Shame and wonder Essays

Review by New York Times Review

"WHEN PEOPLE TALK about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it," F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "because they think that it is only style that they are talking about." But uncommon literary style is always integrative, both the mother and the daughter of invention, wrought from a writer's desperation "to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought." Astonishment is a quality central to David Searcy's "Shame and Wonder," a nonfiction collection from a writer best known for two horror-inflected novels, "Ordinary Horror" and "Last Things." What unites these 21 essays, which range from extended, rolling meditations (including one on the semiotics of the cereal box prize) to a lyric fragment on watching the PBS docu-series "Lewis & Clark," is the sense of a wildly querying intelligence suspended in a state of awe. The tension of this predicament - the need to push forward meeting the need to hold still - pervades Searcy's style, which is one of casual virtuosity, expansive focus and ambling centripetal force. Searcy is drawn instinctively to moments, the way parcels of time expand and contract in memory, conjuring from ordinary experience a hidden sense of all that is extraordinary in the world, in being alive. Oriented by an array of such discrete reveries, each of these essays is itself a kind of extended moment, within which Searcy pauses, turns ideas about, attempts to take it all in. Unstructured yet well fortified, Searcy's long, hanging moments take on the contours of a rare, desperately private space. To join him there is to be astonished. "The religious and the modernist impulse seem to spring from the same engulfing moment of self-consciousness and doubt. 'My God, where are we?'" begins "A Futuristic Writing Desk." In this essay, as in others, an observed premise carries Searcy toward a remembered encounter with the world, and often with a work of art - in this case an exhibition of modernist objects in his native Dallas. A small, 1930s Rudolph Schindler desk in particular remains fixed in Searcy's memory, appearing there as "some pure idea of itself, so tensely here-and-now, so free of ornament and history, its cracking and abraded surface ... about to burst, to let it go ahead and slip into the future." Beloved by Searcy as a child of the pop-science-mad 1950s, the future is now something he can imagine only as part of the past; at some point, death became "the future's only critical feature." In sorting through the resulting sense of loss, Searcy returns habitually to questions of meaning, representation and form. In "How to Color the Grass" he recalls as formative, even incendiary, his third-grade art teacher's pushing her students away from their "stick schematic" drawings of Mom, Dad and the little dog and toward a sense of the world around them as specific and therefore imperfectly understood. Some version of this discovery and subsequent struggle repeats across these essays, in which spaces - literal, conceptual, artistic, memorial - open and close themselves to Searcy, both seeking and eluding a comprehensive frame. Late in her life, Virginia Woolf described as pivotal to her creative development a moment from childhood. Regarding a flower outside her home, Woolf felt the shock of apprehension: "That is the whole." The novel served Woolf the way the essay does Searcy: as a mode within which to pursue that shock, to give form to the formless, to make deeply felt and dramatic the place of each well-apprehended moment - each geranium and writing desk - in a unified, timeless whole. Searcy stages his fond, acutely critical argument with all manner of formal boundaries, of course, on pages that are square and uniform: each one a window. MICHELLE ORANGE is the author, most recently, of the essay collection "This Is Running for Your Life."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 13, 2015]

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Review by Booklist Review

This collection of nonfiction pieces by novelist Searcy (Last Things, 2002) is teasingly powerful, though inconsistent. They are often striking in their descriptive passages, especially of the West Texas landscape and, particularly in the oddly titled opening piece The Hudson River School, of people. But characters, action, and story lines are secondary, often absent. Several pieces read like excepts from longer fiction. One set in old Corsicana, involving a peg-legged Jewish tightrope walker carrying (to his death) a stove on his back, is tantalizing. When fleshed out or expanded upon, much here could be compelling book-length fiction; as is, it is alluring but frustrating. The writing is quirky; seemingly out-of-nowhere connections (one peculiarly invoking Jimmy Durante) or science fiction-like excursions pop up unexpectedly. The book is blurbed by John Jeremiah Sullivan, and those who enjoy his equally quirky narrative nonfiction may be drawn to Searcy's similar approach.--Levine, Mark Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Hangdog dejection and unlikely epiphanies infuse these offbeat, beguiling essays by novelist Searcy (Last Things). He rattles around the Dallas hinterland (with an overseas excursion to Turkey's St. Nick tourist circuit) and stumbles across oddball stories and subjects: a rancher who uses a recording of his crying baby daughter to lure a troublesome coyote within rifleshot; a giant boulder topped by a scraggly tree covered with pocketknife-carved hearts; the barely-remembered tragedy of a Jewish tightrope walker crushed in a fall in Corsicana, Tex., in 1884. Many pieces recall a sunlit Eisenhower-era boyhood filled with baseball, paper airplanes, woodland excursions with a homemade slingshot, and TV space operas. Others explore Searcy's lifelong fascination with the emotional valence of hard science, which he indulges by repurposing the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment, which tested the speed of light, as a symbol of the quest for meaning. Searcy's writing is by sharp turns goofy, wry, and melancholy, tentative at times but always curious and superbly evocative. (An Internet pop-up sex ad "drops down like a rubber spider on a string. As clear and simple and alarming and imperative as schizophrenic voices probably are.") His essays meander along wisps of metaphorical connection, leaping from tooth-flossing to 17th-century housing, from Zuni religious rituals to cereal box prizes, from his mother's still-life painting to medieval Platonism. The result is a funny, haunting journey through mysterious enlightenments. Photos. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

