Meat is All by Andrew Borgstrom (A Review by Sean Ulman)

Nephew

41 pages, $10.00

The opening line grants “the noise” knowledge and equates sound to smell (“noise like a scent”), and Meat Is All steadily metes out sensory guiding sensors for all five senses, but on my initial read my filter tilted toward taste.

My front Lit pallet chomped sumptuous scrumptious sentence spoonfuls while a barely traceable after-taste of plodding plot parts pooled up the tale’s unspooling. I gathered that the project’s machinery (cogs chords cables) was pounding efficiently – unexpected connections clicked cozily, 3 distinct narrative rhythms appeared to ribbon, and I was entertained (confirmed by audible chuckles) despite having a narrow sense of the story’s typical read-on engine – story.

Meat is All, the 2^nd edition in the Nephew series of Mud Luscious Press, has the shape, feel and weight (in lbs & import) of a passport. Its tote-ability & sharp design suggest it be pocketed in this week’s pants, or if one happens to be roving, packaged w/ the batch of essential traveling papers. Like so many of these small artful books – chaps, novellas, poetic experiments, writing as art – Meat is All deserves to be read several times. Each 90 minute attempt to crack language patterns & unsnap story stitches is a more than fair deal in the reading hobby exchange: time for knowledge & fun. A steal?

But I had to switch things up regarding my reading style: you see Borgstrom’s Meat is All has an unorthodox arrangement. The paragraphs, like this one, employ variations in font boldness and caps or LOWER CASE encoding. An introductory narrative weaving/roving emboldened statement such as:  “My front Lit pallet chomped sumptuous scrumptious sentence spoonfuls”: will fade to a lighter regular type and attempt to continue accounting the tale. But the dialogue of 7 SCOUTS, a leader and a fisherman overtly overpower with interruptions and that makes…

SEAN as reviewer: On my 3^rd read I will scrape for story scraps.

SEAN as writer/reader: Why? Let story slide, subtlety – work on the work that worked 1^st & 2^nd

SEAN as lawnmower: I need to get to work.

…for some humbling mental juggling. Early on I kept tracking back to read over clipped phrases.

These ongoing SCOUT conversations, which often intrude & lop-off narrative momentum mid-phrase, are only interrupted in between SCOUT speakers, and are (astutely of Borgstrom) printed in a flimsy gray type fit to fog off the page.

The paragraph conclusions are a few declarative often comical statements that sew each //-separated entry snugly. THESE QUIPS CONJURE FICTIONAL FORTUNE COOKIES. THEY ARE DIRECT ODD STATEMENTS THAT COLLECT ORIGINAL THOUGHT & SOUND COMPOUNDS. THIS 3^RD FORMAT WAS MY FAVORITE CONTENT. Such effervescent aphorisms packed anticipatory punch as rewards for navigating an avant-garde-textured text fractured w/ SCOUT chatter.

To dodge a somewhat fragmented reception of matters on my 2^nd read, I skipped over the SCOUTS’ dialogue and let the lower case telling flow, despite its masonry of prickly sound barbs nicking pearl words. THEN I READ THE SECTION CONCLUSION IN CAPS, OFTEN LAUGHED, and finally tracked back, per page, to check over what these SCOUTS were squabbling about.

While I couldn’t pin down any character motivations (none of the 7 scouts did much to distinguish themselves), I did glean some set-up clues that extended beyond the context contacts I naturally brought to a story about a scout troop – woodsy adventures, survival skills, coming of age, competition/cooperation.

The scouts often discuss a project – a play or film – that they are acting in or just made. My best guess was that they were screening the film which premieres in the descriptions of the accompanying text. The CAPS CAPSULES that close each section are referred to at one point as CLOSED CAPTIONING. That bit fit off the bat. I could see these messages typed on the screen, advising like peculiar public service announcements. For example:

“IT TAKES MORE MUSCLES TO FROWN THAN TO RELEASE SPERM. A BADGE IS SOMETHING A MOM CAN WEAR ABOVE HER BADGER. PLAYBOYS ARE NOT SCOUTS AND CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BEAVER AND A BADGER.”

I do recommend this jumpy method as the best way to make ends meet in grounding matters in the absurdist, surprise-loaded cut of  Meat is All. This smoother read enabled my appreciation for Borgstrom’s word gaming & gambling to gain thrust. All along the uneven crag-crusted trail of this adventurous read are chunky crumbs that display a pro author at play. For example:

“The clouds shaped like moss puddles: the shape of mud in the shape of cloud, the potential circus animals covered in it, the moss of it, the bright green pool of it, the reversal of one eye being sky and one eye being earth.”

Borgstrom’s verbal recreation, which empowers calibrated repetition and reminds of words’ resourcefulness  – multiple dictionary definitions and pliable parts of speech – is never reckless. Each 3-segmented page-long section has a gristle-sticky cohesiveness. Images, arguments, and phrases broached in the intro are often discussed by scouts and revisited in each section’s closing CLOSED CAPTIONING. Here’s the corresponding wrap to the above excerpt:

“A CIRCUS IS NOT A CIRCUS WITHOUT DIRT CLODS. THE EARTH IS A BONE CALLED JOINT. THE CHEST OF THE EARTH PROTECTS THE SUN INSIDE.”

The unusual earns accessibility when words and ideas brush, lock, entrap… in short interact.

On my 3^rd read, I skipped over all the SCOUT dialogue and whipped through that play-like script after as a post read. A narrator started to emerge. I typically announce the POV to myself after reading the opening of any book so I’m clear on my processing. I think due to the original and challenging layout of  Meat is All, I didn’t start picking up on the sporadic ‘I’ deliveries until the middle of my 3^rd read. I suspect this first person (SCOUT? perhaps the LEADER?) jangling the story’s keys, should be monitored minutely in my ongoing mission to decipher a roundabout plotted arc or expose faded efforts by the telling character to assert his stamp on the story.

During my 4^th go at it, I’m going to keep my eye on that variably-disguised yet ever-present ‘I’. And I’m going to read it straight (I mean jagged) like it was intended, w/ disrupting SCOUT (actor) dialogue and jig-sawed sections glued by a necessary consistency.

At times the three rhythms diverge and even obstruct, but it’s clear that the sourcing comes entirely from a single author’s polished verbal provisions.  As long as there is a material (adj, synonym: significant) belonging to the material (noun, synonym: stuff) I’ll gladly turn up slim findings on story searches every time. Other readers might want plot to drive their bookish escapes. And I don’t doubt that they will find footholds, a trail of tension, obvious ornamental cairns, and even a climactic summit in Meat is All, – certainly by their 3^rd or 4^th read. I read language 1^st (2^nd, and 3^rd) so I’ll blithely take the same limited English words deftly left in one of their boundless original orderings, every time, even, I anticipate, on my 5^th and 6^th trip through.

*

Sean Ulman is writing a novel about Seward (& Art) in Seward (AK). His other review is in elimae (oct).