Elephants in Our Bedroom by Michael Czyzniejewski
(Dzanc Books, February 2009)
Erin Lewenauer
Following the lives of floating souls, Michael Czyzniejewski’s debut short story collection could be a disenchanted autobiography of our generation. The stories, all written in first person, possess a collective strength of voice and echo the authority of nonfiction. They throw a spotlight on the little problems that are sometimes, let’s face it, the big problems.
To the extent that Elephants in Our Bedroom conforms to a genre of fiction, it lies at the midpoint between realism and fabulism. This is to say that while Czyzniejewski’s stories contain elements of the supernatural and fantastic (“Pleurisy” begins, “About eight years into our marriage, the dictionary started lying to my wife”), they also smack of good Midwestern sense. All of the multilayered characters appear simultaneously perturbed and amused by life’s uncertainties and its refusal to grant guarantee. In “Wind” the narrator’s infant son falls off the couch, which triggers a memory of his own father’s suicide and the question of what the future holds. “Streetfishing” hilariously details a day in the life of two friends who sit on their street, get drunk, and fish for a laundry basket. In “Valentine” a husband becomes suspicious of his wife’s yearly visit to the gynecologist on Valentine’s Day. And in “Green” the narrator’s husband invites all of her old lovers to stay with them for two weeks.
Czyzniejewski’s prose is direct and immediate (some stories border on flash fiction), yet it retains energy and never bores. There are moments of brilliance in the characters’ commentary on how the world is arranged (“I’m not sure why she fosters my once-a-week binging, but again, that’s the way we deal with each other”), and any writer could learn from and admire Elephants’ airtight plots.
But what is most striking about Czyzniejewski is that he does not attempt to explain the unexplainable. He does not apologize for keeping readers at a safe distance or for the pleasure his characters take in keeping secrets. Not even for the fact that once the well-crafted humor dissipates, readers are left without anything to hold onto. In other words, his stories function like the best of fiction: they are true to life. While Elephants in Our Bedroom can be intermittently depressing, the optimism inherent in truth-telling prevails.
Erin Lewenauer, a poet and freelance writer from Milwaukee, is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. She reviewed Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs for Hot Metal Bridge in 2009.