Los Angeles Times fiction prize<\/a> and was a Pulitzer finalist. Park samples many of that novel\u2019s tricks in his new story collection, \u201cAn Oral History of Atlantis,\u201d creating his own brand of Dada. Watch closely for patterns, though: films, ranging from pulp movies to Greta Gerwig\u2019s \u201cBarbie\u201d; technology, from laptop passwords to algorithm fails; politics, from class warfare to the Korean conflict; sex, from hormone-crazed teenagers to a gaggle of lesbians; and metafiction, from Vonnegut to John Barth. If there\u2019s a pea (or more) of genius hidden amid the walnut shells he\u2019s shuffling across the book, it\u2019s on us to find it.<\/p>\n\u201cA Note to My Translator\u201d serves as a preface: An acclaimed author, Hans de Krap, blasts E.\u2019s egregious translation slip-ups. \u201cOnly 10 pages into my novel and already all seems lost,\u201d he rants. \u201cI no longer recognize characters, points of plot, dialogue. … Can you help me? Please?\u201d De Krap isn\u2019t just full of crap; this is Park\u2019s appeal to his readers, drawing us into the collection\u2019s linked pieces. <\/p>\n
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\u201cMachine City\u201d offers clues to his method \u2014 intersections between straightforward narrative and experimentation \u2014 as a middle-aged man remembers a role in a Yale student film. First published in the New Yorker, \u201cThe Wife on Ambien\u201d is a fragmentary, oddly compelling riff on marriage. \u201cAn Accurate Account,\u201d composed as a letter, urges us to question its accuracy. Park includes references to \u201cSame Bed Different Dreams\u201d: Penumbra College, for instance, appears in both books. <\/p>\n
After the ornate sprawl of the novel, he revels in the shorter form, a palpable joy on the page. Irony has never had it so good.<\/p>\n
He showcases figures with mysterious agendas, such as \u201cSeven Women\u2019s\u201d Hannah Hahn, an enigmatic editor of a \u201890s East Village magazine. Midway through the story, the narrator reveals herself as the queer Miriam, who also recounts \u201cWatch Your Step,\u201d an edgy espionage tale set in Seoul and addressed to Chung \u2014 like Miriam, a spy, but a bumbling liability to their network. Both are Korean Americans who\u2019d met in a theater-arts course in college, along with the sinister Johnny Oh, who is possibly a spy, too. This drama will not end well: \u201cWatch Your Step\u201d has a coiled energy, a cobra poised to strike.<\/p>\n
Ditto for \u201cWeird Menace\u201d: Two Hollywood has-beens sip \u201citty-bitty drinklets\u201d while screening a low-budget sci-fi DVD they\u2019d shot in 1984. Neither have seen it in decades, yet they\u2019ve reunited for an online viewing as fans of the cult classic follow at home. The story is pure dialogue between the star, Baby, and director, Toner: They\u2019ve forgotten much of the plot and tipsily put it together. Park formats their banter in left and right margins with plenty of blank space, a visual back-and-forth that enhances spontaneity, a sense of unease. As Toner observes, \u201cMeteors are metaphors, at some level.\u201d Hannah makes a cameo, and a producer, Tina, shoves notes in Baby\u2019s face, nudging the drunken actor toward a grim conclusion.<\/p>\n
Park\u2019s not indifferent to normie concerns, such as family tensions and floundering careers, communities and their discontents. His forays into realism pay off. In \u201cThe Air as Air,\u201d Sidney, a vet maimed in Iraq, belongs to a recovery movement focused on breath. He agrees to meet his distant, macho father at a hotel near a California beach, a dash of beautiful prose: \u201cThe breeze freed fat drops from the trees as I walked from the parking lot to the turquoise hotel. Around a corner, a worker was standing by a ladder while another worker, unseen, narrated something in Spanish from the roof. Little green lizards and red crabs bright as poker chips scurried from my path,\u201d the author writes. \u201cI looked to the water. … No boats were out, and the ocean looked tight as cellophane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mostly, Park challenges us to keep up: \u201cThe idea of unstable reality would be reflected in the form of the piece,\u201d one character opines. The collection is like an elaborate crossword puzzle designed by Borges. \u201cSlide to Unlock\u201d employs second person as the protagonist sees his life flash before his eyes. Fritz, Hannah\u2019s ex-husband, is literally losing his face, a conceit Park develops elsewhere in \u201cAn Oral History of Atlantis,\u201d recalling Mariana Enriquez\u2019s \u201cFace of Disgrace.\u201d <\/p>\n
He invokes the mythological trope of the floating island (also an allusion to Atlantis) in \u201cWell-Moistened With Cheap Wine, the Sailor and the Wayfarer Sing of Their Absent Sweethearts\u201d: 18 women named Tina labor on an archaeological dig in the Pacific, funded by a shadowy foundation. There\u2019s British Tina, Pageboy Tina, French Manicure Tina, Tina with the scorpion tattoo, even the Anti-Tina, a bit of fun tucked among Park\u2019s coded riddles. The Tinas argue as they decipher an ancient script. A few want to escape the island. Is Gerwig available to direct the film version?<\/p>\n
And is \u201cAn Oral History of Atlantis\u201d a code-breaker or deal-breaker for readers? What are we to make of Park\u2019s fusion of comedy and danger, his puns and wordplay and arcane theories? He\u2019s testing our patience for excellent reasons: We\u2019re complicit in his fiction, perpetrators at the scene of a crime, the act of reading a jumble of synapses in our brains, spinning in all directions like a spray of bullets. <\/p>\n
\u201cEverything could mean anything, as well as its opposite,\u201d Park writes in his tale of the Tinas, a gesture to his craft. \u201cYou had to pick which side of the contradiction to embrace, or else record the whole unholy snarl itself.\u201d <\/p>\n
Cain is a book critic and the author of a memoir, \u201cThis Boy\u2019s Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Upbringing.\u201d He lives in Brooklyn, New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Book Review An Oral History of Atlantis: Stories By Ed ParkRandom House: 224 pages, $28If you buy books…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[14149,14144,6271,8638,457,14153,14150,96,14148,14146,11879,14151,14145,14143,14154,14147,14152,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-22106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-acclaimed-author","tag-atlantis","tag-baby","tag-book","tag-books","tag-dialogue","tag-ed-park-story-collection","tag-entertainment","tag-face","tag-hannah-hahn","tag-note","tag-novel","tag-oral-history","tag-park","tag-piece","tag-tina","tag-toner","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}