Short Story Review: Rhonda Discovers Art, by Katherine Dunn

Rhonda Discovers Art
by Katherine Dunn

Katherine Dunn is most famously the author of Geek Love, which, like a great many popular books, I have not read. I do know that when I was on the Internet dating circuit, it was one of the most popular 'favorite books' among the single ladies, along with anything by Barbara Kingsolver, whom I have also not read. Having read its description, and having a few unfortunate first dates with her fans, Geek Love became something of a warning sign to me. It's about circus freaks who willfully take poisons that breed more circus freaks, and about the family they create, and the chaos they bring to the 'norm's who come to visit them.

"Rhonda Discovers Art," the new short story by Katherine Dunn, is in the latest issue of The Paris Review. Interestingly, it's her first published piece of fiction since the release of Geek Love, over 20 years ago. Since then she's been laboring on a novel called "Cut Man," and writing web pieces, often without pay, about the Oregon boxing scene. A collection of her boxing writing was recently released by tiny independent publisher Shaffner Press.

"Rhonda Discovers Art" is excerpted from her forthcoming novel, and it's told in two parts, the first of which takes place in Rhonda's childhood, and concerns the accidental death of her brother at the hands of a neighborhood bully, who also meets his fate at Rhonda's hands. The second half, years later, never mentions this first half. It follows Rhonda's emerging obsession with a performance artist whose outrageous pieces include sticking his head in urinals at the ballpark, and slaughtering trained pigs onstage. When his latest performance is to sit in a full bathtub with several household appliances, a giant lever near the crowd set to supply power, Rhonda's interest/love is more than piqued: the end is, well, should I say shocking?

I read this story with a distantly morbid eye, always just a bit dis-engaged, always wondering what might happen next, a slightly guilty grin on my face. I could not commit to fully liking this story, or really approving of it, but I doubt I'll ever forget it. I felt almost as if I were reading a Roald Dahl story, one where character was secondary to the morbidity of the events and the author's own cleverness, where the distant narration holds you back and above the action. Wicked good fun is the phrase, I think, and it applies just as well to Katherine Dunn.

Reviews of "Geek Love," and book-group guides, always talk about 'definition of family' and 'questioning the concept of other' or the 'relation between appearance and power' when they talk about Geek Love. I find it interesting no one does that for Dahl. They just read him and have fun, reveling in morbidity with no attempts to be socially redeeming, and I'm all for that. Fun is fun, I want to say to all the book club groups looking to justify getting their freak-gawk on. Enjoy what you like, and don't sugar-coat it with English major rhetoric.

As an aside, I'm curious to know what Katherine Dunn thinks of her work being fodder for book groups, complete with pre-digested study questions. Isn't that sort of group-think exactly the kind of conformity Geek Love was written to satirize? Unfortunately, her contact information is non-existent. So if you read this, Katherine Dunn - if you ever get to the Internet (she seems to be kind of a luddite, with a man to type her manuscripts, and no personal website or Blog or anything, God bless her soul) - feel free to let me know. Your comments will remain off the record, I promise.