Re:Telling, An Anthology Edited by William Walsh (A Review by Sara Lippmann)

An Anthology of Borrowed Premises, Stolen Settings, Purloined Plots and Appropriated Characters

Edited by William Walsh

Ampersand Books, $17.95

This is a book that’s good fun. The tagline says it all: collected fictions that steal a page from, or lend the re-purposed nod to TV, literature, pop music, cultural icons, fairytales and such, compiled and edited by William Walsh, author of Questionstruck and seasoned pro in his own right at taking something borrowed and making it new. Pastiche is one thing; innovation – and lots of it – is what you’ll find here.

The anthology opens wisely with Matt Bell’s brilliant homage to one of Nintendo’s most beloved games. “Mario’s Three Lives,” exemplifies the project by plunking us down (glazy-eyed with munchies in Amy W’s patchouli thick basement, anyone?) before our lonely, seeking plumber who “eats with his ass. He kills with his ass. His ass is a multipurpose tool. Why do I have a mouth, he thinks, if I never speak or eat with it? He wonders if it’s this way for everyone but there is nobody to ask.” We eavesdrop on Mario waxing philosophic, grappling with his absence of free will. “He dies until he runs out of lives and then he waits for God to say Continue.” The omnipotent joystick falls from hand; that plumber? We become him.

From there, like the best of choose-your-own-adventures, you can hop around as you wish. With 32 selections (many of which have been previously published), the TOC reads as a Who’s Who of the indie lit world, offering work so radically different in terms of structure and voice that each proves surprising, clever, and engaging. Molly Gaudry and Heather Fowler spin twists on iconic short stories (Gaudry’s “Down at the Dinghy” delivers a distillation of Salinger, Fowler’s “A&P, Come again” revisits Updike from the girls’ perspective.)  Alicia Gifford recasts the gang from “I Love Lucy” as ravenous, VD-ridden adulterers. Corey Mesler exposes an Arthurian plot to kidnap Stonehenge in bawdy dialogue. Kathleen Rooney and Lily Hoang thoughtfully rework the book of Ruth, subverting Ruth’s legendary pledge: “Wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried” – with “she would come to regret this decision almost immediately.” Michael Martone transports Borges to Indiana only to reappear in John Maday’s postmodern riff on the author (and authorial ownership) that echoes the anthology’s overarching ideas on construction, appropriation, dissemination, and storytelling.

For laughs, flip to Shya Scanlon’s “Tropic of Candor.”  This spring I had the serendipitous thrill of hearing Scanlon read his internet chat between a virginal Henry Miller and his girlfriend, Tania, and it is as hilarious performed as it is experienced on the page:

“3:11 AM Henry: I swear to you, Tania, that when we finally fuck it’s going to completely destroy both of us. It’s going to shake the world and rattle all the dying, gold bones on Wall Street.

Tania: [is away]”

Tim Jones-Yelvington’s “Law & Order: Viewers Like Us” is another comedic highlight.  The piece imagines a series spin-off based on this central premise: “In the criminal justice system, there are the police who investigate crimes, and the viewers who watch television shows about their investigations. These are the stories of viewers like us.” Regardless of whether you follow Law & Order you’ll appreciate this smart send-up of pop culture and how we consume it while at the same time – bonus! – becoming hooked like the best of TV junkies on Simon’s sordid family drama that rises from the script.

With no shortage of diversity – there’s even a visual spread of the Mona Lisa – this collection will engage anyone with a taste for refreshing, energetic prose and stylish smart winks. For me, the pieces that proved most lasting were those that reached past their thieved material and through the page to connect the reader to a wholly new, fully realized story. Roxane Gay delivers her usual wallop in a flawless flash on “Alias: The Complete Series,” the ending of which will make your heart throb “bright and good and strong” in your own ears. Jim Ruland’s Jack and Jill could not be farther from the land of Mother Goose, in Amsterdam, where they become sex workers, and where sure enough, they wear, tear, until they break, both individually, and as a couple. Curtis Smith builds a universal tale of love and alienation around his rubber-suited Godzilla in “Real, True-Life Story of Godzilla”:

“He hadn’t anticipated the weight of the suit, the smothering effect of isolation and the moist, curling warmth of his trapped breath. He was cocooned, adrift in a black world, even his sense of touch robbed. Standing perfectly still, he listened to the rhythm of his nervous heart and wondered what pathetic turn his life had just taken.”

This story speaks to us all with possibly my favorite line in the book – and one that resonates with the project: “Maybe filling empty spaces is the one, true international language.” Although nothing in this anthology started as empty, all this stuff subsumed by our mass cultural warehouse – household legends and myths, David Lynch, Madonna and ABBA! – takes on a quality of emptiness, of slates written upon until black, then blank, which make them particularly ripe for retelling. In the same way that nothing is original (we’ve all heard those seven plots), it takes an artist to make fresh prints, to fill the void with humanity – which is exactly what these fine writers have done.

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~Sara Lippmann is a writer living in Brooklyn. Follow her on twitter at ….~