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A Review of Diane Williams' The Stupefaction |
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The epigraph to Diane Williams' The Stupefaction reads Thank Goodness, which is a sentiment that might be uttered appropriately by its readers as well (one wonders at the number of these, and hopes for the historical accretion which (again, one hopes) accompanies qualitative excellence) for in its pages the patient, and impatient alike (for these "stories" run from page to page, generally) will discover the fractures and fragments of personal experience and memory as set against and intermingled with the filters of fantasy (sexual, dreadful, and the like) as well as the tedious monotony (obviously) of the mundane. Otherwise, what one reads, or chooses not to, represents the straightforward and obvious in a light and manner of presentation that cause one to wonder, why bother? But the ailment that plagues most contemporaneity, and the seeds of its eventual undoing (and continual and repetitive flowering) are nowhere to be found in the pages of this collection and novella and leave the reviewer only to repeat the invocation which inagurates the pages of her presentation. |
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