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“ALL HAMMERED UP WITH NO PLACE TO GO” Anthony Tognazzini, I Carry A Hammer In My Pocket For Occasions Such As These In I Carry A Hammer In My Pocket For Occasions Such As These, a collection of 57 flash fiction/ prose poetry pieces (along with a few longer narratives), Anthony Tognazzini playfully, tragically, and surrealistically tackles the need for communication, escape, the inner self, and love. In tales where furniture gets moved around, macho men get addicted to figure-skating, characters carry hammers for physical and emotional protection, couples shrink, and people get attacked by woodpeckers in their own homes, Tognazzini deals with the inability to gain control over the mechanical world. In this thematically tight collection, Tognazzini’s personal “I” is a punching bag of emotions all of us can easily identify with. Nowhere is Tognazzini’s personal “I” more effective than in the theme of doubles/other selves. Found in a myriad of pieces in the book, some funny, some sad, some surreal, and some (like “The Suicide”) downright scary, this colloquialism offers the reader a chance to glimpse his/herself in the fiction. Consider the reader-identifiable and Jungian “I Bring the Lip Balm,” where the speaker’s cocky shadow embarrasses him by overeating and womanizing at a barbecue, playing dead at home, and ramming a porcupine quill into his chest. At night, the shadow’s sleepy voice sounds as if “he’s gargling with gravel.” When the narrator inquires about the true nature of his other self, the shadow replies: “‘If you want to know who, you are doomed,’ then goes on to complain that his lips are real chapped.” Yet Tognazzini knows that theme is only as heroic as the craft which molds it. Following his own bliss-language, the author—in many of these pieces—hoops each word into sentences which mimic the subject matter or action being taken by the main personal “I.” For instance, in “The Metaphysics of Orange Juice,” the storyteller, in a rush to get to his mundane desk job, slugs some orange juice until everything in sight (“the dish drainer,” “the fruit bowl,” “the sweet running sun behind the blinds”) turns orange. Tognazzini cleverly hustle and bustles the short mechanical sentence (depicting daily rush) around a long sentence positioned in the story’s middle which illustrates life’s repetitive dullness: In your mind’s eye, which is orange, you see yourself at a desk all day, and though you’re aware it’s bad form to go unenchanted so long, the years pass quickly, and always you are like a dog running toward the edge of a field where your rubber doggie bone, also orange, is hidden, but the field keeps receding and you are more and more confused, but running. By piece’s end, the speaker realizes that the clock is ticking and he must promptly pull on his socks and pants and head to work, actions mimetically captured in short, swift sentences. Although Tognazzini’s mimetic prosody throughout the collection separates his work from mere flash fiction, “The Metaphysics of Orange Juice” also thematically links to other pieces where the act of running away from one’s home, job, adulthood, or life is prevalent, but often itself leads to nowhere. The quest to escape and/or somehow adjust to this need is found in “The Stories of Our Lives,” where the narrator, having alluded police in a high-pursuit chase for thirty-five years, finds in the “Meek and Sleepy Diner” an older waitress who has lost three fingers in an accident, who can’t make enough money to feed her four children, and whose husband is in prison. After trying to persuade the waitress to gather food for a picnic, after which they will start a “new, post-picnic life” together, the narrator notices the police out in riot gear in the parking lot. The waitress guides him into the walk-in-freezer, where they hear the police with their angry voices combing the restaurant. In the freezer, the waitress holds the narrator’s hand with her two-fingered hand, and like newly born children they both try to keep each other warm the best they can. Funny, surreal, and sad, the story shows that the connection with someone is what keeps us from giving up altogether. These days, Reality TV, YouTube, and Fark.com give literary writers a run for their money, but Tognazzini has nothing to worry about. His house-bash entertains and teaches. Although this collection can be read through quickly, the characters keep one coming back to them, again and again, out of empathy, compassion, and fun. A book that should be studied by both writers and scholars, it is undoubtedly one of the best debuts in recent years. Doug Martin is the editor of Snow*Vigate Press. |