By the Book

September 15, 2014
A new collection by Schoemperlen (At a Loss for Words, 2008, etc.) offers stories that revel in unconventional forms and odd details, each one mining texts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in an exploration of collage and fragmentation. Only one piece in this strangely appealing collection, "By the Book Or: Alessandro in the New World," engages with the traditional expectations of narrative. Alessandro, an ambitious young man of 25, journeys to the New World in search of a new life. He follows the guidance of a book that belonged to his great-great-great-grandfather, an annotated volume of vocabulary lists, sample letters and suggested dialogues called the Grammatica Accelerata. Fragments of this text appear throughout Alessandro's story and seem to bend his new reality ever closer to a perfect fit for its recommended phrases. These fragments exist beyond the confines of the story, excerpted faithfully from an Italian-English handbook published for immigrants circa 1900. Schoemperlen builds her own story around the old words, focusing attention on how texts might shape life and our perception of it. This exploration continues in pieces that are less and less like traditional stories. "A Body Like a Little Nut" rearranges phrases from a botany textbook in alphabetical order, creating a sequence of images and sounds that works almost musically to encourage imaginative association. "Around the World in 100 Postcards" lists facts from a 1946 Canadian textbook on geography and reads like missives from a world made foreign by its existence in the past. While the stories are not all equally engaging and sometimes veer into confusing opacity, they provoke energetic consumption, urging the reader to make unusual connections with the personal baggage of their own imaginations. Collages, also created by Schoemperlen, illustrate each story. An extremely clever and often graceful collection that rewards the curious reader but should not be approached with the expectation of traditional story.

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