The story “E531529-7a” is representative of the collection: the narrator notices a man on the street, shouting in an unrecognizable but oddly familiar language, and pointing to his (the narrator’s) apartment, where two gentlemen are tossing objects such as lamps and end tables into the ceiling; they disappear in its milky whiteness with a splashing sound. Several paragraphs later, after a white burst of light, the men disappear, leaving the apartment empty.
Who were they? Why were they throwing things into the ceiling? What was the point of the story? Readers who are apt to ask such questions will not care for Laredo, because the collection leaves most questions unanswered and even unasked. But the whimsical, imaginative reader will find many of these stories unique little port windows on dreamscapes, small roadside attractions that usually do not progress anywhere but in a circle, slowly looking about in wonder: the date whose hair grows over night until it covers half the room; the father who turns into a fish; the inexplicable fight between cops raiding the neighbors house and a troupe of clowns; the girlfriend who climbs out of the window and shimmies down the drainspout naked in the middle of the night, then crosses the street to enter a church.
In spite of the pervading irrationality, the stories have a uniting feature—Rauch’s lonely, sensitive, always-present narrator, who visualizes and records without judging (or, if judging, it is in the failures of his own life). The best stories seem to be those that are most effortlessly lyrical, recalling a surrealistic Ray Bradbury. From “as I tumble softly through the sky”:
I found myself in an old rowboat floating through the sky. I have no idea how I got here like this. I mean, how do you explain or interpret the unexplainable? I’m just here, in this soft floating dream machine.The sky is an endless rolling expanse of cotton, streams of puffy clouds, waving strands, baby blue breeze and fresh air.
I see another old rowboat approaching through the strands of wiggling smoky mist. A man is sitting in it. He is wearing a brown suit and a tie.
Like the border town it’s named after, Laredo is half in this world and half Elsewhere. It is best read over a period of days or weeks, in the brief moments just after waking, when the mind is open and receiving, and the night’s dreams are still half-remembered.
- Joel Van Valin