Years ago, before I’d donned the monocle and cane, my first post to this web-log was an endorsement of Karen Russell’s novel “Swamplandia!” Months later, officially in my capacity as a recommending gentleman, the monocle and cane still decorative rather than functional, I recommended her short story collections, “Vampires in the Lemon Grove” and “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” Years later, now in dire need of all manner of apparatuses to shore up my vision and ambulation, I again recommend Karen Russell’s work. I expect to be recommending her writing long after my mind is uploaded into the “Cloud” and my body is used to nourish whatever fauna survives the fires. But for now I’m still inarguably human, and so rather than cast ineffectual digital whispers into an electronic void, I’ll share my recommendation that you read “Orange World and Other Stories” on DBRL’s blog.
In an interview with Electric Literature, Russell said, “In the past, I think I have sometimes felt like a better sentence-writer than a storyteller,” and while I might agree, that’s only because I think she’s one of the greatest sentence-makers going. In the present, her sentences are still gorgeous and her talent for metaphor is still awesome. Her stories, even the ones in the past, are fantastic, but certainly this new one is chock-full of humdingers. But since everyone knows Russell is a prose genius and makes cool and fun stories, I will tell you what you don’t know, which are the morals to her stories.
There’s “The Prospectors” about two young ladies grifting their way through the U.S. a century ago. When they attempt to take their grift to a ski lodge, they find, after taking the wrong chairlift, that they’ve joined a party composed entirely of the ghosts of the men who died in an avalanche while building this abandoned lodge. Every story has a moral, even if it doesn’t want one, and the moral to this story is that if you’re not grifting carefully, you might end up in a ghost-lodge and meet some very charming ghosts, but there are downsides, too.
In “The Bad Graft” the spirit of a Joshua tree possesses someone and regrets it. The moral of this story is that if you are a plant, you are not prepared to be a human, and if you are a human, you do not want a plant wielding influence over you.
In “Bog Girl: A Romance” a teenage boy unearths a long dead girl preserved by the bog her corpse was left in and declares her his girlfriend. Here’s your moral: don’t date or constantly lug around a corpse.
“Madame Bovary’s Greyhound” is about the titular dog and their despair over their owner’s dwindling affection. Moral: be nice to your pets or give them to someone nicer.
“The Tornado Auction” is about a man who, looking to add spark to his life, buys a scraggly tornado at a tornado auction and nurtures it until it becomes a behemoth. This is dangerous, and his mostly estranged family is not happy about it. This story will teach you that when humans make the weather worse, their children are hurt and angry and possibly doomed.
“Black Corfu” is about a 17th century surgeon whose job, bequeathed to him because of racism, is to sever the tendons in the legs of the dead so that they can’t rise after burial. When his apprentice accuses him of botching an operation, he is presumed guilty because of racism. So, racism is evil, and also you do really need to sever those tendons when your village is plagued by the rising dead.
In “The Gondoliers” a young lady transports people by boat over the submerged ruins of Florida. What you’ll learn: to those that are born into an irreparably damaged world, a damaged world is just the world.
In “Orange World” a prospective mother makes a bargain with what she believes to be the devil. If her child is healthy, she agrees to breastfeed the devil daily. While the experience isn’t pleasant, it seems a worthwhile trade, at least until she learns more about this devil from her local moms group. This might be the most moving story Russell has written, and I think it’s a masterpiece. There are a whole slew of morals to unpack from this one, but perhaps foremost among them is that you shouldn’t breastfeed the devil and you should call your mom.
