Near Flesh
What does it mean to have something published posthumously? (I mean, I know what it means, but what does it MEAN. [Know what I mean?])
After Katherine Dunn’s death in 2016, Lewis & Clark College worked with her son to archive what is apparently 40 linear feet of her work…“drafts of short stories, poems, and essays; Dunn’s daily notebooks; a handful of sketches, rendered in pen and colored pencil; some correspondence,” according to a New Yorker interview with Naomi Huffman, one half of Hagfish, an imprint that specializes in out-of-print and obscure books that brought Dunn’s archive to the attention of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Near Flesh, a short story collection, is the second work by Dunn — known mostly for the National Book Award finalist/cult classic Geek Love — to be published posthumously; a novel called Toad was published in 2022. The stories in Near Flesh feel slightly less “freak show” than Geek Love (that’s not me being abrupt or tactless; if you don’t know, the novel really is about a traveling carnival family that has bred its own “freaks”)…which means they’re more up my alley. In fact, they read to me like a more contemporary Carson McCullers; some reminded me a bit of Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh. (Ok, fine, they’re not exactly breezy beach reads.) A little weird mixed with a lot of normal human desire to be seen, noticed, and appreciated. Instead of leaving me with a hollow feeling, which sometimes happens after reading something on the stranger side, these stories made me think that the focus on Dunn’s ability to shock often ignored her ability to mine humans’ complexity with cunning detail. Standout stories for me: ‘In Transit’ (about an almost apparition-like high schooler and her dad), ‘The Allies’ (about a young girl who is overly attuned to others’ need for recognition), and ‘The Well’ (about a mother and her young child and…a well).
Unearthing manuscripts out of obscurity is kind of cool because it’s like an analog, less brain rotty version of the dreaded infinite scroll. Also: a reminder that we all — whether or not we’re famous — hold a trove of “unpublished” thoughts and dreams.
originally published on instagram