Why Visit America by Matthew Baker
Review by Nic Townley
A couple who are expecting during an epidemic causing babies to be born ‘empty’; a teenager abducting immigrants to transport them out of his home-state; a trucker with a past and a penchant for prostitutes; an ex-con whose crimes have been erased from his memory: characters from across America search for meaning amidst the darkest elements of our modern world gone wrong.
The collection of thirteen short stories begins in our world – to be precise, the Great Lakes of Michigan, Matthew Baker’s homeland – where two brothers plot to avenge their ninth-grade niece, a victim of apparent bullying at the hands of a former teenage admirer. ‘We have decided we will hurt him. We will hurt the boy in a way that he will feel and keep feeling and never stop feeling, mutilate his psyche in a way that will make him fear us and what we are capable of even after we are dead.’ The two intellectuals, one a lexicographer, the other a professor of dead languages, stalk their young foe, glimpsing the circumstances of his present as they ponder their own past. There is a sense of better natures gone astray, degraded, subverted.
Tise first story ends like many of the others – with its own unique Joycean Epiphany, a realisation that is either gained by the characters throughout the collection or reserved for the reader. In ‘Life Sentence’, Wash (short for Washington) returns to society with his mind erased of his former misdeeds. His insights come in flashes as he reconnects with the person he possibly was and experiences the pleasures of family life, which are streamed into our consciousness as if they are images on a reel of film. ‘But maybe all that is trivial compared to how he used to be. Is he a different person now? Has he been becoming somebody new? Or does he have a soul, an inborn nature, a congenital personality, that’s bound to express itself eventually?’
Truth exists; there is always some insight to be gained. This, it seems, is Baker’s aim as he carries us across the United States. His reams of imagery which span pages, his one-true-sentences, the time-altering narrative of ‘To Be Read Backward’: this is not dystopia or sci-fi, this is wrenched realism. Connecting each character through their flaws and their failures is love – love of family and love of country. Love of the ideal, of the dream. ‘A nation is people. We’re what we are because of who we are… America is a country whose people love each other.’ Love of the possibility of change, love of hope, love of freedom, love of sex and power, love of wealth, love of celebrity, love of consumerism and things and appearance, love of borders. Love underpins these little worlds.
Humanity, in all its glory and madness, is presented more succinctly through these characters than it ever could be through YouTube video-explanations or self-help books. Art triumphs. ‘Nothing’s happening,’ one of them says. ‘Nothing has to happen,’ his decrepit elder responds. Through vacuous ennui, through tragedy and loss, the people strive to understand and to bring meaning and purpose to their situations.
In ‘Testimony Of Your Majesty’ the young protagonist cannot escape all her belongings, which once gave her such joy, now deemed by society as archaic and ugly, in a fantastic reimagining of consumerist culture. In ‘The Sponsor’, morals and reason can be tossed aside for that costly dream wedding. ‘The Transition’ tracks Mason’s struggle toward his authentic true-self and the impact it has on his family, who although forward-thinking, remain trapped in the nets of a traditional mindset. ‘If you’re born in a body, then you belong in a body, and that’s that,’ Mason’s father says.
Likewise, Daniela will risk life and comfort for both her and her baby in ‘One Big Happy Family’, instinctively fleeing the nation’s enforced system in favour of the dangerous swamps of ungoverned backwater society. It feels no matter how hard we try, sometimes life gets the better of us. Sometimes no means no. Sometimes you have a bad day even in Utopia.
But still you try anything, you give it everything you’ve got. When a global epidemic, in which babies are born without consciousness, induces mass hysteria and a mystical explanation, Naomi the scientist is forced to look away from logic, putting trust in the faith of her husband and parents. Set in and around Las Vegas, the Oasis facility of ‘Lost Souls’ brings to mind a cult-centre or casino. Still there is hope and endeavour.
The people’s dream of a new country in the title story are put in danger when old (Uncle?) Sam cannot get on board with the new way of thinking, resisting change. Still the people fight. In ‘The Tour’, Kaveh, though facing inevitable unemployment at the hands of technological advancements and suffering terrible nightmares which he cannot remember, sets out to help the prostitute Rachel realise her dreams. ‘Maybe someday when she was a celebrity she would hire him as a bodyguard. Maybe that was what he would do when the computers took over the road.’ Throughout all of the gloom, the knockbacks, and as in vain as trying can seem at times, love and hope still exist. As we visit each state, it seems that we touch upon every issue plaguing our own times, and that perhaps, just as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was a beacon for the first, Baker’s adventure could very well be a light for the next American revolution.
Hybrid Creatures, Baker’s 2018 debut collection, with its exploration into the narrative use of artificial languages, offered each reader a unique experience – ‘a collaboration between me and the reader’ as Baker explained. Like the Abstract Expressionism of Pollock, there is of course the artist’s intent, but each work is then available to be interpreted endlessly and subjectively – a process theologians call eisegesis. Why Visit America invites both analysis and interpretation, meaning and intent gained at the end of each story through a subtle meditation on our own selves and beliefs.
In the story which closes our journey across and into America, Baker brings us back to known ground, to a city unmentioned hitherto, a place we have been waiting for. When we arrive, an event that we were not expecting is quite literally spun around, hitting softly yet overwhelmingly; a story which you will read over, maybe even backwards. Gripping, mind-blowing, devastating. It is immediately obvious why many of these stories have been optioned for film by Netflix, Amazon, and Fox Searchlight. Yes, there are Black Mirror, Atwood, and Orwell connections, but this is the first of its kind, a work born of a deep understanding and a philosophical awareness of how things are. Over a century ago James Joyce aimed to write a moral history of his country: Matthew Baker has achieved that for his own. At the end of this acclaimed and untouchable collection there has been horror, but what remains is love.
Why Visit America by Matthew Baker is published by Bloomsbury, 4/8/20