Night Stories: Illuminating absence

I thought I was being a little extravagant when I bought myself a hardback book for $45, but then I looked for other books by the same author and I found only one, selling for $1,827.93. (Plus $3.99 for shipping!) So I guess my Linden Frederick collection will remain limited to one book.

But what a book! Linden Frederick is a New England artist, and Night Stories: Fifteen Paintings and the Stories they Inspired is exactly what the title says: 15 of his paintings accompanied by short stories (and a one-act play) written by contemporary authors as diverse as Ann Patchett, Dennis Lehane, Louise Erdrich, and Richard Russo.

I was initially attracted by the art. From his home base is in Maine, Linden Frederick allows his eye to roam across small-town America, producing austere images reminiscent of Edward Hopper's Night Hawks. Though his paintings generally lack human figures, Frederick's night scenes of dimly lit vacant lots, isolated gas stations, and silent houses hint at lives barely imagined. The cover image, Offramp, invites viewers to travel further down the highway or follow the offramp into some forgotten community where lonely people lead lives of quiet desperation.

The night sky is a brooding presence in many of these paintings, its rich shades of blue, green, and gray often pierced by unexpected points of light. In Downstairs, a hulking mass of house crowds the left side of the frame, but our eyes are drawn to the lower edge, where a brightly lit basement window suggests the presence of vibrant life. Vacant Lot presents a greeny-blue night sky so murky it seems to be drowning the planet, but some sort of ordinary life survives in a tiny house where a car drives into a well-lit garage.

In 50 Percent, a one-story house seems squeezed between bands of darkness, as if it is being swallowed up by earth and sky, but large windows reveal a group of women dressed in candy-colored prom dresses. On closer inspection, the festive women resolve into mannequins. A commercial sign shines blankly on the right side, suggesting that this is some sort of business, but in the absence of words, the meaning of the assemblage of mannequins remains a mystery.

Lois Lowry fills that absence with a story called "Vital Signs." The stories in this volume reverse the usual process: instead of finding an artist to illustrate a text, Linden Frederick found a bunch of authors to create stories suggested by his paintings. Lowry imagines a group of retired men trying to play a prank on one of their own but instead coming face to face with the power of loneliness and loss. 

Ted Tally's one-act drama "Repair" closes with a reminder that "Some things can't be fixed," even by an honest mechanic, and many of these stories features lives so broken that the possibility of redemption does not even enter the picture; nevertheless, light shines through the murky depths of the human condition. In "Ice," Andre Dubus opens the doors of a cold, lonely convenience store to reveal the beating heart of passion, and in "Downstairs," Richard Russo takes us inside that dark, hulking house, where a glimmer of life lingers in the midst of despair and death. In Dennis Lehane's "Offramp," a cynical U.S. Marshal on the verge of retirement takes a brief detour toward compassion, while Joshua Ferris's "Maniacs" follows a teen boy through an idle summer vacation; the story throbs with youthful energy that leads the boy headlong into dangerous terrain.  

Louise Erdrich's "Green Acres" takes a turn into uncanny territory, though it begins normally enough:

The house was a soothing color and the streets had pleasant names--Joy Street, Lydia Street, Crystal Way--the names of the developer's wife and daughters. There were also echoes of the old farm--Hereford and Holstein Streets and Jersey Trail. The breeds of the animals that once had grazed the subdivided fields. Our cabin house was at the end of Angus Avenue. Which had the ring of happiness, I thought, pregnant. It had the feel of the address a family would refer to one day with nostalgia.

This pastoral setting soon turns strange, though, in a way that will resonate with any nursing mother who has felt a kinship with cows. Erdrich's brief story dramatizes what happens when we attempt to transform forces of nature into comforting nostalgic images: nature does not forget. It may take a while, but eventually, the cows will come home.

At $45 for a hardback beautiful enough to grace any civilized coffee table, Night Stories would make a great gift for the literary-and-artsy people in your life, but it's currently listed as "temporarily out of stock" at Amazon, and if you want something else by Linden Frederick, you'll have to fork over $1,827.93. (Plus shipping!) But you can view images of some of his paintings here, and who knows, maybe they'll inspire you to write your own story. Imagine the hearts that beat behind those dark walls and within those dimly lit landscapes. I know the people who live in these paintings--and so do you.