The Star Cafe

by Mary Caponegro

A Simon & Schuster eBook

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, Unfinished

192 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1990

About the author

Mary Caponegro is an American experimental fiction writer whose collections include Tales from the Next Village, The Star Cafe, Five Doubts, The Complexities of Intimacy, and All Fall Down. Her stories appear regularly in Conjunctions and in other periodicals. She was awarded the Rome Prize in Literature in 1992, and is also the recipient of The General Electric Award for Younger Writers, the Bruno Arcudi Prize, and the Charles Flint Kellog Award in Arts and Letters. She has taught at Brown University, RISD, the Institute of American Indian Arts, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Syracuse University. She is the Richard B. Fisher Family Professor of Writing and Literature at Bard College. Her work has been praised for its syntactic complexity and its surreal, fabulist content.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Mary Caponegro’s short fiction is lyrical, comic, above all, erotic. From the purely feminine Chinese tales to the transformational vision of the title story to the final brilliance of the novella ‘Sebastian,’ this rare first collection rings all possible changes on gender as illusive power. To read this book is to succumb to it--with the greatest pleasure. --John Hawkes (re:The Star Cafe*)

In the landscape of American fiction, The Star Cafe is now on the map, a stop that cannot be missed. If you are feeling lost in the forest, go there, it’s the real thing, a subtle, elegant book, marking the emergence of a gifted and powerful young writer. --Robert Coover (re:The Star Cafe)

The music of Mary Caponegro’s stories is to the mouth what wine is. Readers will find themselves lost among answers, intoxicated, knowing only that these are stories unlike any others before or since, which is, for this reader at least, a relief, a challenge, and a godsend. --William H. Gass (re:Five Doubts)

I believe that’s a rather rare triangulation. And I don’t hesitate to drop names because those names are magic words and it was names=dropped that led me to Caponegro’s magic. She is a confirmed member of this school [you’ll see that membership is proven by objection to being counted a member of.....]; having been a student of both Hawkes and Gaddis, even teaching in Gaddis’s seat at Bard.

Here’s the setting that set it into motion (finally! srsly, should’ve been here done this muchmuch sooner) ; the words which I now suspect are those of Bursey, not Tabbi (notice the brackets serving to indicate an insertion within the quotation) :: “What Gaddis’s early work gave to his and subsequent generations [e.g., David Markson and, later, Mary Caponegro and David Foster Wallace], which they would not yet have found in universities or in bookstores....” And I’m tempted to say that that famous issue of RCF should’ve had Caponegro joining WTV & DFW rather than Susan Daitch ; imho.
[the Bursey quote :: http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2015/10... ]

But what struck me as I read these two collections back=to=back in reverse chronological order was the contrast between them. Yes, The Star Cafe is her first and it is not exactly a set of conventional short stories, yes they are perhaps more ‘short prose’ or ‘short fictions’, yet reading them on the heels of Five Doubts they felt, yes, rather conventional. Five Doubts had the stuff, the stuff to do more than simply make you sit up and pay attention. Read these two together (and we assume her other two collections also) for a quick glimpse into those two sets of dueling fictionings ; from within a single side of those dueling partners, as it were ; because again, The Star Cafe is not exactly ‘normal’. Here’s some contrast ::

The Star Cafe
pub’d by Charles Scribner’s Sons (1990)
I paid US$5.95 at The Village Bookshop
It sat on those shelves at The Village Bookshop for less than a week’s time.
Reads (to me! to me!) like conventional fiction.

Five Doubts
pub’d by Marsilio [huh?] (1998)
I paid US$1.00 at The Village Bookshop
Sat in the warehouse at The Village Bookshop since January 27 2012 ; remaindered ;; and then when it couldn’t/wouldn’t sell as a remainder, it was Mark’dDown to the Dollar Bin.
Reads (to me! to me!) like what I think of as (successful!) ‘experimental’ fiction.

Whilst the former is twice as popular on gr as the second, neither is worth mentioning as anyhow over=rated. She has two more collections, The Complexities of Intimacy and All Fall Down ; both of which, well... sometimes Completioinizationalism is faaar too easy. I’d really love a big fat brick of a novel from Caponegro some day**.

