My experience reading David Bergen runs the gamut. When I first read The Time in Between, I felt disengaged from the story. Years later, stuck in a waiting room with The Matter with Morris (2010), I recognized layers to his storytelling which I’d missed before. With The Age of Hope (2012), I fell hard for his sustained focus on a woman’s life. And Stranger (2016) was such an engrossing read that I neglected the rest of my stack and read until I finished.
Several of the stories in this collection have been previously published. (“Never Too Late” and “Saved” in The Walrus, “April in Snow Lake” in Prairie Fire, “Leo Fell” in Toronto Life, and “How Can n Men Share a Bottle of Vodka?” won the CBC Story Prize and was published in Saturday Night. “Hungry” was in Hobart, nominated for a Pushcart Prize
Bergen is preoccupied by the complexity which influences and spirals out from simple choices. Consider “April in Snow Lake”:
“The thing is, I could have gone in and she would have been fine with that. But she seemed to be fine with me not joining her as well. At that time in my life, at that moment, I could make no sense of how to choose. And so I stepped away from the door and I walked back to my motel room. Two weeks later I left Snow Lake.”
His keen sense of irony contributes a satisfying whirr beneath the surface of his stories. Consider this familiar scene (from “Hungry”, one of my favourite stories): “There are all these beautiful clean objects on the desk. Beakers, sticks, cotton balls, a little black bed with paper laid out over it in case you’re bleeding and shit. A poster on the wall showing pink lungs and black lungs and at that point I want a cigarette.”
This is not a story designed to make you snicker, but this human contradiction provokes a smile of recognition. Similarly, the language of beginnings and endings is unremarkable, but often unexpectedly moving. Like the opening of “Leo Fell”, which invites questions: “The day Marianne found out she took a swing at him.” And the closing of “Man Lost”, which offers closure: “Their voices at play were like the sounds birds make in the morning, when all is new and there is only time and more time for the day to unfold.”
There’s not a lot of dialogue and what remains unsaid also matters, like this bit in the novella, “Here the Dark”: “‘I won’t come back,’ Marcie said, and Lily believed her, and she wondered what that would be like, to not come back.” It’s Lily’s silence, her wondering, that matters more. But if Marcie hadn’t left, Lily wouldn’t have even been able to wonder. Sometimes this kind of wondering is what passes for action in these stories. If you’re not big on wondering, you might not be big on Bergen’s stories.
Giller-bility
After winning the 2005 prize (in a year when I was rooting for Joan Barfoot’s Luck), Bergen was on the jury in 2007. In 2010, The Matter with Morris was shortlisted and, in 2016, Stranger was longlisted. He’s got Giller pedigree for sure. But the other short story collections nominated this year, Kaie Kellough’s Dominoes at the Crossroads (2020) and Souvankham Thammavongsa’s How to Pronounce Knife (2020), represent fresh perspectives on the storytelling scene, which this year’s jury might respond to more keenly. [Edited to add that Bergen’s book has progressed to the shortlist.]
Inner workings
Bergen’s stories proceed at a languorous pace. His authorial decisions are craft-driven, not audience-driven.Even when characters are en route to the ER, details about their transportation plans are an opportunity to build characterization (i.e. demonstrate class, privilege, social skills, outward presentation). In instances where characters’ experience of the outer world is limited, their restricted view presents a skeletal and flat narrative.
Language
The vocabulary is unusual enough that the prose doesn’t feel stark, but the sentence structure is direct and deliberate. Sometimes punctuation, alone, modulates mood. Consider the absence, then presence, of commas in this pair of sentences: “Over the next three days, Bev and a neighbour boy who was all arms and acne rounded up bull calves and together they branded and inoculated and castrated. The skies were clear, the sun shone, the world was endless.”
Locale
Whether a doctor’s office or a farmer’s field, the settings of these stories are not incidental, but neither are the characters preoccupied by place.
These stories unfold primarily against a backdrop of hearts and minds.
Engagement
The characters in these stories are busy living their own lives; they don’t have time for your questions and might not even acknowledge that you exist. In the space between each paragraph, readers could lose their patience. Sometimes time passes quickly, scenically, but other times the weight of an entire existence settles in: “The seasons spun around like the Lazy Susan on Johan’s mother’s dining-room table.”
Readers Wanted
When you travel on public transit, you imagine entire lifetimes for the people seated nearby, spiralling around details that you know someone else would dismiss immediately.
You stare too often and for too long.
I adore your “Readers Wanted”! They’re always things I would totally do. (Not that I take a lot of public transportation… but if I did…)
Sidewalks and public walkways count too! Some authors do (like Munro and Shields have discussed) spend a lot of time watching people in ordinary circumstances and I’m guessing that Bergen moves along those lines too.
I know i’ve read a book by David Bergen. I can’t remember which one it was, which probably says enough about how I generally feel about his writing. I enjoy it in the moment but I don’t find it particularly memorable. And I feel bad saying that because I met him and he is a lovely person. Sigh, the internal conflicts of a book reviewer 🙂
There was a review a couple of weeks ago in the NYT by Richard Russo (about Sue Miller’s latest novel) and I think a lot of what he said about Miller’s prose would apply to Bergen’s as well. Their particular kind of artistry doesn’t appeal to everyone, but Russo did a beautiful job of capturing that subtle beauty and strength in simplicity and dedication (to theme and character, particularly). Maybe you’ll try another one day and find yourself responding differently.
“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” ~ Mark Twain
Great quotation: I keep meaning to read beyond Huck with Twain!
I enjoyed Stranger, too, certainly enough to make me want to read this should it be published in the UK. Interesting that there are two collections of short stories in contention for the prize. Perhaps you take short stories more seriously than we seem to here in the UK.
I wonder if it’s less likely for short fiction to have rights sold in other countries too; in any case, I feel like the stories in here are less like Stranger and more like his earlier writing, so maybe you’d prefer to wait for his next novel instead. (I think you might enjoy The Age of Hope for its focus on marriage, though, and the novella in this collection for the same reason.)
Another writer I don’t know at all, but you make his work sound very appealing. It’s good to see short stories being recognised by prize shortlists.
He has published several books, but by the sounds of it, based on Susan’s comment, maybe Stranger is the one which is best known across the pond.