Unending Rooms 1st edition by Daniel Chacon (2008) Paperback

by Daniel Chacon

The winner of the Hudson Prize, this collection of stories, mainly set in the Southwest, digs deep into the lives of its characters. Daniel Chacon’s writing is very lucid and dips into Carveresque plain talk at times, but he isn’t afraid to use pretty descriptions as well. Daniel Chacon is author of Chicano Chicanery as well as various short stories and plays. His fiction has appeared in several journals, including ZYZZYVA , New England Review , and Callaloo , and his plays have been produced in California and Oregon. His first novel, and the shadows took him , was published by Washington Square Press.

Paperback

First published November 1, 2008

Reviews

[Fabian · Rating 3 out of 5]

His best story is the 24th one: "Borges and the Xican@" Otherwise, nothing to write home about...

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was cool to read a collection of short stories with references to my home town and the culture I grew up in. Some really poignant stories that made me think.

[Flavia De Luce Ruffalo · Rating 2 out of 5]

As one of his characters said (the Chicago professor who did not understand Borges), “He would think the reading of it a waste of time.”

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tough one for me to review. First of all, I don't usually read short stories. I don't know why. I guess I'm not sure how to read when they are in a book. Do I read them as individual stories? Do I read them as part of an overall theme for the book? I don't know. I read these stories over a period of about two months. Sometimes I read two or three in one night, sometimes just half of one. I'm usually done with a book within two weeks, so the cohesiveness of the stores got a little lost for me. Secondly, how am I supposed to review the book? Do I review the individual stories or the book as a whole? And how do I talk about a story without giving away too much? I worry that any little bit that I write about an individual story will be a spoiler. Its a lot to think about at this hour. I'll try to do a little of both.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. Reading short stories fit my mommy schedule because I could be done with a story without taking much time. That was good. Oh, and have I mentioned, I'm not a very a good literary critic. I like what I like. I don't like what I don't like. I don't do comparisons or analysis with other works. I'm just a simple gal. But back to the book- I enjoyed most of the stories and found the surrealist (or is it magical realism?) theme to be interesting. Chacon creates a world where anything is possible and the lines of reality and imagination are blurred. I find his characters to be realistic, human, complex, dark, self-conscious, and insecure. I like that. It makes them relatable. On the downside, it felt a little "academic" for my liking. It could be dissected by a class who knows how to do all those things that I just can't (or won't) with writing. Like looking at metaphors and cross comparisons, blah blah blah... I found the beginning and ending stories to be the most engaging.

Right off, one of my favorite stories was "John Boyd's Story" about a Native American writer in grad school. It had me smiling for some reason. It was like a literary middle finger. And the last story, "Borges and the Xican@" about a Chicano teaching in Minnesota, was a great one to tie up the book. It was reassuring when he mentions the character stopped trying to analyze and instead allowed himself to get lost in the story and the writing of Borges. Which I took as a not-so-subtle message to the reader to do the same with this book. Phew, guess I'm off the hook...

[John Paul Jaramillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chacón’s book came at the right time for me as many of his stories in this fine collection involve fictive spaces—alternate realities of the mind and place we are awoken to and also spaces we find ourselves trapped. But also spaces we can escape. Chacón also writes: “Reading should be like entering different rooms of a house, creating walls that rise up around you and then dissolve into a mountain range or a tree on a hill” (230). These stories are well crafted and Borges-esque. I particularly enjoyed the Epilogue: Borges and The Xican@. I felt this story or essay or whatever one wants to call it is where I felt closest to the author and empathized with the experience. I also enjoyed the Meta aspect of the story and was fascinated as the author, the character/persona of Danny and Borges himself wrangled over the aesthetic at play in the book.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories have the taste of Borges and Cortazar, with a dash of hot chili sauce. While all of the fables are quite clever, I was most engaged by the ones in the first section, or the final story/epilogue, Epilogue: Borges and the Xican in (b flat). I intend to check out this writers' other books.

[Bailey Robertson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm in his brother's class right now.

Turns out he stole "Mean Looks" from my teacher...not cool.
No respect for him anymore.


*update*

Finished the book. Not a wow-inducer. I'm probably biased because of the above information, but I found it a little trite and very...English 101. Every story seemed very formulaic.

[AshleyReadThat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what it was about this book, but I stopped reading it because I started to find it disturbing, but can't quite put my finger on why....

[t aly m · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent language & compelling characters, though some of the stories feel arguably weaker than others, which unfortunately brings down the collection as a whole.

[twrctdrv]

Two things:

1) When Chacon is on, he's great with tiny, realistic ironies. He's got a real ability to present the kind of ironies that fill reality up in a way that does not draw attention to the ironies, does not draw red arrows to and circles around them as tho to point out their horrid reality. Instead he has his characters live inside them, as people often do. He let's his reader notice the ironies, which allows them to be felt. (Of course, as everyone says, because who couldn't say this, the final story presents the strongest example of this.)

2) That said, Chacon is not always on in this collection. Some stories feel like fun ideas he wrote to clear his mind a bit, and some fall a bit too heavy on horror/weird fiction style ironic twist endings, or simply, in what I can assume is meant to elicit despair, do not end at all. Of course, this is common in most story collections, but Unending Room has the benefit of conveying, even in its worst stories, its author's excitement in writing the genre. They've got this wonderful feeling of someone having fun.