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| FEATURES | BLOGS | DAILY DIG | GEAR |
THE WAY THROUGH DOORS (PAPERBACK) | JESSE BALL
VINTAGE | 2.10.09
By CARRIGAN DENNY-BROWN
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Doors are deceptively simple, because besides being a means of entry they are also an exit. In the hands of a talented writer, doors can be a felicitous metaphor, but it is singularly when Jesse Ball takes the door by the knob that ingress becomes pure, prurient flirtation. In The Way Through Doors, protagonist Selah Morse witnesses a car accident and escorts the beautiful victim to the hospital, impulsively/prophetically proclaiming himself her boyfriend. It would prove, however, that this particular girl is the worst kind of high maintenance, for she has lost her memory. And hence, over a round of mint juleps, Selah seeks to rekindle memory in the victim’s deadened mind by telling her stories. With a Surrealistic touch and Murakami-esque whimsy, Ball distinguishes himself in his storytelling as a master of doors. The reader is never sure whether a story is on its way in, or out…and all the time, the prose is with such light-handed beauty and wit that it could be a novel by Frank O’Hara.
A suggestion for reading this book (a must-read), would be on a train, where you’ll be surrounded by fellow riders and their stories. Someone sees you turn a page and your stories run side by side for a moment, until you glance out the window. Don’t even get me started on windows; windows are just inconvenient doors.
