Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The four protagonists in Matthew Baker's collection "Hybrid Creatures" are preoccupied with the idea of connection--how to connect with strangers, how to connect with family, how to connect with friends, and what makes a connection sincere. A young hacker attempts to track down his vanished mentor; a boy is equally torn between his mother's and father's families; a composer takes a spontaneous trip to Nashville in the wake of his husband's death and gets stuck on a roof with a hipster philosopher; and an elderly businessman searches for his wife at a dinner party on a remote mountain. Each story in the collection is written partially in a hybrid language: HTML; mathematics; musical notation; and formal logic, the language used to construct philosophical arguments. These hybrid lexicons attempt to capture the consciousness of someone whose experience of the world is filtered through linguistic fusion--and because there are aspects of the human experience, certain connections the characters make, that are only possible to communicate through these hybrid tongues.
In the end, "Hybrid Creatures" is a moving exploration of how hard yet necessary it is to connect with others and even one's self, as well as the various languages we use in an attempt to do so.
Synopsis
Hybrid Creatures, Matthew Baker's sharp and innovative collection, follows four very different protagonists as they search for, and struggle with, connection: an amateur hacker attempts to track down his vanished mentor; a math prodigy, the child of divorced parents, struggles with being torn between his two families; a composer takes a spontaneous trip to Nashville while mourning his husband's death and gets trapped on a hotel rooftop with a hipster; and a wayward philosopher accepts a job working for an industrial farming corporation. Through-out, Baker explores the inner dialogue of failed, floundering, and successful bonds between strangers, among family and friends, and even within a person.
Pairing the emotional pursuit of connection with multiple forms of communication, Baker weaves the languages of HTML, mathematics, mu-sical notations, and propositional logic into his storytelling in order to unveil nuances of experiences and emotions. This poignant formal invention articulates loneliness, grief, doubt, and comfort in ways that are inaccessible through traditional language alone.
In both form and content, Baker captures the complexities of breaking and forming connections with other people, and the various lan-guages we use to navigate this inescapable human need--resulting in a moving exploration of interpersonal bonds.