If there's one thing we share collectively as human beings, it is the growth and maturity experienced through childhood and early adulthood. While everyone may have different experiences, childhood has certainly been the subject for countless writers throughout the ages. Whether it's James Joyce's Stephen Daedalus or Charles Schultz's Charlie Brown, artists have tried to make sense of their childhood while explaining essential parts of human experience.
In Down to a Sunless Sea, Mathias Freese delves into the darker aspects of childhood through 15 excellent stories. Freese's protagonists share dark secrets and tragic experiences, but by the end of each story, Freese leaves the reader with a sense of empathy for his young protagonists. They all deal with the things that plague young men in the 20th century (and beyond), such as shaving, making sense of friendship, parental abuse, and sexual desire, yet Freese's stories tackle these subjects head-on, giving each character depth and perspective beyond an idealistic view of childhood.
Freese allows his characters to speak for themselves, but uses his own experiences as a social worker to shape each character. In "I'll Make it, I Think," for example, the main character is a crippled young man who tries to make sense of his teenage life by naming his body parts, his new best friends: Ralph, his "bad hand," Lon, his other hand, and David, his penis. As he makes sense of his sexual desires, he wishes he could "go out with normal girls" but his webbed hands scare them away ("unless she's into frog"). According to the introduction, the character is based in part on Freese's crippled cousin. Freese doesn't just look at the young male's teenage years and leave it at that. Instead, Freese brings us into the young man's mind, showing us his pain and realization that he's different from others. Through physical frustration, Freese shows that the character has trouble dealing with his life and imagines taking "practice slashes" at his throat with his razor.
The characters in Down to a Sunless Sea are often coping with loss, and unavoidable pain, but somehow these characters show strength. "Herbie" is a story that deals with an abusive father's control over a son who still looks up to him. After Herbie's father shows him how to shine his shoes, Herbie and a friend hope to set up a shoe shine business, but his father won't have a son who shines shoes in the street. Herbie's situation (and his mixed feelings toward his father) is a scenario that Freese reveals without judgment; he shows how feelings toward loved ones are never cut and dried, especially in adolescence.
Freese's stories have similarities with Charles Bukowski in theme, and Raymond Carver in writing style. Instead of trying to make sense of a dark and lonely world, Freese (like Carver) shows us the world each character lives in and leaves it at that, allowing the reader to make sense of it all at face value. In this way, Freese's stories successfully make sense of otherwise senseless moments in childhood. At the same time, he shows there might be hope in the future; in "Alabaster," for example, a young boy meets an elderly Polish woman and her daughter who have moved to his neighborhood. He sees the seven digit tattoo on her arm, and sees that she is "numbered." Freese doesn't say whether or not the young boy knows he has met a holocaust survivor, but leaves open the possibility of hope in the child's future while suggesting the pain of the woman's past.
Of course, Down to a Sunless Sea isn't entirely heavy-handed and depressing (not that sad stories are depressing anyway). At times Freese's stories are quite humorous, as in "Arnold Schwarzenegger's Father Was a Nazi," where Freese has some fun with Schwarzenegger's past. And future, for that matter; the story reveals Schwarzenegger's attempts to re-make his upbringing to fit with his new-found fame and marriage into a heavily political family. Any story about Schwarzenegger in 2007 would be funny, but the story is especially interesting because it was written in 1991. Not only does it reflect a pre-"Governator" Arnold, but also an Arnold Schwarzenegger who hadn't yet graced the world with his god-awful comedies Jingle All the Way and Junior.
Overall, Down to a Sunless Sea is an excellent portrayal of the heartaches and troubles of childhood and adolescence. The short story has become one of the most important literary genres in modern history, and Freese's grasp of the genre is certainly up there with the best modern writers out there. With its important themes and literary allusions, Down to a Sunless Sea is well worth a read.
Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/12/31/175731.php
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