Slow Burn explores societal disconnect, loneliness through technology
Slow Burn (Safety Third Enterprises) by, local Atlantan, John Carroll was one of those collections that actually felt complete. There were clear threads throughout each story that allowed there to be connections and revelations in the reader’s mind moving from one story to the next.
The link between most of the stories in Carroll’s debut collection was primarily based on the disconnect and loneliness that technology has created in our relationships. And secondly, was the exploration of characters in their setting of Kentucky.
The title story, and many of the other stories in the collection such as Family Affair, was extremely reminiscent in form and tone as a lot of the works in Michael Jeffrey Lee’s collection Something In My Eye. A collection that also had an underlining importance set on place. Slow Burn adds to this circling motion of a story that Carroll began in the first in the collection Hellhole. The character shares only inner thoughts throughout the story, beginning with the detailed description of a brand of cigarettes, weaves through isolation that was fueled by childhood experiences and ends with the cigarette amongst a suicidal revelation.
The Phantom highlights Carroll’s main influence in this collection. A couple is having a non-conversation in their home which is described by classifying their “things” by brand and make. The focus is purely superficial. The reader is led to believe that the question left hanging in the air amongst the couple is one of precedence due to the wife’s reaction. But quickly learn otherwise. It is yet again proof that relations will fail amongst this realm of constant connection through other devices.
“With head in hands he heard the front door slam. Her keys were no longer on the mahogany kidney accent table that stood inside the living room. Pulling out his 64g black and slate iPhone 5 from his Stanton style shorts, he unlocked the screen and opened the Star Wars Unleashed app.”
One of the highlights of the collection that is explored in Kentucky is this idea of paranoia, which is isolating on its own, but the way these characters deal with it furthers that retreat from life. It begins with Hellhole. The character has returned to Kentucky to help his mother after his step-father dies in a freak accident that doesn’t seem to quite make sense. He lives in a crap apartment with thin walls and hears his upstairs neighbor hammering all night long. He eventually makes the move to confront him and finds out there is a strange connection between his step-father’s death and his neighbor’s insanity once he walks into the upstairs apartment. This same idea is visited again in Beyond The Pleasure. A couple gets divorced and the father eventually gets limited visitations with the son due to the strangeness in his apartment and the accusations leveled at the “Mother.” The relationship between “Mother” and son becomes intimate and the father commits suicide with a note that reintroduces the effects of planted seeds in the mind, or the body.
Even throughout these two stories of conspiracy theory and other worldly beings, there is still a clear line of lack of connection. The step father in Hellhole is talked about in a way that does not detail a close relationship or empathy.
“Also, Robert’s body scorched body was found clutching a machete. He probably looked like Skeletor.”
And in Beyond The Pleasure, after the father and son have seen a move chosen mindfully as a warning by the father, Independence Day, the son is unable to see what the father is forcefully attempting to convey.
“When the credits rolled, he asked if I had learned anything. To his disappointment,
my response was, “Yeah, dude. The Fresh Prince is a bad ass.”
Though the collection is filled with characters that are,although at times humorous, filled with a dark sadness based on this idea of disconnection from others. They are on a path of habit that only fuels the self quarantine through technology and seemingly are not able to even conceive of true connection and a happy ending of sorts. But then the reader hits the final story, Routine Fuck, and finally a character breaks the cycle, makes a choice, and finds a true counterpart outside of a cellphone.
“He checked the date from her last text message. It had only been three days, but it had felt like ten.”
It is the perfect final story for a collection of this kind. It proves that all it takes to break this mold of conforming to conversational techniques outside of the text message and busting out of your cell phone – and all the influences that your peers have on maintaining this limited access to others – is to just allow yourself to feel the fear and vulnerability of actual connection to another human being.
Carroll’s Slow Burn is a perfect contemporary read that digs into societal, relationship and familial issues that are ignited by this lack of reality. You will never look at your choices throughout the day the same, and will be better off for it.
