Czech Techno

by Mark Jarman

Fiction. From the author of 19 Knives and My White Planet comes a brilliant suite of stories built around music and travel. Whether it's a band coming apart at the ruins of Pompeii, or tours through Napoli's "volcanic dust and volcanic drugs and jackal-headed bedlam and mountains of stinking trash;" or a nostalgic stroll past the homeless in Victoria's inner harbour while "gentle Tunisian techno" rides the breeze, where the addicted populate park benches, as weighted as Shakespearean characters... "lit rock and tiny chalice hidden under his shirt, get it all, draw every wisp of the wreath and heavy is the head that wears the crown, that lights the lighter." Or it's Steppenwolf or The Youngbloods drifting from a car radio as "an ambulance siren and lights fly our street... a flashing mime show of grief's rocket." Or, perhaps they're in Iceland, or Denmark, "somewhere seriously lunar and attractive" spending wheelbarrows of cash the record execs didn't give them. Or it's the Viper Room, Sunset Boulevard, a bar in Butte, Montana, or Johnny Cash in Tijuana. The five stories that comprise CZECH TECHNO are replete with the sizzle and jump we have come to expect in a Mark Jarman story--"those shadowbox anthems of lost icy street corners and vanished republics" are on grand display, his herky-jerky emblematic style in full roar. And the quest for love, the matters of the heart, is ever-present, weaving through these stories like a knife blade through sand.

Genres: Short Stories

96 pages, Paperback

Published December 15, 2020

Reviews

[b · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took my time with this, probably the first time I’ve done so with one of MAJ’s books. It’s hard not the fall into the whelm of Jarman’s singular line of thought. I’m probably ultimately between a 4 and a 5 if I have to pin down a rating.

So the critique: Mark’s voice is kind of ossifying a little bit into “cool guy thinking about an absent woman or one probably on her way out the door, and isn’t she just so” with a dryer’s tumble-cycle of observation meets rhetoric meets lateral movement meets dynami(c/te) language taut as an upright bass’s g-string; but the way Mark dispenses time, sometimes like someone rummaging in a pocket for a euro to make a phone call, other times oozing and flowing like molasses but suddenly like a large ale pitcher, idk, the way a Mark story asks me to inhabit it, and what it offers in return, the hospitality of its language, it’s unparalleled.

I recommend Mark’s writing a lot. If you’re new to him I’d start with My White Planet, maybe 19Knives, but this is also a really nice little book (and such nice black / red / white design! probably from the same brain-vat that come up with Stuart Ross’ “I Cut My Finger,” same press and all). Really glad to have taken my time with this and to have finally finished it.

PS I’m pretty sure this is incorrectly listed under Mark Jarman and not Mark Anthony Jarman, so, if you’re looking for MAJ, but it all looks like poetry instead, that’s probably your trouble.