I only got into Stephen Dixon on account of the shape of Frog. It is a supremely thick, square-faced novel, designed and packaged to draw in the clueless and dim-witted. I only bought one copy, though a hundred-dozen copies would have made for an interesting flooring.
Sometimes the chance purchase brings the greatest gains. There are no expectations or competing interests, pre-judgments or swayed impressions. If you have a winner on your hands, its impact is intensely personal. Dixon served up what I had been lacking since Updike’s Rabbit series drew to a close - the male psyche in all its insecurity and animal selfishness – though Dixon grants the reader a backstage pass to the central figure’s leading thoughts.
It feels a little “stream of consciousness”, though better informed on the average intellectual’s tendency to not be so lofty in what they’re thinking. Each sentence hits you like an impulse, an urgency – something more aligned with the way we think. You can feel the words hitting the frontal lobe, perceiving what is seen or initiating what needs to be performed.
Though there are some difficulties with Frog: you lose your bearing, and there is no meta-narrator to tell you whether you are re-imagining certain events, anticipating them, or truly living them. Dixon has a tendency to rework the same subject matter: whether this is to his own discretion or his own insecurity and dissatisfaction – we’ll never know.
However novel or idiosyncratic this retelling is, it becomes perfectly fitting for Interstate. Interstate is a nightmare. The retellings are the re-living of the nightmare, with details changed as fear and hope allow it. This is its strength: Dixon has taken the most heinous event that a parent can experience, and done in word what any parent would do in thought: continued with multiple retellings of the event – the events leading up to it, tangential references to it, the things that could have happened if only it never happened.
It’s a strange sensation to the reader. After the emotional exhaustion of the first chapter and pages into the second, you realize you just got back on the roller coaster. Go with it. It may not be the most pleasant or entertaining reading experience, but by the end of this repeating nightmare, you will feel like you have experienced something special and unique. You never see anyone reading Finnegan’s Wake on the beach, right?
Sometimes the chance purchase brings the greatest gains. There are no expectations or competing interests, pre-judgments or swayed impressions. If you have a winner on your hands, its impact is intensely personal. Dixon served up what I had been lacking since Updike’s Rabbit series drew to a close - the male psyche in all its insecurity and animal selfishness – though Dixon grants the reader a backstage pass to the central figure’s leading thoughts.
It feels a little “stream of consciousness”, though better informed on the average intellectual’s tendency to not be so lofty in what they’re thinking. Each sentence hits you like an impulse, an urgency – something more aligned with the way we think. You can feel the words hitting the frontal lobe, perceiving what is seen or initiating what needs to be performed.
Though there are some difficulties with Frog: you lose your bearing, and there is no meta-narrator to tell you whether you are re-imagining certain events, anticipating them, or truly living them. Dixon has a tendency to rework the same subject matter: whether this is to his own discretion or his own insecurity and dissatisfaction – we’ll never know.
However novel or idiosyncratic this retelling is, it becomes perfectly fitting for Interstate. Interstate is a nightmare. The retellings are the re-living of the nightmare, with details changed as fear and hope allow it. This is its strength: Dixon has taken the most heinous event that a parent can experience, and done in word what any parent would do in thought: continued with multiple retellings of the event – the events leading up to it, tangential references to it, the things that could have happened if only it never happened.
It’s a strange sensation to the reader. After the emotional exhaustion of the first chapter and pages into the second, you realize you just got back on the roller coaster. Go with it. It may not be the most pleasant or entertaining reading experience, but by the end of this repeating nightmare, you will feel like you have experienced something special and unique. You never see anyone reading Finnegan’s Wake on the beach, right?
2 comments:
I want.
It's a tough find; you might have to 'check it out' from chez grizzle.
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