Review: "Census" by Jesse Ball

There is a certain type of modern, usually American, writer that I do not really like, whose work is pared down, its beautiful elements plucked until the story is merely a skeleton of what it could be and the writer comes off less like a storyteller and more like a performance artist. I think of writers like Catherine Lacey, Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter who are guilty of this (mainly in their short fiction): a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of George Saunders and whatever their genre of choice is. But, after being mean, I can say that there can be merit in stories like these done the right way, and at the forefront of this aforementioned quality is American author Jesse Ball, whose most recent novel, Census, offers a menacing yet tender entry into this mumblecore genre of post modern fiction. Reminding me a lot of the work of Blake Butler, although not nearly as acidic, violent or nihilistic, this tale of the love between a father and son feels immediate, heartfelt and shot through with the pain of impending lose. It focuses on an unnamed widower who gets news that he is about to die. His main concern though is for his grown son who has Down’s syndrome and will be left alone in a cruel world once he is gone. The narrator decides to take a job for shadowy government agency to travel “up north” through towns denoted only by letter to give people a mark: a little symbol tattooed just below the ribs. What follows is a strange journey through these little towns and through the narrator’s memory.  We see what the two have to deal with in their mysterious quest, from those who offer bits of comfort to those who offer a healthy yet hurtful distrust. We also learn of the narrator’s life with his wife, a kind of performance artist/clown and whose full story is only revealed near the book’s heartfelt and emotional climax. This is a strange story, but a powerful one that makes me rethink some of my harsher literary opinions. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "How to Set a Fire and Why" by Jesse Ball

I have been circling around the work of Jesse Ball for a few years. I was always impressed with his prolific output, but a bit put off by his style, which, from a few glances at his past few books, struck me as detached and emotionally scattered. But with his new book, How to Set A Fire and Why, I feel I picked a good one to begin with. To begin, it is a very scattered book whose themes and ideas are a little hard to grasp with the syntax Ball puts forth and what kind of narrator we have. But I had a really good time with this book, more so than really expected, and some of the books flaws, which I will discuss soon, actually add to the book’s overall charm. The narrator on hand is Lucia, a young girl who has recently suffered a tragedy, and is acting out in increasingly aggressive ways. Her father has died, her mother is in a mental hospital and she is constantly kicked out of schools for disciplinary reasons. She lives with her aunt in a crappy garage, and is attending another school, this one with its own burgeoning group of min-terrorist who call themselves the Arson Club, and armed with her dad’s lighter, she intends to join at any cost. Lucia is unreliable at best, the world seen through her skewed, quasi-nihilistic solipsism. She is a cross between Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen and that annoying chick from My Life as Liz, passably smart, yet lacking true self-awareness of the basics of empathy, so all the other characters are either too stupid (especially the male characters) or emotional fodder. But she is entertaining, and through a few emotional scenes, one involving and easily predicted death, her humanity shines through, as does the humanity of the story. This won’t be on my year-end list, but I found this book to be way more of a blast than I anticipated. 

Rating: 4/5