SHORT STORY REX for Feb 2023
Trevor Bonas, Naben Ruthnum, JR Bolt, Ray Bradbury, and more
1. “Mountain”, Trevor Bonas
For reasons of space and of taste, I’ll spare you the two terrible puns the name PROPAGULE suggested to me (they involved Tony Soprano and MC Hammer, fwiw), and will simply say that Propagule is in their own words "an independently-run convergence of the arts, focused on fiction, music, visual works, theory, and more," and they are "especially interested in the aesthetically novel, experimental, transgressive, and uncategorizable."
Their second issue definitely ticks all those boxes. My favorite is a story called "Mountain" by one Trevor Bonas, which works in a dark and comically absurd vein in the tradition of either a) Ionesco or Beckett via Barthelme or b) Adult Swim or possibly c) both
"When Rowan died," it begins, "it was sad not only because I lost a brother but also because my family lost our sled. He had been sturdy, aerodynamic with his flatter-than-usual head, and being a real live person could do two-way communication in motion."
The deceptively silly tone hides canny and effective worldbuilding wherein we are introduced to the town of Sledville and its draconian code of honor amongst Tobogganers, a code which ends up bringing further disgrace upon our bereaved protagonist, a youngster by the name of @
As for the author, his online presence is minimal and his bio is shockingly concise: "Trevor Bonas is a computer science student from Canada." I would love to read more of his, but in the meantime i’ll keep an eye out for more Propagule.
2. “Kenyon Archive Report”, Naben Ruthnum
Between the title "Kenyon Archive Report" and the first sentence mentioning the National Review, I’m not ashamed to admit my brain took a couple seconds to grok it was not the Kenyon Review but rather The Brooklyn Review i was reading this fabulous story in.
Written in a note-perfect mimicry of the style and tone used in your typical bombshell longform, the story examines the biography of a fictitious political consultant and powerbroker Augustus Kenyon, or thats how it starts anyway
Specifically, it becomes a dissection of two very awkward moments in Kenyon's brief flirtation with the local literary scene, and the focus comes in tight around one Peter Wheatley, a pathetic figure treated with a level of outright scorn that makes for some of the story's funniest moments)
A multilayered tale about race and class and power--or rather, about the discourse around those things, and who does or doesn't get to control the narrative and set the agenda. I’ve heard great things about Ruthnum's other work, so I guess ill be adding him to the ever-growing list…
3. "Abfigurations, 1997, or: Why I Hate Rei Ayanami", JR Bolt
Murdered Futures is a Cronenberg fanzine which came out around New Year's. I'm not the biggest connoisseur of David Cronenberg’s oeuvre but that didnt stop me enjoying this collection of work from the likes of Sloane Leong, Ai Jiang, Andrew F. Sullivan, Jordan Shiveley, Kris Bertin and Indra Das among many others.
My favorite, though, comes from JR Bolt, with the unlikely title of "Abfigurations, 1997, or: Why I Hate Rei Ayanami", which tells the tale of Darren and Michael, two friends living in grim circumstances that are driving them to some let's-just-say extreme life choices
Written in heightened, sharpened prose fit to the body-horror task at hand, its a journey with an unexpected destination, a story about desire and self-mortification, about the need to consume versus the need to connect (and yes, tangentially, about the waifish titular EVA pilot).
there's a lot of stellar work to be found here, fiction and comics and essays and art. available on itch.io, pay what you want, see that you do!
4. “The Exiles”, Ray Bradbury
Years ago my mom gave me the collection Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales. since then it's sat on or inside my night table, and every so often i'll pick it up and oh damn what a treat when to got to "The Exiles", originally published as "The Mad Wizards of Mars" in MacLean’s (Sept. 1949).
So, who are these exiles, these mad wizards? Well, the year is 2120, and a crew of Earth men rocketing to Mars are having a rough time with the ol' space madness, nightmare visions of serpents, skeletons, etc.
Also, we learn that the captain of this ship has for some reason brought aboard the last existing copies of various books by Poe, Blackwood, Machen, et al. Oh did I mention the actual Weird sisters from Shakespeare are hanging around as well?
These authors, and the characters they created, are the Exiles: driven off the face of the earth when their works were censored and burned back in 2020, they now live as a Martian secret society led by Poe--that's right, like a very dour sort of proto @midnight_pals, if you will. (The Barker role in this Midnight Society is occupied by Ambrose Bierce, which kind of makes sense)
…the other man, Ambrose Bierce, sitting very idly there, lighting matches and watching them burn down, whistling under his breath, now and then laughing to himself.
[…] “What did we do? Be with us, Bierce, in the name of God! Did we have a fair trial before a company of literary critics? No! Our books were plucked up by neat, sterile surgeon’s pliers and flung into vats, to boil, to be killed of all their mortuary germs! Damn them all!”
“I find our situation amusing,” said Bierce.
[…] Poe said: “We’re doing everything we can, Blackwood. You’re new to all this. Come along, we’re going to Charles Dickens’ place—”
“—to contemplate our doom, our black doom,” said Bierce, with a wink.
As the rocketmen draw near, Poe et al must try to convince Charles Dickens (unfairly lumped in with the horror-fantasy authors on account of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future) to aid them in repelling the invaders with their voodoo and sorcery.
Bradbury wrote a ton about censorship issues in this era, but more than the bookburning angle what fascinates me here is the pitting of Sci-Fi versus Horror, cruel aseptic Modernity versus the wild and hoary pleasures of The Old Ways.
Yes, the story is bananas but it strikes a perfect balance of buckwild premise and bittersweet execution, between pulpy melodrama and pure poetry (after all, this is Bradbury we're talking about here), and spoiler alert, the "power of storytelling" does not save the day.
Not-short story rec: Unto the Godless What Little Remains by Mário Coelho
“English,” says Portuguese author Mário Coelho in a recent interview with Seize the Press, “is a beautifully liquid language.”
That is definitely true in this novella. At both the micro level of the sentence and structurally at the macro level, Coelho takes big swings and reaps huge pay-offs in this surprising and affecting story, heir to the best of cyberpunk tradition. I have been a fan of Coelho’s work for a while, and highly recommend this book from Rebellion Publishing.
Not-a-story rec: “Ride Your Ride”, The Crownhate Ruin
In honor of the quit-your-day-job-or-not discourse that shook writing Twitter earlier this month, here’s a song that advocates doing just that:
Yes, the lyrics are in that 90s GenX bag of like, “how dare you offer me a decent well-paid job with benefits” which is whatever but musically and vocally this is perhaps the very finest specimen you’ll find of a very specific type of 90s emo which I was a huge fan of one point.
As I recall, by the time this record came out (which I briefly owned on vinyl), my peer group and I were already discovering the liberatory party vibes afforded by the records in our local thrift stores’ bargain bin, and while we had not entirely ‘outgrown’ this variety of emo type stuff, it did seem like all the screaming and angst was starting to feel a bit stale.
This first track, though? Absolutely holds up imo, and there’s this triplet thing the drummer does on the hi-hat and snare around 2:47 that’s so good it makes me want to jump into the sky and slap God on the ass