Under: Stories

As wryly profound as ever, Glen Pourciau solidifies his reputation as a master of American short fiction with Under, a collection of brief yet meticulously elaborated stories that deconstruct daily living as his characters see it by diving beneath their skin and surveying the electric heat bristling below. He scours their interiors for the granular details of consciousness that accrue to a person's singular point of view, shape patterns of behavior, and culminate in consequential decisions (or equally meaningful inaction). Pourciau's writing thrums with claustrophobic intelligence, untangling the knots of eccentric personalities by observing the trajectory of his subjects' thoughts and tracing them back to the source. Rarely is the root an inciting incident or narrative catalyst, but rather the self-propagating algorithm of paranoia that proves to us we have something to fear precisely because we are afraid. Pourciau's titular story begins with the narrator confessing, "A voice from within is telling me this story. It rises like protruding lumps from nowhere." More often than not, plots that start inside one's head refuse to stay there; soon, psychological disruption asserts itself in the material world, determining a character's lived experience as tangibly as an external force or outside actor. "I've been watching a patch of ground in my backyard that has been upset by something moving up from below," the narrator continues. It's no comfort, actually, that what is emerging never actually emerges; a lack of conclusive evidence means never fully disproving the possibility of the thing, either. "Nothing is buried or rising from below in my backyard. My conscience is clear, guided only by its own instinct," the narrator assures himself to no avail. "This story should be rooted out, destroyed, but talking to it doesn't make it go away. Even when silent, something insidious gnaws within it." Pourciau's ability to illuminate that something insidious is what makes his writing something marvelous. No less instructive or revelatory for their internal accelerants, these stories spotlight the small conflagrations that punctuate even our most ordinary days. In delineating the invisible machinations of each person's mind, they reveal the flammable borders of personal boundaries and the conflicts with colleagues, neighbors, and long-time friends that cast off sparks and set our small lives ablaze.