Unnecessary, but two comments in a gender direction. 1) Some say that the term ‘genius’ is gendered ; may well be. I don’t use it here (despite my Delight! in Five Doubts because a) short fiction is not my strong suit and b) Caponegro’s simply not written enough for me to arrive at such a judgement. 2) This school of fiction (‘experimental’, ‘Hawkes’, etc) is dominated by male writers, true. But readers of Maso and readers of Ducornet will recognize something familiar in Caponegro. Were you to look at the numbers, I think you’d have to concede that these writers go unread at least as much because they write an experimental fiction as because they are female -- Hawkes’ biggest number is 624 ratings ;; not exactly a blockbuster [Gass’s is 1238 and Coover’s 1314 ;; you can do the other numbers].

eta :: quoted from the interview which is following and there found link’d :: “I believe I mentioned during the ‘Imagination Alive Imagine’ Paris Conference my wish to ‘feminize’ the legacy of my mentors. Despite a great resistance to such terms and gendered categories in general when interpreting literature, I was certainly aware of having mostly male predecessors in the domain of American metafiction, with Angela Carter as an obvious exception.”


Interview (2002)
An Interview of Mary Caponegro in Six Questions by Françoise Palleau-Papin
https://www.cairn.info/revue-francais...
“Here is my response to John Hawkes’ infamous assumption that ‘the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme.’ I see myself as very much a member of this renegade school, writing against the grain of the mimetic mainstream. I consider myself an avant-gardist, an experimentalist, (and admittedly in this case, a sentimentalist)—as these words are those of my mentor, John Hawkes, who gave me tremendous encouragement and urged me to follow my own idiosyncratic path in fiction.”

Here’s Mr Moore with Ms Caponegro ::


And his review of The Star Cafe ::
http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive...
“Short ‘fiction’ is more apt than short ‘stories’ because Caponegro avoids the well-trod path of the well-made story for the yellow-brick road of Borgesian ficciones.”
“Faced with a ‘back in ten’ sign at a gas station”--that’s a big factual SIC! Mr Moore!!! [it’s a ‘back in fiftene’ [sic!] sign at a dry=cleaners]

Moore also reviewed Five Doubts in the American Book Review, July=Aug 1999. [nolink]




*I really should write ‘Café’ but it’s just too tedious to do so today.

***from that interview (again) :: “But I can’t imagine ever being a 600 or 800-page person. I am (and suspect my reader is) exhausted by 8 pages of my stuff!—into which I try to cram what might be the equivalent of the material of a whole novel.”

This Review is duplicated in that of the other discussed collection. Also.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Caponegro's debut collection includes four disparate pieces: 'Tales From the Next Village' is a set of Chinese tales and fables (presumably gathered from the next village); 'The Star Café' is a darkly erotic short story that relates an isolated woman's nightlong experience with the mysterious owner of the café below her apartment; 'Materia Prima' is an inventive novella told in alternating voices that follows the development of a precocious girl into an unwanted adolescence; and 'Sebastian' is a fairly conventional character study of a British man living in America with his artist fiancée.

Caponegro writes in a confident, controlled style. The level of honed talent she displays belies the fact that this is a debut collection. As with any collection I read written in such varying styles, though, not every piece resonated with me. I found 'Materia Prima' to be the strongest: the most unique in its telling and and most riveting to read. The title story was also strong, although I would have preferred a less direct ending, as it too completely cleared the cryptic fog in which the story's compelling premise had been enshrouded. 'Tales From the Next Village' was enjoyable, though I don't think these tales capitalize on Caponegro's strengths as a writer. Finally, the novella 'Sebastian', while a fine writerly portrait, ultimately did not reach far enough beyond ordinary realism in either content or style to hook me. While it did grow a bit stranger toward the end, it didn't go as far as I'd hoped.

Thematically, there are some common threads tying these pieces together. Characters locked into their ways of life, feeling imprisoned, either through their own making or due to the influence of others around them. Isolated, alienated people, the 'other' in society, and the struggles they face. For each there is an arc, though, and the dark places often lead to moments of release, or at least to an opening up to other possibilities.

