One of the most remarkable things about Zoetrope: All-Story has always been their use of guest designers.
Every issue carries the unique stamp of the contributing artist but this issue feels especially extraordinary. Kara Walker is the guest designer, and I wouldn’t have expected her work to translate so well in magazine format, but it seems even more beautiful on the page than it does on a gallery wall.
Walker’s best-known work—black cut-paper silhouettes—often examines the issues surrounding racial and gender tensions. Many of the pieces in this issue seem to be exploring those issues as well, but some feel more whimsical or wondrous than much of her other work. These images—especially the color and texture—are really beautiful against the white pages of text, and they are allowed to speak for themselves, having no real connection to the subject matter of the stories. In fact, Zoetrope is smart to avoid any kind of literal connection when placing images next to stories. After all, what are imaginations for, if not for visualizing a story when we’re reading? And this happens to be an incredibly imaginative issue.
There are five stories here, including a classic reprint of “Adjustment Team,” a Philip K. Dick story from 1954. (Which is being turned into a movie called The Adjustment Bureau staring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.) I was surprised to discover that this story was the least interesting of the bunch, which probably says a lot about the caliber of fiction in this issue.
The real gem of this issue is Anthony Doerr’s story, “The Deep.” Doerr has gotten a lot of well-deserved accolades for his recent collection of stories, Memory Wall. It’s one of the best collections I’ve read lately, and it’s because Doerr writes stories that so accurately capture human feeling. He allows us such close access to the fictional world, it’s like we’re actually there, conversing with the characters in his stories. Doerr writes the kind of stories that stick in my head for days, sometimes weeks. “The Deep” is one of these stories. I read it almost two weeks ago, and there hasn’t been a day since that it hasn’t crept into my head at some point.
The story takes place around the Detroit salt mines during the Great Depression, and follows the life of Tom, who, we find out early on, has a deadly heart condition. “Atrial septal defect. Hole in the heart. The doctor says blood sloshes from the left side to the right side. His heart will have to do three times the work. Lifespan of sixteen. Eighteen if he’s lucky. Best if he doesn’t get excited.”
As we get to know Tom—and we get to know him so well because of Doerr’s precise use of language—he grows up in his mother’s boarding house, and things get worse and worse because of the depression. The only bit of hope in Tom’s life is Ruby. “Tom whispers Ruby Hornaday, into the space above his cot. Ruby Hornaday. Ruby Hornaday. A strange and uncontainable joy inflates dangerously in his chest.”
Tom and Ruby’s courtship is unexpectedly cut short, and Tom eventually takes a job in a maternity ward. The underlying tension in this story is the constant, heartbreaking feeling that Tom is going to die at some point. The fantastic ending builds to a classic Doerr last line—the kind that evokes a gasp, as if every single previous line in the story was leading up to it.
The other outstanding story in this issue was “The Space Elephant,” by Téa Obreht. Obreht was just named one of the ‘20 Under 40’ by The New Yorker and after reading this story, I can see why. If this story is any indication of what she’ll do with her career, she’ll probably have a Pulitzer by the time she’s thirty. Part of what makes this story so great is the switch of perspectives between a first person narrator, a writer who is asking questions, and a narrative in the second person, which forces the reader into the head space of the old man who the writer is interviewing. It’s crazy how well this structure actually works.
This story is interesting from line one: “There is a very old man who lives on Ampurdan Beach in a house made entirely of knotted driftwood, and he has a space elephant.” And it only gets more interesting after that. Obreht writes moments that capture a life in just a few words, sometimes just one choice image: “Suppose the space elephant follows you home one night from the ocean. The ocean, you understand. This is when you are young, maybe twenty. Your mother is dead, and your father has been crippled crashing the family paint truck into a barn full of cows.”
What exactly this story is about is difficult to pinpoint though, partly because it’s so complicated, and partly because it’s about a space elephant (seriously). The dynamic between the writer and the old man is essential, but the real heart of the story is the old man’s life. His past recollections, which revolve around painting murals on all the beach houses and his relationship with the woman he loves, but ultimately it’s a story about friendship, about loneliness. It’s funny and touching, and a little sad.
Zoetrope frequently publishes stories like “The Space Elephant,” and it’s nice to know that magical realism can find a home in a major literary magazine. I wish more American magazines would publish work like this. Even though this piece is fantastical, I’m the kind of reader who completely accepts magical elements in stories and as I was reading this piece I never once questioned the reality of the space elephant. I don’t think that we’re really meant to. Perhaps that’s why Obreht chose to quote Salvador Dali at the beginning of her story, “One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.”
