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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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The Dead
Fish Museum by Charles D’Ambrosio |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Schadenfreude Most of the eight short stories in the
new collection by Charles D’Ambrosio, The Dead
Fish Museum, have appeared in The
New Yorker. The pleasure of reading them as a set is to appreciate the
wide scope of D’Ambrosio’s talent, and to note a theme: no matter what our
troubles may be, they could be worse. There’s a schadenfreude in many of the stories that will cause pleasure for
those readers who are glad they don’t live the lives of the characters
presented. There’s a universal humanity that D’Ambrosio captures in a
controlled and low-key way that reinforces the reality that we create many of
our own problems. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of the story titled,
“Screenwriter,” pp. 47-50: How was I supposed to know
that any mention of suicide to the phalanx of doctors making Friday rounds
would warrant the loss of not only weekend-pass privileges but also the liberty
to take a leak in private? My first suicidal ideations occurred to me when I
was ten, eleven, twelve, something like that, and by now I was habituated to
them and dreams of hurting myself (in the parlance of those places) formed a
kind of lullaby I often used to rock myself to bed at night. I got into
trouble when I told my p-doc I couldn’t fall asleep until I’d made myself
comfortable by drawing the blankets over my head and imagining I was closing
the lid of my coffin. In confessing to him, I was only trying to be honest
and accurate, a good patient, deserving. But no dice: the head p-doc put me
on Maximum Observation and immediately I was being trailed around by a sober
ex-athlete who, introducing himself, put a fatherly hand on my shoulder and
squeezed and told me not to worry, he was a screenwriter, too—not as
successful or rich as me, sure, but a screenwriter nonetheless. He said that
his name was Bob and he let it be known that he’d taken this position on the
mental ward only to gather material for his next script. Half the reason I
was in the ward was to get away from the movies, but my whole time with Bob I
kept wondering, Is this, or that, or this or that, or this, or this, or this
going to be in a movie? Everywhere
I went, he went, creeping along a few sedate paces back in soft-soled shoes,
a shadow that gave off a disturbing susurrus like the maddening sibilance
settling dust must make to the ears of ants. One morning I was lying on
my mattress, flipping through women’s magazines, but after a while Bob
started scratching his ankle, so I got up and went to the bathroom. Bob stood
right behind me and in my state of excited self-consciousness the splashing
of piss against the urinal cake was deafening, a cataract so loud it was like
I’d managed, somehow, to urinate directly into my own ear. After that I
watched a television show about a guy with massive arms but no legs climbing
a mountain; with a system of pulleys and ropes he managed to belay himself up
the slope like a load of bananas. He planted an American flag on the summit.
This ruined man’s struggle and eventual triumph moved me; in fact I began to
cry. To calm myself I listened to the languorous pick-pock of two heavily medicated patients thwacking a Ping-Pong
ball in the rec room, but there was a final phut and then that unnerving nothing, nothing at all, and finally
an attack of the fantods drove me out to the patio. Where I sat, Bob sat, and
pretty soon the patio started making me crazy, too. Sitting still—just
sitting!—was like an equestrian feat. But if I stood up, if I walked in
circles, then Bob would have to stand up and walk in circles with me. The patio was perched high
above the FDR and the Bob said, “Are you gonna
get better?” I looked up from my lap and
said, “This isn’t very interesting, is it?” “I didn’t say that.” “I know you want to write a
movie. You’re looking for material. But this— It’s not a thriller, that’s
for sure.” “And it’s not a whodunit
because, like, you’re not doing anything.” A young woman known on the
ward as the ballerina was dancing across the patio. By the way she kept her
hair twisted into a prim, tight bun, and by her body, which seemed to have a
memory separate from her mind, a strict memory of its own, you immediately
guessed she was a dancer. Her grandparents were with her, two hunched-up
people in colossal overcoats and tiny black shoes, people I assumed were immigrants
or refugees, because their clothes were so out-of-date, like from the
nineteenth century, and because, all bent over, they looked wary and
vigilant, as though they were ducking. Lumpen, I kept thinking, or Lumpenproletariat—when I probably
meant just plain lumpy. Every evening they came to visit their granddaughter,
and now they sat on a bench and watched as she swooped like a bird through
the lengthening shadows. The old man smoked an unfiltered cigarette, working
his tongue in a lizardy fashion to free the flecks of tobacco lodged in his
teeth. The old lady sat with her knuckle-like face rapt, a Kleenex balled in
her fist. She was crying for the beauty of her granddaughter, and in motion
the girl was beautiful, she was
ecstatic. She wore a sacklike standard-issue paper gown the same as me and
she was barefoot. Her arms floated away from her body as though she were
trying to balance a feather on the tip of each finger. Then she jumped
around, modern and spasmodic, as if the whole point of dance were to leap
free of your skin. She raced from one end of the patio to the other, flew up,
twirling and soaring, clawing the fence with her fingers and setting the
links to shiver. But as soon as her grandparents left, blam, the dance in her died. She went cataleptic. I clapped, and said, “That
was nice. Brava, brava. Bravissima!” “Got a smoke?” she said. I rose to hand her a
cigarette and my lighter and to look into her strange blue eyes. “You’re
really a good dancer,” I said. “No I’m not,” she said. Her voice had no affect and
its deadness sat me right back down on the bench. She turned away and flicked
the wheel of the lighter, cupping the cigarette out of the wind. A paper
plate rolled as if chased, around and around the patio, like a child’s game
without the child. A white moth fell like a flower petal from the sky,
dropped through a link in the fence, and came to light on my hand. The
cooling night wind raised gooseflesh on my arms, and a cloud of smoke ripped
into the air. The girl’s gown was smoldering. A leading edge of orange flame
was chewing up the hem. I rose from my seat to tell the ballerina she was on
fire. The moth flew from my hand, a gust fanned the flames, there was a
flash, and the girl ignited, lighting up like a paper lantern. She was cloaked
in fire. The heat moved in waves across my face, and I had to squint against
the brightness. The ballerina spread her arms and levitated, sur les pointes, leaving the patio as
her legs, ass, and back emerged phoenix-like out of this paper chrysalis,
rising up until finally the gown sloughed from her shoulders and sailed away,
a tattered black ghost ascending in a column of smoke and ash, and she
lowered back down, naked and white, standing there, pretty much unfazed, in
first position. The Dead
Fish Museum can sit comfortably at one’s bedside, and provide the perfect
end of day story for eight wonderful nights. Steve Hopkins,
June 26, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the July 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Dead Fish Museum.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park,
IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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