This being my introduction to Caponegro, I'm sufficiently intrigued to read further. If everything here had been at the level of 'Materia Prima' I would give the collection five stars. Overall it was more like a 3 for me, but I'm weighting 'Materia Prima' heavier. I'm hoping to find more of the spirit and style of that work in her other writing. And should she one day write a novel I have no doubt it will be extraordinary.

Our meager human memories and fantasies and hopes weave a web of nostalgia to which we are bound, locked into compulsion through anticipation or dread, through repetition. Single events occur over and over in memory, until it seems that they concretely had repeated. How we cling to our joys and our trials, grow attached, never able to break free of the burdens we believe to be our jewels. But bonds that once seemed more than real, substantial, even immortal, when we finally see through them, become tenuous indeed.

[Derrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

4 short stories. The first one, “Tales from the Next Village,” is glaringly the worst, but the other three make up for that in my summation. Gut reaction favorite is “Materia Prima” (3rd story), and “The Star Cafe” (2nd story) and “Sebastian” (4th story) are neck-in-neck following, both very good. A fairly unique thing about Caponegro is the way her stories shift from fairly straight-forward narratives into esoteric, erotic, and surreal fragmentation. Looking forward to reading more of her.

Sidenote: she had her first publications Bard College’s lit journal Conjunctions. They have published stuff from Vollmann, DFW, and Sorrentino, some of it is available to read online if anyone wanted to dip their toes in some “weird” fiction.

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems, for Caponegro is all about the language and metamorphoses.  The transitions from one state to another, between the surreal and the mundane, between the tactile and the ephemeral; Metamorphosis of the language as well.  The sentences possess a unique vibrating cadence. The prose is measured and rhythmical. The images she create are vivid and disturbing. And always Eros in fight with Thanatos: 

“She does not, he thinks she does not fear death, dread that transition. She says he’s resistant to mystery. But what, he wants to ask, is the appeal of a closed door? For him is the terrible dread that in space between - that void- he might lose memory of earth, of life, yet not possess the sight to see what lies beyond, if something does.”

And now, I will write it like this:

She does not, he thinks
she does not fear death,
dread that transition.
She says he’s resistant to mystery.
But what, he wants to ask,
is the appeal of a closed door?
For him is the terrible dread
that in space between - that void-
he might lose memory of earth, of life,
yet not possess the sight to see what lies beyond,
if something does.

You probably see what I am talking about. Sublime.

This is her first collection when she was still young.  It is a complex, dense text, but sparkling and poetic as well. I definitely have a wish to read her later work to see how life experience affected her imagery and style.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fey quartet gathers momentum. It gets a bit steamy. It seduces, elucidates, misdirects, doubts, wonders, shudders with terrifying pleasure, ramifies ambiguities through fully concentrated, precise prose. The concluding and prize piece, "Sebastian," occupies half the pages but "The Star Cafe" is a much snappier title. "Sebastian" tunnels into multiple levels of writing, some playful, some dire, but the fractal rays beaming between him and her, or Mary and me, or you and me, are too splendid to be abbreviated into a list here. Goodfriend N.R. says better things, but for me the takeaway is that Caponegro was just beginning to find her voice. Evidently this was a warm-up and the real singing begins with Five Doubts.

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite story collections. Beautifully surreal and strange and in ways unsettling. The title story captures dreaminess, desire, and confusion in ways I am in awe and envy of.

Worth checking out if you like fiction that leaves you thinking.

[Lorna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea at all. Gave up after Star Cafe, a story so devoid of character and humanity it made me want to hurl the book at the wall.

