Emerging
in the late morning of an overcast day (one novel in 1988 and a handful of
short stories over the decade that followed), there was not much indication
Jeffrey Ford would become as prolific as he has. In 1997 he produced The Well-Built City
trilogy which did well critically, but was not a commercial success. A deluge of short fiction followed, however,
and since 2000 he has produced more than ninety stories amidst a couple of
novels. Quantity and quality often
quarrelsome bedfellows, Ford proves harmony is possible, a fact wonderfully
exemplified by his second collection The
Empire of Ice Cream: Stories (2006).
What else do you want on a warm, sunny afternoon?
The
best of the second quarter of Ford’s oeuvre to date, The Empire of Ice Cream: Stories contains a wide range of tales,
all written in attentive, quality prose.
While style varies only slightly to accommodate the story being told, the
subject matter broached is far-ranging.
Faery, explorations of the act of writing, Americana, synesthesia,
dreams, (superb) barroom storytelling, Weird, the mythological, tall tales,
folk tales, dark fantasy—the stories are rooted in a wide variety of modes and
moods, which make the collection all the more satisfying.
Opening
with one of Ford’s most crowd-pleasing stories, “The Annals of Eelin-Ok”
captures the purest essence of faery.
Standard storytelling with a most charming veneer, the reader will never
look at sand castles the same again.
Another story with the essence of faery, at least initially, “Giant
Land” opens with“Once a giant kept three
people in a birdcage” and then completely evolves into something else, and
into something else yet again, and into…
You get the picture—but not the end of the story. That, you have to read for your
reality-perpetually-shifting-underfoot-self to understand. More readily coherent is Ford’s
self-proclaimed venture in YA territory, “The Green Word.” Much darker and more adult than some
supposedly “adult” fiction on the market these days, Ford proves that even when
dipping into YA material, he can shine.
About a forest rebellion, things start with a strange execution and head
toward Green Man territory, his “word” key.
Ford
as curious about the craft of writing in his fiction as he is a quality
practitioner of it, a handful of the stories look into the act of putting pen to
paper. A story about creating story, “Jupiter’s
Skull” tells of a man who often has tea with a mysterious local shop owner with
a skull for a doorstop. When she appears
to commit suicide, the bizarre button gets pressed. Thing is, the reader doesn’t notice the
button was pressed until they are in the middle of the bizarre. A cynical yet humorous look at writer’s
block, “Coffins on the River” conjures the spirit of Lucius Shepard, telling of
two middle-age artists who have an experience of a lifetime when deciding they
need a little boost to their creative energy.
Snapshot from a kaleidoscope, such is the feel of the very brief and
ethereal strangeness of “Summer Afternoon”.
No more can be said save that the idea of creating fiction bounces in
and around.
Some
of the tales feeling autobiographical (an idea often confirmed by the wonderful
notes Ford adds to the end of each story), the first to appear is “A Night in
the Tropics.” Barroom storytelling at its best, Quentin Tarantino could not do
better in this tale of a high school rebel turned petty criminal. “The Trentino Kid” goes back to Ford’s days
as a clam diver off Long Island, but transcends any real history in its
denouement. While there may be some structural
issues with “Botch Town,” the tone and mood it captures of Golden Age suburban
Americana is tip-top. The story of a
young boy Jeff and his just-functional family, the end of one summer vacation
finds him, his brother, and sister on the lookout for a neighborhood prowler. As nostalgic as fiction can be, “Botch Town”
is reminiscent of Stephen King’s “Stand By Me” while having a flavor, charm,
and aim wholly of its own. (This one was
begging to be synthesized and extended into a novel, which Ford did in 2008
with The Shadow Year.)
Then
there are the stories which defy categorization, starting with the title
story. “The Empire of Ice Cream” is
about a boy whose parents think is hallucinatory but is in fact a
synesthete. Coffee ice cream tipping him
over the sensual edge, his world is further turned upside down when a strange
girl begins appearing in the ice cream parlor.
A brief piece, almost an interlude, “The Beautiful Gelreesh” is a deep
dredge of the darkest parts of the imagination and a glimpse of thimble-ful of
WEIRD that emerges. Ford himself saying
he knows not the story’s inspiration, its escalation of disbelief will only
have the reader’s eyebrows raising or eyes rolling. Source of the frontispiece lithograph,
“Boatman’s Holiday” is a mix of river of the dead mythologies, but unqiue for
the story that results. The main
character named Charon (natch), the story tells of his unending ride back and
forth across the river of death, taking money from beneath the tongues of the
souls on their last journey. Working
magic with a story that probably has no right to succeed, Ford proves why he is
one of the best by converting Charon’s soul into something of interest.
In
“A Man of Light”, a reporter for a small run periodical is granted an interview
with the well-known yet reclusive inventor known as Larchcroft. Arriving in the evening, the man’s entrance
curtails only a head. But that is only
the beginning of the reporter’s nightmares.
While Ford would revisit the themes to more success in “The Dream of
Reason,” the story of the man who mastered light nevertheless captures light,
dark, dreams, and the dimensions between in classic Ford fashion. “The Weight of Words” works with the idea
that “printed words had, according to
their length, their phonemic components, and syllabic structure, fixed values
that could be somehow mathematically ciphered.” Ford taking the premise in an interestingly
personal direction, I’ve never read another story like it.
In
the end, The Empire of Ice Cream: Stories
is a quality selection of shorts that engage the reader from a wide variety of
angles. From “standard” fantasy stories
to fictional explorations of the act of writing itself, the collection is
anything but predictable. Dynamic range
to dynamic prose, the afternoon sunshine is indeed warm.
Published
between 2003 and 2006, the following are the fourteen stories collected in The Empire of Ice Cream: Stories:
Introduction
(by Jonathan Carroll)
The
Annals of Eelin-Ok
Jupiter’s
Skull
Night
in the Tropics
The
Empire of Ice Cream
The
Beautiful Gelreesh
Boatman’s
Holiday
Botch
Town
A
Man of Light
The
Green Word
Giant
Land
Coffins
on the River
Summer
Afternoon
The
Weight of Words
The
Trentino Kid
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