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hsienhsien27's review
5.0
This was received from the publisher for an honest review
This is the last of Tanzer's New York series, this is the end of it all. And oddly enough, as I look a little closer at the picture, it sort of resembles an area I pass by in the car where I live, but it's not New York, it's New Jersey. Despite being a New Yorker, I came to New Jersey after Freshman year of high school, I don't remember much and I have no idea exactly where these stories take place in New York. I haven't actually been in upstate New York, only pass by it in the car, which is where apparently most of the NY suburban areas reside. So for most of this collection, I literally imagined it in my neighborhood. The image on the cover looks like the area I live in.
Like the previous story collections in the cycle, this one contains the same themes of suburban depression (well the synopsis says a little town but that's somewhat close right?). There's this constant droning question with an answer that is just too vague to understand or to satisfy, what is the point of it all? What is love really? What is life? In the background, there's a flash flood that slowly devours the town. Which is why I kind of threw in that post- apocalyptic label, because it happens during and after. These story cycles are kind of like a trilogy of concept albums, but instead of progressive rock songs, there's mind provoking and nerve twitching literature that seem to predict and expose the future and our human condition all too well. These stories also reminded me of a book I haven't read, but read about it, and it has been on my wish list for a good while, Satantango by László Krasznahorkai. So before anybody laughs at me, I'm not saying the books are similar, but they both contain the creepy darkness, that doom, that fits well with the night sky and the orange lights in the book cover. The rain drowning away humanity and sanity. The isolation and the whole sense of human existence is erased when the world is ending.
Compared to the previous collections, which I enjoyed, but for some reason only gave 3 or 4 star ratings, so I'm actually confused about my past experiences, I think this is his magnum opus. Which would be a dumb thing to say since I haven't read anything else of Tanzer's other than the story collections, but I'm getting there. But this was seriously my most fave CCLaP publication. Here's a funny thing, yesterday, there was a sudden black out because some doofus broke something somewhere in New Jersey and that caused something to break and knock out the electricity in the late afternoon, so I actually read some of this in the dark and it just fit so well. Luckily, it came back in the evening, so the post-apocalyptic feelings didn't freeze me to death. This is also his most violent and the darkest, I was actually kind of worried, because the characters felt so familiar. I was actually waiting for it to somehow turn into a horror story, the best horror story ever, because I rarely get scared despite being scared easily. If that makes sense. But I think it's also because we all dealt with hurricanes and that Super Sandy storm was so scary, this was pretty close to real life.
Some of the stories, in my mind, even had a sort of surrealist feel to it due to some of the absurdity, the whole disintegration of mankind as it slowly drowned in it's already shallow and degenerated architecture of mind in a suburban world. I also noticed that in each story after the flood, people finally began to have their own little epiphanies. Much like a person having flashbacks before they die, in every story there is a longing and a regret for what was missed in the past or what was lost at the moment. Much like how a person kills someone out of revenge, to finally relish in a sort of bland achievement that will fill them with regret like before or how a person shoplifts to feel a two minute adrenaline rush because their lives are so miserable and boring. One thing that seems to hold humanity's depression the most is the fact that there is so little time and emotional space, that it is almost impossible to achieve what is truly desired without breaking your own self, and usually the results are dissatisfactory.
Favorite stories (not in particular order:
How It Works
The Runner
Longing (This one sort of reminded me of a story in Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You)
Night Swimming
What We Talk About When We Talk About the Flood
Stabbed in the Back
Barely Breathing
God's Work
Freddie's Dead
A Different Story
Something Like This
Sorry for some pretentious sentences, I got really into writing about this one.
Rating: 5/5
Originally posted here: http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot.com/2015/01/after-flood-by-ben-tanzer.html
This is the last of Tanzer's New York series, this is the end of it all. And oddly enough, as I look a little closer at the picture, it sort of resembles an area I pass by in the car where I live, but it's not New York, it's New Jersey. Despite being a New Yorker, I came to New Jersey after Freshman year of high school, I don't remember much and I have no idea exactly where these stories take place in New York. I haven't actually been in upstate New York, only pass by it in the car, which is where apparently most of the NY suburban areas reside. So for most of this collection, I literally imagined it in my neighborhood. The image on the cover looks like the area I live in.
Like the previous story collections in the cycle, this one contains the same themes of suburban depression (well the synopsis says a little town but that's somewhat close right?). There's this constant droning question with an answer that is just too vague to understand or to satisfy, what is the point of it all? What is love really? What is life? In the background, there's a flash flood that slowly devours the town. Which is why I kind of threw in that post- apocalyptic label, because it happens during and after. These story cycles are kind of like a trilogy of concept albums, but instead of progressive rock songs, there's mind provoking and nerve twitching literature that seem to predict and expose the future and our human condition all too well. These stories also reminded me of a book I haven't read, but read about it, and it has been on my wish list for a good while, Satantango by László Krasznahorkai. So before anybody laughs at me, I'm not saying the books are similar, but they both contain the creepy darkness, that doom, that fits well with the night sky and the orange lights in the book cover. The rain drowning away humanity and sanity. The isolation and the whole sense of human existence is erased when the world is ending.
Compared to the previous collections, which I enjoyed, but for some reason only gave 3 or 4 star ratings, so I'm actually confused about my past experiences, I think this is his magnum opus. Which would be a dumb thing to say since I haven't read anything else of Tanzer's other than the story collections, but I'm getting there. But this was seriously my most fave CCLaP publication. Here's a funny thing, yesterday, there was a sudden black out because some doofus broke something somewhere in New Jersey and that caused something to break and knock out the electricity in the late afternoon, so I actually read some of this in the dark and it just fit so well. Luckily, it came back in the evening, so the post-apocalyptic feelings didn't freeze me to death. This is also his most violent and the darkest, I was actually kind of worried, because the characters felt so familiar. I was actually waiting for it to somehow turn into a horror story, the best horror story ever, because I rarely get scared despite being scared easily. If that makes sense. But I think it's also because we all dealt with hurricanes and that Super Sandy storm was so scary, this was pretty close to real life.
Some of the stories, in my mind, even had a sort of surrealist feel to it due to some of the absurdity, the whole disintegration of mankind as it slowly drowned in it's already shallow and degenerated architecture of mind in a suburban world. I also noticed that in each story after the flood, people finally began to have their own little epiphanies. Much like a person having flashbacks before they die, in every story there is a longing and a regret for what was missed in the past or what was lost at the moment. Much like how a person kills someone out of revenge, to finally relish in a sort of bland achievement that will fill them with regret like before or how a person shoplifts to feel a two minute adrenaline rush because their lives are so miserable and boring. One thing that seems to hold humanity's depression the most is the fact that there is so little time and emotional space, that it is almost impossible to achieve what is truly desired without breaking your own self, and usually the results are dissatisfactory.
Favorite stories (not in particular order:
How It Works
The Runner
Longing (This one sort of reminded me of a story in Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You)
Night Swimming
What We Talk About When We Talk About the Flood
Stabbed in the Back
Barely Breathing
God's Work
Freddie's Dead
A Different Story
Something Like This
Sorry for some pretentious sentences, I got really into writing about this one.
Rating: 5/5
Originally posted here: http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot.com/2015/01/after-flood-by-ben-tanzer.html
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