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Whatever Happens
by Tim Conley
Insomniac Press, 2006
Moosecall #3: Big Game, Small Stories
Fiction from the Moosemeat Writers Group
www.moosemeat.org
Reviewed by Michael Bryson
See also TDR's
interview with Tim Conley
Here's the first thing I wrote about
Tim Conley's book of marvellously peculiar short stories:
Tim Conley's characters question the
boundaries of what can be known--and challenge the reader with the
implications of living in an unknowable world. His stories tell us
again that the silences are often the loudest notes in the aria. A
welcome new voice with a unique vision.
You can find that quotation on the back
of the book. Yes, I blurbed it,
and now I'm going to review it. There's more I wanted to say about it.
You might want to start, however, by reading Conley's story "The
Watch," published on TDR, which begins like this:
He was a doorman and his friend was a
doorman. There they were talking and he was saying yes we do have an
unexamined role in society, I've put a lot of thought into that. Not
like we're invisible, his friend rejoined, though the way some of them
walk by you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
* Done?
Okay, let's proceed. * First,
even in the opening sentences of "The Watch" you can see what
I was trying to get at in my blurb of Whatever Happens. Yes, some
readers are going to find these stories too abstract. The
"unknowable world," say what? But it's not only doormen that
have unexamined roles in society. Canadian literature itself is often
too much unexamined. Conley
writes the type of short fiction we don't see a lot of in Canada. Others
shaking up readers' expectations include Paul
Glennon and Barry
Webster, each of whom also published a new book in 2006. Webster's
won the ReLit Award for short
stories. Conley's publisher notes
the writer's work is "influenced by--but expand[s] upon--the work
of Jorge Luis Borges, Raymond Queneau, and the European
avant-garde." Yes, sure. David Foster Wallace also deserves a
mention. Like Foster Wallace's
fiction (or Tim Burton's movies), Conley's stories take us well beyond
our common boundaries of perception. Into the minds of some terribly quirky
individuals. In the first
story, two neighbours quarrel passively over a length of rope. Which
will hang him/herself first? In the second story, one thing leads to
another, but it doesn't really. A string of unconnected events that
actually are connected, in a tenuous manner. The sixth story is one of
the funniest I've read in many years. A priest replies to a letter a
young woman has written to the Pope. I dare not give anything more away.
"The Watch" is the seventh story and still my favourite. In
total, Whatever Happens includes 19 stories in less than 200
pages, which again suggests the influence of Borges' Ficciones. Many
of these stories are stories about storytelling. Honestly, I wouldn't
recommended this book to my mother. She wouldn't get it. But if you're
looking for something to prove that Canlit has innovators: look no
further. * About
Moosecall #3: Big Game, Small Stories what can one say? It
is a 19-page chapbook. It includes 17 stories by 14 writers. On the
cover is a moose in the middle of a yellow-upside-down-triangle. Like
one of those highway signs that means: Drive cautiously! You don't want
to hit a moose! Inside, the cover is corrugated; a sheet of rice paper
covers the title page. In short, this is an attractive chapbook. Now
on to the content. The short stories themselves are micro-fictions.
There's not a lot of meat on 'dem bones, in other words. But that is
just figuratively speaking, before one has even read a word.
(Incidentally, this is a chapbook self-published by a writers group from
Toronto: Would a racoon not have been a more appropriate figurehead?)
One complaint: I would have preferred for the stories to have been laid
out in a way that gave each more space. As it is, each new story begins
fast upon the heels of the previous one. More white space, please. Add
some blank pages. Oh, boy. Edward
Brown: killer story. Congratulations, Nikolijne Troubetzkoy and Myna
Wallin. Yes, other stories were good, too, but a reviewer must separate
best from good. At least, in his own subjective way. Actually,
what this chapbook left me wondering is what happens in the sessions
between these writers. Do they force each other to boil down each story
to its smallest essence? Is that why many of these stories verge on
narrative poems? Does anyone ever say, "I really think you need to
expand this story to at least ten times this length ... these characters
deserve a broader life ... as readers we're well trained for the
marathon ... not every race needs to be a sprint." Personally,
that's what I'd like to see each of these writers do. Kick it up a notch
or three. Expand your vision. Dig deeper into your talent. Become the
writers we need to get us through the 21st century. There's many years
ahead of us yet. Keep
filling those blank pages! Michael
Bryson's fiction appeared in 05: Best Canadian Stories (Oberon
Press) and other places also.
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