Night Soul and Other Stories (American Literature)

Joseph McElroy, best known for his sprawling novels such as Women and Men or Lookout Cartridge, evinces an equally impressive prowess with his short game in Night Soul and Other Stories. The twelve stories, collected from the past three decades, demonstrate his versatility as an author and philosophical investigator as he deals with topics ranging from politics, musical theory, family dynamics and the tense racial atmosphere of a post-9/11 America. While these stories appear on the surface to be unrelated, individual stories, McElroy affects an undercurrent of subtle motifs and themes drawing these stories together in a nearly novelistic sense. Despite being twelve separate stories, they beat together with one heart.A highly decorated author, being the recipient of the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1976; the American Academy of Arts and Letters fellowship in '77; and twice honored with the National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, it is a shame that McElroy has a relatively low readership. The difficulties found in McElroy's style and prose is rather bewildering initially, which may turn many readers away. As Burns argues in his article on McElroy in theNew York Times Book Review,`McElroy's cosmopolitan, erudite fiction needs to be received on a wider bandwidth that also registers signals from other disciplines and earlier literature... [Reading Night Soul] is, in fact, a little like being a member of Marlow's audience in "Heart of Darkness." We listen in a foggy void, and try to puzzle out the significance of a narrator's inconclusive experiences.'To read McElroy's collection is like facing down a much better endowed and formidable opponent, yet, if the reader digs in and stands their ground, they will find an author that doesn't wish to spar for domination, but to build a sense of mutual respect*. McElroy wants his reader to succeed through his trial by fire - like the tyrannical fathers whose obdurate demands spawned the drive to immortality of the world-renowned classical composers, McElroy wants his reader to transcend his safe-zones and really strive for personal glory. He offers to assistance along the way, but privately holds out for hope that a reader can reach his summit. The final line of Unknown Kid best demonstrates McElroy's message to the reader: 'figure it out yourself'.Each story centers about a collision of sorts. There is the collision of culture in No Man's Land; collisions of political ideals and perspectives in The Campaign Trail or The Last Disarmament But One; and frequently the collision of city and country life shown most effectively in Canoe Repair, a major highlight of the collection, and Character. Dizzy and reeling from each collision they have been dropped into, McElroy's style effectively has the reader receiving the information around them in a jumbled, incomplete, and often a nearly incoherent manner as they attempt to steady themselves and find their bearings again within each story. The reader is further disoriented through the constantly fluctuating usages of syntax and punctuation. The dialogue in particular varies practically from paragraph to paragraph, being received in one instance in through traditional line breaks and signified by quotation marks, and a few paragraphs later with dialogue embedded within the larger paragraph, often unidentified through punctuation, and even occasionally flowing together without any sort of break similar to José Saramago's signature style. To call these variances mere inconsistency or laziness would be a gross mistake however, as McElroy's style is entirely abstemious and alternates to accommodate what is best for that particular instance of the story. Each word or phrase is an individual brick crafted for it's particular place, however, instead of being a rejection of the overall façade, McElroy manages to interlay each brick to create a potent mosaic when taken in as a whole work of art. Even the narrative perspectives are subject to change, as in Canoe Repair, with the story alternating between Zanes' first person perspective, or a third person perspective. Interestingly enough, the reader learns more about Zanes from the third person point of view than they do when he is able to openly assess himself to the reader.`We are all nomads' the young boy in No Man's Land asserts, and like nomads, the ideas of this book are always traveling, taking on new surroundings and meaning, but essentially remain the same as well. Between each individual story is an intricate network of overarching themes and motifs, most notable the water and architectural themes. These motifs, which easily identified, are difficult to pin down there exact meanings within the text, as they take on a nomadic, always altering explanation. Similar to the double-S motif of Gravity's Rainbow, the themes and motifs are wrapped in multiple layers of applicable metaphors and symbolic connotations, taking on different meanings to suit the vast array of literary needs present in this collection.Near the conclusion of Unknown Kid, carefully placed near the end of the book, McElroy alludes heavily to the theories of topology. Seemingly as a reward to a reader who has made it that far, McElroy constructs his most apparent clue to the overall totality of his work. In a proper postmodernist gesture, he invites the reader to examine the stories as interconnected whole with each theme or motif being the tonal center, to borrow from Particle of Difference, for which he builds his overall melody upon, or perhaps the stand of web for which he grows each story around in a similar fashion to the bone growth specialists in Silk. Had the words `and Other Stories' been removed from the spine of this book, it could have easily worked as a novel of elaborate connected ideas. The overall effect is simply staggering.This collection, released by the Dalkey Archive in 2011, may just be one of the foremost publications of that year. McElroy manages to both deliver exquisite short fiction while still maintaining a novelistic approach complete with intricate thematic networks and cohesion. With a whirlwind of styles, a wide range of stories, and an interesting cast of narratives that often spiral into a flurry of fragmented ideas, this collection is a wonderful postmodernist feast that satisfies on the same level as the best of Pynchon, DFW, and DeLillo. Although he is a difficult author, he is a worth opponent to spar with intellectually. I highly suggest getting in the ring with McElroy.