Stacey Levine
The World of Barry, though quite short, is
many things for me--a quick sketch of a suburban locale, an exploration of
human conception and worries about god, and also, the old stifled-in-the
suburbs motif. I began with the latter
idea, and thought my most important task was to prevent the prose from falling
into any of the cliches associated with the usual stranded housewife tale--at
this point a century-old cliche, explored by modern novelists from Tolstoy to
Duras to Didion to postmodern writers like Kathy Acker.
Though I continued to repeat particular
phrases about chicken (women and food simply can’t be separated in this
culture; it’s a curse), I tried to
invent other particularities and less standard physical details, less
standard, and did not allow the
narrative voice to complain directly about what is ailing her. Instead, she obsessively focuses her
attention on her lawyer-husband, Barry, in a rote manner that belies her
discomfort and alienation. Yet for me,
it’s not simply a story of a life gone wrong.
Through the nervous narrative voice, I tried to articulate aspects of
human intimacy, spiritual desire, fear,
and the culture of consumption that, in fact, would be hard to address
directly.
****
Stacey Levine grew up in St. Louis, and has lived in Seattle since the
1980s. Her
collection, My Horse and Other Stories
(Sun & Moon Press), won the PEN/West fiction award in
1994. Since then she has published a novel,
Dra----
(Sun & Moon Press); another novel, Frances Johnson, is
forthcoming. Her criticism has been
published by The American Book Review, Rain Taxi, The Seattle Times, The
Seattle Weekly, The Stranger, C Magazine (Toronto), Nest Magazine, Fodor’s
Guides, and other venues. Over the past
years, she has performed public readings of her work with Karen Finley,
Kathleen Hanna, the Black Cat Orchestra, Grace Paley, and Russian novelist
Andre Bitov. Kill Rock Stars of
Olympia, WA issued a spoken word 45 of her work, available through killrockstars.com.