Lawrence Schimel has made his mark as a prolific author and anthologist in both the queer and fantasy genres. His 1997 short story collection, The Drag Queen of Elfland, showcased some of his own cross-genre work and earned him a spot on the shortlist for a Lambda Literary Award. (Elfland, incidentally, was a delightfully difficult book to miss in the local bookstore: the very memorable cover depicts a loincloth-clad, crystal wand-carrying muscle boy with bejewelled butterfly wings fluttering among dew-beaded flowers.) In this more recent and less eye-catchingly decorated anthology, Things Invisible to See, Schimel again combines his interests, producing a collection of LGBT-themed magic realism. In his introduction, Schimel acknowledges the difficulty in defining a term as broad as "magic realism". In the case of Things Invisible, however, it's fair to say that magic realism encompasses the broad generic territory between what we acknowledge as genre fantasy and "realistic" or "mainstream" fiction. In the realm of magic realism, everything might seem perfectly realistic, right up until Aunt Petunia discovers a miniature unicorn grazing on the carpet under the setee.
Eleven stories (by ten different authors) compose Things Invisible to See. They vary widely in both style and content. In Martha Soukup's postmodernist short, "The Story So Far", two women struggle--in a very literal sense--to be more than just scenery in the story of a man's life. In Schimel's own erotically-charged "The River of Time", a funerary urn begins behaving strangely, divulging secrets about its former occupant. Nancy Springer spins a bizarre yarn about enchanted tarot cards, drag kings, and Elvis in "Elvis Lives". Rand B. Lee's "The Pearl" takes us on an extended out-of-body tour of a recently-deceased hustler's life. In Sarah Schulman's Kafkaesque "Penis Story", a lesbian wakes up one day to discover she has a penis.
In "Angel Droppings", by Kerry Bashford, a man returns home from work to find an angel tangled in his clothes-line. Brian M. Thomsen's "Reunion" plots a unexpected course for the life and death of an Arthurian knight. In "Shayna Maidel" Laura Antoniou explores whether it's more difficult to come out as a lesbian, or as a vampire (or both!). A second piece by Martha Soukup, "Absent Friends" elaborates the near-death experiences of a man dying of AIDS, alone on Christmas Eve. The title of Lesléa Newman's "Still Life With Woman and Apple" best encapsulates this truly magically real short short story. Finally, in "The Vision of Men", Michelle Sagara West pits a man against his insecurities when it seems that the surest way to ruin his relationship is to supernaturally second-guess it.
Easily the strongest story in the collection is the opener, Soukup's "The Story So Far". An excerpt from the story's beginning illustrates Soukup's compelling narrative talent.
"We grew up in the same small town, in the same short story.
"A first glimpse of classroom. Blinds raised, a sunny day. Mrs. Zelinski appears, short, gray, plump, pulling down a map with a stick with a hook at the end. In another moment, she is wearing a plaid cotton dress, and it is ugly.
"I am sitting at a desk among two dozen other murky students, but I do not know who I am yet. I only know Mrs. Zelinski, talking about Argentina, which hooks down to a point at the bottom of the map, and Dennis."
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of the stories. There are highlights--the stories by Sagara West, Bashford, and Antoniou are quite good--but most of the stories in Things Invisible just don't hit home. They abound with schmaltzy sentimentality, leaving little potential for genuine emotional impact. Too many are patchworks of faded, threadbare LGBT cliches that crave permanent retirement. Many others, lacking solid characterization or even entertaining content, rely on gimmicky ideas that just can't carry a story.
Given his genre pedigree, I expected a better collection from Schimel. Still, I was happy to be turned onto Soukup. I'll be looking for more from her.