Other Electricities.OTHER ELECTRICITIES BY ANDER MONSON LOUISVILLE, KY: SARABANDE sarabande Stately processional dance in triple metre popular in the French court and throughout Europe in the 17th–18th century. Of Spanish or Mexican origin, it began as a vigorous dance, set to lively music and castanets, for a double line of couples. . 224 PAGES. $15. Show me your environment and I will tell you who you are.--Boris Pasternak A raw, incantatory in·can·ta·tion n. 1. Ritual recitation of verbal charms or spells to produce a magic effect. 2. a. A formula used in ritual recitation; a verbal charm or spell. b. whirlwind, Ander Monson's Other Electricities depicts a remote northern Michigan town that is pelted by ice, frozen, and illuminated by the Paulding Light--a local phenomenon wherein shifting points of light appear on the horizon with no apparent source. This is pre-mall sprawl; it is a place where nature is still big and men struggle to overcome the isolation of winter nights. In a series of interrelated in·ter·re·late tr. & intr.v. in·ter·re·lat·ed, in·ter·re·lat·ing, in·ter·re·lates To place in or come into mutual relationship. in vignettes, prefaced by a character flowchart, Monson combines basic science with elements of legend, story, and a sense of place. Radio schematics punctuate punc·tu·ate v. punc·tu·at·ed, punc·tu·at·ing, punc·tu·ates v.tr. 1. To provide (a text) with punctuation marks. 2. the chapters, accompanied by stranded lines of poetry that linger like random transmissions, meditations on distance. The result is a wonderful tension--"the weather [as] a system of surprise." This town is a skeleton, a former mining community depleted of its minerals and drained by the resultant loss of jobs. Lacking direction and worn down by the brutal weather, characters drift alone in their circular thoughts. Some are maimed maim tr.v. maimed, maim·ing, maims 1. To disable or disfigure, usually by depriving of the use of a limb or other part of the body. See Synonyms at batter1. 2. (an armless aphasic a·pha·sia n. Partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language, resulting from damage to the brain caused by injury or disease. boy, a one-armed shop teacher); others are haunted by memories of those who have died (a murdered girl, cancer victims, and teens who had nothing better to do than drive their cars onto the ice and sink). In Michigan, Monson writes, "Everything ... is due to saws or mines or bombs or Vietnam." Even the land itself is damaged: "The hills surrounding the town are riddled with shafts like holes in the body." Monson's book is an elegy for a stranded generation often lost to fantasy. In the title story, a recent widower, obsessed ob·sess v. ob·sessed, ob·sess·ing, ob·sess·es v.tr. To preoccupy the mind of excessively. v.intr. with pirate radio, holes up in his attic whispering codes to strangers in the storm. Hovering outside, his two sons plug into the phone line with alligator clips and listen in. They desire to understand not only the physical but the emotional weather of the town, as if both were decipherable through invisible airwaves. In spite of this desolate landscape, Monson's stories possess a spectral beauty. His lyric prose exists in the energized synapse between fiction and poetry and inhabits a place not yet defined, between the overcrowded o·ver·crowd v. o·ver·crowd·ed, o·ver·crowd·ing, o·ver·crowds v.tr. To cause to be excessively crowded: a system of consolidation that only overcrowded the classrooms. modern world and the small town. Electrified and awkward, often incandescent, "It's a perfect kind of silence. So much snow coming down." |
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