Book Review : Sensitive Tales Capture the Nuances

Zero db by Madison Smartt Bell (Ticknor & Fields: $15.95)

“Zero db,” the cryptic title of this short story collection, refers to the critical point on the narrator’s tape recorder. Above zero db the tape will be saturated and the sound a jumble of noise; below it his whispered voice will be inaudible. Though this suggests a wan, faint murmur, the actual tone is vigorous and distinctive; exactly the proper frequency for these subject tales. At zero db, the slightest sound registers, becoming the basis for Bell’s skillful inventions. Tuned to that level, the listener concentrates, hearing the nuances others miss. The extraneous and irrelevant is filtered out and only the essence remains.

The speaker in the title story is an unemployed sound engineer, sitting in a seedy New York bar, recording phone calls, random thoughts, and snippets of other people’s conversations. His last job was synchronizing sound for a documentary film shot in a mental hospital, an assignment cut short when he insulted the producer in a flagrant example of his self-destructive behavior. In the bar, he picks up a discussion between two loan sharks talking about the idiosyncratic methods of an Asian strong arm man working over a deadbeat. Next he phones his ex-girlfriend Rosemary, but his nerve fails him and he says nothing. The story ends with the engineer’s own brief and cheerless monologue, which establishes a tenuous but strong connection among the incidents. In Bell’s stories, the most disparate elements can acquire an amazing coherence.

A similarly observant narrator figures in the other five stories in the middle section of the book. In the first, “The Structure and Meaning of Dormitory and Food Services,” he’s a Princeton undergraduate, sliding inexorably from preppy wholesomeness to psychological breakdown. Though the voice here is the familiar one of the sensitive adolescent in the process of becoming entirely unhinged by circumstances beyond his control, the setting is so completely original that the story seems to have no antecedents at all.

A City in Ruins

In “Irene,” an older version of this person is living in a squalid room in Newark, N.J., sometime after the race riots that left the city in virtual ruins. Now he apparently decided to become a writer, and if that is the case, the story of “Irene” is a great start. He has already learned to speak for the inarticulate, inventing a logical context and a sturdy structure for his random encounters. By the time of “The Lie Detector,” the narrator has moved on to Hoboken, where he is slowly recuperating from a bad love affair and “watching his brain turn itself inside out,” activities which become surprisingly fascinating. “I NY” and “The Forgotten Bridge” are superb studies of metropolitan atmosphere, in which the writer submerges himself and the reader into the subculture of the Puerto Rican barrios. While he makes a great show of his listlessness and lack of ambition, there’s no doubt that he’s found his true vocation, and despite his pretense at idleness, he’s becomes a complete writer.

The last story has a well-deserved section to itself. “Today Is a Good Day to Die” is an account of the adventures of a 21-year-old cavalry lieutenant in the months preceding the battle of Little Big Horn. Here too the central character is overwhelmed by forces beyond his control, driven to the edge of madness and beyond by the irrational behavior of those who control his destiny. Though a century separates the student in “Dormitory and Food Services” from the youth in Custer’s army, they’re brothers in circumstance; youthful idealists at odds with the world.

Each of the four stories in the opening group is told in a different but always Southern voice. “Triptych I” is three vignettes; the first a hog-slaughtering witnessed by a 5-year-old white girl; the second a penetrating glimpse into the lives of the black people who work on the farm; the third uniting the separate strands into a tight coil of Southern attitudes, 19 short pages of fiction as illuminating as a dozen ponderous texts on relations between the races.

Small Fact, Big Difference

A couple of good ol’ boys fool around in “The Naked Lady,” but one of them is a sculptor, a small fact making a big difference. “Monkey Park” is a love triangle among a waitress, a fellow who works on a shrimp boat, and the waitress’ husband, a clod who starts out thinking the shrimper is his buddy. The little party begins in Carolee’s house, moves on to a couple of bars, and finally winds up in the town of Opelika, where there are a few monkeys in cages and a green metal spinning saucer on a post; all there to give children a few harmless thrills. None of these amusements is meant for grown-ups, though Carolee, Perry and Alphonse make full use of them all. “Triptych II” establishes an unlikely relationship among a peacock, an elderly widower and a bull on its way to the slaughterhouse; not an easy assignment but one that Bell manages neatly with his highly specialized and super-sensitive sound system.