Imprints by Cynthia Litz
Imprints by Cynthia Litz
Matter Press
Paperback, 55 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9837928-7-1
Short story collections are often greatest hits albums of an author’s fiction. Unless we’re discussing a collected story cycle or a novel-in-stories, the common short story collection is often the most recent, best-published fiction of an author brought together in a single volume. These collections are completely readable and enjoyable, but often remain more a sampling or buffet of the author’s best work, the whole sometimes being absent from the sum of the parts. The very best of these short story collections, while obviously enjoyable, sees a whole emerge. We see sharply the author’s style; her vision and craft unify the seemingly disparate stories into a larger artistic statement that would otherwise be missed or incomplete when looking at one or two stories by themselves. These collections transcend in their unity, and I’m happy to report to you that Cynthia Litz’s Imprints is one of these very fine and transcendent story collections.
Imprints is subtitled, “a collection of flash fiction,” and indeed the entries within have been published in a few of the finer places one would hope to publish her flash pieces. The topics and themes of these stories cover multiple interests. Stories of medication, hospitalization, and health issues are interspersed with stories about photography, childhood, and rural Appalachia.
My favorite pieces are unconventional. Before I get to those, however, it’s important to know that the overwhelming majority of stories are conventional in style and in subject matter. “Oxycotin” details a woman visiting her grandfather in the hospital after he’s suffered a stroke. She’s there to say goodbye in that way stories have of revisiting a poignant memory that is also symbolic. In “sub rosa” a young girl from a conservative Christian family (and town) gets a glimpse of liberal bohemia in the form of her theater teacher, a rustic, braless painter of male nudes who recognizes but does not judge her student’s sheltered perspective. “Bill” and “Look at Me,” two of the longest pieces in the collection, take their time to develop characters trapped in the life after potential and possibilities, negotiating friends and family in an emotionally melancholy tone. The latter story features a photograph that is reproduced on the cover of the book, a black and white of the narrator as a kid with his family in what we learn is a highly composed scene meant to suggest a natural, unstaged moment. The majority of these stories are very much like this, finely crafted anecdotes and scenes meant to lovingly suggest and recreate a natural, poignant moment. Her technique is exact and superb. None of these conventional stories are ever tired or trite. The language, the images, and especially the tone are exquisite and impressive. If the collection were composed of these types of stories alone it would be well worth your time, but Litz has more in store for readers.
Among my favorite pieces are “Imprints,” “Zaz: Another Middle School Story,” “Bundle of His,” “Bond Girl,” and “Line Segment.” The title story, first published in our very own NANO Fiction, is a short collection of images attached to a word or phrase. Each segment is what the title promises, an imprint, a singular moment that makes a lasting impression in the imagination. For what reason or purpose is up to the reader, as each entry is never longer than three sentences. Here’s one delightful illustration of the story, plucked from the back cover: “intellectuals in virgin snow: One evening after Honors Philosophy 101, she is eating pop rocks in the dark on a date with you and makes warm angels for the first time in the snow.” It’s a fit story to serve as thematic symbol for the other pieces in the collection. Short, detailed works that leave an indelible imprint on the reader longer after the book has been closed and set aside.
I had to read “Zaz” twice. It’s tricky, coming across like the other more conventional stories, except for one detail. The title character, Zaz, is a literal clown, from a family of clowns who live in an otherwise normal rural town. The details are perfectly selected, meant to suggest the grease paint and rainbow hair, but also cleverly suggesting the awkwardness and discomfort of middle school age. “Bundle of His,” is also reminiscent of more conventional fair, but it’s a story told backwards. An elderly woman’s numerous deaths are related in reverse order, so that her first (and final) death hits us at the moment when it will actually do the most damage. More experimental style is on display in “Bond Girl” and “Line Segment.” The former is a list of one-line monologues from a mother who is trapped in a complicated web of gender construction centered around her seven-year-old’s obsession with James Bond. “Line Segment” published in McSweeney’s, is practically a pastiche of Edward A. Abbot’s Flatland, telling the story of a Line who dates and marries a Circle. These more experimental stories are a delight, not only in the way they vary from and add richness to the other stories around them, but because they also suggest how much more there is to Litz’s fiction and to the collection as a whole. It’s a marvelous, transcendent whole that tells me that those of us who take the time to seek out and read her fiction will relish it for many years to come.