![]() ![]() I'll make it a good one.' He smiled again, that same terrible smile. "Black Bark" concludes: "'A story, then,' said Sugg. One character in "The Blood Drip" actually tells the story of the characters in "Black Bark." This might yield the feeling of passive, reductive circularity if it weren't for the way each story ends: with a widening aperture. ![]() Yet, inside both of these stories, other stories are told. Now, in the ranks of Saunders and Link, we should add Brian Evenson's newest collection, A Collapse of Horses.Ī Collapse of Horses' central narrative concept is introduced and concluded by its bookending stories: "Black Bark" and "The Blood Drip." "Black Bark" is about two injured outlaws fleeing into the desert similarly, "The Blood Drip" is about two nefarious men driven out of town. The kinds of books that continually open up their specific world with each piece. Works like Tenth of December by George Saunders or Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link. And I'm not talking about novels-in-stories I'm talking about thematically-linked, tonally-rich, expanding universes. ![]() The ability to put together not only a collection of individual artistic creations, but to also have them work in conjunction with each other, in a dialogic pattern of narrative inhale and exhale and the moments in-between-that's true mastery, in my opinion. Be it Pink Floyd's The Wall or Nine Inch Nails's The Downward Spiral. ![]()
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