Literary Arts: Book Review
Fist to the Mouth
David Kranes' The Legend's Daughter
by Larry Menlove
As I read one of the stories about halfway through David Kranes' new collection, The Legend’s Daughter, I became lost in the language: the tangents, the circle-rounds, the free-form understated bombast. I started to wonder if I might need whiskey flowing in my veins to understand the narrative, to tap into some muddy logic that I was missing for trying to read the story straight. Then, and it was a relief—for it was too late and I was in no mood to crack a cap and splash corn bourbon on the rocks—the narrator of his own accord admitted to speaking in tongues. So I was off the hook, at least for that reading.
I picked up the book the next day, started over with the difficult glossolalia story, and I understood. Fully. Yet I’d had no conversion in the night. No visitation. No holy-rolling and Angel of Death mushroom-touch on the floor of the First Church of Idaho.
You ask: What is the First Church of Idaho? I say: In the beginning…and mention my mother’s hand, my ankles, my father’s corrupting restlessness. I say I enter any building under a cross. I remember tell me every time. I use the word intersection.
And at "intersection" is where many of the characters in Kranes' fine stories find themselves. Consider: two men from the East, thigh-deep, umbilically-joined in the Salmon River awash with loss and love muddied with edifying sexual ambiguity; the title character mapping a course from living flesh to find her famous father over the roads of Idaho, setting out for "Beyond”; a mother on a cross-country odyssey in a clanking second-hand car, pausing a half-mile past the Sunbeam Springs Café to consider the consequence of going back to meet the man she's never met who might be her son's new father.
There are so many concurrent themes in these stories. A great many ways to hang your fishing hat on what Kranes is getting at. Maybe there is no "getting at" with these stories. They can be taken as a kayak ride down an uncertain river like one character does repeatedly. Who knows what might come around the bend? Certainly there are misfit relationships and a drought of understanding in these stories. These themes are the bedrock of the collection. But I'll focus on whiskey—since I'm already drifting down that stream in this review--whiskey, the pull of Idaho, and the gravity of river banks.
The folks in Kranes' stories are drawn to Idaho like the coarse, dark, metal shavings in a Wooly Willy magnetic drawing pad I played at on a family vacation driving north from Utah decades past. Kranes' figures arrive on the frying pan of the state in clumps, drooping-castoffs, seeking shape. They show up from all points, west, south. East. Mostly east. Some come straight--poof!--from the show stage of the Monte Carlo casino in Las Vegas. It isn't as though they have come of their own will. There is some greater power at work. Some magnetic stylus picking them up here, there, dragging them flawed cross-country to the Sawtooth Mountains, the Shoshone Ice Caves, the Payette River. Stanley. Boise.
Kranes, a highly-heralded and accomplished playwright, holds the stylus over his unruly characters, each with their varied attributes, and allows them to reach and gather their own filaments and settle there in Idaho…or recognize their deficiencies and flee. He does this mostly through dialogue. Rich. Raw. Real words spoken with no hesitation from vulnerable people:
C'mere you big ol' conservationalist!" She said. She wrapped around him. "Give me a hug," she said. "Give me a big, long hug."
There is often a calm clarity in these stories. A sense of what may become, but rarely a conclusion. Like the Wooly Willy tableaux on my lap cutting north toward Burley all those years ago, many of the people in these stories seem to be tenuously held in place, and only a quick turn or tap on the brakes would spread them back to the edges. It is, though, as if Kranes would have no edges.
This is a difficult world in which to find, finally, love. So draw impossibly close. See as much you're able. And, if you can, find a story without demarcation. There is a measured control at work drawing these stories. A master's creative hold. Forgive the pun, but let's call it the "Maker’s Mark." It's the whiskey that passes the lips of so many men in bars, in restaurant dining rooms, by campfires on the banks of rivers. Sure, in one of these stories, there's the Scottish variant that fuels the parting flames between father and daughter at odds between art and "milk money," but it is Maker’s Mark, good American artisan bourbon that spills onto the pages and stains the sentences, paragraphs. The margins.
I believe David Kranes meant for me to have that difficult first pass of the story “Angel of Death.” He means for a certain level of misunderstanding to be a constant stimulating rub for the reader and also the people who populate these stories. They speak in starts and fits. As if they are searching for one good way to impart a feeling that cannot be put into words:
Into the shoulder of his Patagonia vest, she said, "Here are some more words from William Faulkner. Now listen up. Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up to exist at all."
"I'm not sure I understand that," said Blake.
"Nor me," Betsy said.
