Book Review: Cataclysm Baby by Matt Bell
Cataclysm
Baby by Matt Bell
Mud Luscious Press, 2012
Novel(la)
Review by Debrah Lechner
Matt Bell calls Cataclysm
Baby a “Novel(la).” I’m not sure I agree with the descriptive “novel”, but
the “la” sounds right. La! What the hell is going on here? What part of our
deeply buried reptilian brain, where your children and spouse are also food, propelled
this voice? How did Matt Bell even survive writing this?
This collection of small works is organized alphabetically, a
technique he also used effectively in "An Index of How Our Family Was Killed,"
a short story in his previous book HowThey
Were Found (Keyhole Press, 2011.) Despite the often cutting-edge and
experimental nature of those stories, they followed a more traditional method
of characterization than anything found in Cataclysm
Baby. In this collection, the grotesque is not a quality that ordinary
human beings acquire or reveal or have thrust upon them. It is encompassed in
the world they live in, as in the story "Virgil, Virlotte, Vitalis," where
a father takes his daughter, disguised as his son, on a road trip to the sea
where he will shoot at her in order to forcer her to swim to a barge, where all
the women left in the world live in order to protect them from men.
In this environment, Bell succeeds in making the ordinary
moment of the daughter calling her father “daddy” an element of horror. In the
world these characters live in, the term becomes grotesque.
This is inside-out fabulist structure--where the grotesque
is the norm and the simplest of human gestures evoke horror--is something Bell
accomplishes over and over again. "Virgil, Virlotte, Vitalis" may possess
the most protective parental moment in the entire volume. In most of the
stories, if I may call these pieces “stories” (I may, I must, I will) children,
parents, and siblings are, well, dysfunctional, often disfigured either by
birth or dismemberment, routinely and monstrously selfish, sadistic, and homicidal.
Not only the children but virtually every character is a human “cataclysm.”
Often I found this funny as well as horrific. I’m not sure
what that says about me, or of Bell’s work, but here is an illustrative excerpt
from "Beatrice, Bella, Blaise":
To support these interests, we buy stocks of whetstones, of
wood blocks
filled with meat knives, of blister-packaged scissors, until
at last our house
is pregnant with the voices of children playing, trying only
to get nearer to
each other, to have the other close at hand: Tag, you’re it, then, Duck, duck,
goose! The older leads these
games, a born teacher, but it is the younger who
best exploits the rules. Every evening their screaming
laughter cuts through
our locked bedroom door, until one night we hear only the
voice of the
younger, playing all alone.
Here’s another, a very direct way of dealing with a
teenager. From "Xarles, Xavier, Xenos":
I put my hand on his shoulder, and then I take it off.
I say, I have decided I would rather have no son than to
have you.
I say, I will give you a 50-yard head start, and then I will
shoot just once.
If you aren’t killed, then good luck to
you.
. . . I say, I do not know I want to kill you, but I suppose
I want to have a chance.
Just to see how this thing might feel, that I have
daydreamed for so long.
Moments of black humor aside, these stories had the capacity
to reach down my esophagus like a fist and grab my gut in what was frankly a
most unwelcome way. I prefer the type of horror that externalizes fear and
violence, and doesn’t insist that it lives within. These stories are filled
with loss, the expectation of grief, and the inevitable severance from what we
most hope will bind us to each other. Usually, the cause is a personal choice,
sometimes regretted, but chosen nonetheless.
I found that many of these stories hurt.
As mentioned earlier, alphabetization works for Bell. It
evokes childhood, and beyond that, there must be a deeply engrained track in
the brain that demands completion of this sequence of letters, even when you
become reluctant to continue. I’d advise taking these passages slowly, but both
the alphabet and Bell’s utterly compelling writing creates a strong urgency to
read and read and read. This is true both for the stories themselves and his
writing technique. His sentences are pristine, enjoyable for the sheer mastery they
show, and it’s impossible to read one and not want another.
Anyone who wants to experience just how powerful a sentence
can be will read Cataclysm Baby, forthcoming
in April of 2012. I’m a fan, and I’m so glad I didn’t miss it. But did I like
it? I may need a little time and a little therapy before I can answer that.
Bell dedicates his book, “For my parents, who survived five
cataclysms of their own.” La!