|
How To Take Yourself Apart How Make Yourself Anew:
Notes and Instructions For/ From a Father
by Aaron Burch
Pank 2010
Paperback & Kindle
First collection
Book Website: HowtoTakeYourself Apart.com
|
|
Aaron Burch is the founder of Hobart: Another Literary Journal. His short fiction has appeared in numerous respected locations including SmokeLong Quarterly, Quick Fiction and Pank. Having concentrated on editorship for the last few years, he is now focussing on his own writing. His second collection, How to Predict The Weather, is published by Keyhole Press.
Read
an interview
with Aaron Burch
|
|
"I
poured liquids on myself, took bets what color it would dry. Cola
dried the color of coffee. Coffee, cola-colored. Whiskey: the color
of fresh-cut maple, or fine sand from a virgin beach."
Reviewed by Mark Dalligan
This
is the first chapbook I’ve come across, though Wikipedia tells me
they were common between sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, are
being revitalised in the digital age. I can see their attractiveness,
small volumes, literally pocket sized, constrained by limited space
to focus and distil the author’s message. They are ideally suited
to Flash.
Burch
achieved publication of this volume (no, too big a word, better "pamphlet") by winning Pank’s first chapbook contest. He
already has a number of publishing credits and his editorial skills
seem to have been in full use here, paring words and feelings down to
the bone.
The
work splits into three sections: How To Take
Yourself Apart: Instructions; How To Fold Paper Cranes: Tales, and
How To Make Yourself Anew: A Bestiary. The
first is a dissection (the chapbook’s eighteenth century anatomical
cover illustration is apt) of memories and awareness, a stripping
down and rebuilding. It is also very challenging to read in that way
good writing can be, a bouquet made from the author’s intention and
reader’s interpretation: each floral arrangement likely to be
unique.
Here is an example from the first section, entitled How To:
Cut from the front of scalp back to the temple. Start where the tip of
the widow’s peak might be, if you had one, following the hairline. Make
sure the blade is sharp to pull through the skin with ease, though be
careful to not let it slip in too deep. Holding your forehead down with
one hand, pull the skin above it back slow, like peeling the plastic off
the top of a container. Tools that may help: tweezers, scalpel, any of a
variety of dentistry instruments you may be able to acquire, the tip of
the blade itself. Peeled back, the skin may stay on its own or you can
hold it in place or, most recommended, pin it back with some kind of
clamp, hair pin, binder clip. Retrieve the small piece of metal or
plastic or even paper you’ve been keeping though you never knew why.
Place it against the exposed area. You may need to move it around until
in place; when there is a pang of regret or forgetting, you’ll know how
it fits. Fold the scalp back into place, reattaching as you best see
fit. Don’t worry about the scarring or healing. It will have already
happened.
The
second section is more "traditional" a melange of short tales and
observations that mix the surreal with the everyday. The final
section reverts to a more instructional approach, a kind of magical
imbibing of animal attributes. Together, these parts form a whole, a
skeleton fleshed with life experiences.
Overall,
Burch’s collection is impressive. He is an original writer (and
there aren’t many of them) who can reveal the world in a new way.
|
