Tom Lynch

What do you desire from a piece of fiction?

Kevin Brockmeier's "The Brief History of the Dead," originally released last March and now coming out in paperback, successfully, delightfully and with overflowing entertainment, blends elements of philosophical literary exploration, wilderness adventure and good-natured, heart-pounding thriller. I could kick myself for missing this book when it was first put on shelves--I can only feel grateful and lucky I caught it now.

There are two worlds in Brockmeier's quick, slim novel--The City, inhabited by the recently deceased, who are only present because they are still remembered by the living, and Antarctica, where one woman, Laura Byrd, is isolated on a research experiment, trapped, alone, forced to venture out into the wild snow and blizzard and cold in search of help and human contact. The two story lines alternate chapter by chapter. The City seems to be getting smaller--people keep disappearing, the streets are clearing out, they are off and gone to wherever we go next. The novel's, well, dead protagonist, Luka Sims, who runs the afterlife's lone newspaper, searches for others left in the city, in need of an answer, why people are evaporating into thin air, and where they are going. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is alone and frightened, with only her memories to keep her alive.

The language is brave and striking--sometimes sentimental, often humbling and occasionally, very, very funny. Brockmeier has an exciting young voice, imaginative and graceful. The opening chapter, simply titled "The City," first appeared in the New Yorker in 2003. "It gave it a lot of attention," Brockmeier says. "There's no doubt that that chapter has been read by far more people than anything else I've written."

The methodical switching of story lines, chapter by chapter, could've created a disjointed, choppy final product, but the author seamlessly transitions from one hero to the other. "I split it up," he says of the process. "I wrote the first chapter, to begin with. Then I wrote all the even-number chapters, the Antarctic chapters, then I filled in the odd-number chapters. There were a couple of advantages. One of them was that the Laura chapters are from a self-contained perspective--there's a close third-person centered around her point of view. I felt that if I kept interrupting myself [it wouldn't have worked]. Because I wrote her section of the book first, I kind of kept a running tally of who she remembered, who was in The City."

The Laura Byrd character is, of course, the reader's gateway into the story, a set of eyes to watch the world Brockmeier creates. "I think that the question the book is likeliest to raise in minds is `Who do I remember, and why is it that I remember those people?' It seemed to me that the best way to sharpen that question was to give you one living person in whose memory all the inhabitants of the city would remain. It seemed like the best way to bring the central question to the forefront."

Why is Brockmeier so fascinated by the afterlife? "I guess it's the same thing that draws most people. I think it's the big, unanswered question. I had somebody ask me [before] why I was drawn to the morbid or horrific. It never occurred to me--I don't think of these stories as horror stories, I think of them as mystery stories or fantasy stories, a terrain to play out the ideas of the fantastic."

Just like the way Little Rock, Arkansas author Brockmeier alternates the threads of "The Brief History of the Dead," he shifts his career from one mode to another. He's also authored the novel "The Truth About Cecilia" and a short-story collection titled "Things That Fall from the Sky," plus a pair of children's books in "City of Names" and "Grooves: A Kind of Mystery." In addition to the New Yorker, he's published stories in The Georgia Review and McSweeney's, and has won three O. Henry Awards and the Nelson Algren Award. His next project is another short-story collection, which he hopes to have out "in the first half of 2008."

What does he enjoy writing most? "I find it very fulfilling having written for adults," he says, "but when it comes to day-to-day, it's more fun to write children's books. Children's books are very voice driven. They are supposed to be funny, filled with pop culture references and puns."

Must be more fun than working with the dead.

Kevin Brockmeier discusses "The Brief History of the Dead" February 8 at Barbara's Bookstore, 1218 South Halsted, (312)413-2665, at 7:30pm. Free.

(2007-02-06)

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