(Be)Longing in the Midwest: On Jackson Bliss' "Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments"

Jackson Bliss | Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments | Noemi Press | 2021 | 200 Pages

A common critique of experimental short fiction is that it may fail to balance its brainier, genre-bending tricks with true intuition and care for its characters and the reader. In an interview with The Millions, David Mitchell, author of the Booker-shortlisted and formally experimental Cloud Atlas, asserts that, as a reader of experimental fiction, he often feels “obliged to be the victim of a practical joke… as opposed to sort of being taught the rules of the game.” As readers we have become accustomed to certain “rules” of fiction–narrativity, continuity, plot–which help us feel some sense of control over a story which we can easily understand. Such is the case with the invisible, unobtrusive prose of writers like Bryan Washington or the straightforward narratives of realists like Hemingway and Carver. So when a writer like Jackson Bliss knuckleballs a book like Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments into the world, which seems to break so many of those so-called rules, that book can be met with quite a bit of scrutiny. Bliss takes up this challenge knowingly: to match technical genius and playful, teasing flare with enough meaning, enough care, to keep the reader invested.

In his interview with the LA Review of Books, Bliss states, “I think that’s one reason I don’t usually call my writing experimental but conceptual, because a lot of old school experimentalists–pardon the oxymoron–were white guys with brilliant minds and no editor in sight.” Like these white guys, Bliss, with a PhD, many years of teaching both in the US and abroad, and a multilingual vocabulary (words from at least four languages appear in the stories in this collection), has proven that he possesses a brilliant mind. But his stories are not “white guy” stories. These Counterfactual Love Stories are multiracial, biracial, hapa stories which convey, in their own conceptual or fragmented or tangled ways, the relationships of nonwhite people in and to the Midwest. The stories are experimental because this is the first time that many of these characters’ voices have been heard. They are complex because they are about both love and disdain for their own Midwestern setting, often at the same time. In “Secret Codes and Oppressive Histories,” for example, the protagonist expresses his love for Ann Arbor, a city which “looks airbrushed by a lush and bountiful acrylic mist.” However, a reader will notice bolded words throughout the story which combine to tell an alternate tale as palimpsest: that “He loves the idea of love…” This is just one example of how Bliss’ “conceptual” explorations aren’t merely clever, but add real depth; in this specific case, by cutting through the facade of a pleasant train ride to touch the longing, dissatisfied heart of the forlorn protagonist.

Other examples of form deepening the scope and scale of story abound. A fan favorite, “Sola’s Asterisk,” begins at an intersection in Chicago, but what proceeds from here are actually eight different stories, or destinies, eight alternate realities based on the main character Sola’s single choice. The story is a rumination on where Sola might end up, as Sola is “contemplating how different her whole life could have been if she’d made different decisions.” A less imaginative writer would simply narrate each decision, each different path, to the point where it becomes redundant, a retelling of the same story with a few altered facts. But Bliss’ rendering adds dimension to Sola with each new alternate reality. Each potential path reveals more of her character, the past she battles with and the future she must accept or change. Her character grows from the telling of each counterfactual story of her life. In parallel, the city itself becomes increasingly clear with its “notoriously schizophrenic” weather, its old men playing dominos in the park, the “bookstore that reeked of sawdust.”

Sola’s story is also an example of Bliss’ characters’ complicated relationships with the Midwest. Read interviews with Jackson Bliss and you will find that he has lived in Los Angeles for the last few years, in love with the big city, its coffee shops and warm weather. But he still clings to his roots in a Midwest where he struggled to define himself and his hapa identity. His characters struggle similarly with identity and place. They are “too light-skinned for people of color and too ethnic for white spaces,” or “Japanese and Brazilian, but my Japanese is fucking horrendous.” They are racially hyphenated, working to fully realize themselves while struggling to navigate a region that itself does not know what to do with them or their ancestry. It is no wonder then, with these tangled histories, that the world through which Bliss’ characters move renders as both beautiful and obscene. Ann Arbor is at once “wobbly houses near the tracks where rusty pick-up trucks, overturned recycling bins, and hand-me-down bikes have sunk into soggy grass lawns,” and the shore of the “lake that seemed to murmur forever in a series of run-on sentences like a book of broken mantras.” In each of Bliss’ landscapes, beauty clashes with disgust, mistrust, and longing for something else.

This relationship with the Midwest in every story is complicated, which means the stories themselves tend to be complicated too. But Jackson Bliss’ experimental love stories are experimental because they must be, because the lives of his mixed-race, marginalized characters are, for the most part, unheard, unsung. To the Midwest canon, Bliss has added not simply literature but a nuanced counterfactual history. One that, for many readers, may require more than a quick graze through its pages, but one that is ultimately rewarding for both those who want to learn about an experience not their own and those who themselves need to feel seen and known. This is where Bliss separates from those “experimental fiction writers” that David Mitchell scorns. Counterfactual Love Stories does not make a “victim” of the reader, but rather gives the reader new agency. Sure, each story challenges traditional modes of storytelling in ways which may lead to some discomfort, but that is only because the reader is becoming actively involved in the work, getting in on the jokes (yes, there are quite a bit of them). Between each story, a sort of choose-your-own-adventure guide allows the reader to decide their own trajectory through the book. This reader is not simply an audience. This reader is empowered. To put the book down or struggle forward, bearing with the writer as he opens these worlds, working through these complicated love stories in this complicated Midwest.