In the past I have seen books published by Oberon Press that have seemed under-designed, almost Porcupine’s Quill ugly, an impression reinforced by the glossy coating on the covers. Dance of the Suitors has a soft matte cover with a lovely image (somewhere between Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, though perhaps embroidered rather than illustrated) by Phoebe Anna Traquair, and it makes all the difference in the world. This volume of short fiction, with its heavy interior stock and clear, simply arranged type seems dignified rather than cheap. The thing that struck me the most about the work itself was the obvious care Villaverde took with the language, his obvious attention to crafting each sentence, choosing each word. I found myself reminded, actually, of Michael Helm’s In the Place of Last Things, which I read earlier this year and has since become one of my favourite Canadian novels. Like in Helm’s book, each sentence in Dance of the Suitors not only feels honed to its essential elements, but also seems to be the absolute best sentence, the most right sentence, for whatever story it happens to be in. With many writers, most writers in fact, there are phrases that one could lift out whole and transplant in another work without doing them much harm, or in many cases without doing them any harm at all. Not so with these stories. Villaverde’s sentences are not only finely made, they are the exact right sentences for the stories they are in, and could not be transplanted whole into some other work. There is a real sense of each part being absolutely necessary to the whole.
The title story, “Dance of the Suitors” is, I think, actually the weakest in the book, although that’s a relative statement if ever there was one; none of the stories are genuinely weak. The narrator describes in muted terms a visit with his twin sister and the various glancing romantic contacts they have during the course of an evening. One gets the sense of a huge unnamed thing in the room with the twins, a love that is not quite incestuous, but that stands between them and real connection with others (or at least between the male narrator and real connection; his sister has the three dancing suitors of the title, and though the narrator implies that he understands his sister’s relationship with these men, I do not feel that he is entirely reliable). The weakness in this story comes, I think, from one or two occasions when the fourth wall is broken and the narrator is revealed to be writing the story down, and not simply telling it or giving us some similar access to his mind. It’s an old technique, but it seems out of place for some reason, and was jarring. I also allow that it might be jarring because I read the piece not five minutes after having finished Pynchon’s V. which was written in a dramatically different prose style.
One of my two favourite pieces was “Suits of Woe”, a wonderfully cliché-free portrayal of a screen writer dealing with back-stage emotional politics. I have done a (very) little amateur acting, and slightly less screen writing, but even I have enough experience to recognize the honesty and straightforwardness of the story. It was refreshing and engaging and I felt like I was being allowed to explore the characters as people, rather than having to continually say to myself “I’ve seen this a dozen time before”, as so often happens with stories about either the stage or screen. My other favourite piece was “Voglio vivere una favola”, about the young Henry James (“Harry” in the story) encountering Europe for the first time. Villaverde managed to pitch his voice perfectly for the period and subject matter without any dramatic changes to his style, to the tightness of his sentences, which is no mean feat indeed. I felt James’ frustrations keenly, the emotions that were left not entirely unstated, and at the same time I could see the seeds of some of his most famous works being planted, without the obviousness of one-to-one analogs, without feeling as though Villaverde was trying to force those works into an autobiographical mode. I was thoroughly enchanted by the story.
The paranoia of the the woman Myriam in “Where a Disparaging Word” reminded me of the husband in Nathan Sellyn’s “A Routine to These Things”, though I suffered no anxiety attack this time. Myriam’s own anxieties seemed completely unfounded and I spent most of the story pitying her, not liking her, even at times feeling sorry for her young husband and her friend Daniel who seemed to be as much caretakers of her mental struggles as they were friends or family. When her fears about her husband’s infidelity proved real, I found myself making a sharp about-face; though she did all she could to push those closest to her away, she did not deserve such a betrayal. Two days later I am still trying to decide if her husband had been cheating on her all along, as she suspected, or if her paranoia drove him to a bold and heinous act. We do these things to ourselves, sometimes, even if the instruments of our pain are other than ourselves. I do not—cannot—absolve her husband, but his role as adulterer may have seemed inevitable to him. If one is to be perpetually punished for a crime, having committed one or not, one might as well enjoy the loot, so to speak.
Oberon is a fine press, with an excellent reputation, particularly for publishing superb works of short fiction, but I would feel that Canadian readers would be done a disservice if Mr. Villaverde’s future work were not picked up by a publisher that has a larger distribution network and a heftier promotions budget. I was quite impressed by these stories, and attention to language such as they display is one of my chief pleasures as a reader. I certainly hope that Dance of the Suitors and Villaverde’s work to come will find a larger audience.
Next: No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy.
