Over at The Collagist, I’ve reviewed Tristan Foster’s début collection of short stories and/or prose poetry — let’s call it a collection of “pieces” — entitled Letter to the Author of the Letter to the Father:
Foster’s signature move, again and again, is to flag a subject, suggest that it has some sort of meaning, and then deflate or revoke the suggestion. Sometimes he does this by signaling that a piece is “about” something and then carving out spaces in which it isn’t “about” that thing at all. “Stories About You,” for instance, takes form as a series of discrete, inscrutable statements about “you”—”You remember the dead and rest your head in your hand, or against a wall. Then you remember something else”—until the fifth one appears inexplicably to be scrubbed of human presence, containing no “you” to which its meaning could apply. Likewise, in two pieces both titled “Neighbourhood Myths,” accounts of extravagant suburban folklore (“Friend’s dad killed friend’s brother in law”) subside into two paragraphs of pure, stirring description: a tranquil summer breeze, the interplay of shade and light, no scandalous rumors whatsoever.
At other times, Foster bores holes into the meaning of a text by withholding contextual details that would make the piece intelligible. “Alive and Well” takes the form of a letter that starts with these words: “In response to your notice from 04/09: I believe the individual you are referring to is me.” But while the text comprises the letter writer’s reply to the notice, it offers few clues to the references that apparently prompted the writing. Striking a similar note in the collection’s title piece, another letter writer begins: “Dear Sir, I send it anyway, but I hope this letter fails to reach you. A failure here seems only right.” What follows is a letter written in response to an earlier letter intercepted and read illicitly, the interception implying that the original didn’t reach its intended recipient. This letter, then, opens onto a textual hall of mirrors, each text addressed explicitly to readers who are or will be deprived of its meaning.
Infinite Patience 