Infidelities: Stories of Mini-skirts and Machine Guns

"It's not much of a plot, but that's fine; I don't need plots. In a way, after 9/11, it's nice not to have a plot, or big events; I've written so much about war and murder-- and crime and sex, for that matter-- that it's a relief not to have any of that." -- from "59th Parallel" by Josip Novakovich


So now that I maybe feel ready to talk about Novakovich's short story collection (see title), I'm not entirely sure what to say. I suppose starting out with the stories that really stood out to me might help. "Spleen" didn't do much for me. I felt sorely let down but like I was, as the reader, in a Catch-22 from about halfway into the book. Also, like Bret and Chelsea (?), it took me a long time to figure out that the narrator was female. But then as soon as the narrator decided to sleep with the emigrant, I felt like the story, for lack of phrasing, screwed itself. Why, you might be asking yourselves right now? Because if the emigrant was in fact the rapist, then the story was going to feel like a cliche. If the emigrant wasn't the rapist, then I was going to feel like I'd been built up and let down for no good reason.

But anyways, on to the stories that I actually liked, which would be "Night Guests", "Tchaikovsky's Bust" and "59th Parallel". I think these stories stood out to me because the narrator felt the most legitimate to me (whether they are fictional or confessional, they still passed the honest voice test for me). I was a little thrown by the meta-fictional daydream at the end of the story "Tchaikovsky's Bust", but I loved the sensory imagery that came out really strongly through out the story, as well as Novakovich's intense attention to the idiosyncrasies of his characters (for example, a three year old who occassionally breaks out in strings of profanity when she's upset) was something that I found to be highly admirable and would probably be advantageous to try and imitate.


What I loved about "Night Guests" was Novakovich's use of such strongly contrasting dialects (between the narrator who had a sort of European emigrant syntax reparteeing with the full out rural dialect of the other characters). I also thought the crazy cop and the difference between Italian and American underwear was pretty nifty.

Granted, I haven't met Novakovich yet, but I felt like, after reading "59th Parallel", maybe we had been introduced. I don't usually go in for non-stories like this (I don't usually get the point of them), but this story seemed really honest and somehow vital to me. Maybe it was the juxtaposition of such a little story like this amongst all of the gruesome deaths, dyings and grotesques of the Balkan conflict that made it seem so touchably real. To be honest, at the height of the Balkan conflict, I was ten. The most that I really remember about it was that there used to be news clips about it on the Nickelodeon news show for kids (with the bald woman...Linda something). I never really liked that show, it seemed so boring compared to everything else on Nickelodeon on a Sunday night. I will say though, that these short moments of fiction made the Balkan conflict/civil wars real to me in a way that (short of the opening scene of one of the most graphically violent movies that I've ever seen which would be The Hunted) I've never known it.

Sorry if this all comes out as gibberish, I should probably not be writing these at 3 in the morning, but that seems to be my best opportunity right now.