In the end, the misunderstood--the women and men, fathers, mothers, their sons and daughters, all those seeking to express themselves--they who want to understand and to be understood always return to the water. They come to the lake, or to the river where the flow sings a note ancient and pure, a song distilled over the rocks like moonshine and poured onto the pages of this book. A book of humanity and mortality from the panhandle that is like that swallowed whiskey:
When it comes—tastes just as I'd hoped—like a fist to the mouth, coating my teeth, ripping at the back of my throat.
The Legend's Daughter: Idaho Stories
by David Kranes
Torrey House Press (2013)
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Up and Upcoming: To The North
Exhibition Listings in Northern Utah
Prepared by 15 Bytes staff unless otherwise indicated. UPCOMING and UP listings should reach us by the last Wednesday of the month. Those accepted will run until the closing date, or for one month if no closing date is given. Readers using the guide are cautioned to check with the exhibitor if the accuracy of the listing is crucial. Please send listings for this page to editor@artistsofutah.org.
PARK CITY
The Park City Gallery Stroll usually takes place the last Friday of every month.
Kimball Art Center UP: The 2007 French presidential campaign is the inspiration behind artist John Bell's politically charged exhibition titled, "Election."|1| The series is comprised of 21, limited-edition, digital archival prints created from photographs taken in Paris during the presidential election between Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal. This is the first time the series will be shown in its entirety along with a selection of the original photographs. Bell also is debuting five new prints exclusively for the Kimball Arts Center. Through July 28. AND: A Sheet, A Gathering: Paper Works by Aimee Lee. This exhibit presents the full range of both the sheet and gathering in Aimee Lee’s book and paper artwork, both of which she makes by hand.|2| The range is wide in both form and content, from pop-ups to etchings on knitted paper to paper hangings based on Korean traditional paper and techniques; her tone shifts from whimsical comics about abundance to quiet seriousness about systematic oppression of women by government, and then somewhere in between while examining historical artifacts of nomadic cultures. Through July 31. AND: Ink, Paper, Scissors is an exploration of this age-old material in its many shapes and forms.|3| Come discover artists’ books, mile long love notes, 3-D pop-ups, lithographs, collages, even environmental paper installations. Whether pure white, or printed upon in a multitude of vibrant hues, paper has a delicate quality that makes it both ephemeral and accessible. Through July 28.
JULIE NESTER GALLERY UP: Reunion. Marshall Crossman is a figurative painter from San Francisco, CA. For this exhibition, she has created a collection of new paintings from her Class Photo Series. This series began back in the summer of 1983, when she attended her husband’s 20th high school reunion. She was intrigued by the exaggerated poses, hairdos, and draped shoulders of the women in the 1963 year book photos. The photos told a story of the people and the time, both individually and collectively.|4| Through July 23.
MEYER GALLERY UP: The unique paintings of artist Kaori Takamura. Her paintings are cut, stitched, and sewn pieces of painted canvas.|5| Through July 19.
GALLERY MAR UPCOMING: FIVE, fifth anniversary show featuring work by gallery artists.
DISTRICT GALLERY UP: Encaustic works by Pam Nichols.|6|
BOUNTIFUL
BOUNTIFUL/DAVIS ART CENTER UP: Conversations in Culture features works by artists who live in the US but were born in another country or travels to other cultures are reflected in their work. Works by Featured Artists for Summerfest 2013 will also be on display.|7| These Summerfest Featured Artists will also have booths at Summerfest, August 8-10, Bountiful City Park. Through August 30.
OGDEN AREA
The Ogden First Fridays Art Walk takes place every month on the First Friday of the month. Galleries will hold receptions 6-9 pm.
Whitespace UP: A group exhibition of works on and of paper, featuring political collage by Tim Gratkowski of Los Angeles, pyrographs by Etsuko Ichikawa of Seattle,
embossed prints by Brian Usher and querls by Stefanie Dykes of Salt Lake City. Through July 30.
Eccles Community Art Center UP: Traces of the West is comprised of recent works with a Western theme by resident Utah artists in all media and will include a selection of Paint Yer Cowboy Boot. More than $5,000 will be awarded. Award categories include Western Art Master, Western Art Novice, Paint Yer Cowboy Boot Boogie and a special Ogden Pioneer Day Rodeo Committee choice award. Through July 28.
Gallery 25 UP: Show featuring work by Keith Dagley|8| and Paige Barth.|9|
BRIGHAM CITY
Brigham City Museum UP: With thousands of colorful, toothpick-size fabrics, Noriko Endo of Tokyo, Japan, has captured the rapture of nature in art quilts that are on display in the Brigham City Museum of Art and History’s 2013 International Quilt Invitational Exhibition. Works by Endo, the Featured Art Quilter, and Helen Butler, the Featured Traditional Quilter, are hanging in the museum. Through August 24.
These listings only include fine art exhibitions. If you are looking for information on lectures, art talks, classes, workshops, calls for entries, employment opportunities and more, visit our message board. |
