Nightwork

by Christine Schutt

In this, her first collection of stories, Christine Schutt gives exquisite and provocative form to feelings and memories. "Nightwork" is a masterful dreamwork, revealing with startling clarity the dark and unsettling sexuality that lies just beneath the surface of the mundane.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, American, Literature, Literary Fiction, Novels

129 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 1996

Reviews

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seriously, the quality of prose alone had me reading most of these at least two or three times each. But then the stories themselves—they were dark, sexual, tense, mysterious, gloomy and atmospheric, ultimately bleak. Nightwork is a collection of (often very) unsettling stories very beautifully told. It won’t be suited to all tastes, but it certainly suited mine.

Personal standouts: “You Drive,” “Metropolis,” “Daywork,” “Religion,” “His Chorus,” “What Have You Been Doing?”

Will definitely be reading more from Schutt very soon. I’m annoyed that it took me so long to get to her work, but I’m very glad to finally be here.

Highly recommended.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christine Schutt works prose as a precision instrument. Despite the extreme craftsmanship that clearly went into these stories, sentence by uniquely-turned sentence, they don't feel over-labored or forced into unnatural form when simplicity would convey them better. Instead a simplicity, a sublime economy, is their essence. The sense is that there may not exist any freer means of conveying what needs to be conveyed here. That is not to say that what must be conveyed is simpler or clear. Schutt captures a necessary uncertainty in the events and underlying histories she recounts. The precision clarity of Schutt's prose deftly traces omissions and unknowns.

Much of this was also present in her more recent collection Pure Hollywood, but here, in her first collection, in these images of broken or breaking families and relationships, awaiting a death or escaping a doomed religion, they appear in even more concentrated, intense, and harrowing form. Much is said about her kind of sentence-level style/focus in new-emerged writers of the last 20-years or so, but Schutt's stories demand and earn the care she gives them. Pieces so perfectly distilled as to all but demand the endless savor and realization of re-reading.

[ipsit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nightwork projects on the nocturnal screen of literature an extraordinary innovative style: Filmy. Organic. Deliberate. Sexual.
Her sentences compacted; words intense, dynamic, sensual. The mechanics of her stories well-oiled, run on its own Schutt's vernacular.She addresses sexuality and kinship, mundane bondage, social rituals inside of bedrooms and in cars, diseases and deaths, with keen honesty and blurred lucidness,her writing most original and raw.The reward for reading Nightwork lies in the wonderful line-by-line sensuality of Schutt’s language and in the intensity of each worked line. Often her stories contain leaps of prose which thrill like virtuoso moments in dance. Onomatopoeic words and neologisms ornament this work. A shoe doesn’t slip on and off but shucks against a heel. Debris beneath a table becomes “bread crusts and withered peas always more, and furred with such a dust that I think they come alive at night and breed.” Though the stories in Nightwork are brief,they all carry the same tone of a richly forbidden morbidity that one may want to take their time with them and read each piece with deliberation and slowness.

[el · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was quite literally just an incest compendium. the language in this was often stunning and strange, as is noted in garielle lutz's essay "the sentence is a lonely place." if you asked me what the story was in any given piece in this collection, however, i would not be able to tell you. christine schutt seems to be a writer more attentive to the micro than the macro, to the detriment of logic and meaning. if you like syntactical vibes and vaguely menacing melancholy more than you do story, this might be for you.

not me tho yall be easy out there. 2.3/5.

[Sean Masterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Publishing is dying and it's being killed by MFA programs and the constant search for the next "it" kid that penned her first novel at the age of 19, blah, blah, blah."

So say the vast majority of articles and sniping blog responses I've read about contemporary literature lately. My suggestion is to expand your shopping radius beyond the first 20 feet of the local Borders Books (sic), stop shopping for literature at the airport and start reading Christine Schutt.

I had a great opportunity to see Schutt read at UCSD last year and she was as generous a guest as her prose is otherworldly. Just when you think the 20th Century, with its Joyce and Nabokov and Pynchon, had contorted the sentence into terminal structures along comes Schutt and the language is new again.

Her sentences serve a dark corner of the psyche in the tradition of Rimbaud and Poe but with a generation of child-abuse and domestic violence narratives behind her. Schutt reinvents both genres. Gary Lutz's great writing-on-writing piece puts it best and I'll leave him to tell you the rest of the story.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200...

[Robb Todd]

Dark and lovely. She loves the sentence and ignores narrative, and I appreciate her for that.

[flannery · Rating 3 out of 5]

"the dark sacs of his sex" just say balls!

[Proustitute (on hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the story of our lives, nothing much happens but that we drive past the same town sometimes and remember.

Schutt���s prose shines here, and it���s something I tried to examine at some length in my review of her most recent novel Prosperous Friends, so I���ll point you there; in sum, though, Schutt���s use of poetic rhythm, discordant clauses, and lush, often archaic textures to sentences are the true focal point of her prose���the narrative is simply a boon.

