Reviewed by Princess Gonzales
What Could be Saved:
Bookmatched Novellas & Stories
by Gregory Spatz
Tupelo Press
June 2019, Paperback, 234 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1946482174
It’s daunting, intimidating when you’re a kid opening a violin case for the first time. At first, you’re impressed with the construction and the artistry behind it. At this point in your life, there aren’t words in your vocabulary to describe its beauty as well as this tension (especially for the untalented) to master it and all its perfect flaws and complexities, Gregory Spatz’s What Could Be Saved: Bookmatched Novellas and Stories is akin is that experience. It’s dense with vernacular a violinist or luthier are familiar with. From a shallow perspective, parts of stories that are heavy with violin construction or personal recollections of a violin’s acoustics can be niche, where at times as a non-violinist (I was one of those kids whose parents made me learn piano) the prose describing violin anatomy and acoustic loses me, shakes me off the flow of the narrative. It’s just a small criticism as I am one of those average people who cannot tell between a Stradivari and a Guarneri, so take it with a small grain of salt because the deifying of violins as instruments for transcendence through varying perspectives of musicians, luthiers, sellers who contribute to the suffocating strive of joy and pain is beautiful.
Spatz does an incredible job overlapping themes through the four short stories. Each entry feels like it’s picking up a thread from the previous story and then using that same thread as a baseline or expanding further on it. It also adds to the re-readability of this collection as in “What Could Be Saved”, “We Unlovely, Unloved”, “The Five”, and “Time and Legends” there are whiffs of reoccurring characters or motifs. Henri Wieniaski is a name that pops up so often that you’ve become familiar with his genius. If you’re like me with no knowledge of famous or popular violinists, you’ve now become familiar with Wieniaski as it becomes a cool reference. There is a repeated motif of a character letting go or putting their passion for the violin away, time passes and then they return to the violin as if they needed a breather, a way to save themselves and experience the world before going back to it. For the characters in these stories, the violin is an obsession. It’ll always remain no matter how much these characters change. In “We Unlovely, Unloved” there is a wonder passage that conveys this:
“Though it would be years and years, more than forty, before you remembered long enough to find one of us, join the local community orchestra—school, life, law school or medical degree, work, family, insurance and mortgage payments, deaths, boats and cars and family trips, more deaths, tennis games, golf, a surgery or two, divorce, fake teeth, sunsets, boredom and finally, there it was again: the violin. Time to take up that old dream of playing the violin.”
This type of dormant passion is what I’d imagine for anyone who had to put an end to a well-loved hobby because of the interfering factors of life, so it remains in the closet buried underneath shoeboxes or left in a nondescriptive cardboard box in the garage catching dust. The physical entity may be hidden away while the non-tangible, romanticized idea of it remains within concealed by everyday worries and automated routines. Whatever it is, violin or not, it grows old alongside you, except the passion remains youthful and optimistic just like the days before you decided to let it go.
It must have been intentional to have “What Could be Saved” and “Time and Legends” bookend the collection as it could be a little reference to bookmatching when constructing a violin. The premise of the two narrators who are both sons of a renowned luthiers being familiar, only differing in the how these young men perceive their “inherited” trade. They contrast themselves through how cold and aloof Paul is towards the idea of following in his father’s trade. Guy on the other hand accepts it, though at times it seems he’s mocking the passionate nature of his grandfather and who runs the business side of their family trade. There are times when Guy tries to distance himself the violin by reminding himself, “It was just a violin…”. There are scenes in “Time and Legends” where Guy is building a violin, and he becomes engrossed in it. He becomes one with the violin when it’s being played where he can feel the player’s skin on his along with all the smells and sensations. By dismissing the violin as just an object of no importance, Guy is preventing himself from becoming a fanatic despite being halfway there. Paul of “What Could Be Saved” is similar in the same regard, where he also has a deflection mechanism whenever the slightest hint of his interest of taking up his father’s trade gets brought up in conversation. He’s always downplaying it, trying to hide it from his parents and others. Unlike Guy who is already working with his father at their store, Paul is currently in college and working on graduating. Guy has been taught about violin building and its history ever since he was young, making Guy quietly confident in his abilities, while Paul is the complete opposite. He’s aimless, unpassionate about his degree and is clearly running away from his father’s trade. This observation of himself I found very interesting and relatable as an aimless college student as well, “Just kind of regular, except for the deceit and failure and the lack of direction, occasional panic and everything else screwing himself up inside.” Because of his low opinion of himself that is explained in the story, Paul pulls away from the allure of the violin for most of his adolescent years. In these stories whether it’s intentional or not, these characters’ contrariness lead them through the same experience that lead their father (Paul) and grandfather (Guy) to become what they are. It’s strangely fated. It echoes back to the unknown female in “The Five” muses about fate, “The thing about fate, she realized—you might well see in the pattern or design emerging plain in day, yet you could never intervene.”
This short story collection is the type of read that requires multiple readings as you’ll find your own ideas change about the character motivations or see connections between the four entries. Even if you’re not a musician or one of those kids who were forced to take music lessons, this reverence for the violin is whimsical and interesting. There is something about hearing or speaking with someone who’s passionate about their hobby or subject, and how their faces light up in excitement to tell you all about it which this collection reminds me of. Regardless of their short length, Spatz has created magic from the joy and pain violinist, craftsmen, sellers, historians, quitters, and admirers suffer for their loved obsession.
About the reviewer: Princess Gonzales is an English undergraduate student from San Diego State University. Of course she loves reading, because if she didn’t why wouldn’t she be writing these reviews? An enjoyer of the weird and experimental—the ones where explaining the narrative to a friend makes them question your sanity—to the cozy and cliché, she hopes to one day to bring the same enjoyment to readers of her own work. For now she’s working to find her place in the small, yet varied world of the publishing industry.