Millie Oliver
Book Review
A review of Diane Josefewicz’s Guardians and Saints (Cornerstone Press). Purchase the collection directly from the publisher here.
In her latest book, Diane Josefewicz collates eleven stories that – while existing on separate plains – weave amongst each other with a dedicated tone that bonds them as a collection. Created over the course of twenty years, the pieces appear as if written in one sitting, possessing a unifying voice of authoritative omniscience — that of Josefowicz herself. Having spent much of her time among institutions while crafting these stories, whether that be a university’s hallowed halls or working in clinical settings, this concept of caretaking and, in turn, neglect, seep into the bones of the Guardians and Saints.
The earliest piece is Psoriasis Memoir, written twenty years ago and which finds itself situated in the middle of the book. It is within this work that the reader may discover the bedrock which anchors the eleven stories – the stylistic architecture of Josefowicz’s work.
‘The word, ‘psoriasis,’ comes from the Greek word for ‘itch.’
In the 1940s, a physician wrote that ‘psoriasis is a capricious disease that refuses to part with its innermost secrets.’
There is no cure for psoriasis. But of course, that is true of so many things.
From the nascent thought of the condition, Josefowicz evolves from the language and etymology which surround the word, grounding it into history and its psychological meaning. She then moves to the scientific study of psoriasis, the cold, clinical description of its physical effects on the body. Finally, she moves to a more meditative state – the spiritual meaning of a disease and its implication in a life beyond the body. It is here that the author rewards the reader for their interest, for their participation in the journey of a word.
Josefowicz introduces the foetal collection of her work – words that are yet to be written will follow this similar structure, floating between this axis of language. Perhaps if one were to alter a single vowel, the rest of the collection will begin to unravel itself. ‘There is no cure,’ becomes ‘there is no care,’ and so is born the crux of Guardians and Saints: children, the institutions which shape them and the shortcomings of those who were supposed to protect them.
Josefowicz exemplifies this paradox in her opening story The Dwindling, which she sets in a children’s home, run by the imperious Dr. Querque with the aid of the kindly cook, Lunette. The structure mimics memory, and more specifically, childlike memory with its concertinaed layers of recursive narration that folds into itself and threads its language through powerless observation. The character of Dr. Querque works to blur the line between protection and possession as he equivocates between his role as a father figure and enforcer of authority. To the reader, understanding is partial but acute, as Josefowicz uses a childlike sense of instability without the means to articulate it in comprehensible terms. Thus, the tale tumbles into existence with a dreamlike quality that unsettles ordinary, clinical scenes.
Yet one sees glimpses of lucidity, with the ‘private universe of home economics, of dead bulbs and decrepit electrical systems, leading her to muse that ‘the Home is a more reassuring place that I’d imagined, involving no witchcraft.’ It is in passages such as these that the anachronistic world of The Dwindling fits into place among the likes of Psoriasis Memoir, set in a fundamentally recognisable world, and one slips out of the childlike eyes to gain a sense of distance from the story. Before the moment has a chance to settle in the reader’s consciousness, however, they are pulled back into the haunting fracture of identity.
‘Let us review. Your name is?’
‘Muh,’ I stammer. ‘Muh-muh-muh.’
A human noise, dwindling. Querque smiles.
‘That’s the magic,’ he says, ‘of the right name. It calls you out. An in-voc-ay-tion.’
Josefowicz’s mastery of language turns the dialect into something palpable, reminding the reader of the childish vulnerability of the narrator at the hands of the cold doctor. A relationship structured by imbalance, the lack of name transforms the child into just ‘a human,’ a possession that lacks individuality through the loss of enunciation. In a recent conversation, Josefowicz described her relationship with the English lexicon as ‘impossible, not beautiful,’ and this paradoxical relationship with language washes itself through her story. Key emotional beats are often implied rather than stated, thereby forcing the reader into an interpretive position, or one of merely a witness.
Indeed, Josefowicz herself speaks multiple languages and perhaps this is where she learnt to craft prose that is both controlled and elastic – she allows it to move and fill the spaces between breaths whilst also withholding explanation. Years prior to beginning this collection, she spent time teaching English in a village outside Berlin in East Germany, which lay the foundations for a later story in the collection, Alberto: A Case History. Set in the fictional village of Bad Dürrenmatt, the story begins much like The Dwindling, with a vulnerable child crossing a threshold, this time to an asylum. Yet unlike the opening, we hear from the perspective of the adolescent Lunette, rather than Alberto himself. Set up as a case history, the clinical retelling of the bizarre, the reader gains a distance in perspective as one learns about the boy from the future. Still, Josefowicz is careful to hold close her incongruous nature of the uncanny within the ordinary. The setting is not entirely surreal, instead more a subtle distortion of reality that mirrors psychological unease, perhaps the same unease that comes with childhood, or adolescence – an uneasiness of searching for one’s independence and place amongst society. As for Lunette, she finds herself in a position of care for Alberto, a role which she is not equipped to undertake.
And the silence – so thorough was this demonic purge, even the sparrows had been murdered, one by one, each lying on the ground with its neck twisted.
Josefowicz offers aftereffects instead of the violence and loudness that has been enacted. The reader sees the absences in place of action and the silence where voices once were. In this moment of loss, and small, innocent bodies littering the ground, moments of modernity flutter on the edge of unreality. Mentions of ‘trains,’ and ‘podiatrists and dermatologists’ populate this once timeless town, its vague absurdity is plundered by dispassionate institutions and bureaucracy. As Lunette moves into adulthood, ‘helpless and angry,’ she does not release her memories and allows them to swirl and reintroduce themselves throughout the story, bringing Alberto – and her role as a substitute mother – into this new world.
Recurring characters are not unusual in Guardians and Saints, or indeed in any of Josefowicz’s work. The figure of Zinnia is the most notable one – either alone or with her sister Zenobia – who was the protagonist of the author’s recent novella, L’Air du Temps (1985). In an interview with Josefowicz, she noted how Zinnia works almost as an ‘alter ego’ for her own voice. She knows, when she is speaking as Zinnia, that she is using her own vernacular and the character, in effect, ties her to the world she writes about. As a writer that places such emphasis on language, it is important to find one’s own expression within the tonal dissonance of the collection. Zinnia stands alone as a lingering pillar of solitude within the narrative disarray. Even amongst such a wide range of characters, there is something unsettlingly precise about Josefowicz’s voice that speaks directly to the reader, singles them out, and embeds them in the experience she is writing.
Upon reading Guardians and Saints, one discovers the uncanny atmosphere of discomfort that accumulates significance rather than delivering a single linear narrative arc in plaintive tones. Josefowicz traces the afterlives of intimate wounds, with a dreamy, unsettling notion that winds its way through the stories, gathering them together in narrative string without ever tightening the knot into the bizarre, or the distant.
Guardians and Saints
Diane Josefowicz
Cornerstone
202pp
$23
Millie Oliver is the Publicist of Indirect Books.
L'Esprit Literary Review 