Reviews: ‘Easter Rabbit’ by Joseph Young

- Edward Mullany

Published by Publishing Genius Press, 2009. (91 pages, $12 plus shipping)

Consider the Easter Bunny and the Easter Rabbit. Neither of them is real, or both of them are real, or one of them is real and one of them isn’t. The Easter Bunny – the big, white creature and bestower of chocolate eggs - is (without getting too political) harmless and fun and, in its way, involved with something like compassion. The Easter Rabbit (as understood by Joseph Young, in both his story and story collection of the same name) is neither harmless nor fun, but, like its counterpart, is also involved with something like compassion.

Here is the title story, one piece of microfiction among many:

Easter Rabbit

Can you save me? Yes. Put your head down. I’m afraid it’ll hurt. It will. No one wants it.

And that’s it. Strange, but no stranger than anything else in the book.

Before writing Easter Rabbit, Young wrote and published fiction that was more traditional (see “Ice” in SmokeLong Quarterly), which is to say he achieved a level of success with the form most frequently visited in the contemporary short story. With his most recent work, which calls to mind both Gertrude Stein and Lydia Davis, he’s forced (or allowed) himself to move into a territory of fiction writing that is arguably less amenable to the casual reader, but that has possibly resulted in a greater achievement.

Consider “Easter Rabbit,” above. What makes this story less amenable to the casual reader is the way its brevity and omissions create an unfinished puzzle. Answers to the questions we might ordinarily ask of a story are not provided, and cannot even be intuited. For even though we might establish that the ‘story’ relates a conversation between two parties, we cannot say who those parties are, or what their relationship might be. We cannot even know, without a doubt, what dialogue to attribute to whom. All we can say is that one party wants to be “save[d],” one party has the capacity to “save” the other, and that the act of saving (or being saved) will involve both pain and, it seems, submission or sacrifice.

Yet it is due to this ambiguity - this resistance on the part of the story to interpretation (or easy interpretation) - that the story is affecting. It asks us to think associatively, to use the title not as a direct means of understanding what follows, but as a springboard to memories that may or may not be part of our ‘collective unconscious.’ For instance, I would say that the title of this particular story, in collusion with the story itself, evokes images both religious and secular, and forces them into a juxtaposition that makes me uncomfortable. Whether other readers would have a similar experience when reading this story, I cannot say, but I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest that this story (and most others in the collection) is constructed in such a way that not every interpretation is equally valid, by which I mean there is an intelligence at work here - the collection isn’t simply an exercise in language play.

That said, some of the stories succeed more than others. The ones that might be less effective tend to make associative leaps that are so particular or obscure that it’s unlikely any two readers will share the same interpretive experience (assuming such a shared experience is important). An example is the piece, “Marie Celeste,” which etymologically refers to the ‘sea’ and the ‘heavens,’ and which is also the name of a ship found abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean in the late 19th century. The story isn’t about the ship, which isn’t unusual given the impulse of Young’s project, but if it’s about the ‘sea’ and the ‘heavens’ (that is, if the title is working associatively) it is only with effort or guidance that the reader perceives it.

Here is the piece in question:

Marie Celeste

The cup moons beneath her eyes were in decline. You know the tsunami? she said. Except that all of it was ping-pong balls. It was evening again already, pushed fingernails against the palm.

Certainly the associations are there - moons (heavens), tsunami (sea) - but a relevant question is whether they have been ordered in a way that allows the reader to grasp the story’s literality. One might argue that the story isn’t intended to be read this way - literally - that it should be read lyrically, or for tone, or for some other quality that is equally legitimate; the problem with this objection is that the story then becomes ‘story-less’ - its narrative less a real, identifiable aspect than an impression that varies from reader to reader; and while the definition of fiction is broad enough to contain varying degrees of ‘story,’ a book of fiction (or even microfiction) shouldn’t depart completely from ‘story’ unless it departs from it consistently (in other words, in every piece in the collection, in which case it would no longer be a collection of fiction, but something else entirely). The reason for this need for consistency involves a mundane yet timeless rule of art - what Poe would call ‘unity of effect.’

In Young’s defense, he seems less interested in the distinctions of genre than in individual pieces of writing. He has spoken of his desire to achieve, in literature, the same effect that can be achieved in visual arts - the compression of narrative into a single moment. And it’s possible to appreciate a piece like “Marie Celeste” for what it is - poetry - regardless of its context, except that its context matters; my criticism is directed less at the piece itself than at the way the piece speaks (or doesn’t speak) to the stories around it. Consider “Menlo Park,” which like “Marie Celeste” includes a title that has historical significance - in this case the area of New Jersey where the inventor Thomas Edison worked. But unlike “Marie Celeste,” in which the link between the parts is difficult to discern, the parts of “Menlo Park” speak to each other clearly, and thus allow us to see how they comprise a story, and thus fit into the larger context that is the collection.

Menlo Park

He gave her the light bulb, the glass gone pink over the years. I can drop it? she said. He nodded, and she held her hand from the window, the traffic moving stories below.

It is the light bulb, of course, that connects the story to the title (as the light bulb was invented in Menlo Park). Not that the logistics are our primary concern; the story works as a metaphor, and it is the metaphor that allows us to be moved, but we would fail to observe the metaphor (indeed there would exist no metaphor) if it was not for the logistical connection. We grasp here the wisp of a story - the hesitant complicity of the male, the eager willfulness of the female. What does it mean that the thing that gives light will be shattered? What does it mean in the context of the title, which asks us to think historically, and thus universally? It is this kind of piece that catches its little hooks on our skin. We cannot glide over it the way we can with a piece like “Marie Celeste.” Both pay attention to rhythms and tone, but only “Menlo Park” has a narrative that can be identified and agreed on.

Many of Young’s stories, like this one, are gems, but partly because of the way they resonate with the stories around them. At his best, Young pressures language until the plot he is describing - even a plot that is ordinary - is suffused with something sacred. His use of white space, between title and story, and between lines of the story itself, is bold enough to relieve us of the sort of sedentary composure which some habits of reading effect in us. Yet it is also careful enough that the traces of the story are retained.

Easter Rabbit is composed of three sections - the title section (which is the longest), Deep Falls, and God Not Otherwise. It is possible to conceive of the book as a sort of literary triptych - a treatment of religious ideas in a secular world.