Emperor Of The Air by Ethan Canin, 1988
The magic trick:
A suspenseful plot as a throughline connecting multiple ideas and feelings
It’s a week of Ethan Canin stories from his excellent 1988 collection Emperor Of The Air. His writing isn’t maybe timeless, but it certainly isn’t traditionally 80s. His style and settings could be from anytime in the last 60 years.
We start with the title track. Some stories have two tracks running parallel. Some drop ideas at the start and call them back at the end. Some just tell their story straight through without much subtext or subversion at all.
“Emperor Of The Air” somehow manages to be all those things at once. It’s almost like a giant spiral. Like one of those DNA helix things spinning around. The themes keep blending into one another and coming back around. All the while, we get this extraordinarily entertaining plot, serving as a throughline, as we watch our suburban hero attempt to sneak into his neighbor’s backyard to right a wrong. It’s a great, great story.
And that’s quite at trick on Canin’s part.
The selection:
Last week he stood on my porch with the chain saw in his hands.
“I’ve got young elms,” he said. “I can’t let them be infested.”
“My tree is over two hundred years old.”
“It’s a shame,” he said, showing me the saw, “but I’ll be frank. I just wanted you to know I could have it cut down as soon as you gave the word.”
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