![\"Rupert](\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2021\/02\/32A16A8D-43E3-414B-8E5D-611959A84B19-200x300.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nWillow Springs Books, 2020<\/p>\n
Paperback, 180 pages, $21.95<\/p>\n
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If short story collections had singles, the chart-topper in Nickalus Rupert\u2019s debut collection,\u00a0Bosses of Light and Sound<\/em>, winner of the 2019 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, would be the deliciously irreverent \u201cAunt Job,\u201d which depicts an alternate reality in which coming-of-age rituals like bar mitzvahs and quincea\u00f1eras have been replaced with aunts initiating their teenage nephews into manhood with a hand job. As the father of the story explains to his appalled pubescent son: \u201cAunts have become a kind of sexual starter kit . . . It\u2019s the way of things.\u201d And yet Rupert\u2019s charm as a storyteller is that he\u2019s never satisfied with one idea (however perverse that idea may be!). Instead, Rupert\u2019s stories are jammed full of dazzling turns and inventive world-building. In this way, Rupert\u2019s stories resemble Donald Barthelme\u2019s self-described \u201cslumgullions\u201d\u2014the narrative equivalent of well-stirred and savory stews.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The title story serves as the perfect aperitif to whet the reader\u2019s appetite. In \u201cBosses of Light and Sound,\u201d a nostalgic movie projectionist takes the reader through a director\u2019s cut of his youthful pranks and lost love, recollecting summer nights spent editing and manipulating Hollywood films to the chagrin of unsuspecting moviegoers\u2014splicing Daniel Day Lewis into Finding Nemo<\/em>, inserting pirates into dystopian sci-fi films, etc.\u2014all while struggling to translate this mastery of light and sound to life outside the projectionist\u2019s booth. In \u201cHale in the Deep,\u201d a prolifically divorced protagonist, haunted by his innumerable marital failures, is lured by the promise of a late-night infomercial that offers him an array of sci-fi gadgetry to \u201cde-member\u201d all the painful and awkward gaffes of his past. In \u201cOh, Harmonious,\u201d a chain-smoking and exasperated Mother Nature descends to a local gymnasium to hold a press conference and announce her retirement. In \u201cThe Temptation of Saint Ravine,\u201d a fame-flirting recluse\u2014known for talking locals out of committing suicide in his plummet-friendly backyard\u2014strikes up a friendship with a troubled teen, all while a rogue mountain lion stalks the premises.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Frankly, it\u2019s Rupert\u2019s brain-candy sentences that are the real treat of this collection. The pages of Bosses of Light and Sound<\/em> resound with \u201ccombinatorial delight\u201d (to borrow a phrase from Nabokov). Rupert\u2019s language is adept at shifting tones and offering a double-barreled wallop. In the flash piece titled \u201cIf the River Drops,\u201d the fatal rocks of a whitewater rafting resort are imbued with dental-mythic registers: \u201cmolars from the mouths of giants.\u201d In a nostalgic ghost story titled \u201cDeadman\u2019s Island,\u201d the sunset is staged as \u201ca flashlight aimed through pink Jell-O.\u201d It\u2019s hard not to think of the linguistic felicity of a writer like Jim Shephard while reading through Rupert\u2019s collection: both share a knack for defibrillating the world with a charged turn of phrase.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Throughout Bosses of Light and Sound<\/em>, Rupert dramatizes the friction of hope rubbing against the bristles of reality. Underneath the comic and off-kilter veneer of many of these stories is the aching of lost souls and foreclosed hearts. As the disillusioned protagonist of the story \u201cJewels of Mt. Stanley\u201d claims, \u201cHell of a thing, belief. Like spraying yourself with OFF! before entering sharky waters.\u201d And yet, the prospect of certain doom never quite prevents Rupert\u2019s characters from cannonballing into the ocean of belief, aspiring in spite of expiring.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There\u2019s an admirable messiness to Rupert\u2019s stories\u2014characters botch epiphanies, flirt with gravity, taunt passersby to pelt them with tomatoes, and unleash their inner spirit animal (in this case, a howler monkey) to mixed avail. Each story encourages a redrawing of simple maps, a recharting of the twined territories of yearning and despair. In the world of Bosses of Light and Sound<\/em>, relationships might end, but there\u2019s always the possibility \u201cthe universe might cobble together a second chance\u2014a redo\u201d\u2014to quote the story \u201cBonus Round.\u201d And perhaps that is the secret charm of Rupert\u2019s collection. The hearts in these stories are simultaneously spiking and flatlining, suspended in cardiac superposition. The closer we look through Rupert\u2019s narrative microscope, the fuzzier and more fascinating our lives become.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rupert dramatizes the friction of hope rubbing against the bristles of reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6144,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[6,347,1781,1782,1783],"class_list":["post-6142","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-book-review","tag-bosses-of-light-and-sound","tag-nickalus-rupert","tag-willow-springs-press"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n