Dislocated, Disorienting, Dis…
THIRST
Ken Kalfus
Ken Kalfus, according to his author bio, has spent a life in transit, having resided in a dizzying array of worldwide locales since his Bronx upbringing. And one might suspect that this wealth of geographical experience would lend itself to a stirring actualization of the project which he attempts- a loosely knit exploration of culturally distended characters, just slightly out of synch with the unfamiliar settings which they find themselves in. however, Kalfus' set of short stories, aptly titled "Thirst", fails to capture what is a vitally relevant worldwide phenomenon in the human psyche at the present time: the unsettling and displacement of individuals and cultures, the ripped fragments of grounding, the utter lack of "place" which haunts so many and deserves such great attention and detail in contemporary literature. This element is treated far too superficially in this collection of short stories, and with an overwhelming apathy which leaves the reader just a little more dead inside.
Granted, his aim is not an explicit evocation of these subtle tragedies. He bills himself as a comic writer. And more than once, I found myself laughing aloud at a certain twist here or there. But in sum, his comic approach simply lacks depth- his ironies and quirks operate on the level of a really well-done TV sitcom. Occasionally, the "darkness" of his humor dampens itself out entirely; for example, a group of suburban drone teens operates a chilling concentration camp for local cats. Kalfus concludes "I am married now, with my own children… I try and be sure they are kind to animals, but you never can be sure of anything. Like the rest of us, they're on their own." His treatment of these types of scenes seems to strive for a certain bizarreness, but doesn't quite make it. The reader is left puzzled, but not really thrilled or challenged.
The immense scope and variety of the scenerios explored
is admirable (we have a pataphysical baseball league, a dying
Venetian bourgeois in a 19th-century war-torn Italy,
an Irish au pair in Paris). His delivery, likewise, demonstrates
incredible range. He toys with a slew of approaches to the constraining
medium of the short story. One could easily conclude that he overextends
himself, but I rather feel that this diversity, this striving,
may be his ultimate strength: he doesn't really limit himself,
and this lends promise to his approach on a whole. As an author,
he may be worth keeping an eye on, if for nothing else, his continual
openness to trying new things, which is well demonstrated in this
work. However, as for comparisons to Borges, which line the promotional
materials, I am a little skeptical. Kalfus is not writing on that
level, nor, thankfully, does he really attempt to.
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