While Searcy's earlier work (Last Things; Ordinary Horror) has been gothic or horror fiction, the 21 essays in this collection are autobiographical stories whose leitmotif is the mystery and elusiveness of "meaning." The entries are dominated by recollections of Searcy's early childhood and adolescence, when the fundamental meaning of things was communicated to him in the carefree happenings of everyday events and objects (e.g., "Mad Science, "A Futuristic Writing Desk," "Cereal Prizes," "Always Shall Have Been"). Since the author's inadequate sensibilities were unable to recognize or comprehend the signs and signals, true meaning passed through him as do neutrinos through matter. Entries such as "Santa in Anatolia," "Nameless," "Love in Space" demonstrate that as adults, our apprehension of meaning is obstructed by conscious thought and our elaborate scientific and philosophical constructs in the pursuit of knowledge. Searcy's idiosyncratic, conversational style is punctuated with asides, interjections, and allusions that suggest that he may be talking to himself. VERDICT While the narrative style may not be for everyone, readers who appreciate it will enjoy this collection.-Lonnie -Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A Texas essayist goes looking for meaning in all the right places. The essays in this debut collection by Searcy, who previously published two novels of sci-fi horror (Last Things, 2002, etc.), suggest what might happen if Stephen King somehow morphed into David Foster Wallace. Though there are none of the latter's signature footnotes, the author's allusive and elusive writing seeks connections beneath the surface of appearance and the alternatives to conventional wisdom. His mother was an artist, as is his girlfriend, as is his late friend, and their work provides plenty of perspective on the creative impulse, which also permeates these essays. In the opening "The Hudson River School," a visit to the dental hygienist inspires a visit to her father, a rancher in West Texas, who has been targeting a coyote (or more) that has been attacking his sheep, using a tape of their baby's cries as a lure. "Out here, you probably need to know a lot more clearly what you're doing," writes Searcy. "How to situate yourself. You've got your basics here to deal with after all. Your wind, your emptiness, your animals, your house." Clarity, emptiness, and whatever the basics are remain touchstones throughout these essays, whether the writer is exploring the lunar landscape of Enchanted Rock, touring Turkey in search of Santa Claus, trying to find meaning in his lack of connection with baseball, or rediscovering a piece by his late mother while rummaging through "twenty years of stuff diverted here. Not quite tossed out. You never know." Searcy also spends plenty of time revisiting childhood experiences never quite resolved, snapshots and notebooks that provide a different perspective on the experience he's relating, and occasionally discovering, "How cool and dark and clear it is, right here at the heart of things. How clearly things reveal themselves. Who knew?" Ultimately, meaning and mystery coexist in Searcy's mind, and his offbeat, exciting writing will resonate with readers for whom "you never know" and "who knew?" might be mantras. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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The Hudson River School I'm in the dental hygienist's chair and she's a new one, although very much the same bright, cheery presence as the last, which works for me. The unencumbered heart is best, I think, in matters such as these. She seems about the age of my daughters, which I mention, and we talk. She's from West Texas, where her father is a rancher. I'm a writer. Well, her sister is a writer. Really. Children's books. How about that. It's a nice day. You can see downtown from here. We're on the eighth floor. I've been coming here for years, and I have always liked the view. I think there may be something classically romantic (if that's not a contradiction) about the view and my condition as I view it. Like those grand romantic nineteenth-century landscapes so majestic you don't see at first the tiny human figure there, oblivious and engaged in tiny purposes of his own right at the edge of where the whole world seems to fall away toward heaven. This is just like that except it's Dallas, Texas, with no place to fall away to and I'm only here for a cleaning. When I'm able to speak again, it is to lie about my flossing habits and ask about her childhood on the ranch--I spent some time on a ranch myself when I was young, pretending to help with shearing sheep and hunting the wild dogs that would prey on them. It's coyotes in West Texas, though, she says. And so develops out of all this bright and cheery and obligatory chitchat in the eighth-floor dentist's office such a strange, opaque, and mysterious tale, it startles me and makes me ask if she'd mind if I spoke with her father about the events. It seems there occurred, a number of years ago on her father's ranch, an alarming rise in coyote depredations among his flock. The lambs, especially, suffered terribly. He believed it was the work of a single animal but his efforts to hunt it down were unsuccessful. For two seasons he tried all the usual snares and calls but nothing worked. The animal was too cunning. And the lambs continued to die. One day he hit upon a new idea--and here's the part I'd like to know a little more about and why I'd like to give him a call, find out where the idea came from, whether he made the tape recording for this purpose or already had it; how it felt to do what he did, if it seemed desperate or dishonorable or too risky in some indefinable way--but anyway, one morning he took a tape recording of his infant daughter's cries (not those of Lila, my hygienist, but another daughter's cries) out into the tall grass or the bush, the range, whatever you call it out there where the coyotes wait to take away your lambs, and played the recording