In the Electric Eden: Stories by Nick Arvin

From the Publisher

From the electrocution of Topsy the Elephant at Coney Island in 1903 to the rekindling relationship of two high school sweethearts in a stolen SUV, each story in Nick Arvin's first collection reveals a world where people struggle against their own shortcomings as time and technology move inexorably forward. Arvin explores how technology shapes the way we interact with one another and how we experience a world governed by it.

Publishers Weekly

Machines, large and small-from an electric chair to a cell phone-are the inspiration for this cleverly conceived but uneven debut collection of 10 stories. Exploring the ways in which machines mediate human relationships, Arvin invests his stories' gadgets with heavy metaphorical significance. In "Electric Fence," the eponymous barrier serves as a symbol of alienation and greed, separating a woman from the woods she played in as a child. In "The Prototype," a man steals a new model SUV to impress an ex-girlfriend who likes trucks. The title story tells of the electrocution of Topsy, a man-killing elephant put to death at Coney Island in 1903, but is largely focused on the family of Topsy's final victim, a drunk who fed the elephant a lit cigarette, igniting the animal's rage. Here, as in many of the stories, Arvin paints his characters with broad strokes ("Fielding was a drinker, however, and when he drank his face became red"; "Despite Fielding's drinking binges, it was evident that Emma loved him very much"). In his strongest efforts, he links material objects and human emotions with a lighter touch. In the insightful and tender "Commemorating," a couple vacations on a beach in Florida that is stormed by marines in a routine but startling exercise. Shortly thereafter, the narrator's wife disappears. Ignorant of the abandonment, an ad man who was also on the beach annually sends the narrator commemorative junk-coffee mugs, T-shirts, bumper stickers-inadvertently marking the dissolution of his marriage. Arvin, a former engineer, strikes a rich cultural vein, but has yet to smoothly mesh machine lore and fluent storytelling. (Jan. 28) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Ten debut stories that draw most of their inspiration from the author’s background in engineering and then a stint working in product development for the Ford Motor Company. "But when he mentioned engineering, his old man was incredulous. He said in a mock-gentle tone, ‘But, Duke, how can you be an engineer when you’re always breaking things?’ " Engineering becomes the controlling metaphor here: if characters work together or fail to do so, it’s usually connected to the machines around them and to the thinking and history that brought them into being. The title story is a quasi-historical account of the lighting of Luna Park and the subsequent electrocution of an elephant named Topsy, while in "What They Teach you in Engineering School," the progress of engineering technology measures the educational distance between a father and son even as they both realize, after a sudden trauma, that they’re all either of them has. The final piece ("Aeronautics") is another history of early aeronauts, the warriors who made war three-dimensional, and made balloons weapons as surely as men or muskets are weapons. "Telescope" is a single sentence short-short that plays with the engineering of sentences; and when a prototype SUV breaks down in backwater Michigan ("The Prototype"), it’s a chance for a local mechanic to fool its fish-out-of-water engineers and possibly engineer for himself a lost love. While Arvin’s prose often centers on the inner workings of things on the near-mechanical level ("Instead he sat frozen and hyperaware of himself—of the noise of his breath, the twitch of his toes against his shoes, the clutch of the muscles in his chest"), the emotions are always real, enlivened by thecontext that gives them life and shape. One wonders why only one of these stories has been published before, and what’s likely to happen when this author shifts to a longer form that will allow his vision the breadth it really needs to develop and grow. Accomplished and promising.

What People Are Saying

Chris Offutt
The prose is direct, the wisdom is earned, and the stories very fine indeed.

Stewart O'Nan
Nick Arvin is dauntless as a craftsman and fearless in his pursuit of a good tale.

John Burnham Schwartz
...a wonderful, surprising, and - yes - illuminating debut.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents