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An interview with RAWA’s Sahar Saba.
Thousands of U.S. troops are headed to Central Asia, and they're not leaving anytime soon.
Give Us 0.01 Percent
It’s time for the Tobin tax.
Pedal Revolution
LOCAL MOTION: New York rediscovers the virtues of car-free public space.
Web Exclusive | Greens or Green (Egalitarian) Democrats?
A Commentary on the Nader 2000 Campaign.
Editorial
Stand Up for Peace.
The West Wing’s workaholics
No Logo
IMF: This time it's personal.
Appall-o-Meter
Amnesty International targets INS for treatment of 9/11 detainees.
Half Measures
NGOs reject U.N. Monterrey Consensus.
Plan Colombia, globalization stir unrest in Ecuador.
House Arrest
Indigenous organizers jailed in Baja California.
Political Prisoners
In Person: The Angola Three.
BellyWashers Vitamin C Drink.
Cuba Confidential
BOOKS: Cuban literature is back ... and looking for answers.
BOOKS: Mark Nesbitts short but Gigantic stories.
FILM: Taking Time Out from work, identity and reality.
Walking the Talk
The living legacy of the radical past.
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March 29, 2002
The Grace Card
Marc Nesbitt’s short but Gigantic stories.
In “Quality Fuel for Electric Living,” Nesbitt’s sentences shiver
with kinetic force: “The dash says 8:13 in the A.M. and I’m already
sweating; last night’s whiskey still twitches in my stomach, biting at
the lining. So dehydrated my blood feels like electric tinsel.” Zeroing
in on the precise way we communicate with ourselves and others, Gigantic is
loaded with junkyard-dog syntax, loopy turns of logic and an in-joke sense of
description. But for all the individuality, it’s never cryptic. Instead,
it’s intuitive and playful. The first day of his job with the State Highway, Nimrod, the character reeling
from a painful hangover in “Quality Fuel,” is assigned to remove some
fresh kill off the road by his boss, Pucker. A “half-Canadian-take on a
redneck,” with “neck veins screwing spiral, alive” and a “State
Highway T shirt tight as a rash and sun faded green,” Pucker’s forceful
yammering is like “shrapnel,” so piercing Nesbitt worries it could
“halve a skull.” Those descriptions seem enough to convey the point, but Nesbitt takes it one
step further—nearly all of Pucker’s dialogue is in capital letters:
“HERE’S A TELLING STAT ABOUT MY LOVE LIFE, LET’S GET THIS ONE
ON SPORTSCENTER! PAST SIX MONTHS, ONLY NIGHT I GOT LAID AND THE ONLY NIGHT I
PUKED BOTH FELL ON THE SAME DATE!” Visually, this may seem like nothing more than a gimmick, but the dialogue
is so blaring, especially in Nimrod’s mind, that the trick seems not only
justified, but completely necessary. It also shows that Nesbitt, who was selected
by The New Yorker as a 2001 Debut Fiction Writer, isn’t afraid to bang
on the bars of literary fiction, a genre that is sometimes too mousy for its
own good.
The characters in Gigantic are acutely aware of riding the chasm between white
and black, never fully inhabiting either, encompassing both. Like the author,
most of the central characters are of mixed heritage, but Nesbitt’s too
smart to attack this bull straight on. Instead, the details stain the background,
and the book is all the more powerful for it. In “Polly Here Somewhere,” Nesbitt writes, “My white mom and
black dad hunch in gray slumps at opposite sides of the house, watching snow
fall in fistfuls.” Later, when the unnamed son won’t mingle at the
junior high dance, we learn he hangs out “away from the crowd, for reasons
like I got Hendrix hair but can’t play guitar. Or breakdance.” It’s
a perfectly modest detail, but it says everything. In “The Ones Who May Kill You in the Morning,” Cole, already humiliatingly
employed as a lawn jockey, is asked to wear a ski mask while he greets guests.
The boss spells out the reasons in, well, black and white: “Well, no offense,
but you’re yella as a sick Chink. ... And I’ll be honest, people don’t
need reminders of someplace they didn’t want to be. Or worse than that,
some mistake from a long time ago.” Cole wears the mask—he’s an agreeable type and he needs the job.
And though he gets a little revenge on “Fatsby” by sleeping with his
flirty, hypocritical daughter, the real revenge, the one that grabs the reader
by the collar, doesn’t hit until the very last moment. Cole’s co-worker,
Vince, drunk and incensed, commits one brief act on Cole’s behalf that
makes a statement louder than bombs. It’s the kind of moment so loaded
with violent feeling we’re left wasted in its aftermath, exhilarated and
spent. But however much we want to cheer on Cole and Vince’s victories, piddling
or dramatic, the effect is unsettling. What fate might Cole meet when the adrenaline
wears off? What will happen to Vince? More hauntingly, think of fates met by
so many before them. Moments like these make Gigantic not just a stylish feast
but a book with lasting impact, one that whispers in your mind long after the
last shout is over. Margaret Wappler is a freelance writer based in Chicago. |
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In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
ace, sex, college and booze. These are the four thematic kingpins that muscle
their way through Marc Nesbitt’s Gigantic. Breaking noses and bruising
hearts, this debut short-story collection is as heady as a Charles Bukowski
poem and as rowdy as that poet’s many barroom brawls, but the stories are
never clumsy or banal—just clamorous and passionate. Like the best of jazz
improvisers, Nesbitt is almost spazzy in his enthusiasm for the potential of
language. Gigantic so noisily dines on words, sipping and slurping and smacking
until there’s just a carcass left, that language gets a new lease on life.
or all of Nesbitt’s fireworks and playfulness, he knows how to be subtle
and serious with a theme. Sex, college and booze give Gigantic its color, but
the race card, so to speak, is what gives this book its muscle, its fine-tuned
sensitivity to being the odd one out.