Wincing on the L: On Aleksandar Hemon’s The Question of Bruno
by Amy Janiczek
Amy Janiczek on the American consumption of the spectacle of war in Aleksandar Hemon’s 2000 debut collection.
Amy Janiczek on the American consumption of the spectacle of war in Aleksandar Hemon’s 2000 debut collection.
What is it about the European cultures, tucked like bats into their tiny cubbies, that seems so much more specific than our own? How do Belgium or Luxembourg achieve “culture” in little more space we might use to construct a Wal-Mart megastore? What is it about confinement that breeds a more tribal than national identity? What are we doing when we sit down to read a collection of fiction culled from a continent?
Perhaps, in keeping with the stricter labeling laws, Aleksandar Hemon‘s new collection of stories should list its primary ingredient first. Impediments, more than love, are the foundation of Love and Obstacles: Stories (Riverhead, May 2009). Foreignness, prepubescence, awkward bookishness… Even sex itself is a liability: the characters look ridiculous pursuing it, worse doing it, and we think less of them afterward. Men offer up their partners for it, threaten each other’s mothers and sisters with it, reminisce about it, and thwart each other’s pursuits of it. Aleksandar Hemon’s vivid prose serves as the overlit bar mirror, showing us every wax bead in his characters’ pores.
Winners will be announced on November 19th. Here are the finalists in fiction: Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country Marilynne Robinson, Home Salvatore Scibona, The End
