This month, Cultureweek writers Dawn Shanks and Ben Black review Aimee Bender’s 2000 novel An Invisible Sign of My Own

Aimee Bender is an heir to the tradition of the fairy tale and arguably America’s best answer to magical realism. Her stories are filled with unusual characters in compromising situations, always with a touch of the unreal, and even the surreal: potatoes turn into children, a man reverses through the evolutionary scale, a boy has keys for fingers. No matter how strange and altered her characters, humanity shines through, and ultimately Bender’s stories show us ourselves, coping as best we can.

Mona Gray is the off-beat protagonist in Invisible Sign. The novel is written in a first person, present tense, nearly stream of consciousness style. All signs point to her having a normal life ‘til about age 10, when her father gets sick. After that she seems to curl in on herself with some particularly odd and disturbing personality traits. She knocks wood, she quits things, she recoils from human interaction in general. This weird lady with a love of numbers fittingly becomes a math teacher (hold your breath during each classroom scene, for both the teacher’s and the children’s sake; these are some weird pupils, too). Math teacher meets science teacher, ponders the curious sensations that come from axes and soaps, and hovers quaking over each of her stalemated relationships. The resolution is as beautifully ordinary, as exquisitely anticlimactic as the ending to her father’s fairy tale that also serves as the novel’s prologue.

Dawn Shanks: First off, I found the lack of quotation marks, or any punctuation for the dialogue, for that matter, to be distracting and kind of gimmicky. Just like some of the main character, Mona’s, neuroses. The sort of things that make elegant imagery, but not a very savory story.

Ben Black: That’s funny, I didn’t notice that at all until you brought it up. But those sort of unconventional punctuation quirks never bother me anymore after reading so much strange and unconventional experimental literature. Which neuroses did you find gimmicky?

Dawn: Enough bragging about how well-read you are. Bender makes her dialogue a blurry slow churn without any quotation marks or other indications, which I suppose is one respectable aesthetic, but I’m a sucker for crisp, punchy back-and-forths. Gimmicky neuroses? She eats soap. She knocks on things all the time. She consistently quits everything. Why didn’t her loving parents notice that their sole child needed therapy? Reality was suspended for the sake of fairytale imagery.

Ben: You seem to have missed the point of the book. The entire thing is meant to read like a fairy tale. This is not a story out of the realism tradition. It’s not meant to mimic real life, except on an emotional level. The soap and the knocking and the quitting all have a purpose within the story. They make sense to the characters in the world which they live. And even setting that aside, I don’t see the quirks as that unrealistic. People obsessively knock on wood all the time. People do quit everything they start. And the soap? Well, it’s called avoidance. It’s all a little strange and altered but it mimics our world in order to comment on it.

Dawn: Most children’s fairy tales were, once upon a time, allegories for something real that was going on in the world. Ms. Bender’s novel is weird for the sake of being weird. There are glistening moments, for sure: smoke filled bubbles and pas de duxes with axes, but too much of it comes off as heavy handed surrealism that would have drawn me in at a younger age, but today makes me want to sit the author down with a stack of modern British literature to show her how it’s really done.

Ben: I could just as well sit her down with a stack of Magical Realists like Borges and Calvino and show her how she’s on exactly the right track. I’m a little baffled by your demand for realism. How could a person, after reading the introductory parable and the first sentence of the story proper, (On my twentieth birthday, I bought myself an ax.) expect a realistic story? You’re holding the book to a set of internal standards which it neither meets nor attempts to meet. In the altered words of Obi-wan, this is not the book you’re looking for. The book has a different set of goals in mind. Tastes aside, a book must be judged by whether or not it accomplishes what it sets out to do, which I believe this one does.

Dawn: I’m not braying stolidly for realism, I’m saying that for this reader, art imitates life and the good art, the really good art touches upon it so eerily well you’re stirred to enter that art’s world- - with Invisible Sign there was a lack of that touch-and-go. What I mean to say is through a good two-thirds of the novel, the reader cannot readily sympathize or empathize with its protagonist, and if Ms. Bender is going to create a story that radiates around that person, she’s already got her work cut out for her. I’m not familiar with her other works, so maybe she’s distilled her style a bit by now; I hope so.

Ben: The art of Invisible Sign DOES imitate life, but like other works of surrealism the life it is mimicking is a sub-level of emotional life. Is Dali’s artwork full of apparently unnecessary randomly placed objects? Perhaps, but his paintings accurately portray an emotional sense which is present in the viewer if they are willing to encounter it. The same is true of this novel, which is really about the human coping with death. The characters in this novel may not appear to act or even exist in a way that seems logical, but I still contend that the logic within the novel makes sense to its characters.

Dawn: Bender may have filled her room with carefully placed objects, but I kept stubbing my toes on them. But, like I said, sometimes it did click. “Anne was lifted onto a stretcher…she went by my door, bloody, wailing, getting drawings piled on her by the art class…here Ann, a pony; here, Anne, a flower…as she exited, I heard Ann wail, through her sobs: This doesn’t look anything like a pony.” These sort of touches add whimsy to her modern day “fairy tale” as you put it.

