Pocket books

>> Chicago publisher Featherproof
redefines light reading

by Juliet Waters

Today I downloaded a book. Not an audio version of a book, an actual book with a cover, a publicity photo and short bio of a writer I’ve liked for a while. Granted, Donovan’s Closet by Elizabeth Crane is only 15 pages long, about the size of a small stack of index cards; and I did have to bind it myself. But the “origami” assembly instructions on the Web site were easy to follow, and now I have a book I can slide into the same pocket as my iPod.

There are about two dozen more just like it in the “light reading series” section on Featherproof’s site. I came across them when I was reading one of Featherproof’s relatively big books, Hiding Out by Jonathan Messinger, which I read on the recommendation of Crane, who claims she came out of “blurb retirement” to praise him. It doesn’t surprise me.

Crane, with her acerbic but poignant style, has the potential to become Chicago’s Lorrie Moore. I still smile thinking about one of my favourites from her debut collection, When the Messenger Is Hot. In it, a young woman convinces herself she’s an alcoholic, after a one-night binge. Soon she’s addicted to recovery meetings where she finds a steady supply of dates. In the hands of a lesser writer, such a character would be pathetic. Somehow Crane made her weirdly charming, like a co-dependent Scarlett O’Hara.

Even if Messinger’s book is heavier than the downloadable chapbooks (weighing in at a whopping 185 pages), it still qualifies for the light reading label. There’s a sadness to many of his stories, but it’s often whimsical, and occasionally surreal. At his best, Messinger is like a cross between George Saunders and Charles Schultz. Some stories have the hyperrealism of an episode of The Office.

In the title story, a lonely file librarian from a hedge fund company develops a quirky sense of disassociation by sending himself pep-talk e-mails. Things get worse when he starts getting versions of these e-mails that he doesn’t remember composing himself. Is he developing a split personality, or is he the butt of an office joke? It’s hard to guess in a collection where a man-eating wolf escapes from the zoo, and racks up a triple-digit body count in two pages.

The stories show admirable range. Some are short and quirky. In “True Hero,” a sad ex-boyfriend dresses up as a robot to stalk his ex at a Halloween party. Some are not. “One Valve Opens” is one of the longer, more serious stories. In it, Messinger does a convincing job of narrating the dilemma of a teenage black poet struggling with both grandiosity and writer’s block.

Most are about white men and boys living life in Chicago. One is about a Chinese factory worker in Kaiping, the manufacturing town in Guangdong province. Since the story is largely about Waysun Tsai’s inventive daydreams of Western-style escape, it makes sense that it reads like a North American’s inventive daydream of Asian style monotony.

Officially, there are 15 stories, accompanied by Rob Funderburk’s spare but impressive illustrations. But Messinger can’t seem to help wedging extra stories in.

In the About the Author’s section, Messinger manages to fit in a short experimental story called “The Eight Permutations of the Binoculars of Power.” It’s available for download as a mini-book on Featherproof’s Web site.

If you just can’t wait to read your first Messinger story, I found this one on the page usually reserved for copyright and Library of Congress information. Titled “This Story of 50 Words Feels as Though It Ran a Little Long, Maybe by 5 Words,” here it is:

“There is little left for Connie to do. Her options: exhausted. Her headlights: dimmed. Her friends: silent. She lets slip her car keys onto the floorboard and neutralizes the gears. The dark car lacks any resistance, overwhelming her with its speed as it rolls downhill. She thinks of no lovers.”

Hiding Out by Jonathan Messinger,
FeatherProof Books, PB, 193 PP,
$13.95, featherproof.com