On The River Styx And Other Stories (1991) - Plot & Excerpts
This collection of Peter Matthiessen's short fiction is presented in chronological order according to publication date. The themes of race relations, the South, and violence loop through and around each short story like an uncoiling snake felt slipping over one's bare ankle. You know its there, you feel lit, you can even see it, but you tell yourself you can't see it because if you see it, you'll never be able to see anything except for that with which we are uncomfortable. But like the snake rasping over our anklebone, once felt, it can never be unfelt. Matthiessen's talent for writing behavioral truth whether between a man, his wife, and a snapping turtle, or between black and white, is staggering and exquisite.For the first five stories, I stood in slack jawed awe. I danced the sweaty dance of broken glass rapture. I wore the open socket pealed back grin of desert skulls and asylum madness. Matthiessen could have asked me to step off a bridge within those first five stories and I would have done so, gladly. Lunacy via literary ecstasy? Perhaps, perhaps. I can't explain it better. Matthiessen made magic in those first five. And then, the magic went away. The final five in this collection are okay, one or two is potentially good, but they lacked that living wonder that whisked me to that place of other, delights so wicked, I shiver now to think.I'm curious to see what Matthiessen's more recent work is like, since his later writing within this collection lost steam. I'm looking forward to reading Shadow Country and In Paradise.
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