The Bodhisattva

It’s Friday again, and again I’m forced to remember something for the greater good; an attempt to either help battle the wackness that is your unimaginative books shelf; a bookshelf bored by your safe habits, a bookshelf that’s contents can define you in single words that are shared by some broad pop culture label, a bookshelf not of a reader, but of one that is all too easy to read. For some, it will merely be an expansion of those already well traveled, those who have shelves that Dewey cannot catalog, that’s secrets are not even described in the Junior woodchuck guidebook - and limited only by the thought that comfort zones are destinations not new beginnings. Once again, Forgotten Fridays is not a review - just a general pointer to a book that isn’t on enough shelves brought to you by a loose confederation of bloggers, whose membership I don’t even know, but we all share the gift of having nothing better to do on the weekend but tell you what you’re missing.

Those of us who are on the move know the name Stepan Chapman already. In 1997 the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award was given to his novel The Troika, a fabulous book that’s only crime is being too fabulous for time. I say time, because I think we live in a world that will never truly embrace the literary master fabulists - we live in a world where Bruno Schultz is not a household name, where Ambergris is not a themed Disney attraction ( if this happens I demand a job - I can dress as a Gray Cap!). Even odder, Chapman is as silent a literary assassin one can find - the man’s work started showing up as far back as the 60’s, email him and see what return message you get, and from a stylist view, he requires not pages to shift shadows around you - Chapman attacks with sentences, single words. Some would call this economy, I’d call it first class mastery and though the fluidity suggest a brutal initial assault it’s not always so. Chapman casts delayed fireballs that motherbox your mind after encounters upon recollection, stirring recollection. In an interview conducted by Jeff VanderMeer in 1996, Chapman said:

Well, surrealism is never an easy sell . What I’m striving for are stories that partake of the same depth and resonance as folktales and myths. But to be modern, they necessarily include the imagery of science fiction. Tolkien chose to write about elves and wizards, but I prefer robots and angels. To medieval audiences, a mountain of glass was miraculous and unthinkable. Modern audiences live inside mountains of glass. Times change.

This week’s Forgotten Friday choice is a collection by Chapman entitled Dossier, and while I’m not sure it’s a collection that can claim complete success across the board or close to it like a Breathmoss and Other Exhalations, The Doors of His Face, the Lamp of His Mouth, Vermillion Sands, Smoke and Mirrors, The Nightmare Factory, or a Stories of Your Life but I view it much like a I view collections by Michael Swanwick, not in style at all, but in terms of you become keenly aware of the nuggets at the time and come to enjoy the ensemble even if it’s only for one particular instance in a story. Swanwick has also done collections with very short stories (Cigar Box Faust) and he’s probably more effective than Chapman at burst, but the longer pieces within Dossier - Minutes of the Last Meeting or At Her Ladyships  Suggestion - are works deserve to be included in any annual ‘best of’ coronation. While I mentioned Schultz above the SF elements that Chapman dabble in seem dipped in stanishaw before being sprinkled with the surreal, yet Chapman’s stories are his own and any similarity is due to inadequacy of the summarizer, a person who hasn’t realized taken the final plunge and doesn’t understand that the best fiction confounds classification.

Though  the longer pieces are immediately more satisfying, there is something about some of the shorter pieces that tend to make you want reevaluate yourself as some are so striking that you think you must have missed a bread crumb somewhere in between the pages of others, but at the end my conclusion is that Dossier is in fact a very uneven collection of stories that yet still demands to be read as oddly enough, you get the feeling in isolation, any of these  stories would feel less inadequate when not sharing the same space, when not competing with each other and existing on their own. You find yourself in repeated readings, not understanding more, but coming back and always feeling like you’re picking the wrong door to go through and Chapman’s story is under an unseen rabbit hole.

Cutting this a bit short this week due to some yard work that must be done before a pesky BBQ later today but its all for the better as while I love reading short fiction and collections, reviewing them is a pain in the ass - that I’ll leave to Tangents and Tiltons -  and from me always come out rather mechanical to my eye-ear, not to mention it would  also breaks the first rule of Forgotten Friday (even  on Saturday): There are no reviews here. Still, the lack of examples of Chapman’s published work actually makes it more convenient to get everything the man has out in print and to add to the voices clamoring for more. A man’s exiting novel shouldn’t be an old woman, a talking brontosaur, and a sentient, robot jeep sharing a desert  each with their own sun - it should be the beginning.

_{You can read a story from Dossier, The One-Armed Elek, at Infinity Plus.}

Previous Forgotten Fridays:

Black Brillion by Matthew Hughes

Pandora, by Holly Hollander by Gene Wolfe

Coelestis by Paul Park

Sarah Canary by  Karen Joy Fowler

Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop