Small fires, dulled senses in the short fiction of Andrew Duncan Worthington

The main assertion of collection “A Very Small Forest Fire” by Andrew Duncan Worthington (Bottlecap Press, 2018) seems to be that the ultimate way to undermine capitalism is to be too bored to participate.

“Assertion” may be too strong a word. These 12 short-short stories employ what I suspect is purposefully dull and vague language, creating characters numbed by the constant stimulation of modern American society. Narrators (often unnamed) drift through recreation activities but don’t have any fun—they don’t feel much of anything. The sparse language evokes Kerouac, but with a more limited vocabulary.

“A Very Small Forest Fire” opens with the titular piece, where a stoned narrator seemingly sleepwalks through roller coaster spins and a theme park evacuation due to fire. Our protagonist was riding the park’s tallest ride while the fire broke out, but not even this woke up his senses. He reports,

We went out towards the parking lot, filled with trucks and crowds of people staring at them. This went on for several hours. We left to go to the bathroom and get hamburgers.

Kerouac’s biography comes to mind again during “Defecation,” a flash piece about a youngish man milling around unhappily in his parents’ house after a move home when college ended. That discomfort of returning to the suburbs after a cigarette-fueled adventure through less manicured places is present here and it was essential to the disjointed existence of Jack Kerouac. (Kerouac’s relationship to his mother: So. Weird.)

Throughout these stories, zoned-out characters are surrounded by books, computers and television programs but don’t focus on anything very closely. Not even food holds any pleasure in the universe of “A Very Small Forest Fire.” I struggle to imagine a less inviting meal than this one described in “Calling Back Home”:

She went to the kitchen. Fried chicken from the night before was left in the fridge. She microwaved it. She scooped some potato salad onto the plate, pushed aside some of the pot to make room at the table, lathered the potato salad and fried chicken in hot sauce.

This artless style is most convincing when delivered by a first-person narrator. It is easy for a reader to believe that these characters experience their own surroundings in fragments and could only describe them in broad strokes. When an omniscient third-person narrator is employed, the delivery is frustrating. The sentiments ring false. Again from “Calling Back Home”:

Patti quit smoking and drinking after her son was born. One reason was she didn’t want to set a bad example. A deeper reason was that she no longer felt the need to fill those desires. She held Donnie in her arms in the maternity ward and felt nothing else mattered in the world.

Probably every mother on the planet would call shenanigans on this. We humans write about motherhood a lot (A LOT) and it is never this neat or easy to describe. The notion that motherhood obliterates all desire isn’t new but it also isn’t authentic.

The most effective piece in this collection is “Everyday Mr. Kent,” formatted as a journal entry of the exclusively trivial aspects in a day in the life of one Mr. Clark Kent, reporter for “The Daily Planet.”  Superman isn’t called into action on this day, so regular old Clark lolls in ennui. He thinks about his own arc:

He imagines someone making a movie about his every day. It would reject all the tenets of conventional literature: plot, character, setting, conflict. It would focus on a man, but not the man as a character, but as an idea. The idea would be profound and simple and normal and real at the same time. There wouldn’t be any romance or drama or arch. It would just be a man, who was just an idea, which wasn’t ever defined, but rather, merely, felt.

This is actually what this story achieves, though perhaps another reason this works is that readers are likely quite familiar with Superman’s back story, so we can plug in the gaps in storytelling. Also, the corresponding cartoon illustrations help convey more ambience and setting.

I’ll leave it up to other readers to determine if the short works collected in “A Very Small Forest Fire,” resolutely minimalist and solipsistic, succeed in any other goals: breaking new ground, entertaining readers, maintaining interest. Though I suppose these characters would snooze through any critique, anyway.

 

 

Laura Eppinger is a Pushcart-nominated writer of fiction, poetry and essay. Her work has appeared at the Rumpus, the Toast, and elsewhere. She the blog editor here at Newfound Journal.