[Susan Katz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really did not like these stories. Had difficulty following any plot (if there was one). Could not find a character to like or identify with.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“On some level she knew she was an intuitive person, but she hadn’t learned to trust herself, too cautious, as if there were a very strong force at work inside her all the time that wasn’t allowed to come to expression, like all that sun missing her house, all this foliage in her head, that was so pretty and interesting and alive, but how much it got in the way. She suspected that her mind had evolved in some distorted fashion, different from the rest of the world. And now here she was, trapped in this stagnancy of glass, that had become by all its clarity a blur, itself a distortion. She couldn’t forgive herself, though she supposed she’d suffered enough to be redeemed of any number of sins or crimes. She cursed her intuition, because she’d never have stayed with him if she’d weighed, considered, evaluated. On the other hand, she’d never do anything if she always weighed, considered, evaluated; that was precisely what so often kept her from doing any number of things, things she felt a genuine desire to do, but couldn’t get over this habit or obsession of getting stuck, nothing resolving itself. She felt the irony of the whole thing as deeply, as physically, as a metallic taste in her mouth: that the only time she’d ever felt not removed from her body, when will and act had meshed, was with him; it had felt right, but clearly had been wrong, as wrong as anything could be. She slid the tab of the zipper all the way up and fastened the button at the waistband of her skirt, then leaned against one of the mirrors as she dreamily repeated the motion of button through opening, gentle grasps and pulls, all the way up her blouse. If only there were as simple a motion to secure her exit. He had said she had only to figure it out. And there had to be a door; somewhere there had to be. She thrust her weight hard against the mirror as she leaned, then moved forward to tuck in her blouse. Had the mirror seemed to give a little as she had pressed? She must be imagining it. Perhaps if she pushed against every mirror, one of them might yield.”

[Devin Curtis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I wasn't in a great mood, or a little distracted when I read some of this, but overall it did not wow me the way other people seemed to be wowed by it. Perhaps because I've read other authors who do similar work in a style I prefer? I'm not sure, but it was interesting at least.

Tales from the Next Village - I was told not to read this one by someone who loves this book...must be pretty bad, but idk.

The Star Cafe - 2.5 stars. While it should theoretically have been up my alley (being all inside a character's head + their fantasies), it felt honestly really devoid of real emotion. Maybe that was part of the point, but nothing beyond the "look what I'm doing" nature of it captured me.

Materia Prima - 4 stars. This is my favorite piece in the collection as it removes the excessive sex from the other stories and finds a very compelling insular coming-of-age narrative within its main character. My problem with it is that it perhaps attempts too much, and goes a little overboard (especially towards the end which I feel could have been cut down considerably)

Sebastian - 3.5 stars. Parts of this I loved, parts of it I did not, parts of it I found myself daydreaming through. Ultimately I kind of hate the main character, so it being a book all about the main characters thoughts was kind of a turn off, but obviously I still liked it. I am able to appreciate that he's not supposed to be super lovable. Moreover I think I'm just pretty sick of the short story all about a "shaky" relationship, especially because I really don't feel this story, in the end offers anything new.

[nethescurial · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is sitting with me in a really odd way. I'm definitely going to have to soak it in more and probably can't say much of substance until then about the stories themselves, but they are fascinating, challenging, and really linguistically and formally inventive in a way that grasps at an ineffable deeper truth that Caponegro really skillfully makes peripheral, never over-reliant on pomo bombast [fun as that can be]. Mostly realistic, mostly very psychosexual stories [cw: rape in the title story] that are just enough outside the orthodox to shock the senses, intrigue and unnerve the mystical side of my mind, in addition to how Caponegro is so talented at portraying the darkest situations with measured grace and empathy. I really struggled staying invested in the ending novella but I stuck with it and it ended up solidifying that this is a great, overlooked writer. I think Caponegro is an author I'm going to be reading a lot of when I can get my hands on more of her books, in no small part because this book is already beckoning me to have a deeper relationship with it and this author's style in general. I've been discovering so many great new writers this year, an exciting time to be a reader!!

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't entirely convinced by the first story (the setting seemed "borrowed", so to speak), which is why I took so long to read the rest. But they are wonderful! I was completely amazed by "The Star Café" and "Materia Prima" and "Sebastian" are definitely unique. Love the risks she takes.

[Janine]

I have had this book for a long time. Mary was one of my professors in College but I have to admit, I never finished it.

[Nelly]

surreal and was i and everything looking for bizarre