The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Fear of Blue Skies by Richard Burgin
Irving Malin

Richard Burgin. Fear of Blue Skies. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997. 184 pp. $19.95.

Richard Burgin is the editor of Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer and Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the editor of Boulevard magazine. These admirable collections helped me greatly by pointing the way to his fictional interest in occult patterns, in odd passions that transform routine perceptions into “fears of blue skies” and force his unbalanced narrators to be trapped in labyrinthine narrations.
The opening sentences of “My Black Rachmaninoff,” the first story in this brilliant collection, set the tone for the entire book: “Sooner or later if you stay in a place long enough something odd begins to happen to it. The walls or ceilings start to contort and parts of them may begin to look like tree branches in the wind or fingers trying to caress you.” Burgin uses a plain style, strengthening the tone of uncertainty. The familiar becomes strange. The female narrator of the story begins to hear a piano. She creates an elaborate narrative—involving racial and sexual “notes”—to explain the phenomenon. She is wrong but even at the end of the story, she does not admit defeat. The last line refuses to close the matter: “maybe the concert was really the first thought of my new life or at least the first one that made sense.”
All of these stories are “detective” stories, but the “detective” is often the “criminal.” Thus Burgin suggests the metamorphosis of roles, thoughts, genders. The title of one of the stories captures his uncanny art: these stories are “Ghost Parks.” [Irving Malin]


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction Fear of Blue Skies by Richard Burgin Irving Malin Richard Burgin. Fear of Blue Skies. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997. 184 pp. $19.95. Richard Burgin is the editor of Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer and Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the editor of Boulevard magazine. These admirable collections helped me greatly by pointing the way to his fictional interest in occult patterns, in odd passions that transform routine perceptions into “fears of blue skies” and force his unbalanced narrators to be trapped in labyrinthine narrations. The opening sentences of “My Black Rachmaninoff,” the first story in this brilliant collection, set the tone for the entire book: “Sooner or later if you stay in a place long enough something odd begins to happen to it. The walls or ceilings start to contort and parts of them may begin to look like tree branches in the wind or fingers trying to caress you.” Burgin uses a plain style, strengthening the tone of uncertainty. The familiar becomes strange. The female narrator of the story begins to hear a piano. She creates an elaborate narrative—involving racial and sexual “notes”—to explain the phenomenon. She is wrong but even at the end of the story, she does not admit defeat. The last line refuses to close the matter: “maybe the concert was really the first thought of my new life or at least the first one that made sense.” All of these stories are “detective” stories, but the “detective” is often the “criminal.” Thus Burgin suggests the metamorphosis of roles, thoughts, genders. The title of one of the stories captures his uncanny art: these stories are “Ghost Parks.” [Irving Malin]

Search the full text of our books: