SHORT STORY REX Feb 2024
Short Story Rex Feb 2024
1. "Pig House", Kay Vaindal
so if i described this story as 'mother and daughter go on a road trip to visit a pig' you might at first blush expect lighthearted and potentially sappy but haha sike this is Seize the Press we're talking about here
The atmosphere has gone sour, phoshates have fucked up the world, abuse and mistrust cloud everything. Also there is giant corn.
Just one of several great stories in a great issue, i know i bang this drum a lot but if you haven't subscribed to Seize the Press yet seriously what are you waiting on
2. "The Cave", Liliana Colanzi
Flabbergasted by this story in The Baffler, a series of nine vignettes that tells the awe of nature, the cruelty of time and the cruel stupidity of man. A story about our past present and future told over a span of millenia all centered around the titular cave.
The story's taken from her collection Ustedes brillan en lo oscuro (You Glow in the Dark) which i'll definitely be checking out, probably in Spanish but maybe in what promises to be an excellent translation by Chris Andrews
And if you like "The Cave" also try "The Narrow Way" in the New Yorker, from the same collection. It belongs to what I am positing is a microgenre of "fucked-up futuristic Mennonite stories" which has at least one of other entry ("Fallow" by Sofia Samatar), and probably more I'm not remembering or haven't read, also well worth your time.
3 and 4. "We Never Went Away, We Just Hid Better", Sam Rebelein and "Fuck Me in a Whale" by Sasha Brown
I am old, and was 'off the market' years before dating apps were a thing, so these two short little stories (one in the debut issue of Gamut Magazine, free to read online and the other featured in The Masters Review: New Voices) that begin with the protagonist going home with someone they just met seemed especially otherworldly and uncanny to me from the gate lol
One is a not-at-all-deceptively-titled satire on the insidious power of virality over the miserable human heart, the other a lysergic x-ray into dating hell and the horror that lies beneath it, but you should read both to find out which is which
Not-as-short-a-story rec: Star Shapes, Ivy Grimes
My admiration for Ivy Grimes is no secret to those who've been subscribed for a while, and her recent novella Star Shapes only deepens that admiration. It's interesting to peer into Grimes's unique world through a broader window here than the keyhole we're often afforded in her short stories.
That view still strikes Grimes's characteristic balance between the mythopoetic and the odd. The story told here has its feet more firmly planted in something like our real world, but it takes us to some strange places through the exploits of our protagonist, a kidnapping viction by the name of Charlotte. Half the fun is just riding along in her mind and following the subtle jags her thoughts veer off on:
I've never been easy to convert, I would have been a good actress, because I can give people this look--I don't know quite how I do it--but it makes them feel like I believe them. People think I agree with them, that I vote however they vote, that I worship however and whoever they worship. But inside, I can easily disagree with them. Whatever someone believes, I believe something a little different. There's no way I pray to the same God that you do.
There's tons of little moments like this as Charlotte's captivity progresses, snapshots into her mind which gradually become snapshots into some other mind. Things gets gnarly but in the end it's a very human, very humane take on the Southern Gothic. Worth a look, and I can't wait to pick up her next collection when it comes out.
Not-a-story rec: Blue, Joni Mitchell
Late last year, for reasons I won't get into, I decided to get into Joni Mitchell. That is, I decided to Become the Type of Person Who is Into Joni Mitchell--though one could argue I was already That Type of Person and just didn't know it yet. (Tangential to this, just yesterday, I listened to an episode of the Weird Studies podcast in which the hosts used a detail from a Ligotti short story as a springboard to a discussion about affectation, about the conscious choices we must sometimes make to change as people no matter how conspicuous or absurd they seem, highly recommended.)
Anyway, as I say, I decided to get into Joni Mitchell. I started one day, arbitrarily, with The Hissing of Summer Lawns (I suppose I had an inkling that "jazz Joni" was going to be my entry point.) The following day I mentioned to this a friend who, more schooled in the JM catalog, suggested quite rightly that perhaps for the winter months (it was December) I should look into what was a more winter-appropriate album, hence: Blue.
I have made peace with the fact that I'm at a juncture in my life where this music fits with my sensibilities (achingly intimate, virtuosically sung ruminations on adult love and loss are hitting so right right now) and my possibilities (I can't be giving a fuck about 99% of the music in the world anymore, particularly the genres I was once most proficient in, the louder or more urgent ones, which seem to have little left to say to me).
I mean, of course, I am digging this shit. I, who (like this album) am much closer to a half-century than a quarter-century old. Of course, I am puttering around my kitchen warbling "We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall/keeping us tied and true", a damn near impossible melodic figure to warble convincingly if your name is not Joni Mitchell.
Of course, I can't keep up with the algorithmic firehose of musical Content those thirty years my junior are attuned to. I couldn't Become That Person even if I wanted to. I have to choose an album sit with it, one album for a month, months at a time, until I internalize it, make it part of my personality, of myself, of Who I Am. And now winter's almost over. Maybe Hejira will work for springtime. In summer, I'll go back for those hissing lawns, and next winter, skate on home to this one.
Thus concludes another edition of "This universally acclaimed masterwork is Rather Good, imo"