Give it to me straight: the unadulterated pleasure of pure story distilled, or my review of Ben Loory's Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Raymond Chandler once said that a "good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled." When I first came to read Ben Loory's stories five years ago, I began to see just what Chandler meant. For me, these stories were, and are, a revelation: in some ways so modern, their brevity suited to our contemporary attention span, so easily consumed sitting on the subway, while wondering how a particular tale might end (I never could guess what would happen next), and yet so familiar: so like the fables, and myths, the sagas, and the dreams and the twilight zones that I have loved, that they feel they must have existed before Ben wrote them.

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is pure distillate of story, boiled down to the essential words that unfurl inside and take up residence, and the disarming restraint of their sinewy form only serves to bring me in closer so that I'm collected inside them, as they are inside this book, as they collect inside my memory, as they make laugh (oh so hard), cower (equally hard), and smile (hardest there is). They make me feel, for those moments when I am in them, that I have a reprieve from this world, and have really lived these stories myself, that I was part of them and those sublimely surreal other worlds that we are still left to discover in this looryverse.

The most visceral moments in reading are the ones I wait for, so absorbing you can almost reach out and touch the taut atmosphere, and the tension of the tale resolves itself inside you. Ben’s book is full of these moments, told with a direct simplicity and metre; his words wash over you, delightful and unexpected, like a convenient sprinkler on an unbearably hot day. This writing is no inch of ivory but more a paint-with-water book, the paint inked on in defined lines, just enough, mind, and you simply add your own water to a world that becomes more vivid and real every moment, and then you wipe off the brush, or eye, if need be.

I don’t want to give too much away in this review about what you will read in these pages: I will not point out favourites because each of the stories has its own secrets at its core, and it’s how we reflect these stories on ourselves that we come to love one or another best. I will say that these pages are a pastiche of the paranormal mixed with some magic, deepened by dazzling darkness, populated with people, trees, ducks, tvs, the sea, and the breeze, so very many things and beings changing, and they morph before our eyes for good or ill.

If it’s not clear by now, this is an exhortation to people that might read this review: I recommend you get this book the minute it comes out. I’m hard on books, but I know what I like, and I love this … I knew at first reading that there was something very special in these stories. If I’ve intrigued you at all, I’d recommend you pre-order**, so the book is in your hot little hand as soon as possible – I know you will find charm, and enchantment, some anxiety, some sorrow, some sweetness, and occasionally hope here. This is a breathtakingly lovely collection of little stories, so full of nighttime and day, so spare and so fine, I cannot now imagine living my life without it, and can’t for the life of me, think why you should either.



** book arrives in stores on July 26, 2011.

in Canada to pre-order from amazon, click here
in the US to pre-order from amazon in book format (they also have kindle), click here






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i just read the hawkline monster and i loved it so much i'm gonna have to blog about it. have you all read it? if you haven't, get on it! :)

i read the hawkline monster the other day, and i'm still wrapped in it, like a dream. i can't shake it even as i read other books.

you have to read it. i was lucky enough to stumble upon it in the bookstore literally around the corner from my apartment, and for four dollars. original cover price was a buck seventy-five but i would pay a LOT MORE for this book. maybe 10,000 dollars. but i'm glad i got it for four. :)

i just finished a jim thompson but i really just want to read it again. i'm writing a blog entry about it now. :)

p.s. i am tempted to cobble together my blog entry from these paroxysms of pleasure i keep posting on the internet about the hawkline monster. :P

*******

and i did. at least all that stuff up there i have blabbed onto the internet. there was more but since it was a conversation and not really my writing, i'll write about it here, as these ejaculations are hardly sufficient in communicating my delight in this book. even now, i would rather be reading it than writing this. it is helping me to understand what kind of prose i love to read more than any other book to be able to name it. to say, "read the hawkline monster by richard brautigan, and you will know prose i love"; it's a gift.

the gift is actually from a friend, ben loory. he's just finished his own book, stories for nighttime and some for the day, and i decided to read the hawkline monster because we were discussing his influences. i'll say here and now that i love his book -- i've had the privelege of reading it in advance of publication, and it's only in reading someone like brautigan do i begin to understand why. they both give story as essence, a terse dream that is the opposite of jane austen's two inches of etched ivory. they etch their lines purposely as she did, and bring it lyricism, brautigan with his metaphors, and loory with his metre. but austen's world, while beautiful in its own way, is a small one, and constrained and her analogy points to the limited sphere of her world i see as a woodcut, deeply ingrained, whereas the simplicity of the approach these men use is rather different for me. the effect in my mind is this: the spare words become a paint brush that with three wide strokes paint in watercolour a world that becomes more vivid and real every moment i stare at the canvas.

even now, as i write this, still i want to be reading the hawkline monster again. i'm distracted by a pain below my shoulder blade, and i know i should probably eat something because those honey nut cheerios were a long time ago, but i also know i should try at least to exorcise this need to be with this book, stop thinking about greer and cameron, the laconic heroes that have so bewitched me, and have me constantly in conflict as to whom i love the better. i miss the shadow, the honourable shadow. i miss the stark pleasure that this book gave me when i was reading it, which by the way, i could not do straight through. i would stop and absorb my feelings about the story, about the characters and how alive they were to me.

i am enamoured with the distillate of story, which raymond chandler thought was just the starting point but which i am convinced is a reward in its' own right. brautigan and loory have made me sure.