Coup de Foudre

March 16, 2015
This collection from Kalfus (Equilateral), containing one novella and 15 short stories, overflows with ideas and oddities that mostly succeed. In “Square Paul-Painlevé,” a young man, in deep contemplation, begins to suspect that a park bench possesses an unusual gravitational pull. “The Moment They Were Waiting For” finds the residents of a town suddenly cognizant of the dates they will die, all thanks to a curse uttered by a death-row inmate at his execution. Not all of Kalfus’s narratives hinge on the fantastic, however. The title novella, about the fall of a misogynistic French finance bigwig, echoes the real-life trials of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Similarly, stories such as “Mr. Iraq”—in which a political journalist, on record supporting the invasion of Iraq, attempts to subdue a Washington, D.C. antiwar rally in 2005—and “Laser”—in which a man has laser surgery to curb deterioration from glaucoma in his eye, only to find his vision failing soon thereafter—plant firm roots in situations real and vivid. Still, with so many concepts on display, certain stories fail to thrive. The alphabetized wordplay of “‘City of Spies’” feels more like an exercise than a story, and “Gemini,” though clever in construction—a man recounts the day he lost his job without revealing why—resolves with little satisfaction.

March 15, 2015
A gathering of new stories by Kalfus (Equilateral, 2013, etc.), drawing on his long-established interests in history, science, and at least a few of the seven mortal sins. A self-satisfied French financier "in the service of the public" luxuriates in the oversized bathroom of an oversized deluxe hotel in New York, reflecting on a pattern of sexual behavior that has landed him in the newspapers and in court-and on the legal and political radar of his home country as well, since "Sarkozy is another Nixon" keen to put evidence about his enemies, however gathered, to bad use. If the reader connects with a certain legal case much in the news of late involving a French financial wizard and an African hotel housekeeper, then it's certainly no accident; the value Kalfus adds, so to speak, often involves illuminating certain prurient details ("With her eyes closed and her skirt pulled up, she was intently fingering herself") while examining the psychology of a man who blends an unhealthy dose of paranoia with a host of very real enemies. Whether those enemies are deserved or not is for the reader to judge, but Kalfus' titular novella, detached and sometimes stilted, won't do much to engage his or her moral compass, well-written though it is. The shorter stories tend to be less fraught than all that; one is a seemingly tossed-off vignette about a spell in the hygienist's chair ("Given the long, bloody history of my gingivitis, I go in for a periodontal cleaning every three months"), another an obligatory homage to Borges, still others less obvious nods to Borges, some quite effective, as when Kalfus imagines the possibilities of resurrecting a language "that is not spoken by more than one other living person." In one of the best pieces, human law meets quantum physics; in one of the least successful, a would-be writer laments how hard it is to be a would-be writer. A mixed bag: not as satisfying as Kalfus' recent novels, though technically accomplished and often with great insight into the curious ways of people.