How They Were Found

I've had less time to read this semester than years gone by--less time commuting, more classes, more time revising and editing my own material--but I always make time for books by writers I admire most. The book I enjoyed most recently was Matt Bell's collection How They Were Found. In fact, I devoured the book during my Thursday commute. I don't often write about what I read, but I was so impressed throughout, that I was compelled to jot some quick thoughts.

Many of these stories I had read before. Some, like "Wolf Parts" and "An Index of How Our Family Was Killed" are studies in adventurous form, in how humor and heart and horror are meant to be mingled. I taught "Index", a story that first appeared in Conjunctions, in a creative writing class last spring. My students articulated the experience of reading that particular piece as taking a direct dose of pain and horror and, really, the suffering of the narrator. The experience was deeper than reading a mere first person account. Here they found no filters, just horror. They were pretty impressed. They were also surprised by how funny, at turns, "Index" is.

I wish I would have had this book to dip into back then. Other stories, like the 19th century science fiction of "His Last Great Gift" read like a wondrous conflation between Brian Evenson and Ray Bradbury. Or Mary Shelley.

Elsewhere "horror" and "suspense" writers like Peter Straub and Stephen King often come to mind. I will admit the impulse to lay these genre tags, these comparisons, is likely due to limitations on my part--the comparisons are thin and, really, inaccurate. I suppose what I mean to say, when I invoke the most famous and best of our "horror" writers that, like Evenson's work, there's rarely a moment in Bell's writing that strays from what would be considered literary (in style or in depth of meaning) yet elements of what we consider "genre" fiction are apparent on every page--mystery, horror, suspense, sci-fi.

These stories are heavy, they are beautifully written, they are deep, they are bold, formally and thematically, yet, no matter how form busting or experimental they can be, they are always page turners in the best sense. Here's a brief section from "Dredge", a story whose pages moved very quickly in my hands, that illustrates, I believe, the best elements of the grotesque, of horror, where the elements of terror are infused with significance, while retaining their power as pure images:

"He's careful as he lays her in the freezer, as he brushes the hair out of her eyes again, until he holds her eyelids closed until he's sure they'll stay that way. The freezer will give him time to figure out what he wants. What he needs. What he and she are capable of together."