In her collection Nightwork, Schutt���s stories center almost exclusively on the erotic lives of women and children, and also the ways in which violence, economics, and internalized gender expectations are interwoven in one���s relationships, be they with lovers or with siblings. ������Schutt���s prose is unflinching, and her subject matter is often oppressive: here we have, among other subjects, a woman being intimate with her father in the opening (and strongest) story in the collection; ���sisters��� fleeing from a seemingly misogynistic cult; a woman who plays at kissing with her son so that he will learn the art; daughters facing their mother���s mortality as they sift through all of the objects she has collected; and a lament for a teacher with whom one narrator has had an affair throughout both of their adult lives, a moving and disturbing story whose title is taken from Emily Dickinson���s poem ���Because I Could Not Stop for Death.���

A master craftsman and an impeccable, wholly original prose stylist, Schutt���s work demands to be read carefully for the luminous ways in which it renders textually the psychological and perverse cadences she tackles thematically.

4.5 stars

[Robert Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliance.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I prefer the stories in Schutt’s second and third collections, I still think there is on display here much of her brilliance and ingenuity. The best stories for me are the classic “You Drive,” which is somehow even more disturbing than the summary of its plot, and “The Summer After Barbara Claffey,” the opening paragraph of which is simply perfect. (It begins, “I once saw a man hook a walking stick around a woman’s neck.”) Schutt is a master stylist, even if her stories themselves can occasionally fill a little thin, not entirely fulfilled. She is worth studying.

[Alex Juarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid story collection from the 90s! These stories feel alive, built out, and realized. Schutt isn't following the modern MFA style, instead these stories pan in and out and around the world of women living difficult lives.

These stories are not necessarily linear or easy. They are mostly 5-10 pages, and I found myself rereading immediately after finishing. Great if you like the gritty, experimental fiction of the 90s.

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

too much like raymond carver

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't read poetic fiction very well, I'm not able to stop trying to find the narrative and listen to the words. To be quite frank, I usually only understood that incest was happening and that it was pillowed between a hazy sort of scenery that seemed to make people speak and behave like they were in a quirky indie movie.

I gave it two stars because that dreamy, floaty quality makes the subject matter that much more disturbing. Even when it's not explicit, there's a seedy stickiness all over everything. I found myself curling my lip while reading it on the subway, trying to figure out if it was always incest, if this one was really incest, when OF COURSE IT'S FREAKIN INCEST, c'mon now. What else do you possibly think is going on here anyway.

I would give it three stars for quality alone, but I only got two stars enjoyment out of it, and that's likely my own problem.

[sofía · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘He is angry,’ the teacher says, and she describes my son in the class, talking softly as he does, growing louder—the sly smiles to friends, the audacity, the tinny glare about the boy defiant. Bored or hungry, sometimes ignorant of what inspires him to speak, the boy says he does not know why he does it. ‘A monologue,’ the teacher says, ‘with glancing reference to the class; otherwise, just bloodshed.’
My son’s drawings are all of men.
I see small heads, squared bodies—a robotic, bolted quality about them, no knees, didactic jaws. They are armed; many of them smoke. Trails of ash and fire are the loose horizontals in these drawings of stiff men standing in air, guns pointed and firing. The blood splatter is coloured in.

+ cy twombly, lepanto

[Ben Bush]

I came to Schutt's writing by way of Gary Lutz's essay "The Sentence is a Lonely Place." As Lutz indicates, it's a book for page-huggers, not page-turners. I read most of the stories in here twice as I would a poem. "You Drive" "What Are You Doing?" and the one with gerbils were stand-outs.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is what I think I wanted when I read Walsh's Vertigo last year...possibly interconnected stories but very much driven by each sentence, often times left adrift, the plot is, but beautiful more often than not

[Annette Boehm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an intense read. The characters in Schutt's stories all occupy liminal spaces: they are never just daughter, mother, grandfather, or lover, they live any number of roles at the same time. These short stories manage to be disturbing by creating relatable characters.

[nethescurial · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something of a hallucinatory vagueness and uncomfortable dissonance between form and subject matter going on in these stories that makes for a really compelling writerly tightrope being walked on here. The actual thematic and narrative content is overwhelmingly bleak and disturbing, often iterating on themes of abuse, incest, the evil that men do to women, and broken homes and upbringings; but the actual sentence structure [of which this is primarily the focus over narrative fundamentals] and the tone makes for an astounding musicality and undeniable beauty that somehow never undermines the black thematic core of the stories. In other words, the beauty of the language only makes it more foreboding, like being forced to see something in a light it almost shouldn't be looked at but, for Schutt's own oblique authorial reasons, has to be illuminated in this way, or else the things she's driving at wouldn't hit the emotional mark aimed for. There's also a slipstream approach to time and setting that makes the whole thing even more surreal; time in these stories passes without incident, giving the sense that many scenes that are really happening in one moment really happened in another, and so on; perhaps illustrating how trauma is often recalled after the fact, when it's difficult to fit it all into a neat chronology. It lead to an effect where despite how dark it was I kept wanting to return to it, because the unique power it coasts on really demands attention and to be respected until you reach the end.

