F&SF, March 2007

The March 2007 issue of F&SF features a beautiful new story by M. Rickert entitled "Memoir of a Deer Woman," along with new fiction by Fred Chappell, Ron Goulart, Robert Reed, and the continuation of "The Helper and His Hero," a novella by Matthew Hughes.  Rickert's story is, predictably, my favorite of the bunch -- she is continually proving herself as a master of employing her mysterious worldview within tight, emotional narratives, and she doesn't disappoint with this new story about guilt, responsibility, and transformation -- but I was also intrigued by the Reed story, "Magic With Thirteen-Year-Old Boys," which is not as whimsical as it sounds.  The story is a creepy examination of identity against a backdrop of sexual adventure, also bringing up issues of archive and memory.  It is with this notion of recorded experience, of the storing away of memory, that connects Reed and Rickert's stories; while in Reed's story a man photographs women during intercourse, keeping the photos as a crude record of his exploits, in Rickert's story, a woman who is rapidly transforming into a deer feels the urge to write her memoirs before it is too late.  Preservation of the memory of lived experience, in the context of these stories, is a personal endeavor, eventually shared but not necessarily meant for posterity -- and the evidence (photos in the case of Reed's story, slips of paper with mysterious words written on them in Rickert's story) is disseminated without explanation, recorded information which only makes sense to the recorder, leaving others only to wonder.

The issue also contained a nice critical piece on Cormac McCarthy's The Road (in Elizabeth Hand's column, which also includes a review of Salon Fantastique, a short story collection I'm excited to read) and an essay by Kathi Maio entitled "The Magic of Lost Loves and Crushed Canaries" about last year's two films about magicians, The Illusionist and The Prestige, in which she agrees with me about The Illusionist being the far superior film.  As much as I wanted to like The Prestige, it ultimately seemed far too ambitious for its own good -- which is often a compliment, but here it just means the film spent too much time on ideas and not enough time on character development and narrative continuity.  Or, as Maio writes: "It is an elaborate contraption that leaves the viewer confounded and confused, but never feeling particularly entertained or delighted by the performance.  There is showmanship in the film, but it is the kind that is arrogant and self-involved; and sometimes repellent, to boot."  (And I'm embarrassed to say that I have yet to read Christopher Priest's novel, but it's on my list, I swear!)

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