Thank You For Your Sperm

A Review of Marcus Speh's New Collection

If there is a table at which the best writers of flash fiction should be seated, Marcus Speh deserves a chair – with his name on it. 

In four short years Speh has gone from obscure internet ego Finnegan Flaunt to nearly a household name, at least among the three thousand or so writers competing for that tight little club listed on Duotrope, championed by small presses, and swirling in constant motion among the blogs and posts and coffee house readings we find out there these days.

It’s an exciting time, a world without agents, where anyone with the will and imagination can start a literary magazine. That said, the truth will out, it always does, and someday flash fiction will not be so cutting edge, some other literary blade will be forged, then student’s will study and teachers will teach and the old ones will remember when. With the publication of his first collection, “Thank You For Your Sperm”, Speh is helping to launch this genre into the main stream. Someday, names will have to be named, founders have to be found. I think this collection may be one of those.

That Speh is a native German writing in English and teaching Engineering at a Berlin University isn’t cause enough, throw in the absence of any formal literary training and a style that (dare I say it) reminds me of Joyce and you have a hell of a surprise: grate writing and story telling. The humor is irresistible; you’re an insider even before the end of the first paragraph. The use of language, the well-disguised alliteration (so hard to do right), even the penis jokes: all of it flows and feels essential. Take this description of a character's face from “A Welsh Wedding”:

“…tall as a larch, large head spiked with black hair, deeply set yellow eyes the size of small oysters and secret as mussels behind long lashes, some gone white already from heavy dreaming, some rainbow-colored, making the upper part of his face sparkle in the right light, his cheekbone indicating an inclination to dominate and brood.”

I plotzed, as one of my Jewish friends likes to say – “secret as mussels” – what does that mean? Well, it means precisely what is meant. Much of the collection is like that; as if we are almost there, almost come to an understanding, but not quite, not until the last sentence, and sometimes not even then, yet the payoff has somehow occurred. We move on to the next story, anxious to be surprised yet again. At the risk of being old fashioned, this book is entertaining, good, solid stories with an edge.

And then there’s the fact that he’s lived. This isn’t some clever man in a tower reinventing read-about lives. He’s loved, been loved, knows the streets, jumped out of airplanes with weapons strapped to his back, even vacationed in rural Texas, for Christ’s sake. He imagines Christmas in twenty-two time zones (my favorite device in the collection) and the very fact of the title story being my least favorite only makes perfect sense (to me) that ‘I’m sure those who actually do like the title story will no doubt think less of the stories to which I was drawn. The book has a broad appeal.  

Speh takes risks and they pay off.  Witness the final scene in “Berlin Pastoral”, where the main character, a woman who used to live year round outdoors on an apartment balcony with two other men is now a young mother living across that same street on yet another balcony, having been evicted from the first by a Russian arms dealer:

“When they are hungry, Susi shoots a pigeon, and Baby practices signaling with his new gang of heavily armed infants: next week, they’ll rob a second-hand clothing store, just for practice.”

Of course they will, in today’s world it isn’t that far a stretch, perhaps it’s already been done.  Just last week (in our current reality) a five year old shot a two year old because the box top said he could. Speh understands - the absurd, not-so-absurd world in which we are living these days. Kafka wanders in and out of these stories. Other influences, like Dostoyevsky, keep them real.

Contrast another story, “In the Nude” where the ending couldn't be simpler, exactly what is required. It chronicles an early love affair lived in southern Italy, a place with hot, moist, airless evenings. This is one of those subtler pieces that smack of an author’s life having been well lived. Want to test a relationship – change the scenery. Some things go on; others don’t. The words are inevitable:

“Later we lived in the North. We kept the windows open and the curtains drawn and we slept in pajamas. This is where we lived before we split up. Which is where one thing ended and another began.”

Hem would have been proud.

I could go on but feel the word “Spoiler” being whispered. In conclusion, I offer all the usual praise: no words wasted; unique and wonderful characterization, no gratuitous action or shock for shock’s sake; nothing but excellent craft and imagination. But here (and well I know) comes my finest recommendation – whether writer, student, teacher or simply that gentle reader –  you will find yourself picking this book up again and again, flipping the pages, searching for a sentence or phrase where Speh said it so well, or that story you didn't quite get, that character you want to revisit – how did he put it? – different for everyone. Somehow, it seems, he said it with you there in the room.

"Thank You For Your Sperm", MadHat Press 2013, 188 pages , $15, paperback, available here or here.