The Human Case
by David Barringer
Brainpan Publishing

There's something simultaneously reassuring and unnerving about seeing the words of an Internet writer turn up on old-fashioned paper and ink. It gives permanance and impact to a previously tenuous presence; the paper and binding say: "Hey — I'll be around until I get lost, burn down or fall apart. I'm no longer a ghost running around on a server." At the same time, it's a lateral and forward step — the writer is consciously moving away from his or her online incubator.

Including "The Human Case," David Barringer has written two collections of short stories, but he's primarily a creature of the Internet. He's on Haypenny. He's on Sweet Fancy Moses. He's on Dezmin. And he's right here on Flak. His online output swarms like a gang of aphids, making his print incarnation seem both denser and smaller by comparison. A cubic centimeter of lead instead of a room full of helium.

To call Barringer a writer's writer understates what he accomplishes in "The Human Case," but gets at some of his appeal. With throbbing, palpable effort, Barringer shifts and confounds his own style with almost every turn of the page. "The Light" takes a paragraph and rewrites it seven times, tweaking, updating and using near-synonyms and little twists of the text to make it creep forward in a jagged blur. "Belongings" tells the story of a man with a series of tiny, first-person vignettes from the perspective of his personal accessories. "Today" is a guy losing, over and over and over again — losing the lottery, instant win sweepstakes, radio call-in shows and a dozen other elusive opportunities. Barringer's stories are laser-focused and intense; they rub all the nuances out of a tiny little spot of ground and once they've burned themselves into your head, they're gone.

Barringer's fiction doesn't wallow in dialogue and it doesn't take many tangents. It doesn't blend together into a gray, familiar blanket of themes or a single acidic brand of wit. It moves a lot faster than that. And while it lacks the swaddling, transportive energy that a more self-indulgent and laid back piece of writing might boast, it's never dull. Take all 74 words of "Work," for example:

To work was to alter his environment and, indirectly, himself. To create was to leave a record of where he'd been. He made new dead things so he could grow, rather than merely move, through time. He scraped at the edges of the mortal cage to memorialize in little dead things his long dying. He was lucky. He thought he knew the trick to making his long dying feel like living to him.

If only all writers could be as succinct when describing their craft.

"The Human Case" has a lot of bright little moments, but the best, perhaps, is a story called "The Fight." It's noun after noun, puncuated by all caps, rushing headlong into the bloody struggle of championship bout:

The stratgies. The dirty tricks. The feints. The false leads. The commercial breaks. The peripheral vision. The head bump. The hug.
WARMUP.
The when to fight. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Now.
DOWN THE HALL AND THROUGH THE CROWD.
Stadium. Ring. Stage lights. Agents. Managers. Money. New rules, old tricks. They say it's fighting like you never seen it. Feels like fighting like we always fight it. New costumes. New sponsors. Better microphones, bigger speakers. No refs. Live, pay-per-view, cable, wireless, theme songs, family rooms, remote controls, barrooms, ringside, hot dogs, evening gowns, highrises, pork rinds, beer bottles. Don't matter. The backdrop. The pageantry. The show. It's the same drag of bone, same rip of muscle. Same bullet-to-head drop to the dance floor, counting down, all over but the commentary.
RINGSIDE.
ENTER THE RING.

It goes on for another two pages, and by the time you're through, you're ready to smash your fists into the wall. It's a surprisingly good feeling.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)