The contemporary mythologist is an endangered literary species in today’s landscape of post-modernist, realist prose. Mythology, by its very definition, evokes the narrative arisen from a culture’s oral storytelling tradition. These are stories handed down from on high, through the ages. The telling of mythic tales and legends often incorporates phenomenon of nature as well as the rites and passages of people; it regularly employs elements of the fantastic and chimerical.
The modern myth uses many of the same narrative devices, yielding a sense of story rich in metaphor and universal, human truths, yet set in contemporary society. These are tales steeped in primal themes: the hero’s journey, revenge, betrayal, gallantry, the outcast, the tragic. In the acknowledgments section of her new short story collection, “Stone Mattress,” Canadian Margaret Atwood illuminates her book’s mythic intent:
These nine tales owe a debt dept to tales through the ages. Calling a piece of short fiction a “tale” removes it at least slightly from the realm of the mundane works and days, as it evokes the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago teller of tales.”271
“Stone Mattress” is Atwood’s first short story collection since 2006’s “Moral Disorder.” The author of over 40 books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, she is a staple of esteemed short fiction anthologies and is, perhaps, most often recognized for her classic 1985 dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
In her new collection of “Nine Tales,” in the words of the book’s subtitle, Atwood traverses the terrain of the modern myth. The book opens with a trio of captivating, linked stories about a group of artists and writers and their romantic imbroglios. The first story “Alphinland,” is quintessential Atwood: dark and quick-witted with razor fangs. The story follows Constance, a wildly successful fantasy writer, creator of the mythic wooded milieu of “Alphinland.” Constance is kept company in her home by the voice of her deceased husband. We follow the arc of Constance’s career, going back to her early, youthful romances along the way. We are introduced to Gavin Putnam, her 20-something first live-in boyfriend, who is the connecting character in the first three stories here. Gavin is a weed-smoking writer of sonnets, a folk-era poet who pens verse in homage to his beloved Constance.
As Constance creates her fictional fantasy world of “Alphinland,” dismissed as “juvenile pabulum” by Gavin, she strikes commercial gold, becoming a multimillionaire author. Jealous, Gavin cheats on Constance, and their relationship ends in tatters. She remarries, later becoming widowed, while Gavin lives in a state of regret. Constance, in turn, lives with the voice of her deceased husband. The story, like much of “Stone Mattress,” is rife with caustic wit, memorable, if often flawed characters, and elements and implications of fantasy. The stories in “Stone Mattress” are sharp and contemporary, intelligent and darkly comic, yet awash in the wisdom of a nearly 75-year-old writer still very much in possession of her A-game. There are many standout tales in “Stone Mattress.” “Lusus Naturae” (loosely translated from Latin as “freak of nature”) follows a tragic young woman born with a genetic abnormality that causes her family to believe she is a monster. They lock her away to keep her from harm. In “The Freeze-Dried Groom,” a man bids on an auctioned storage space with a very dark surprise. In “Torching the Dusties,” the book’s final tale, Wilma and Tobias are trapped in a gated retirement community under fire from a vicious “anti-elderly” witch-hunt that deems the seniors “dustballs under the bed” that must be cleaned away.
But it is the book’s title story that, perhaps, stands out the most in this exemplary collection. “Stone Mattress” is Margaret Atwood at her wicked best. The tale follows Verna, a widow up in years, who has expedited the deaths of her pervious spouses by delivering wrong doses of their daily prescription medications. During an Arctic cruise, Verna coincidentally meets a man who raped her in high school, the emotional and psychological catalyst behind her descent into darkness. Verna begins plotting Bob’s death, a sinister and conniving plot of decades-old retribution. The story is complex, emotionally nuanced and reads with the locomotive movement of a thriller.
This title story, along with other tales in “Stone Mattress,” contain a surprising comic commentary on the aging process, a world of Viagra, widows and cranky, arthritic seniors in the throes of late-blooming sexuality. The collection is surprisingly unsettling, gripping and at once laugh-out-loud hilarious. It attains its laudable goal: Myths last over time, and the stories in this book have that very quality. They are timeless, memorable and quite simply fun.
Sam Weller is the associate chair of the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. He is the authorized biographer of Ray Bradbury.
Stone Mattress
By Margaret Atwood, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 273 pages, $25.95
