By Bill Littlefield

These micro-fictions can feel slight, funny, or confounding—but their strange imagery and off-kilter observations occasionally land with surprising force.

I Liked Rex by Diane Williams. Introduction by Merve Emre. New York Review Books, 122 pages, $16.95.

Reading the short glimpses into the lives of various characters created by Diane Williams feels a little like reading through a collection of haiku. The reader may sigh in recognition after taking in a squib. Or they may move on to the next entry, hoping it will be wiser or funnier.  Or the reader may put I Liked Rex down and stare off into space, puzzled or amused. Or hungry.

(I think Diane Williams would like that last possibility. I don’t know why.)

Sometimes it feels as if the author has kept an entry short because she’s not all that interested in the character she’s describing, or at least not sufficiently intrigued to fill out the mini-picture.  Sometimes it feels as if the entry is short because the character isn’t worth more than an initial effort.  There’s just nothing more to say. Whatever the reason, Williams has no interest in plot as the term is generally understood and no interest in character development. She’s sometimes great at individual sentences, though.

Consider, for example, the first sentence in “For Those Who Have Been Charmed.” It reads, “Good luck itself has a releasing effect on the spine, she was surprised to discover.” Think about that. It seems to feel true. This sentence is followed by the introduction of a figure named Miles Macbeth, who immediately disappears. Then there is the mention of the warning on the bottom slat of a set of venetian blinds, which the subject of the little story, whoever she may be, does not have to take seriously, because “Her minikin – her boy – he will never accidentally strangle himself in the dangling window-covering cord.”

 This is good to know, right? Who needs a strangling? It might suggest plot.

In the title piece, “I Liked Rex,” Williams uncharacteristically spends time describing the character about whom she’s writing. Rex “looked brightly painted. He wore a heavy wool suit.” He had “very pink privates,” which were “meant to be some cheery dessert.” The narrator resists whatever tantalizing temptations those elements might have represented. There is no further reference to dessert or breakfast the next morning. A few lines later, she is “stroking my new pet – my sheltie.” The piece concludes with an enigmatic injunction: “Let us enjoy our holidays and let us fall for or swear by whatever we want to – because people really like to.”

DO people really like to? Do you? It feels as if Williams’s narrator is celebrating superficiality here. And “here” isn’t the only place that happens. In the piece titled “Diane!” – why the exclamation point, I don’t know – the narrator concludes that Diane is “authentic enough – a genuine imitation,” and comments on her “finger rings, her strings of beads – the various stones” and “the grosgrain ribbon in her hair,” all “stuff and stuff to my mind.” This, she reports, “is what I revere. It is the best of her.”

The best? Maybe the only. And is that enough?

The blurb supplied by New York Review of Books for I Liked Rex contends that “much of Williams’s genius lies….in what is left unspoken.” There’s certainly much to find in that category. Some of what IS spoken pops out at the reader in a way that’s kind of fun. Several lines into “For Pity’s Sake,” the narrator asks: “Must there really be a need for harsh realism?”

Good question in these times when we could all use a break from the news.

Toward the end of “The Greatest Experience,” which involves crawling through a cave, a house with windows and screen doors, and eventually mayonnaise egg sandwiches, we are handed this line: “The loss of paradise keeps happening.”

Absolutely.

Editor’s note: Arts Fuse review of 2018’s The Collected Stories of Diane Williams.

Bill Littlefield’s most recent books are Who Taught That Mouse To Write? (Writing Mouse Press) and Mercy (Black Rose Writing)