Review- HYMNS TO MILLIONAIRES

Posted on March 7th, 2010

Hymns to Millionaires

Stories by Soren A. Gauger

Twisted Spoon Press, October 2004

ISBN: 8086264181

Paperback: 180pp; $13.50

Here are two predictions about your reactions when you read Soren Gauger’s first collection of short stories. First, you will not be surprised when you notice that Gauger’s collection is like most any other collection of short stories by an author: the book is a mixed bag of uneven quality—several of the stories are really quite good (and unforgettable for all the right reasons), most of the stories are at least tolerable reading experiences, but some of the stories are nearly unreadable (and unforgettable for all the wrong reasons). Second, you will be unable to avoid making obvious comparisons: Gauger’s stories seem to be strongly affected by or unconsciously derivative of styles already perfected by Kafka and Borges; still, notwithstanding what the critic Harold Bloom would call the “anxiety of influence,” Gauger—a Canadian now living and writing in Poland—occasionally breaks away from or improves upon the influence of his antecedents and achieves some interesting and nearly original results.

When you read Gauger’s stories, what will you encounter? Well, you will meet a psychoanalyst who loses himself among madmen and ultimately succumbs to paranoia and animal savagery; you will journey to an academic conference that becomes a gothic odyssey of enchantment; you will watch as an aristocrat’s empire of domination and pleasure deteriorates into chaos; and you will eavesdrop as a doctor ponders a patient’s Escher-like disclosure of images, memory, and an adversary’s death. You will also follow along with a waiter whose loss of a bowtie becomes a problem of religious significance; you will read along with a man whose own reading becomes a disorienting psychic excursion; you will watch as death approaches a man from unexpected experiences (or perhaps merely in the mail); and you will look into the architectural history of a palace but instead begin to sense the impossibility of writing (and reading).

So, now you have preview of the ostensible wizardry behind the curtain in Gauger’s book. Finally, though, a warning to readers should appear on the book’s cover: “Soren Gauger’s eleven short stories are so disorienting that this book should never be attempted in a single sitting. Take your time. Be patient. Read one story. Then—assuming you have gotten by the unreadable tales first—go on to read the others one-at-a-time.”

Tags: Academic Conference, Antecedents, Anxiety Of Influence, Aristocrat, Bowtie, Critic Harold Bloom, Escher, Gauger, Harold Bloom, Histor, Kafka, Madmen, Mail, Psychoanalyst, Reading Experiences, Religious Significance, Savagery, Soren, Uneven Quality, Unexpected Experiences
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