DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA by Mathias B. Freese
Just before the turn of the year, I received a slim volume of 15 short stories titled, Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Freese. I haven’t had the time to more than one. The titles are intriguing and I will read more of them, reporting back here.
When I start collections, I don’t like to start with the first story. I much prefer to start with the title story, if there is one. The title story tends to be a window into how the collection will ultimately read. In Freese’s collection, the title story “Down to a Sunless Sea” happens to be the first story.
“Down to a Sunless Sea” is a cloudy-day character study of Adam’s childhood, a toxic nature-nurture downpour. It is hard to see all the classic elements of a story through the strange use of point of view that jumps back and forth in time to give the reader a detailed portrait. I’m still searching for the element that drives most fiction, how the protagonist changes or grows through the experience. Even though I’m unsure a change exists, the story still left me with hunted images of my own childhood, which I think was the main intent of the story.
Adam, like most children are funny miniature people in the eyes of adults. Parents show their children’s antics off to their friends and family, and rightly so. Children take up a lot of time and energy, the center of a parent’s world. However, this parental showmanship can be taken too far. At an early age, his grandmother “… gather him up upon her lap, fell and jostle his testicles- -for fun, in front of the family, who went a long complacently.” Wow.
Even without the testicle jostling, Adam had quirks that his family did not understand, so they laughed at him. The one that I stood out to me was his fear of growing older focused in on the emergence of hair on his boy’s body, on his hands and in more private places. The text of the story suggests a diagnosis of narcissism for Adam. I think that I would have to agree. The underlying abuse seems to have given Adam an unnatural focus on his appearance.
As I look back through the story, I keep finding tidbits, symptoms that compose Adam’s character. This story is well written. I hope to find more gems like this one in Freese’s collection.
Freese, Mathias B. “Down to a Sunless Sea.” Down to a Sunless Sea. Tucson, Arizona: Wheatmark, 2007.
1 comments:
Dear Aaron:
Originally I forwarded a comment or tried to as I am a new to this conveyance. However, I do want to say that Sunless is a kind of Proustian remembrance, and it consists of quarks rather than linear time. What kind of writer is one who does not experiment with time, that which we deny besides death. I am pleased that you struggled with this story as many bloggers seem intent with "challenges" (Harumph!) to read books as if collecting marbles, with little or no insight.(Are they demented Don Quixotes?) Also, there apparently seems to be a latent bias against short stories which isodd for they were designed, at least in America, to lessen the amount of time to read. What gives!
Kind regards,
Matt Freese
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