Ben: I will say this of her: she is a fabulist. Fables and fairy-tales are by their nature short, so she is better as a short story writer, where her style, which is the same as in her novel, really shines because of brevity and an increased clarity of purpose.

Dawn: Is there a certain work where readers can really see her in her element, really see her shine?

Ben: Willful Creatures and The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. Those are her two short story collections.

Dawn: So you admit Bender flailed a tad with the full-sized novel?

Ben: Oh, yes. But she flailed less than I expected her to going into it.

Dawn: I want to add my overall impression of it, now that I’ve made myself the bad guy in my screaming for quotation marks. Over half of this novel is a nosedive-but what a nosedive! It’s the most beautiful creature, unearthly, making graceful twists and turns in its decent, plumage rippling, eyes watery but wide open. At the bottom of its nosedive, the reader can already see an imminent splat, and the plea with each turn of the page goes completely ignored by the creature.

It’s only in the last moment does the novel pull gracefully out of its swan dive, to the relief of the readers. The protagonist gets over herself, has a catharsis with Oz-like Mr. Jones, finds love and reconnects with her parents - no limbs were lost in the reading of this novel. But once that’s done, it’s time to say goodbye. Deus ex machina? Not quite but a hair’s-breadth away.

Final Verdict: A second read is more enjoyable than the first, but the first time around is an exhilarating adrenaline rush, if you can refrain from mentally flicking the protagonist in the head.

Ben: Overall, this is a satisfying read. Bender’s style is simple but powerful and her story is filled with just enough oddity to keep the reader guessing. Ultimately the book ends on a note of hope, leaving the reader to imagine how Bender’s awkward, broken characters will gather their lopped off parts and begin to heal. It’s a pleasant sort of wonder, as the novel’s final story brings Mona out of her fearful, superstitious world and into one where maybe, in her own way, she can be happy.

Next month’s review: What I’d Do to the Martians: And Other Veiled Threats, by Jack Handey. If you’d like to read it and submit your opinions of this novel to be published, please email editor(at)cultureweek(.)com before October 25!

Sincerely,
Spoonless in Seattle

Oh, it’s hip to rag on Wal-Mart, but what you don’t realize is it has a fascinating array of products which you need, whether you know it or not.  Skeptical? I would have been, too, before last week, the week before my first sojourn into a Wal-Mart.  On my recent visit to the discount retail giant, I discovered the following items that may be essential to my survival.

–A t-shirt featuring a menacing version of Popeye. He had large scary tattoos and was apparently winning big at a seedy poker table

–One of those slightly see-through cowboy hats (I saw an old soldier out front wearing one, and knew I had to join this latest fashion trend)

–Home Depot lounge pants with matching boxers (bright orange)

–A screaming child (They must sell them somewhere; I heard them everywhere)

–A sign which says “Prefers Sun” to hang around my neck (These are all over in the plant section, but they wouldn’t let me have one, no matter how hard I tugged at the stick keeping it in the dirt)

–Retractable crayons

–A device which emits a soothing “boop” sound (I heard the boops, but I couldn’t find the source.  Maybe it’s over by the screaming child department.)

–Whisper quiet hamster wheel and Martina McBride CD (I assume this is some sort of two-for-one deal as I found them on the shelf together by the toothpaste)

–Horrible pug dog coloring book (Using my retractable crayons and a little visual imagery, I could finally show the neighbor’s dog who’s boss)

–Indoor McDonald’s (Part of every American’s dream mansion blueprints, for sure!)

And that’s not including the items inspiring mouth-agape awe in the towering discount furniture department.  This was the only section of the store which played soothing classical music, presumably to keep newbie customers like myself from collapsing in paroxysms of pure discount joy.

So hesitate next time you begin to turn up your nose at Wal-Mart.  There may be something there you need, something without which your life may be just a little emptier.  Without a visit to Wal-Mart, you’ll never know that the odd gap on your knick knack table was meant all along for a fiberglass giraffe or a dancing doll which sings “The Name Game.”  You may even need a modest new table to make room for said art pieces. 

And did I mention the low low prices?

No one knows how long ago the area now known as Belarus was first occupied, but the earliest recorded historical accounts of its people date back to the time of ancient Greece. In a passage by a Greek traveler, the terrain is described as “rocky and inhospitable” and the people “grim and nasty.” Little has changed since then, though the rocks in the way have been cleared to the sides and the people have developed manners. The climate is as cold as ever, and has become one of the things that locals both love and hate about their beloved homeland. Another of those things is the local government, which is delightfully corrupt in a nostalgic, pastoral way. Anyone interested in the politics of yore is well advised to attend a meeting of any of the local townships’ Citizens’ Boards, which often erupt in amusing displays of indignation and potential revolution.

Liberated in stages from the former Soviet Union, the Republic of Belarus is just beginning to get back on its feet again. Visitors will notice the rise of urban developments right next to Dark Age style villages. This dynamic makes Belarus one of the most interesting places to visit in all of Eastern Europe. Here you can see the past becoming the future right before your very eyes! So come and visit as soon as possible; do not let the opportunity to see history in the making pass you by!

Tourists are advised to bring their own supply of water, or to fill up from the fortified water filtration system in one of Belarus’ fine first-class travelers’ hotels!