In a series of connected flash fictions, intercut with asides and short (non)sequiturs, Marigold<\/em> is narrated by a doomed worker at a flower shop. He fights with his wife. He trades morbid jokes with his coworkers that contain a hint of real vulnerability. He calls suicide hotlines, a lot. He talks about Antonin Artaud and \u00c9douard Lev\u00e9 and Breece D\u2019J Pancake. He helps a homeless woman. He writes poems for his wife. He makes up with his wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tone is similar to one a contemporary reader is familiar with. Our narrator wakes up with: \u201cbefore I scratch myself and roll out of bed, I stare at the glowing red numbers on the clock\/radio and wonder where all the time has gone. Eight hours asleep every night for twenty-nine years. I\u2019m only two-thirds alive. Not to mention all the napping that gets done on the weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reminds one of that Generation X brand of literary cynicism, at its most useful in American Psycho<\/em>, at its most neutered and lame in Douglas Copeland\u2019s era-naming debut. If only in the style of this excerpt, Marigold<\/em> would be an admirable exercise in gallows humor. But Weaver pushes forward past all-consuming jaded nihilism to include a depth of pity and raw grace. Maybe the central recurring episode in the books involves the narrator\u2019s relationship with \u201cThis hair-twirling kid I work with.\u201d The kid is irritating in his youthful naivete; \u201cHe reminds me so much of myself at his age it makes me want to kill him.\u201d Later on, the narrator\u2019s self-affiliation is vindicated, and they share their problems in an incredibly beautiful and tender episode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither does Weaver fall into the trap of New Sincerity or whatever you would call it. Marigoldby James WeaverKing Shot Press ($9.99) Kafka once wrote \u201cA book must be the axe for the frozen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123467,"featured_media":117396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20522],"tags":[20971,20523,21614,21615,21613,602],"class_list":["post-120139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-book-reviews","tag-conor-hultman","tag-james-weaver","tag-king-shot-press","tag-marigold","tag-square-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/2022-02-03-Book-Reviews.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The world of Marigold<\/em> does not have a silver lining, only denser clouds. There is no solution offered, moral, political, philosophical, or otherwise because who can claim one? The book starts with another quotation from Kafka: \u201cThe meaning of life is that it stops.\u201d Meaning, there is no meaning<\/em>. This is an aesthetic experience. It answers only for itself; yet, it reaches out and provides the solace, however fleeting, that pat bromides could never. Marigold<\/em> is of that rare, sublime form of pessimism, like the work of Schopenhauer, that is the only ladder that reaches to those already at the bottom. It is the hurt that heals the wound. And it is the most beautiful and powerful one hundred and fourteen pages I think you could be reading now.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg\")
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