Beautiful Despair: Wilson Koewing's JADED
Review by Adam Van Winkle
The title story of JADED ends "I knew before I saw her rising into view through the tight binds of the screen door, trailing puffs of smoke, that I would open it and let her right back in." That single sentence is a story all it's own. Wilson Koewing's JADED is full of gems like that. Koewing packs so much into these little spaces. JADED is a collection of short stories, most of which are only 3 or 4 pages long. Yet, each one feels like a river of time.
In reading these stories and these characters I'm reminded of the power with which Raymond Carver could so frankly deal with a relationship between two people and despair. Koewing has this in him.
In "Spyder" the narrator starts a relationship with a homeless woman. Spyder lives in a broken down Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder. The narrator sees her yelled out by a cyclist one day. He stops to watch. "The fuck are you looking at?" Spyder yells to the narrator. He tells, "We officially met weeks later when I was looking destitute and carrying a heavy heart and a beer in a brown bag." This meeting is love--the narrator comes to love her--among the ruins. And incredibly poetic--the heart being in with the beer in the bag. Spyder doesn't want a relationship. One day she dies in her broken down car. The narrator watches at is towed away.
No wonder these people are jaded.
But none of it feels bitter. Koewing doesn't write with spite. He writes about loss and annoying fads and urban decay and a tiredness of it all with, dare I say, something like reverence. What a trick to pull off.
Hey, besides all that, these are some of the best stories I've read in quite some time. I suspect the same will be true for you. Koewing is so damned good. Get Jaded from Main St. Rag Publishing here.
Review by Adam Van Winkle
The title story of JADED ends "I knew before I saw her rising into view through the tight binds of the screen door, trailing puffs of smoke, that I would open it and let her right back in." That single sentence is a story all it's own. Wilson Koewing's JADED is full of gems like that. Koewing packs so much into these little spaces. JADED is a collection of short stories, most of which are only 3 or 4 pages long. Yet, each one feels like a river of time.
In reading these stories and these characters I'm reminded of the power with which Raymond Carver could so frankly deal with a relationship between two people and despair. Koewing has this in him.
In "Spyder" the narrator starts a relationship with a homeless woman. Spyder lives in a broken down Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder. The narrator sees her yelled out by a cyclist one day. He stops to watch. "The fuck are you looking at?" Spyder yells to the narrator. He tells, "We officially met weeks later when I was looking destitute and carrying a heavy heart and a beer in a brown bag." This meeting is love--the narrator comes to love her--among the ruins. And incredibly poetic--the heart being in with the beer in the bag. Spyder doesn't want a relationship. One day she dies in her broken down car. The narrator watches at is towed away.
No wonder these people are jaded.
But none of it feels bitter. Koewing doesn't write with spite. He writes about loss and annoying fads and urban decay and a tiredness of it all with, dare I say, something like reverence. What a trick to pull off.
Hey, besides all that, these are some of the best stories I've read in quite some time. I suspect the same will be true for you. Koewing is so damned good. Get Jaded from Main St. Rag Publishing here.