The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Potato Tree, by James Sallis
reviewed by Pedro Ponce

 

Crime novelist and translator James Sallis reveals another facet of his work in this collection of stories culled from forty years of writing. In the title story, the narrator’s doctor declares him “crazy as batshit,” a diagnosis in itself called into question, since the doctor may himself be a figment of the patient’s troubled imagination: “I, for instance, could well be a wig-maker. A canoeist. We may at this moment be the sole attendants of a missile silo in Kansas. Do you play bridge?” Many pieces are similarly surreal, from “Allowing the Lion,” in which a couple invites a monster to stay with them, to “53rd American Dream,” a disturbingly deadpan piece about a family of cannibals. Others push at the boundaries of genre. “Notes” is a series of annotations to a text not provided in the story; nevertheless it evokes tantalizing glimpses of a larger narrative. “Enclave,” a dialogue set against an ambiguous backdrop of social upheaval, reads in part like a play. In its eclecticism and experimentation, Potato Tree resembles a collection of B-side recordings, with some experiments coming off more successfully than others. But the gems can be appreciated whether you are new to Sallis or a long-time fan. His prose often has the suggestive logic of poetry, proceeding not so much by plot or characterization as by resonant juxtapositions of imagery. The effect is disorienting and frequently striking, bringing to mind the reporter alluded to in “Among the Ruins of Poetry,” who decides that to capture the flavor of the times, he must resort to surrealism in his dispatches: “This has caused some problems, admittedly, as in his feature of two days before, an interview with a railroad tie. Yet he writes so beautifully that no one complains.”