Open Letters reviews three Coach House titles
Three from Coach House Books
Adam Golaski
Nathalie Stephens
Christian Bök
A. Rawlings
Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists
A phenomenon people who read are familiar with: book in hand, hours pass unnoticed. A book has so engaged the mind that the hard desk chair, the unheated library, the downstairs neighbor’s murderous lovers’ spat go unnoticed. To emerge from such a state is like waking from an afternoon nap: sleep snatched during normal business hours, dreams lucid.
This phenomena is concentration. Not the space-out, but rather an opposite state: an active mind working in and out of text, drawing from memory and new information.
That this depth of concentration can only occur when storytelling is transparent, i.e., when there is no authorial presence to interfere with the reader’s attention upon the story, is false. An easy read encourages a sloppy read. Strong, plot-driven narratives often keep readers rapt, but something that demands close attention—which plot-driven narratives rarely do—is better equipped to engage the active reader. Just because a reader looks up from the page doesn’t mean the reader isn’t still inside the text. Books that hold the active reader’s attention allow for contemplation, invite the reader to pause and reread a line that was especially dense or especially beautiful, and stimulate new thinking. I’ve heard such interludes described negatively as “being thrown out of the story.” Rather, such interludes are a part of the story.
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Adam Golaski is a regular contributor of critical essays to All Hallows. His essay “Remembering Charles L. Grant and Shadows” will appear in the upcoming issue of Supernatural Tales, and his reviews have appeared online at cutbankpoetry.blogspot.com and wordforword.info. His fiction and poetry have been published in a number of journals, including: Lit, American Letters & Commentary, Web Conjunctions, and McSweeney’s. He edits New Genre, a journal of science and horror fiction, and edits for Flim Forum, a press devoted to publishing experimental contemporary poetry. He teaches American literature at St. Joseph College in Hartford, CT.
