Tell Me What You See
Terena Elizabeth Bell
Whiskey Tit, 2022

C

onversations about literary genres often unravel into fussy taxonomies. (“Will you read my historical-literary romance with elements of steampunk slipstream? Please?”) On the other hand, a couple of thousand years ago, the author of Ecclesiastes observed, “Of making many books there is no end.” It’s hard to improve on that observation.

But there is one distinction that, if not of practical utility for professors or marketing departments, strikes me each time I pick up a book. It’s the following: some writers, aware of the expectations associated with their genre (or their supposed brand), try to ingratiate themselves with their readers. Other writers, in contrast, challenge their readers, and do not shy away from confrontation.

Terena Elizabeth Bell belongs to the latter category. Her collection of ten stories, Tell Me What You See, announces as much in its title. Although this imperative phrase applies explicitly to one of the stories, it could be extended to the book as a whole, serving as both an invitation and a warning to the reader. This fiction is not for passive consumption.

There are, of course, risks to this kind of writing. If the first category I mentioned exposes itself to problems of conformity or complacency, this second mode can sometimes slip into an aloof, wannabe avant-garde pose. What does the challenge bring to the table? I ask myself. What are the rewards? To put it bluntly, as a reader: what’s in it for me?

Fortunately, Tell Me What You See offers plenty. For all its formal fireworks, typographical effects and play of text and image, variety of genre (biblical narrative, contemporary American politics and sci-fi set in the 22nd century, to name a few examples)—above all, a taste for estrangement that is nothing if not insistent—is also interested in exploring human emotions, and its ambiguities are in the service of larger ideas, not cute puzzles.

The first story, “Welcome, Friend,” effectively conjures up horror in an abandoned apartment; “Privacy Station,” set on a futuristic botanical research station orbiting the earth, is a tale imbued with tenderness; “Regression,” an erasure story about Alzheimer’s disease, is a marvel of condensed prose. Usually I find erasures, at best, an interesting exercise, and all too often, merely an exercise—but here Bell marries form and subject and creates something truly artful and harrowing.

I struggled with the typographical experiments of “The Fifth Fear” but it is an ambitious story whose challenges are not gratuitous. A later story, “I go to prepare a place for you” is a moving piece of flash fiction that, like “Regression,” depicts human vulnerability and packs a visceral punch.

The longest piece, “#CoronaLife,” takes up at least a third of the volume. I admit that I didn’t relish the prospect of yet another Covid story. Enough time has passed that it’s now possible to speak of a “Covid genre” that emerged out of the 2020 pandemic and its aftermath, dramatizing the disruption and fear of that era. What seemed urgent back then is now cursed with a certain familiarity; there is a flattening sameness to many stories and essays on this topic.

To my relief, “#CoronaLife” is an exception. Structured as a collection of text messages, emails and tweets, along with still images, it captures the radical disconnect of the time. One could even read it against the grain as not having to be about Covid-19 at all—it’s about human behavior when the façade of norms crumbles.

The concluding story, “Tell Me What You See,” also addresses recent history, in this case the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C. And again, this highly reported event is imaginatively reconstructed and renewed, this time in the form of a little girl’s eye test. As I type these words, the story feels not only like a retelling, but also like an uncomfortably prescient anticipation of what is happening now, in the same setting.

Formally inventive and politically engaged, Tell Me What You See is impossible to pigeonhole. It is the work of an adventurous writer, and will reward the reader who accepts its invitation.