A BRIEF NOTE
ON ARCHITECTURE AND
INTERIOR DESIGN IN
The Paris Review Book
of People with Problems
by MAGNETIC FIELDS
TROUBADOUR
STEPHIN MERRITT
The big problem, the one that keeps popping up in every story, is:
missing women, or missing missing women, and in Charlie Smiths
Crystal River, even missing missing missing women. It seems
everyone needs a mother, including a mother; instead, everyone has
an ex. Torn from somewhere (always mother?) or somebody (always
mother) we are left in the cold with a stick, some intoxicants, and
maybe a fluffy animal. With never enough clothing, we have to express
our bootless rage not through the second skin of fashion (its
too cold) but through the third skin of our decor.
Among this books treasures of dreadful decor we find the contemptuous
psychoanalysts office in Joanna Scotts A Borderline
Case, a nightmarish room full of objects chosen for their symbolic
weight, yoked in the service of proving the therapists superiority to
his patient. At the climax of a page-long description of this office, we
learn that it is presided over by a bronze statuette of Galatea with a
clock in its belly, as if the analyst means to say: You are mine, you exist
only in relation to me, I will make of you what I want, as I watch
time passing inside you, aging you toward death and the end of the
session, when you will pay me.
The forty-dollar monthly rental on a single-wide trailer in Annie
Proulxs The Wamsutter Wolf is more than such a room is worth to
any self-respecting tenant, but if our hero had any more self-respect
there would be no story. The trailer has pathetically insufficient utilities
and comes furnished with sofa, table, bed, and a flimsy exercise
bicycle. Everything is discolored, and tacky to begin with, and looking
out on it all is an oversize elks head. Nothing good could ever
happen here, so someone has painted religious slogans on the walls
Love God, Love God, Love God, as if anyone could love anything
in such an ill-decorated place.
In The Dream-Vendors August, Ben Okris description of his
protagonists room is entirely negative. Ajegunle Joe has woken to
find he has been robbed, so all we ever know of his room is what is
missing from it: paper, ink, radio, pornography, and his favorite
book, The Ten Wonders ofAfrica. For contrast we visit the dark shop
of an herbalist, which is literally crawling with life, blurring the line
between pets and decor: the walls are covered with snakeskins, spiderwebs,
snails, and a lizard. A turtle putters around the floor. In the
corner is a juju with feathers stuck to it, glistening. It is a place from
which one might run screaming.
Wells Tower tells the story of a dilapidated cinderblock house in
The Brown Coast, but the story is so intertwined with the architecture
that I dont want to give it away.
Julie Orringers When She Is Old and I Am Famous cuts between
a dreamlike Florentine villa, in which one can stretch out on a
yellow chaise longue, and our heroines own apartment, described in
shorthand as never having any hot water, for anyone, ever.
The cabin described in the framing device of Rick Basss The
Hermits Story is snug and cozy, warmed by fires and lanterns and
dogs, filled with hope and pleasant smells, all of which makes quite a
contrast with the setting of the body of the tale: a dangerous alien
landscape under ice, from where there seems to be no possible escape.
We have brought ourselves there by accident, and we may not
all return.
James Lasduns Snow is seen from the eye of a child on Christmas
Eve, who concentrates on whatever glitters (silver picture frames, golden hair tangled in a silver braiding device, melting snow) and so
remains unperturbed at being surrounded by terrifyingly dangerous
machines, including one that conclusively demonstrates the profound
unknowablity of the world.
The heroine of Malinda McCollums The Fifth Wall cant even
stay inside her home because the walls, ceiling, and floor are moving
closer. The alternative is Sams Tackle Box, crammed with merchandise
and stinking of bait, brine, and methamphetamine.
Norman Rush sets up his Instruments of Seduction mostly
through interior design. His female seducer sets the scene with an
erotic atmosphere of death achieved through lighting, the absence of
timepieces, and government-issue furniture that makes her apartment
look like a bordello.
Random things, dolls and mirrors and bridles, all waterlogged,
are all the townsfolk have left after the town burns in Denis Johnsons
Train Dreams. The house becomes just a highly undesirable campground
where nothing will grow, and you cant really breathe, and
everyone else is dead.
The ironically named Buddy, of Mary Robisons Likely Lake,
lives in a typical suburban house except that no one else ever enters it.
Those he once loved are dead or gone, his girlfriend Elise never
makes it, and the Connie woman has to stay in the yard. And what
good are the cats? Buddy cant even tell them apart.
Charles Baxters bleak blue-collar Detroit suburb Westland,
named for its shopping mall, is nearly greenless, with interchangeable
houses. The garage is full of junk, and there is a play structure in
the yard that hasnt been used for years. Activity at the house consists
of tearing the play structure down, and drinking a great deal of beer.
In Miranda Julys Birthmark, there were empty rooms in the
house where they had meant to put their love and they worked together
to fill these rooms with high-end, consumer-grade equipment.
It was a tight situation. And the only action involves shattering glass.
Richard Stern decorates the lonely Malibu house in Audit with a
bedside telephone used for speed-dialing the broker, and on the terrace,
blue bottles hung by the deceased wife to be filled with sugar water
for the hummingbirds. But the houses main feature is its distance from downtown Los Angeles, an anxiety-filled hour on the freeway.
The large Victorian houses in Elizabeth Gilberts The Famous
Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick only matter as far as they either
contain or do not contain Bonnie the rabbit, who is too big to be
used in magic tricks (or is she?).
Frederick Buschs miniature Widow Water features a house that
is all basement, a house where lives a little old lady (maybe the one
missing from the other stories?) with her clogged old pipes. This
basement is filled with junk and old firewood, whatever in her life
she couldnt use. The view from outside is of a house all dark except
for one window showing a weak yellow light. It wont be long now.
In Charlie Smiths Crystal River, a house is made for leaving.
The train track runs just across the fence. The bed is a place of awkwardness.
And even food preparation takes place outside anyway, apparently
facilitated by a sink on the back porch. This house might as
well not be there at all, and soon, its empty. There is no indication
that anyone ever comes back.
Stephin Merritt