Colony Collapse

by J.A. Tyler

In these woods my brother handed me a note. A white paper sea sailing a black ship. I said to my brother What does this mean? and he said There are no words and I repeated There are no words but he was already a deer running back into the lake of these woods. A rabbit crossed from trunk to trunk, a bird from one umbrella of branches to another. My brother's note cried out my dying. A single black dot on a square of white meant that I was deathly, and my brother was a deer again, turning tail. My feet were hooves, but I could not chase down his reasons.

136 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2013

About the author

J. A. Tyler is the author of The Zoo, a Going (Dzanc Books). His work has been published in Denver Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, Black Warrior Review, Fairy Tale Review, and New York Tyrant among others. He is also an interviewer for Ploughshares.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

A ritual. A mesmerism. A rite. A mythos.

A dream of death in the infinite forests of an unending limbo.

A loss. An absence. A fear.

A regret. A regret. A regret.

Cycles and repetition.
Destruction and renewel.
A map and a process without resolution in elliptic prose-poetics.

A medium of hypnosis. An entombing in a natural world populated only by ghosts.

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably JA Tyler's most perfect book. Like an invocation to the earth; animals spirits; the building of houses; the building of daughters; the search for brotherhood. Still not entirely my thing, but if you're into the sort of raw, impressionistic territory Tyler covers Colony Collapse could end up being one of your favorites. This the third book of his I've read, and it's interesting to see him moving closer to form imposed on formlessness; a sort of meditative world where everything is a reflection of the self. Pure,alive, and still somehow "deathly".

[S.T. Cartledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this book sitting around for quite a while, but I only got around to reading it recently. I'm like that with a lot of books. Especially if I'm not overly familiar with the author. I started it a few times, but never really sunk into it. I bought it because it's got that trademark Lazy Fascist aesthetic to it. The strange, vague plot description, the stunning cover design, and the promise of high quality, unique prose. This book reads like a dream. Or a puzzle. On the back cover, there is simply the word "Deathly" and nothing else. This book is about a man who is a deer lost in the forest. He builds a house with a chimney and gutters for the rain. He traps foxes and bears and burns them with the house to the ground. He is looking for his deer-brother. His brother has ten daughters that thrown death blankets over him. He imagines he has daughters of his own, made out of forest and mountain and sky. He searches for his brother, yet all he has to go off is a piece of paper with a black dot on it which signifies his own death. If this is not a dream or a puzzle, then the forest must represent some form of maze. It feels like the sort of book that each person would read and take away something different from it. The prose is very rhythmic and cyclic. It always comes back to being lost in the forest, building and burning houses, facing death, huddling under death blankets, imagining daughters, trapping and killing foxes and bears, and searching for his brother. Is this nature? Why is this family so elusive? What is the meaning of being lost and alone in the forest? Searching for family.

For a while I felt as though it were all about the character coming to terms with his own sexuality. He wants to have a family like his brother. He wants so many daughters. He is loved by a woman, but he is incapable of loving her back. He loves his imagined daughters, yet he cannot love a woman. A homosexual deer in the woods, abandoned by his family? Searching for his kind yet only discovering he doesn't belong anywhere? I was having these thoughts later on in the book, yet by its conclusion I felt like this 'theory' I had wasn't the solution to the puzzle, the riddle to the end of the maze. Instead, I don't think this book can be summed up with one single crystalized idea. Nature is complicated. It becomes more complicated the moment you try to break it down and understand it. It becomes jarred the moment you try to build it up into something it isn't. It's about death and loss and family. It's about love, searching for something, trying to figure things out for yourself. The prose is fantastic, the imagery is vivid, yet fluid - ever changing. Colony Collapse is introspective. Colony Collapse is mesmerizing.

[Michael Seidlinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stay with me as we build and rebuilt the foundation of a home that hides the ending to our story.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've loved everything I've read by J A Tyler, but this one strikes me as possibly the most beautiful. There is a soft, fable-like feel that is both hauntingly melancholy and strangely comforting. It feels more approachable than some of J A Tyler's other work, but is possibly even more enigmatic for all of that. Building and burning houses while wandering woods to refute a message of death brought by the narrator's deer-brother, bears and honey and magic tricks, skinning foxes, daughters made of mountains, and so on. There is always a chance that this book totally went above my head, but I loved reading it whether or not that was the case.

[Jamie Grefe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review forthcoming @ShreddedMaps

[Edward Rathke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn't my favorite by JA Tyler, but it's definitely one of his best. Everything is perfect here, and it's beautiful. JA Tyler writes fairytales for the new world and this is a perfect realisation of mortality, longing, and creation.

As is almost always the case, I read this in one sitting. Any time I start a Tyler book, I know I won't be putting it down till it's ready to leave my hands. Usually some time after the last word's been read.

My interview with JA Tyler at Monkeybicycle.

[Andrew Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite J.A. Tyler book and certainly not his best. In fact, it was hard for me to get through the first 90 or so pages of this one. But after that, the last 40ish pages were great. Looking forward to reading another one of Tyler's books. He is a master of language/syntax.

[Sheldon Compton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book. Language made powerfully perfect. Some kind fever dream that ends in hope and acceptance. What more could a reader of high literature want?

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another sustained work of lyric and existential splendor from J.A. Tyler.