“Short Stories Are a Rifle”: A Review of Dead Objects with No Function by Nicholas Pendleton

 (Self-published, 2022). ISBN: 978-1-387-73383-5

A novel is a cannon, a short story is a rifle. —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition”

Short story writing is no easy task. I don’t want to overwhelm this review with quotes, but writing short stories is a bit like what Mark Twain famously said in a letter: “I apologize for such a long letter—I didn't have time to write a short one.” Unity of action—another contribution from Poe—is key. A singular focus, be it thematic, place-based, or on the psychology and actions of a single character, drives the narrative, giving it the power and precision of the rifle rather than the broad field of play of the cannon.

I have written 19 books, more than 20 plays, thousands of poems, and eight screenplays, yet I have only written four short stories. Those writers who made it their stock in trade—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, O Henry, Ambrose Bierce, and of course, Edgar Allan Poe—have my utter admiration. Many (many) of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century also staked their claim amongst the masters of the form.

Before I turn the attention of this review fully to Dead Objects with No Function, let me be up front, as I was several months ago when I reviewed this gifted author and artist’s reimagining of Greek mythology, More Argonauts. I am a longtime fan. His comic strip about two Moai on Easter Island, Monumental, is exclusive to my art and literary site, New Mystics. Pendleton illustrated the covers of two of my novels, as well as doing many additional illustrations for them. I am honored to have his art throughout my home.

Our long-time association does nothing to change the fact that Pendleton is a gifted short story writer, as this collection (spanning 25 years of effort) more than demonstrates. Some of the stories have been previously published and it was a joy for me to revisit them after so many years. Others appear for the first time in public.

What I enjoyed most about the provocatively titled Dead Objects with No Function is the wide array of styles, tones of voice, and lengths from story to story. The opening story, for instance, is a page and three quarters long. It could be characterized (no pun intended unless you want it to be) as a character study. After all, there is a character name in the title. Some are more than a dozen pages, and a few are twenty pages plus. For some of the stories, the title is simply Untitled.

Being a graphic artist, Pendleton also plays with typography to distinguish between the different types of stories in the collection. It may be the opening sentences of a paragraph all in caps and boldface, or a dozen sentences, each preceded by an em dash (—), devoid of punctuation and reminiscent of literary innovators James Joyce and Cormac McCarthy. There are also no page numbers nor a table of contents, so the collection functions almost as a portfolio rather than as a static, bound collection. Like Whitman with Leaves of Grass, Pendleton could easily remove or move stories in future editions, and only the most attuned and familiar with the collection would ever notice.

No matter the tone, style, length, or typesetting, this collection is bound together by a pair of crucial elements that are essential to consider when assessing the work of an author: Vision and Voice. The first, as I teach them, is how the author sees the world; the second is how they express that vision through their work. Pendleton’s Vision and Voice are a potent combination of deep life experience merged with hard-earned inner wisdom, a talent for the written word, and an outsized imagination.

“Rediscovered Country” is one of the stories birthed from Pendleton’s outsized imagination, wedded to his understanding of and facility with describing cutting-edge technological realities. There is also a “story” that is a catalog of imagined robots with provocative names. You can find this one by its first boldface/all caps section heading, YHWHWHY.

The mix of Meta and Micro in Dead Objects with No Function works like a multi-movement piece of music changing time signatures and keys in a series of stylistically diverse movements illuminating “the human condition.” Grouped under this heading, which is my own admittedly imprecise but workable device, some of the Micro stories’ characters just might make you cry at their tenderness, while others will make you cringe and curse at their callousness. The stories of Outsiders—and they are legion—are especially apt to take you back to the very worst of Middle School. At 27 pages, “Money Well Spent” offers an encapsulation of what I mean. For pure, unadulterated heartbreak, try “Unfinished Wedding Video”—the title alone could qualify as one of those micro-stories like (maybe, possibly) Hemingway’s “For sale, baby’s shoes, never worn.” The final story in the collection, “White Armageddon,” is perhaps the most beautiful of all.

My favorite story in the collection (which I first had the pleasure of reading more than 20 years ago) is “What Trees Have Done.” If you want to experience the totality of Pendleton’s talents, engage with this one first. It demonstrates masterful character work, coupled with a nature-based magical realism and a very strong voice from the author.

Echoing Pendleton’s revisionist Greek mythology project is “Music in the Blood, by One Grimm Brother,” which is a hip, modern, and disturbing retelling of The Bremen Town Musicians. For music lovers, this story had me thinking about the 27 Club, Dylan, Bowie, Eddie Van Halen, and even the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother Where Art Thou? There is also “Ascension: A Folktale Retold” for those who are looking for more of these types of stories.

For a Robert E. Howard–esque adventure that I described in my margin notes as “like a slice of a novel,” try “The Experiment of Doctor Horvath.”

One of the quirkiest in the collection is “Interview with a Living Room Carpet, Part I,” while the most unusual, which is an offering of sparse text intermixed with various schematics and one of Pendleton’s illustrations, is “I Am Summer.”

On the final page, Pendleton gives us three words of instruction in large, block-letter typography: “Speak Me Aloud.”

It seems to me to be a reasonable enough request. So let us do so in payment for the hours of pleasure, pain, philosophy, and opportunity for self-reflection this far-ranging collection provides.