“Willow Pattern”
Jon Singer
Abstract and short. Almost entirely visual, in a non-visual format. Which is pretty impressive. And unlike a lot of the slipstream short shorts I’ve read, this one actually has something behind the pretty words, a meaning I can dig into. Singer shows me these four simple variations on an archetypal story, and wants me to see an entire culture, a march of generations, a breadth of individuality of minds that no single main character in your usual point A to point B narrative could convey. And best of all, he closes it with what may be the only really humble author commentary in the whole book. He calls attention to his flaws. He’s saying, this is the only way I know how to write, the only way I can write, and if you want to call me interstitial and pay me for it, thank you—but don’t go calling me the spearhead of some new movement. Or at least that’s how it reads to me.