as he watched with his rifle ready. And it worked. The coyote came, he shot it dead, the depredations stopped and that was that. She writes her father's name and number on the appointment card and says she's sure he wouldn't mind at all if I gave him a call and that she'll see me in six months. Six months later I've not called him. Though I've thought about it often enough. I've even gone online to look up Sterling City, Texas--which is the nearest town to the ranch--and used that Google Maps capability that is still, to me, so ghostly, where you're able to descend from heavenly cartographic altitudes right down into the street-level world to pass among the living. I'll pass west on Fourth Street--Highway 87--through the middle of town, which isn't much, proceeding in those spooky-smeary increments of fifty yards or so. You don't just jerk along between the discrete locations like you'd think. They've introduced a bit of theater here, I guess. So when you click from one point to another along the virtual yellow stripe--from here in front of this boarded-up feed store, say, to where that little white-haired lady waits to cross the street on up the block--it all goes blurry, sweeps away to the rear like smoke in a wind before things rematerialize around the next coordinate where you find you've overshot the white-haired lady, have to spin that magic compass thing to turn around and get a closer look. She seems uncertain. She looks past you down the highway to the west, where the town itself blurs away into mesquite and scrub and rolling empty distances. On down the road I pause and spin the compass thing again, but I can't see her. I suppose she got across. I have no reason to believe the ranch is out this way at all. I get a sense of how it looks, though. And it all looks like it's pretty much the same. This sort of scrubby empty country. Line of hills off in the distance. I keep thinking I might spot some sheep or something--maybe a coyote even. Everything's so open. But the resolution isn't very good. Those smudges out there could be anything. A mile or two outside of town the virtual yellow stripe splits off to the left down Highway 158. I drift that way for a while until the sameness seems to settle in completely. Then I stop and look around. I can't tell which is the way to go and for a second I'm like Cary Grant in North by Northwest, stuck out here in my business suit in the middle of nowhere, absolutely lost. I think the view across the city on a nice day from the eighth-floor examination room is better than a fish tank. Although possibly to similar effect. So, here I'm back again and haven't called her father. Lila, I say, I'm afraid I haven't called your father. And perhaps she's disappointed, having told him I might do so. I apologize, explaining how terrifically tangled up I've managed to get in my current project but I really had the time and should have called. There's something here that makes me hesitate. Back home I open my little kit and throw the floss away, replace my orange toothbrush with a green one. Later on I'm paused on Highway 87 at the edge of Sterling City once again for no particular reason, gazing past the brown brick church and the service station out to where it fades to open country. It's a nice day here, as well. The blue sky hazes into white near the horizon. It's late morning, I would guess. My girlfriend, Nancy, a painter who pays close attention to the way things look and lived in California where they know what coyotes look like, says she saw one near my house once. Right out here in these densely ordinary 1950s neighborhoods one foggy night, quite late. It stood in the grass beneath the power lines that run beside the tollway. She had come across the Northaven bridge and there it was, just standing there long-legged in the grass, in the foggy pale pink tollway light. She stopped and rolled her window down for a better look. And for a moment it looked back, then loped away. A number of years ago on Forest Lane, not half a mile from here in heavy afternoon traffic, I encountered a giant snapping turtle attempting to cross the road. And it had almost made it somehow, crossing all six lanes but found itself unable to mount the curb. I parked my car to block the traffic, got behind it trying to keep away from the bloody but still dangerous-looking beak--it might have been injured by a car or just from bashing against the curb--but, anyway, this thing was as big around as a trash-can lid and weighed about fifty pounds, so it was all I could do to hoist it over the curb and get it headed toward a narrow grassy corridor that ran behind some houses. There was no place in the area I could think of that might call to such a creature. No place anywhere nearby for it to have come from. But next morning it was gone. I've seen raccoons at night dart in and out of storm sewers on my street. And once, alerted by the yelps and exclamations of my neighbor who was fighting to control her dog, a toad the size of a mixing bowl right out there in the gentle summer evening beneath the streetlamp. I encouraged it--one sort of stomps and lunges--out of the street into another neighbor's yard. Then we retreated--she with her wild-eyed dog and I with my thoughts. That toad was even bigger than the giant African bullfrogs I had seen at the Dallas Zoo. It had no business here. Nor anywhere we care about, where limits are imposed and children sleep and dream unburdened by outrageous possibilities. In the morning though, of course, it too was gone. Where in the world do these things come from? Is the city like a net? Does our imagination--urban, gridlike--drag behind us deeper than we know? And these are just the ones we see. Or are they simply passing through. Unsure of us. Our world perhaps a little ghostly to them, streets and houses hardly here at all, a blur like smoke across an older landscape. Excerpted from Shame and Wonder: Essays by David Searcy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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