Legend of a Suicide by David Vann is an astonishing debut. What he achieves in a handful of short stories and one centrepiece novella is create a narrative that cuts to the heart of the human experience. When I say narrative I don't mean a diachronic sequence of events based on the classical model of a story having a beginning, a middle and an end. I mean one that lays out a map of an emotional crisis and charts its icy Alaskan waters with the assurance of a new great American writer. Think the stripped-back monumentalism of Cormac McCarthy (read Vann on McCarthy’s influence here) vying with the unsettling psychological intensity of Richard Yates.
The opening story ‘Ichthyology’ (which I was lucky enough to see Vann read live toward the end of last year) is a masterpiece of distillation, filtering the trauma of the death of Vann’s own father and refining it into a story that haunted me with the images of a man standing aboard the deck of his carcass-strewn fishing boat deck and calmly blowing his brains out, and the eyeless fish that perpetually swims blindly into the sides of its tank.
‘Sukkwan Island’ is the novella which provides the fulcrum of the book. A boy and his father embark on a misguided trip disguised as adventure to sustain themselves in a shack on a remote island. His father is all show, acting the man but weeping at night, haunted by infidelity and teetering on the chasm of depression. This dark night of the soul explodes in the middle of the deepening sadness: Vann pulls off a gear change and perspective shift which is breathtaking in its audacity. Frankly, I found it hard to recover from that passage just as I marvelled at Vann’s technical ability.
Yes, I think Vann is a very special writer indeed. The book fulfils the promise of its title. Many authors play with the archetype of myths but few successfully forge their own legend – an enduring composition that transports itself in the telling to a higher significance – but Vann has done just that.
As full of admiration for David Vann that I am, I am dismayed by the reciprocal endorsement between him and Florence of Florence and the Machine. She blurbed this book and he re-paid the favour by writing an essay for the acutely overrated Lungs album. Both were highly successful debuts in their fields last year but for me one comes from a startling new talent that feels as real as it gets, and the other is a Kate Bush wannabe. Steer clear of that Siren, David!
