Thursday, May 24, 2012
Friday, May 04, 2012
The Brain Harvest reviewed in The Prague Post
Hey! The official Prague launch part for The Brain Harvest is Sunday, 6 May at 5:30. Taking place at Jazz Republic.
I was thrilled to learn this week that Stephan Delbos has reviewed The Brain Harvest in the Prague Post.
I was thrilled to learn this week that Stephan Delbos has reviewed The Brain Harvest in the Prague Post.
There's a moment at the very end
of the 1982 comedy recording Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip
where Pryor, in his first performance after setting himself on fire
while freebasing cocaine and drinking 151-proof rum, subtly but sternly
indicts the audience for making cruel jokes about him while he battled
addiction and for his life. It is a profoundly deep - and profoundly sad
- moment of comedic genius.
The
Brain Harvest, a collection of short fiction from Prague-based writer
Ken Nash, has much in common with Pryor's sly brand of wounded comedy.
Lurking below many of these fantastically imaginative, often surreally
humorous short stories are significant statements about society, art and
the imagination.
The dominant
characteristic of these stories is their brevity: Most fill only three
to five pages of a small, yet handsome, edition. This has a jarring
effect on the reader, never allowing him to settle into a specific
setting, situation or group of characters. Indeed, after reading a
number of these stories in a single sitting, the reader may wish Nash
would develop one of the stories further, allowing us to see his clearly
limber imagination truly stretch. On the other hand, it's difficult to
become bored with a book of constantly shifting narratives and points of
view.
Nash's are essentially
narrative-based tales, and the narrators of these stories vary wildly,
from a master basket weaver to a bookstore employee battling aggressive
book club members, to a woman who is addicted to being kidnapped and
held for ransom. If the cast of characters here is strange - and
strangely appealing - so too are the situations in which they find
themselves: a writing class to which the professor brings a time
machine, a brain harvest in Mexico and a schizophrenic's visit to
Mattress World are just a few examples.
The Brain Harvest
By Ken Nash
Equus Press
163 pages
Launch party
When: May 6 at 5:30
Where: Jazz Republic
Web: Equuspress.
wordpress.com
By Ken Nash
Equus Press
163 pages
Launch party
When: May 6 at 5:30
Where: Jazz Republic
Web: Equuspress.
wordpress.com
But
beyond the brevity and constantly shifting narrative of these tales,
what prevails is not only Nash's sure gift for spinning remarkably thick
yarns in a short space, but his concern for language itself and the
remarkable names we have given both the natural and the corporate
worlds. Whether in his descriptions of "Cambodian Vine Rattan, Sinai
Braided Sea Grass, Singapore Cane, Burmese Celery Hemp, Uyghur Cave
Moss" in "Baskets" or the "dibble" that once belonged to Emily Dickinson
in "The Dibble & Emily Dickinson," or "afternoons watching Korean
soap operas dubbed into Cantonese, and evenings watching bootleg videos
or playing high-stakes mah jong, while chain smoking Mann Si Fat
cigarettes," in "The Hostage," Nash's awareness of and interest in
minute particulars is by turns hilarious and evocative.
Clearly
Nash has a wicked sense of humor and one that could lead an
unsuspecting reader to conclude there is little under the surface of
these stories. That would be an unfortunate and not altogether accurate
conclusion.
One story in
particular, "Maurice Utrillio," is a fine example of the profundity of
which Nash is capable. It describes a few moments in an afternoon of the
eponymous French artist who is best-known for his paintings of
Montmartre but whose life was plagued by alcoholism and mental illness.
This story, at just one and a half pages, is a searing and deeply felt
expression of the struggle of the artist to overcome his own demons to
convey the glimpses of the absolute one finds only rarely in everyday
life.
Coming upon a white
wall, Maurice is struck by such a glimpse of the absolute. He realizes
what he must do, and yet he is not sure if he will manage - and neither,
of course, are we. "He would need to work fast. If he hurried home and
got his paints, he might still capture the wall in this light and be
able to reproduce its expanse and the suggested possibilities it
conveyed to him at that moment. If he hurried […] If he passed the cafĂ©
and no one spoke his name. If the Russian waitress, Irina, did not call
out to him […] If his blood stayed calm and the vision of white stayed
before him and did not leave him for one moment."
Rarely has the immanent doom of a struggling artist been captured so concisely.
Nash,
a mainstay of Prague's expatriate writing community, drops a few names
here that will put a smile on the face of readers in the know. "The Blue
Bedouins," for example, mentions current and former Prague expat
writers Anthony Tognazzini, Karl Koerner, Julie Chibarro and Laura
Conway. "My Roomate's Girlfriend," meanwhile, mentions Prague resident
and writer Jim Freeman. If a few of these stories feel slightly like
workshop exercises or pieces designed to be performed at a local open
mic, however, that is probably because there are so many of them of
essentially the same short length.
The
Brain Harvest is an eclectic, deceptively witty collection of short
fiction that represents the crystallization of one of Prague's most
resourceful and imaginative English-language writers. The book's
publication reflects well on Equus Press, a new publisher promoting
English-language fiction from Prague.
Those
in the city should not miss the chance to hear Nash read from this
collection May 6 at 5:30 p.m. at Jazz Republic, where these short
stories will shine in the environment in which many of them were
conceived.
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