A collection of poetic flash fiction stories and musings that sometimes hit home and sometimes seem too quirky to know what they are supposed to be. I'm not a huge reader of poetry, so most of the "stories" that were poems in prose format didn't really work for me, but the more straight-forward flash fiction, especially the more surreal pieces, was very engaging. The span of Epstein's stories is vast, covering biblical mythology, Homerian legend, Kafkaesque nightmares, the Israeli situation, bookstores, angels, lovers, and many other topics. The imagination is there, for sure, but I may have been spoiled by "that other" Israeli flash fiction writer (yes, I mean Keret) and so can't help but find Epstein's work, technically great though it is, a little too literary to truly touch the soul. ( )

Alex Epstein is an Israeli who emigrated from Russia as a child, and who writes in Hebrew. He is known as a master of the miniature story and was the 2003 recipient of Israel’s Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature. blue has no south is a slim volume of 131 short-short stories, ranging in length from a few sentences to a few pages, with most just a paragraph or two.

Some of Epstein’s miniature creations are stories with glimpses of protagonists and plot. Others seem more accurately described as prose poems, being simply moments or thoughts, captured in a photograph of words. Epstein’s pieces address a diversity of subjects, with common themes including the myths of Odysseus, Penelope, Theseus and Sisyphus converted to modern settings, Kafka and Jung, time machines and time travel, chess, suicide and earth-bound angels with broken wings.

I picked this volume off the shelves at the library out of curiosity regarding the short-short story genre and ended up basically enjoying this quirky little book. Epstein clearly has a talent for creating a mental image that tells a story in just a few lines. Where his effort fell somewhat short for me, however, was in the failure of many of the stories to elicit an emotional connection, although several, such as “The Chase”, did leave me feeling disturbed. The following are a few examples from Epstein’s shorter pieces.

“A Wayward Text Message”

From time to time, even though all the batteries were supposed to be sent to another warehouse, a short tune bursts from one of the phones in the used cell phone warehouse. The sleepy guard locates the defiant device and erases another love message that will go unclaimed.

“The Crippled Angel”

The crippled angel sat in a wheelchair especially designed for winged creatures of his kind and chain-smoked. From his usual spot in the plaza in front of the museum he observed with concern those coming in. He tried to guess which of them intended to hang himself in one of the exhibition halls.

“Gloss”

Their love story ended many years ago. He still writes her name as a solution to crossword puzzle clues of suitable length. Two words: four letters and five letters. Once, at a bus stop, he thinks he recognizes her waiting for a bus across the street. His hand trembles when he takes his new book of crossword puzzles from his bag. He opens it to the first one and quickly finds a suitable clue. Even afterward, on the bus, the trembling in his hand does not stop. The tip of the pencil breaks against the bright paper.

“The Chase”

On one of the previous mornings, soaked to the bone, we saw a tall, stooping angel dragging his wings in the mud. From time to time he stopped, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and spitting to the side. We fired on him but he didn’t fall. Not one of us remembers exactly when this chase began (in the newspapers piling up in the roadhouses, it is written that this was already the tenth year). And also today, according to the clouds bursting with gray in the heavens, it’s about to rain. The tracker stops suddenly, pointing at the footprints on the ground. “Now,” he remarks in amazement, “now we are chasing after a blind man with a stick.” We pick up the pace.

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Translated from Hebrew by Becka Mara McKay

I can't decide if these are short stories, lyric essays, or poems. In any case, Epstein has compiled little moments of mystery and romance, history and humor, into this slim volume from Clockroot Books. There are no dramatic flares, and no heartbreaking losses. Instead, the situations and events he describes in these short pieces are simple, personal, and honest. There is emotion, but the quiet kind endured by quiet people, an emotion that reads far more realistic than some authors can describe effectively.

In "Memory Card":

"In the winter they buy a digital camera as a surprise for the grandchildren, but they don't know how to connect it to the computer they bought the year before....the old couple takes pictures of each other. In March the woman dies in her sleep. Her husband finds the instruction manual that came with the camera and reads about pixels, about digital zoom, and jpeg and avi files, and other strange, miraculous concepts. In May he finishes the instruction manual, and removes from the camera the 1-gigabyte memory card. He places it in his deceased wife's jewelry box and closes the lid." The picture he has created in so few words reveals the enthusiasm of this couple to share with their grandchildren, the shock of death, and the quiet picture of a man diligently trying to figure out how to save her face. That he doesn't wish to share this "memory card" illuminates how deep his feelings are. I could easily picture him in a chair, trying to decipher the jargon and afraid of messing something up and losing the photos forever. Epstein puts all that into a deceptively simple little paragraph.

In "Another Way Out", he tells another picturesque story.
"A king once imprisoned a poet in a cellar and demanded he find the most beautiful word in the world. This legend has infinite endings. In one, the poet dreamed he carved the word on the cellar's ceiling. When he awoke, he didn't remember it-only that it was written in the font now called FrankRuehl.* In another, the poet doesn't discover (even in a dream) a hint of the word. All he manages, completely by accident, is to invent the game of chess." It has a fairy tale quality, dungeon and all, but the revelation of finding the most complicated game, the game of kings, in a search for beauty, is somehow exactly right.

Alex Epstein breathes life into a variety of topics in this collection: cosmonauts, lost cell phones, dreams, and an escaped elephant heading to another zoo in search of lost love. They are quirky and youthful but lack the sarcasm and edginess that sometimes settles into modern verse. ( )