An Oral History of Atlantis: Stories by Ed Park
Big thanks to Random House and NetGalley for providing me
with an advanced copy of Ed Park’s incredible new short story collection An Oral History of Atlantis: Stories. I have heard of Ed Park, but haven’t
read anything from him, although Same Bed Different Dreams is on my to-read
list. I was surprised at how funny and absurd the stories in this collection
are. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but I found the stories to all be
strange and absurd and often presenting apt and humorous characterizations of
elements of modern life, especially in areas of art, writing, and technology.
Furthermore, these aren’t traditional, canonical type of short stories from the
past, but rather I found them to be unique character studies where we find the
characters engaged in a strange or complicated aspect of life. In addition, a
few of the stories take narrative risks and present the story in unique
formats, which I really enjoyed. Sometimes these approaches to stories can seem
more like a novelty or decoration, but for Park’s stories and characters, they
provide a unique framing device to capture the absurdity and humor in each
event.
The collection starts off with “A Note to My Translator”, a
brief letter from the fictional and pseudonymous author Hans de Krap, who appears in another
story. The basic premise of this story is that the translator has rewritten the
book’s first chapter with “brazen, unnoted blunders”, which de Krap categorizes
in 3 hilarious pages. It’s unclear whether this was a willful change or
something is completely lost in translation, but the book, titled Mexican
Fruitcake in E’s translation (not de Krap’s original title) features many
strange changes that seem to go beyond language choices. Another selection with
a kind of experimental approach to the story is “The Wife on Ambien”, which
lists all of the ways the narrator’s wife differs on Ambien compared to when
she does not take Ambien, and how this sleeping medication makes her a more
productive, but also risk-taking woman. I also enjoyed “Machine City”, where
the narrator, Joon, details his college experience appearing in an experimental
improvisatory student film with an ex-girlfriend. Joon, who is taking a class
in surrealism, is eventually introduced to Bethany Blanket, who ends up
directing him and his ex-girlfriend Yuna, in a film. It seemed like this story
was almost like a key in understanding how the other stories fit together,
since many of the stories take a surrealist approach, where artists often “mentally
stitch bits together into one exquisite thing. The coherence of incoherence.”
Despite his prior relationship with Yuna and the strange break-up and sending
her a 20 page letter, Bethany requires that they act like they are meeting for
the first time for her film. The story is framed by the Joon’s current
recollections of this time, searching for information about the film and Bethany’s
career on IMDB. I loved the Nirvana references in the story, especially when
Joon shares plays “Lithium” on headphones for Massimo, one of his friends. The
dialogue and situations in this story are really funny to consider, and it just
reminded me of reminiscing about those kind of absurd experiences from college.
The story “The Air as Air” also features one of the recurring elements found in
other stories, the town of Eucalyptus, and has some of the funny dialogue where
words and phrases have double meanings. In the story, the narrator, who studies
breathing techniques from a guy named Karl Ababa, meets with his father, who makes
the narrator call him The Big Man. When they meet, they catch up on what they
are up to, and The Big Man says
“‘So you know about Uncle Buck,’ he said. ‘The
movie?’ ‘What movie? I’m talking about your Uncle Buck. He went on that show
where they give you a makeover. It was Lindy’s idea, the whole stupid TV thing.
She has connections. You know Buck. He dresses worse than I do. He dresses like
he smeared rubber cement on his chest and rolled around in a pile of undershirts.
So they show the episode and it went a little too well, if you get my gist.’”
I found this to be really funny, and the entire meeting with
his father was pretty humorous. Throughout many of the stories, there are
similar examples of this kind of word play and punning that add to both the
uniqueness and absurdity of the stories. “Seven Women” was fascinating in that
details 7 women who are all connected to Hannah Hahn, an editor who created an
obscure literary magazine whose rejection letters were sent on postcards where
she retitled their submissions and edited the piece down to one sentence. It reminded
me of the translator from the first story. These characters are all connected
not only through their relationships, but also their proximity to Hannah. One
of my favorite stories was “The Gift”, where the narrators writing a letter to
his alumni magazine, sharing the experience as students in an experimental
class known as “Advanced Aphorism”, which was never taught again. This was
another story with incredible word play, but it also functions as a satire of
higher education, as the professor, Dublinski, has unusual methods and
inconsistent meeting times and places for the class. “Two Laptops” was also a
humorous critique of modern technology, where the narrator’s wife leaves him
and moves in with another woman in the same condo complex. His son, who wants
to go by C-Love, also features in the story, and they try to find interests for
him, from music lessons, to sports, and eventually computers. In this story,
C-Love communicates with his dad via skype when he stays at his mom’s place,
even though it’s in the same neighborhood. However, sometimes the connection
goes “metallic, bits of it gray and bits of it green, and big chunks of the image
fall out, so it looks like I’m seeing his skull.” C-Love also has trouble
seeing his father. In another great story “Eat Pray Click”, the narrator also
has trouble connecting with an old friend who has developed a way to manipulate
kindle books to create innumerable iterations of the novel. When the narrator
tries to connect with Rolph later, he experiences a similar disconnection through
technology, wondering if Rolph was even where he said he was. Both characters
in this story studied with Stoops, a professor in “Machine City” who teaches
the Surrealism course and who founded a literary movement called Sensibilism and
its antithesis, Mood Writing. I loved the interconnection between stories here,
as well as the satire of literary criticism and technology. One of the last
stories, “Slide to Unlock”, is also a kind of satire of passwords, where it
presents various iterations of password formation, but is also critical of the
kind of personal information that these passwords rely on. It’s similar to “The
Wife on Ambien” in that it is something like a list, but it’s also a great
critique of something that has become a feature of our modern lives.
I loved these stories, both the individual stories and the
entirety of the collection. It was great to see interconnections among stories
where ideas, concepts, places, and people overlapped and came up in different
places (Hans de Krap appears in another story as well). Furthermore, the
stories are really entertaining and humorous, offering some bizarre and absurd
situations. Many of the stories feature word plays or subtle satire that allows
readers to question these aspects of life. I will revisit these stories, and I
feel like many of them would be fun to teach, to see how students would respond
to them. I’m also wondering if these stories appealed to me because I’m closer
in age to Park, or whether a younger generation might get some of the humor and
satire in these stories. Regardless, I’m sure that these stories will challenge
their ideas and conceptions of short stories, possibly broadening their
perspectives. Although these stories may not be for everyone, I thoroughly
enjoyed them and recognize that they help to extend the boundaries on ideas
about creative writing and short stories in particular. I highly recommend this
collection.
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