Bark: Stories (2014)
By Lorrie Moore
Knopf, 9780307594136,
208 pp.
* *
I got bamboozled by the Hype Machine, the one that praised
Lorrie Moore's past work and assured me I'd be dazzled by her new stories and
her stylish prose. I'm not a fan of short stories in general; my preferences
gravitate toward complex characters, plots, and story development that need
space to unfold. Courtesy of the hype, though, I put aside my short story
skepticism to give Moore's first new collection in 16 years a try. I ripped
through this thin volume very quickly, but not in a good way. Overall, Bark lacks bite.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf1rSvTz58e16R929w8TDYOwP-69OGnULAlBqXC1VlBSNngOQl-5JpIwf-7RRm4iy7PtFdqcwHDB6CVJN0axKbcfUpDCrLDkm5NGT3pdB6m6mSlDOyNv0NsurXS9CYsmz1ExaQ5rxSpWMS/s1600/0220BOOKMOORE-1392841174100-master180.jpg)
It's downhill from there. "Juniper Tree" is a
diverting ghost story, but nothing special; "Foes" a rather obvious
cautionary tale against snap judgments with a 9/11 twist that's more hammered
in through the cracks than woven into the story's fabric. "Wings" could
have/should have been a contender. It has an intriguing set up in which KC, a
self-absorbed hipster/singer, and Dench, her boyfriend/artist, find themselves
exiled in suburbia. KC encounters an elderly widower who shows her what she
already knows: that Dench is a mooch and a genius only in his own mind. Then
the story takes a weird turn, elides time, and ends on an improbable note. Oh
yeah, KC meets the old man when she walks the dog. If that sounds a bit forced,
it is. Bark! Bark! Woof!
The less said about the final three stories, the better. I
have no idea who Moore's intended audience was in these, but she wasn't barking
up my tree. There was quite a lot of unconvincing dialogue and breaking of sequential
narrative in service of very little. As for Moore's prose style, the last few
stories in particular seem destined to impress other writers more than general
readers. In total, the book's central hook put me in mind of an old power game
journalists play in which they slip the phrase "it was as if an occult
hand had reached down" into a story and try to get it past their editors. Bark made me yearn for a big, thick,
juicy novel–something to sink my teeth into, as it were. Rob
Weir
2 comments:
Well short stories are of course mostly constructed around 1 idea and because of that are not complex and multi-layered - nor should they be. Ask Maupassant, Melville, O Henry, Gorky and a host of others.It's just the brevity of language that makes them work - just different but no less compelling than novels.
All the more reason why the central idea must be a good one and the story one that coheres instead of veers.
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