemployed 43-year-old dilettante waiting out a run of bad luck. When he has an odd yet promising interview at a company run by a beautiful woman, it lifts his spirits enough that he strikes up a friendship with his neighbor's grown (and also unemployed) son. The story feels, continually, as if it's about to veer into the surreal; danger is on the way, but the reader has no idea where it will come from or how. It's a thrillingly unsettling story. When I finished it, I immediately went back and started again, eager to duplicate the rush. On second reading, it called to mind Chekhov's classic story of false hope, "The Kiss."
The other stories in "Ladies and Gentlemen" deliver a less intense variation of this thrill. A particular highlight is "The Rest of It," about a lonely English professor who makes an impulsive promise to the garrulous custodian who fixes his office heating. "We should organize this material," the professor says of the man's nonstop stream of stories. "We could make a book out of it." The custodian is delighted by the idea, soon revealing a dark secret the professor can't bear to keep. He regrets ever chatting with the man.
These are all-enveloping tales, well paced, tense and driven by effortless prose. Reading them, you often want to leave the room before things get out of hand. But the stories are too riveting to abandon, the kind that make you ignore repeated calls to dinner.
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