February, 2005
Daphne Kalotay's first book, published two weeks ago, is titled Calamity, but don't expect disaster fiction on the level of a Hollywood blockbuster (though there is a story about a plane's emergency landing). In this linked collection of short stories, the idea of calamity has a Richter scale that ranges from the slightest tremors of upheaval (a 10-page snapshot of a divorced couple pillow-talking their way through an eight-year distance) to the most shaking (see emergency landing).

“The book either has some major tragedy in the background or it's about a possible disaster. But it's compact, and I think what short stories do is provide emotional focus.”

The focus Kalotay brings is telescopic; each of her pieces locates the moments that shift lives, and she works from there. While she admits a novel offers a “panoramic view,” the appeal to her of more miniature work is its tendency to accumulate. “It's like you get more layering, more texture,“ she says. It's an interesting approach to short fiction, long considered an inferior stepchild to the great novel. But for Kalotay, whatever might be lost in the linearity of 400 to 500 pages can be supplanted by the depth of moments. Those same moments that might be merely mentioned in a novel.

Strangely, calamity is a word that seems almost too ambitious for a small canvas, but the author insists that her arrival at the title and the theme which links the pieces was based on a curiosity for the personal. “I see a woman in her apartment, alone, and I say, 'Come look in this window, and I'm going to tell you why she is the way she is, how she came to be that way.'”

Many of Calamity's stories are brief in their moments of catastrophe. In “Rehearsal Dinner,” for instance, a man contemplates a relationship while enclosed in his car. But it's precisely the idea of such personal transitions that induces empathy perhaps not possible in an epic. “Sometimes I'm at the bookstore, and I'm reading the back of a book, and it says 'invokes the detail of 14-century Denmark,' and I think: I cannot read this.”

It's no surprise that the author arrives at her subjects also by a very introspective empathy. “You hear about disasters and you think you're untouched, but I wonder, hey, what would that be like?” Her favorite story in the collection - a question few writers will answer, and so it's meaningful when they do - echoes her purpose. “'The Man from Allston Electric' is an end-of-relationship story, a lonely woman story, but I felt I portrayed a feeling that everyone has felt. A feeling that was so true.” Such tremors have never felt so thunderous.

Spend First Friday with writer Daphne Kalotay when she joins MacDowell Downtown on February 4th as part of her just-begun tour for her new book Calamity. Kalotay was in residence at MacDowell this past summer and will read from the collection as well as take questions. She will also sign copies for the audience. As always, MacDowell Downtown is free and open to the public; refreshments are provided. For more information, sign up for our e-News.