The Mystery of the Alphabet

The I's Have It Jerome Klinkowitz End of I. Stephen Dixon McSweeney's http://www.mcsweeneys.net 200 pages; cloth, $22.00 In a career running a third of a century and comprising twenty-six books of fiction, it's possible for a writer to not only start things but stop them. Stephen Dixon, already widely respected for his ability to generate immense narrative action from an absolute minimum of constituent materials, has extended his fame in recent years by both creating and finishing with a number of fascinating characters : Gould, Frog, and now I. The first two occupy a complex set of novels, novellas, and collections of stories (Gould [1997], Frog [1991], 30 [1999]). The most recent, whose name sounds like the first-person pronoun but which is always printed as an abbreviation ("I."), comes and goes more quickly, starting in another McSweeney's book (/., published in 2002), and concluding now in the appropriately titled End ofI. The prompt way Dixon treats this last character is because the author has been writing other things as well, including Old Friends (2004) and Phone Rings (2005) from Melville House plus other works in press and in progress. No other serious fictionist has been so prolific for so long. Nor so various. That's the appeal of the /. books: how in an age of so much variety a writer can introduce and resolve so many new narrative issues in fresh, exciting ways. Gould struggled to build a life with women; Frog struggled with alternate impulses of altruism and selfishness. Yet for Dixon none of this was subject matter, but rather an occasion to set in motion a narrative that would propel itself by its own consequences. The /. books are something else again: freestanding chapters that use a broader range of aspects to motivate action, the unity of which is the person I. himself. In the initial novel, he emerged from the capital letter itself, so naturally confused with the first-person pronoun. The choice is no accident or whimsy. Because of how the character's name is formed, readers are constantly pulled back from illusion by having that letter not disappear into the mental movies inattentive readers allows—try as one might, youjust can't read I. as "I," no matter how much the sentence's syntax tempts you. EndofI. finds the character fully displayed, yet ever mindful ofhow self relates with other. That's surely the oldest story in history, a cornerstone ofliterature and philosophy, personal behavior and ethics. Yet in this second collection Dixon shows how even full disclosure eludes the most dedicated narrative impulse, preserving life as the attractive mystery it is. Who is the I.? He's the person who, by standing at the head of a sentence, orients readers to a firsthand experience, even though the author's language is resolutely third person, as in "I. wanted to visit Marty at home, said to his mother 'Should I just go to his building and call from the lobby?' and she said better she call his mother first, and did and was told Marty wasn't seeing any visitors for a long time." This initial narrative, titled "Friend," begins a set of twelve that puts I. in various relationships: with his brother, wife, daughter, mother-in-law, and others, including a childhood acquaintance whose death truncated what could have been a deep and enduring friendship. I. is "I" only when given a line of dialogue, but because of his name the reader is compelled to collapse the distance between third-person omniscience and personalized statement. Dixon thus lets us be simultaneously inside and outside the character, giving the narrative an exponential power—the story, so to speak, squared. Reading Dixon involves rehearsing the structures with which we assimilate life, making usfeel all the more alive ourselves. And what a sad story it is. There's a sense of the great Russian writers that at times colors Dixon's work, and shades of Chekhov pervade the first tale of the relationship that circumstances have never let develop. More than loss, it's the denial of possibility that Dixon wants to explore, and Chekhov was brilliant at doing that...