The Dead Fish Museum
"The Dead Fish Museum" is a collection of eight stories by Charles D'Ambrosio, six of which have appeared in The New Yorker earlier. The theme of human suffering and difficult (to the point of being depressing) situations they find themselves in runs as a common thread between the stories.
In "Screenwriter", which I consider to be the best story in the collection, a successful screenwriter fighting for his sanity in a depressing psych institution meets a ballerina who likes to burn herself.
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 the dance were to leap free of your skin.
The story leaves us with a less than pleasant drug-fueled night of self torture by the ballerina while the writer looks on. For the sake of everyone's sanity, including mine, her torment didn't turn him on.
"Drummond & Son" tells the story of a typewriter repairman whose wife has left him, leaving behind a mentally unstable son. One of the central incident that transpires in the story is the meeting of the father and son with a social worker, after which when Drummond says that he has decided against an halfway house:
"You have to forsake me," the boy said. "I see that eventually happening."
"You don't see, not if that's what you think."
"Maybe I just see better. I'm like a prophet. And you're sort of unevolved."
The tragic beauty of this exchange captures the typical exchange between the father and the son. and here I was thinking that "Drummond & Son" would be the name of a happy father and son team working on a joint enterprise.
Ramage, in "The dead fish museum", recently released from the prison runs the carpentry crew of a porn production.
"What's the plot of this one?" Ramage asked.
Greenfield lowered his glasses and looked at him over the rims as if he were stupid.
"Boy meets girl," he said.
D'Ambrosio's characters are not flat. On the contrary, they are poignant and sometimes humorous. There is just enough color here and there, but not so much that the reader will mistake the character for being happy.
"The high divide"'s narrator Ignatious and his friend Donny go on a camping trip with Donny's father, who thinks it is a good as time as ever to let Danny know that he and his mother are getting divorced. "(...) he crossed over into Mr. Cheetam's tent but kept crying and begging even louder for no divorce." D'Ambrosio style is different and masterful in this story - the punctuations (especially the quotes) are missing, giving a sense of authenticity to the voice of Ignatious. I have yet to come across a kid who can put punctuations like an expert writer and so, it seems has D'Ambrosio.
I like to read short stories mainly because of the mixed bag of experience it presents me with, the style that changes every 30 - 40 pages, a storyline that may or may not have a beginning or even an end, the truck-load of characters, some of who may stay with you beyond the story even though in an undeveloped state and more than anything else for the range of emotions that a single book can cover. "The Dead Fish Museum" delivers on almost everything except for the last. His eight stories are about grey, suffering people in their equally depressing surrounding. Style, these stories have, but not the range.
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If you liked this book, you may also like "Orphans" by Charles D'Ambrosio, "Black Swan Green: A Novel" by David Mitchell or "The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories" by Valerie Martin.
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