Short stories exist in the literary world somewhere between the novel and the dirty joke. Their readers want the accouterments of a novel delivered in the most expedient, gut-punchy way possible. Writing short fiction, therefore, is a process of Occam-razoring the extra bits until one’s left with only the good stuff. In the collection Let The Scaffolds Fall by Chicago-writer Shaun Rouser, readers find some good stuff in the eight pieces. Unfortunately, though, the good is submerged under the river rapids of Rouser’s literary sins, namely, useless detail.
In the first story “Inheritance,” about an old man struggling to care for himself, Rouser introduces the narrative voice with which he seems most comfortable: that of a digressive, pseudo-academic observer. The third person comes off less like the story’s tour guide and more its Encyclopedia. Rouser spouts details like paint splatter to construct something, by an author’s perverse logic, precise and touching.
“He entered the kitchen and stopped at the table. Leaning against a chair with both hands, waiting until he’d gathered himself enough to reach the sink. Three cotton placemats remained. His daughter, Wesley, sewed them when she was fourteen. Red for him, green for her, yellow for her mother.”
It’s detail upon detail, but to what end? Without a compelling narrative there’s no momentum, no grounding. We have a wandering mind, a character sketch, but not a story. The little action we’re given, the wearied moving about a house, serves primarily to queue the next list of details and remarks.
This might make Rouser appear erudite—he certainly thought of things I did not—but there are few reading experiences shallower than appreciating an aimless flex. There’s also something cowardly about a concept so loose it can end whenever the writer gets bored. The story reminds one of the common criticisms levied against postmodernists—Barth, Gaddis, Pynchon—that their doorstopper books have boatloads of information but drown in meaninglessness.
Still, people love the oft-tried postmodern approach, the techno-babble. Many may read Rouser’s prose and find it endlessly edgy, cool, clever, honest in some brutal way. And in their defense information without significance is a poignant contemporary ailment; it’s a reality readers may want mirrored again and again. To other readers, however, the postmodern style is exhausting even when handled by its masters.
In other stories Rouser finds the stuff that makes for good fiction—intrigue, action propelled by dialogue, conclusions—though he often arrives there after long passages trudging through the same mistaken territory explained above. The story “Chris,” for instance, one of the strongest in the collection, concerns a new corporate employee whose coworker constantly misidentifies him as Chris. It has an excellent hook. Why does the coworker keep making the mistake? How can the narrator correct the coworker politely? It’s a quaint little mystery.
The narrator speculates about the situation with his wife, “Well, he apologizes and does it again. The next day or day after, I don’t think he’s ever said my name. Has he? . . . No, I don’t believe so. There has to be something wrong with him, right?”
As readers we’re drawn in, we’re curious about the question presented. And when we’re excited about the story we become more open to Rouser’s flourishes. The odd details, after all, might help us solve the question at the story’s center.
But before getting to the meat of “Chris,” the reader endures a tired tale about the narrator’s job search. Rouser even admits to over-burdening the reader with details when his narrator describes the HR head, “Her cheeks and fingernails were red as the tip of her small and pointed nose. She also wore the first time we met a red blouse with pink polka dots. Remember these details for later as I’ve gotten ahead of myself by describing her appearance.” Admitting to a mistake you won’t correct does not compel forgiveness, not in life and certainly not in fiction.
The first ten pages of “Chris,” loaded with descriptions rarely mentioned later, read as “pre-writing.” It’s Rouser getting everything down on the page, creating flow, telling himself the story. One could imagine Rouser walking himself through the action:
OK, a guy needs a job. He goes on interviews. Does he have a family? Sure, and he’s thinking about his family. And he goes on more interviews. He gets a job but his coworker keeps calling him the wrong name.
Writers may circle the planet to arrive at their point. Once they’ve gotten to the point, though, it’s typically a bad idea to start anywhere else. Rouser should have recognized the story begins with the job. Everything before should go. Yes, I’m calling for a merciless edit, which is euphoria for some writers but arsenic for others. I suspect Rouser is the latter, which is why his book is full of darlings dodging execution.
The strongest piece in the collection is the one most like a mystery. In “Fragments of Lost Patient,” a therapist comes back from vacation to learn a patient has died, though by accident or suicide no one can say for certain. The action cuts between the therapist’s attempts to speak with the deceased’s friends and family, and flashbacks to her sessions before his death. From this format the reader enjoys a series of fascinating conversations about love, family, and death.
“Well, Michael, as you know, is ten years older than me, so I don’t remember much from my childhood,” said the patient in a flashback. “It’s strange because, and maybe this is true and maybe it isn’t, but usually when two siblings are that far apart in age, they have other siblings between them. Intermediary brothers and sisters . . . With us, it was him, a decade later, me.”
That’s an interesting observation delivered not through the obtrusive bloviating of a narrator, but organically through a character’s thoughts. For all the details and flourishes, in the end, it seems, Rouser constructs the best narrative when he puts interesting people in a room and gets them talking. Who knew people would like that?
Rouser, in his attempt at urbanity, bores the reader far more than he realizes. People who enjoy this style may find this a comfortable, familiar read. But for everyone else, it’s mostly a drag.
Let the Scaffolds Fall is available at bookstores and through Magical Jeep Distributing.