TURBINE | KAPOHAU

What:

A collection of short stories canvassing the world according to a whole cast of Sarahs across time and space. PaperPlus describes it as ‘“Queer, dirty, insightful, and so funny” (Andrea Lawlor), this coyly revolutionary debut story collection imagines new origins.’

What does it mean when PaperPlus describes a work as ‘queer’ and ‘dirty’?

What made me go ‘huh, hmm’?

The specificity of the sensibility. I think Cohen has found her ‘bit’ – her corner of the universe she’s deeply interested in – which you can see clearly in the questions she’s posing and, in some ways, testing answers to. It’s such a specific corner of the universe. This collection is the same kind of paint thrown against different canvases, and applied using different brushes. It’s the same kind of material used in different ways, again and again, and a part of me is like okay, is that allowed? Is that a bit …repetitive? Like, we get it. Now there’s a queer woman making her way through a huge, literal vagina. We get your point.

But it is allowed. George Saunders, case in point, writes about the helplessness of capitalism, the pervasive status anxiety of the American middle-class, the hellscape waiting around the future’s corner and how humanity will interact with that. Gogol did it too, as did Grace Paley in The Collected Stories, which is so deeply specific to the second generation immigrant experience in NYC in the fifties and sixties. Hilma Wolitzer’s Today a woman went mad in the supermarket does it too. Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House does this most explicitly, by having different vignettes across different forms carry a single narrative. This is what a collection of short stories does. This is what authors are allowed to do. They find their bit and just run with it, and it’s fine.

But is it a bit paint-by-numbers? I’m thinking of Murakami, who I loved as a teenager and now, almost by necessity, must hate as a result. But there’s an equation to his diegetic worlds and to his story systems:

Male somehow disconnected from society or systems around him + early twentieth century American jazz + late seventeenth century classical music + well-made, simple western food (the heavy lifting that spaghetti does, holy shit) + younger, beautiful somehow disaffected or traumatised woman who are not quite shown as whole people and who the protagonist fucks or lusts after + talking cat + helpful outsider or guide for the protagonist.

I don’t think I dislike that there’s such a specific sensibility. Look – this is what a breakdown of my own work would look like:

Generally female protagonist trying too hard and failing + anxiety with retaining humanity across a range of systems + consistent sense of precocity + horndog for life + queer desire + who gets to be baby + sun imagery + violence.

I think I just dislike Murakami’s specific paint-by-numbers. But it’s fine to be interested in specific things. This is the whole point of writing.

What I think: I want to use the Sarahs for Sarahland concept. I want to do this with Janes across time and space, but then I worry this is just placeholding ‘Janes’ and I don’t need to make this explicit. My main characters are already a series of Janes, and the series of Janes is essentially me.

What specifically: ‘The First Sarah’

This story is my favourite, and conveniently is also available online, now that I’ve returned the library book. We never find out who the narrator is, but they are definitely a character here through strength of voice:

‘Sari was from before God created the gender binary. We know: in all the paintings, everyone’s got perfect dicks and muscles or else curves and neat slits, but that’s not how it was. How it was was genitalia could look budlike or bloomed, zucchini-ish or more like a berry cluster, like an anemone or a starfish or a pair of sea cucumbers.’

The sheer joy of writing comes through.

Things I would like to try:
An unexplained narrator but with a strong authorial presence.