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I'll be diving into the rest of the book once I finish "Scissors" by Ray Garton, which I'm half-way through now.
Blu
DALE BAILEY
Edited by Michael Chabon. Vintage.
330 pages. $13.95.
Michael Chabon is probably the only Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist who also boasts a story credit for a comic-book-based Hollywood blockbuster. The Pulitzer's status as an arbiter of literary reputation conditions us to overlook this fact -- or at least not to mention it in polite company -- yet there his name is, bigger than life, in the credits of "Spider-Man 2." Chabon's participation in the project says something significant about changes in American literary culture.
It also makes him a natural figurehead for a campaign to erase the line between "literature" and the less respectable works -- including sci-fi, horror, and mystery stories, not to mention romance novels featuring photos of Fabio on their covers. Chabon is in a new generation of American writers who trace their influences not only to the literary canon, but to the energetic rabble of 20th-century popular culture. His second novel, "Wonder Boys," features a cameo by H. P. Lovecraft, the father of contemporary horror. His third, "The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay," lovingly recreates the early years of the American comic book industry.
So it's hardly surprising that he should use his new Pulitzer superpowers in service to the revolution. He fired the first shot with his 2003 anthology, "McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales," which dismissed the contemporary short story, "plotless and sparkling with epiphanic dew," in favor of the "lost genres of short fiction" -- the aforementioned sci-fi and horror stories, mysteries and romances, that defined the form early in the 20th-century. His follow-up anthology, "McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories," continues the crusade.
As a practitioner of the horror story, I would argue that these "lost" genres are in fact not lost at all. Most of them enjoy a thriving -- if underpaid -- commercial marketplace. However, it's hard to fault Chabon for trying to bring genre fiction some long-delayed and much-deserved critical respect. One can't help wishing, however, that his new anthology contained more good stories.
The problem is that many of the tales included are neither particularly astonishing nor accomplished. Some seem like echoes of genre stories from years past. Take Margaret Atwood's "Lusus Naturae," which tackles the problem of integrating a monstrously mutated child into a normal family -- a pale shadow, at twice the length, of Richard Matheson's "Born of Man and Woman."
Similarly, "The Miniaturist," by Heidi Julavits, recalls Matheson's classic "The Shrinking Man" -- or, reading further back into sci-fi history, Henry Kuttner's "Dr. Cyclops." The problem is not that these stories echo familiar themes, but that they fail to extend the themes in exciting new directions. One can't help wondering if they fall short because their mainstream authors are insufficiently aware of genres they are unaccustomed to working in.
Writers who spring from genre traditions -- who, to quote Chabon's introduction, work the "borderlands" between genre and literary fiction tend to do better. Stephen King contributes a compelling, if familiar, tale of a writer assaulted by a deranged fan. In "7C," Jason Roberts deploys sci-fi and horror tropes in a memorably apocalyptic narrative. Jonathan Lethem describes a man haunted by a mysterious woman named "Vivian Relf."
More haunting still is "Zeroville," Steve Erickson's/ story of a film editor who discovers fleeting images of an unopened door popping up in films both famous and obscure.
What this book's best stories possess, and what's missing in too many other stories, is a sense of the abiding mystery that envelops us all -- the vast, terrifying, liberating enigma of the universe itself.
In introducing "McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories," Chabon sounds a revolutionary imperative to invigorate the literary short story with the vitality of its genre cousin. But his own success in creating acclaimed fiction that draws upon both streams -- like that of talents as diverse as Steve Erickson and Jonathan Lethem -- shows the revolution is well under way.
Dale Bailey teaches English at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory. He's the author of the horror novels "House of Bones" and "The Fallen."