Jedediah Smith

Details:
Publisher‏: ‎ Mount Diablo Books
Publication date: ‎ January 23, 2025
Language: ‎ English
File size: ‎ 2.9 MB
Print length: ‎ 111 pages

Working in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, John Lennon, and Jorge Luis Borges, Jedediah Smith uses surrealism and the absurd to travel easily between Homeric battle fields and Universal monster sets, quantum physics and the Fortean paranormal, archetypal mythology and modern pop culture. As the author puts it himself in “Carnival Road,” the a story about an unpaved lane that is in some inexplicable way hallucinogenic, each parable “creates its own logic that is neither symbol nor allegory but an insistence upon a world of its own making, where images connect in ways that cannot be explained, only experienced.”

From Esau’s Fables:

Triton’s Trumpet

A man’s wife mailed his daughter a box of seashells from the ocean. Cupping them to her ears, she loved to hear the waves crashing and roaring, each in its own pitch, loving best that of a Triton’s Trumpet, bigger than both her hands together, gripped around it intently.

That night she took it to bed with her. Hours later her father was awakened by her crying. In the girl’s room he sat on the side of her bed and told her, There was a girl crying. Her head ached with sound, and when I cupped her mouth to my ear, I could hear waves. Did you see her? She was here, I’m sure of it.

The next night, the girl closed Triton’s Trumpet in her dresser drawer. Hours later her father was awakened by the house creaking as it tipped like a ship. In the girl’s room he sat on the side of her bed and said, There was a girl choking. She lay on her back while saltwater sputtered and plumed from her mouth as if she were a beached whale returned too late to the sea. Did you see her? She was floating still on the water’s surface.

The next night, the girl smashed the Triton’s Trumpet into small fragments. Hours later her father was awakened by the sharp scent of rust on the water. In the girl’s room, he sat on the side of her bed and said, There was a girl being razed. Sharks swirled through the currents of water and air, whipping their heads from side to side in a frenzy of teeth shivering her into fragments. Her eyes met mine while it continued, and there was disbelief. You believe me, don’t you?

In the morning, he placed all the fragments of his daughter he could find into a box lined with crumpled papers and mailed them back to her mother in the ocean.