Not all of these worked for me, but the vast majority of them are at least fascinating; these are stories really worth rereading and reanalyzing on a line-by-line level, much like poems, of these are really as much prose poems as they are short tales, while never sacrificing the power of either form. To be able to so blur the lines between literary forms and create this entirely new-feeling hybrid takes a talent the vast majority don't possess. I think it's somewhat evident that this is a debut, but that's a nitpick; Schutt's style feels nearly fully formed even here, and I can easily say there's nothing like this I've ever read before, making me even more intrigued with how her style could grow in her subsequent works. Big content warnings abound for this one, but this is a great read.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this years ago when I was fully immersed in my own literary fiction bubble I thought this collection quite astounding. Full of private language, sentence primacy, and aiming for emotional response. Immersive. Don't wonder where it's going, just read and feel. So writing as art. Impressionism, cubism, language on that order. Don't try too hard to make sense, to find the story, just absorb and feel. Still admiring all that now.

Then, as now, though, it is fair to hold this collection up and ask "What is a story?" Is it fair to call these "stories"? We do because we don't have a label yet for what this genre is (and this is not a collection that stands alone). Does it matter? Maybe, maybe not. A lot of story readers, though, those not versed in Barthes The Pleasure of the Text, will raise their hands and say WTF?

As stories, the objects in this collection, don't really do what stories do: move you however circuitously from A to B. At best they steer you to an emotion based on whatever baggage you happen to be carrying.

Do you read for words, sentences, emotion, wonder? Brilliant collection. Do you read for story, narrative arc? You'll be lost in the wilderness.

[Neil Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

When reading this book, make sure you are in a state of mind and place where you can actually focus. Every sentence and every word in these stories matter and it's a hugely rewarding book if you can concentrate on it. When I pulled this book out in a coffee shop, I just felt the words drift by me and I couldn't follow the current of them, so I actually put it away for a few days. But, when I found myself in a quiet, calm place, with some Alice Coltrane on, I sunk into these odd, dark, modern fairytales that gave me such an uncanny feeling. After I finished it, I flipped through the stories again and was struck about all of the interesting material packed into such a short book. I recommend it, but, again, bring it to a lonely, quiet cabin instead of a beach.

[Patrick Probably DNF · Rating 2 out of 5]

The prose is poetic and often quite beautiful. But there's something missing from all these stories, or maybe, several things: 1. Dimension. The characters would benefit from a deeper exploration into the various and amazing traits that make us human. 2. Humor. The subject matter here ranges from dark to the very darkest -- with incest as a common thread. An occasional smile or emotional escape valve would help sustain readers through tough times. 3. Hope. Not every character needs redemption, but a slim ray of sunshine now and then would keep me coming back. Last, know that these are subjective opinions, based on what I prefer to read, so definitely explore the other reviews on this site. You'll find the highest praise.

[Zach]

I have mixed feelings about this one. There are moments of brilliance in these very twisted/dark tales, where Schutt prizes lyricism above narrative, layering meaning through images. As is the case with such writing, how well you groove with the prose will dictate how much you enjoy the book, and I found myself fighting her style somewhat…it just didn’t quite click for me (whereas someone like Lispector does). That said, there’s enough good here for me to try out more Schutt and see where I land.

[Maggie Siebert · Rating 3 out of 5]

alright. so. when this works, it's phenomenal. 'you drive', 'what have you been doing?', 'metropolis', and especially 'religion' were all great. but there are plenty that miss the mark here. her language can be extremely effective, and yet you'll see genitals referred to as "his/her sex" a groan-inducing number of times. florid sometimes, cloying others. all that said, i am very curious to see what schutt's other work might be like, because there was a lot to like about this.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the strangest story collections I have ever read. These stories feel more like cousins of poems, the dark cousins of poems, grown in the night, under moonlight. Each sentence is worthy of analysis. Each story--I just. I am not as smart as this book. I think it should be taught in fiction workshops. I think someone should teach it to me.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I had only read this BEFORE Florida… while still beautiful and claustrophobicly edited (in a good way) much of the material peeks out of the dirt revealing the roots of Florida. I admit being distracted by this, unable to concentrate as much as the writing demands.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tentative 3/5 stars, as I suspect I’ll grow to like these stories more and more as I reread them.

These are unsettling, mysterious, minimalist short stories. Christine Schutt has an eye and an ear for language; her sentences have rhythm.

[Dan Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sublime. Every sentence floors, shocks and unmans you. Read with caution.

[Briana Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t want to talk about it 😒

[amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

'you drive', 'metropolis' and 'what have you been doing?' are three of the best short stories i've ever read, and the others are very good too

[Malcolm Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whew, this book is a lot. But the writing is so beautiful. Definitely a disclaimer is needed, incest and sexually violence.

But the writing is beautiful.