Fantastic Metropolis

One of the most neglected forms of literature, at least in the United States, is the personal essay. I love them at least as much as I love fiction. Collections aren’t very plentiful, as they don’t sell well, but they are worth seeking out. As proof I offer an essay by Brian Doyle, called “The Meteorites,” originally published in The American Scholar but available to us still in The Best American Essays 1999. Listen to this: “She worried that he was autistic, which he was not, just quiet to the point of monastic silence, except when it came to jelly orgies, during which he howled as madly as his fellows as the jelly was cornered, slain, and gobbled raw. None of the Meteorites ate anything but jelly, sopping, dripping, quivering plates of it, attacked swiftly with white plastic spoons clicking metronomically against their teeth, the vast cacaphonous lunchroom filled to bursting with small sweating children shrieking and gulping down jelly as fast as they could get the shrieks out and the jelly in.” If you like this sort of thing, I would also direct you to The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate, which is a retrospective of the form, from Seneca to Edward Hoagland.

Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others, is a graphic novel (actually, a collection of short stories) written and illustrated by Mike Mignola. I know there’s a movie coming soon, but don’t wait for it; read this book. It’s an excellent introduction to the character if you’re not already familiar with him, and to my mind it’s the best of the five volumes so far. The artwork is nothing short of gorgeous; the writing keeps a careful balance between the funny and the genuinely creepy. “The Wolves of Saint August,” contained herein, is still the spookiest story I’ve read in comics.

Some short stories that stood out to me are “The Ceiling,” by Kevin Brockmeier, published in McSweeney’s #7; “Tachycardia,” by Paul Park, published in the January 2002 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; “State Secrets of Aphasia,” by Stepan Chapman, published in Leviathan 3; and “Along the Frontage Road,” originally published in The New Yorker, and reprinted in The Best American Short Stories 2002.

Finally, I have to call your attention to The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles, by Melissa Holbrook Pierson. For me, riding a motorcycle is like smoking a cigar or watching breakers roll in from the sea: contemplative, relaxing, occasionally spiritual. This book encapsulates all the feelings that come with riding in prose that is so beautiful it almost casts light. Pierson writes about the many joys of riding, the inevitable bouts of terror (especially at night, when you are safe in bed), as well as the hurdles she had to overcome as a woman rider. If you’ve never ridden before and believe that a book on motorcycles is the last thing you need to spend your time reading, this one is for you. If you ride, oh, is this ever for you. But what more do you need from me? Her writing is its own best advocate; here, she writes of riding in the rain:

The small glow emanating from the lighted dials is a portable beacon that remains both ahead and calmly with you. The sight of the instrument panel’s little light in the greater dark puts me in mind of a tiny spaceship floating on its way through a benighted universe of unfathomed spread. The headlight glances off the slick leaves at the edge of the road, and what is beyond that quick beam waits there for you to arrive upon it and briefly launch it into existence before consigning it back to what is behind in the black.

With the dampened sound, thoughts become louder. The only thing beside yourself that you can hear, somewhere beneath you, is a steady throb of engine. It is all there is to keep you anchored to the world. All the rest, all the earth, is rain.