Back home in Kingsville, Ontario. Visiting the family. This summer’s weather is perfect: crisp in the morning, pleasant and breezy during the day, cool in the evening. All the local produce, thanks to the cooler temperatures and heavy rainfall, is the best that it’s been in years.
While here, a new edition of Swink Magazine — where I serve as co-editor of fiction with Summer Block Kumar — was published. Everyone’s happy to see Drew Johnson’s latest story, “Edson to 1958″, on display. We were lucky to find the story in the slush pile, and sharp to nab it before it was taken elsewhere.
The story’s an excerpt from the biography of a hapless fictional poet named Norman Patrick Edson (or Fey Edson, as he’s later called). The piece follows the poet’s life from birth (1916), through youth and war in the Spanish Civil War, then self-imposed exile in Mexico. It concludes with the 1958 publication of a poem based on the dramatic — and wildly comic — conclusion to that exile: a brawl in Mexico City that involved several real historical figures, including the eccentric composer Colnon Nancarrow, novelist William Gaddis, and jazz cornet player Bill Davison.
The story’s absurdities are livened by the biographer’s earnest, dry delivery. The use of a period poem to both close the narrative and give voice to the story’s main character — who until the very end (even, arguably, after the end) remains a blank and enigmatic subject — is wry and novel. There is no epiphanic conclusion, no melancholy acceptance of life’s trappings. Only a swift, humorous, almost Saki-eske change of perspective. It’s an excellent piece of fiction.
