8/8/2019 Review- Steven Church

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8/8/2019 Review- Steven Church

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8/8/2019 Review- Steven Church

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In The Day after the Day After, Church takes a direct approach. Sort of.We still find him bouncing around between fantasy, history, and self, but the

 work is tied to a narrative arc and to place. The book assembles itself around

history, around family; it peers into holes and basements and “the legacy of 

apocalypse.” It’s about Kansas, about the strange juxtaposition of banality and

terror that Kansas holds for the American psyche, and for Church himself.

He writes, “But if Kansas is more metaphor, more state of mind, then we’re

all from there in some way.”

Church rewrites the stories of Oz, bringing the flying monkeys back to

haunt Kansas; and the TV docudrama The Day After, with the character

Danny Dahlberg, gives voice to Church’s younger self. We see the nuclear

holocaust played out against Dorothy’s drab prairie. We see the development

of a boy against the backdrop of a crumbling family. It’s a house of mirrors,

really. We get glimpses of Church, of his family, but I’m not sure that we are

ever fully privy to the full-length view. But I don’t think that it’s because

Church is dishonest with us, or even that he’s hiding. This is a memoir, and

it does tell the truth, but like any really good truth-teller, Church leaves us

 with more questions than answers.

Let’s put it this way, or rather, let’s let Church put it this way: “This is all

 we can do. Runaway trolleys rattle through our brains. We’re glutton-fish for

the stories. Tell us more. Tell us we’re good.”

 —Reviewed by Wendy Sumner Winter

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