The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Mexico Trilogy by D.N. Stuefloten
Thomas Lecky

D. N. Stuefloten. Mexico Trilogy. FC2, 1996. 298 pp. Paper: $12.95.

D. N. Stuefloten is at once a chronicler of the grotesque and a minute detailer of our world. In these three novels, Maya, Ethiopian Exhibition, and Queen of Las Vegas, Stuefloten creates imagined landscapes characterized by his “despair . . . and passion.” His range is often encyclopedic, as in Maya when he provides a detailed catalogue of the natural and geological world. His places are always grounded in these particulars and so vibrate with clarity.

In Maya three actors are abandoned on afilm set, which could be a battlefield, which could be in Mexico or Vietnam, which could be on Santa Monica Boulevard. Stuefloten is determined for precision and all three novels reveal a persistent impulse to describe and redescribe. Stuefloten’s dialogue is arched and punctuated by the same staccato rhythms employed in his narrative prose. But Stuefloten shows a tinge of disbelief in language’s ability to achieve any accuracy, for we are often told that we will be given more details later. Later never comes.

It is appropriate that all three novels are peopled with actors and directors constantly perceived through the camera’s viewfinder, a tool as inadequate as language. Language becomes the peephole into Steufloten’s manufactured worlds. And it is language that both creates and destroys them.

Dichotomies are important to Stuefloten: despair/passion, creation/destruction (the actors in Maya are peppered with bombs as they work), and, inevitably, appearance/reality (“This is movieland. Nothing is real.”). In Ethiopian Exhibition an African city poses as Puerto Vallarta and convinces tourists to believe the charade. The Las Vegas in Queen of Las Vegas is of papier-mâché. Osgood Fetters, one of the actors in Maya, returns in Queen of Las Vegas as a script writer saying, “It’s no good, you see, trying to impose a particular order on your material. The order—the story—has to grow out of its material.” And so too there is form and content. The content of Mexico Trilogy is often alarmingly grotesque and its form a lyric beauty. The two are inseparable. Language cannot particularize the world, it seems, yet may entertain its visitors. [Thomas Lecky]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Mexico Trilogy by D.N. Stuefloten Thomas Lecky D. N. Stuefloten. Mexico Trilogy. FC2, 1996. 298 pp. Paper: $12.95. D. N. Stuefloten is at once a chronicler of the grotesque and a minute detailer of our world. In these three novels, Maya, Ethiopian Exhibition, and Queen of Las Vegas, Stuefloten creates imagined landscapes characterized by his “despair . . . and passion.” His range is often encyclopedic, as in Maya when he provides a detailed catalogue of the natural and geological world. His places are always grounded in these particulars and so vibrate with clarity. In Maya three actors are abandoned on afilm set, which could be a battlefield, which could be in Mexico or Vietnam, which could be on Santa Monica Boulevard. Stuefloten is determined for precision and all three novels reveal a persistent impulse to describe and redescribe. Stuefloten’s dialogue is arched and punctuated by the same staccato rhythms employed in his narrative prose. But Stuefloten shows a tinge of disbelief in language’s ability to achieve any accuracy, for we are often told that we will be given more details later. Later never comes. It is appropriate that all three novels are peopled with actors and directors constantly perceived through the camera’s viewfinder, a tool as inadequate as language. Language becomes the peephole into Steufloten’s manufactured worlds. And it is language that both creates and destroys them. Dichotomies are important to Stuefloten: despair/passion, creation/destruction (the actors in Maya are peppered with bombs as they work), and, inevitably, appearance/reality (“This is movieland. Nothing is real.”). In Ethiopian Exhibition an African city poses as Puerto Vallarta and convinces tourists to believe the charade. The Las Vegas in Queen of Las Vegas is of papier-mâché. Osgood Fetters, one of the actors in Maya, returns in Queen of Las Vegas as a script writer saying, “It’s no good, you see, trying to impose a particular order on your material. The order—the story—has to grow out of its material.” And so too there is form and content. The content of Mexico Trilogy is often alarmingly grotesque and its form a lyric beauty. The two are inseparable. Language cannot particularize the world, it seems, yet may entertain its visitors. [Thomas Lecky]

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