When Dolan Morgan's brilliantly creative collection of short stories, That's When the Knives Come Down, opens, the future has been infested with goats. Yep, goats. Luckily for future us, Mr. Hunter knows about getting rid of things. Like his wife, Jenna. And as Morgan writes, "Something not being there at all is much different from something first being there and then not being there." Such is the central driving force of "Infestation," the collection's first story. It's a story that makes us painfully aware of everything in our lives that is gone. And that's exactly what Morgan does. He makes us painfully aware of what has been missing in our lives: Dolan Morgan. From his first sentence ("It ended."), Morgan draws us deep within his world of the weird. This is bizarro fiction at its best. It reminded me of D. Harlan Wilson (in a good way). But what Morgan does takes a giant leap (in my opinion) above bizarro (still weird, but a definite notch). Morgan takes fantastical situations, such as a sound that overtakes the greatest city in the world, and he shoves them in our faces in such a way that we must take take notice. He uses his dose of the surreal like a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of our own reality go down. And he unflinchingly examines the holes that exist in those realities. Like the best weird literature, it's only through such unbelievable situations like a tale of a man propositioning his furniture that we can ever possibly believe the extreme hilarity and sadness of our own lives. Something not being there at all is much different from something first being there and then not being there. The important thing to note is that this book is three very important things. It is, first and foremost, f'ing hilarious. There is a wit in Morgan's writing that often reminded me of the best Joseph Heller (as in, "I'd rather have peanut brittle crumbs on my face than flies in my eyes," Joseph Heller). Secondly, it holds the proverbial mirror up. Throughout the collection, my brain made countless connections between the stories (like songs on a good concept album), but I also made connections to my own life. It made me think about me--and isn't that all of our favorite subjects (ourselves ... not me). And finally, I have a friend who has long talked about how reading Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger, always inspires him to write. This is fiction that can inspire. Morgan has created worlds which may not make us want to go there (in fact, some send us retreating in horror from those very places in our actual lives), but he definitely makes us appreciate the value in creating worlds. He shows us what words can do, and that is inspirational. That's When the Knives Come Down is Dolan Morgan's first published collection. It is available on multiple sites through Aforementioned Productions. Be nice, buy it twice.
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