Out
of Nowhere
by Keith Botsford
304 pages
ISBN: 1902881257
Toby Press, 2000 ($15.95)
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The
Toby Press |
Anthea Lawson, The Times (London)
This enigmatic collection of stories by Botsford, a lesser-known friend and literary journal-editing colleague of Saul Bellow, brings together four seemingly unrelated tales. One novella follows the brother and daughter of an engaging and possibly incestuous man as they attempt to piece together the last years of his life. It starts from the sudden discovery of his body and tracks backward in time, adding layer upon layer of clues. Another novella is about a New York Times obituarist as he delves, through a series of unconventional interviews, through the life and famous loves of an elderly Russian émigrée. In two much briefer stories, the sister of a French transvestite arsonist charts his descent into trouble, and an artist takes a river trip to Buenos Aires. It is the closing sentence of this tale that links them all together: "for people are always curious about death and go on long trips to places that can't be known."
Each story concerns a journey back into a life, a journey that will at some point end in death—one that seems to come "out of nowhere." Some are portrayed as excavations, exhumations of a life; others are more like voyages of discovery. All are told subtly, with a pathologist's eye for the telling, crucial detail and an artist's eye for the extraordinary image. Out of Nowhere is an unusual and strangely satisfying book.
Kevin R. Kosar, Bully Magazine
[ . . . ]
. . . Botsford's fiction is marked by an almost chilling frankness. This well fits his subjects, which are often disturbing. "Oh, Brother!" the first story in Out of Nowhere, immediately confronts the reader with "a maroon '86 Honda . . . parked off the highway facing due east on top of a hill on the state road between Belleville and Tonopah." Inside is a dead man. "Francoise" tells of a young gay man who is put on trial for killing a number of people by arson. Read Botsford and be prepared to take blows—harsh facts will hit you when you least expect it. Further evidence, you need? . . .
[ . . . ]
Eric J. Iannelli, Rain Taxi
Keith Botsford is one of America's less-recognized fiction writers—a mutual loss for both reader and author. A close companion of Saul Bellow (together they edit the acclaimed journal News from the Republic of Letters), Botsford's prose is at once intelligent and familiar. Similar traits have distinguished Bellow's writing for decades.
Out of Nowhere, just released by the direct-sales-only publisher Toby Press, is a collection of two novellas ("O Brother!" and "Olga and Snow") and two short stories ("La Francoise" and "Along the River Plate"). Although written individually, these four tales are linked by shadows, memory and the inextricable nature of life and death. Botsford's characters are intricate and fervent. "O Brother!" presents the life of the mysterious Anthony Mount as told by two narrators, his brother Jim and his daughter Mandy. Mount's peculiar death prompts a retrospective, revealing a man characterized by his charm and disturbing incestuous tendencies.
"La Francoise" moves through the youth, trial, and imprisonment of Toto, an arsonist transvestite. His sister offers a compassionate account of his troubled maturation, specifically in a traveling revue: "Being a boy was what he played in between shows." In spite of their silent suffering, Botsford remains sympathetic to his creations. He stirs in a fair mixture of amusement and lust, bringing a fierce humanity to each, as well as closing lines that resonate long after the page is turned.
"How complex were lives . . . how unpredictable was death," laments Countess Olga in the final novella. And death, just like life, comes out of nowhere. Few authors have captured this connection as completely as Botsford.