The Secret Goldfish

It is a truism that the best modern short stories are written by Americans.

You can take that to mean the United States or North America – or you can disagree completely – but what is indisputable is that writers like David Means are stretching the boundaries of what short fiction can do.

This collection opens with a story about a man who has been repeatedly struck by lightning and is waiting for a final blast to finish him off for good:

‘In this manner another soul would be able to conclude his days upon the earth – at least until the odd premonitions came and the air grew absurdly still and above the shop the clouds began their boiling congregation, and then a faint foreshadowing taste of ozone would arrive.’

This writing, which fairly crackles, gives an idea of what is to come in this collection. In fact, pent-up, drugged-up, brutal violence weaves its way through the pages of Means’s stories like an electrical charge, the violence often begetting further violence.

Jimmy stamps an old man to death, but is later clubbed in the head by his tripping girlfriend; Ernie shoots a guy named Tull ‘who was muttering the word fuck and bowing down while blood pooled around his crotch’ but in turn is pushed over the edge of a speeding boat; an itinerant carnival worker commits a terrible crime against a woman.

There is a queasiness to these and other stories in the book, but Means is interested in more than scaring us with tales of twenty-first century amorality. Formal experiments with structure slow down the reader and make them think harder about what they are reading; seemingly plotless stories, such as ‘Michigan Death Trip’ (in which a number of unconnected people die) and ‘Dustman Appearances to Date’ (dust clouds spotted in different shapes) nevertheless work as very short stories within one short story.