Appreciation for Gary Lutz

Philip Christman:

There's a connection between the strangulated ingenuity of Lutz's sentences and the stories of furtive, transgressive sex they give body to. He seduces words out of their typical usages, coaxes them into strange, unsustainable positions, and ends things before they can begin (36 stories in 160-odd pages); a sort of public-bathroom uneasiness hangs over the proceedings. Lutz's sentence rhythms contract rather than cresting, and the stories generally end on a pinched note. "Slops" is fairly typical: a minor academic with colitis enjoys a highly ambiguous liaison with a student. Nothing about the story sounds promising, but Lutz manages both breathtaking stylistic accomplishment and humor in evoking a Comp 101 drone's dark night of the soul:

There were no tests -- just papers....But I read them hard, expecting sentences to have been spitefully spatchcocked into the running gelatinization of barbarisms and typos to check up on me, to see if I was actually reading. For instance: "Dear 'Professor'" You fucking stink. Try wiping yourself once and [sic] awhile [sic]. Or didn't they teach that were [sic] you went to school? Bag it." But I never found such interludings.

The book under review is Stories in the Worst Way. TQC has also reviewed the pleasant-sounding Partial List of People to Bleach.