An Ordinary Ecstasy by Luke Carman
The word ecstasy comes from the Greek ekstasis, meaning something like ‘to stand outside oneself’. Originally it referred to a state of frenzied emotional or religious excitement, a state one desires because it is liable to produce the kind of sympathetic excess which makes transcendent experiences manifest. Of course we know it as the party drug, which we take to procure this same experience. The etymology is telling, and I want to consider the dual valence of the term. An ecstasy is profound elation, yes, but it is also temporary insanity. Like most kinds of rapture, it may produce both terror and delight.
If you like this kind of dichotomy, then you will love Luke Carman’s An Ordinary Ecstasy (2022). Exaltation and banality do not just co-exist but are mutually constitutive in the seven stories in this collection, stories in which so-called ‘ordinary’ Australians experience life’s raptures/ruptures.
A cantankerous Boomer ruminates on man’s transcendence
A woman revisits grief
Two friends take a road-trip to the Northern Rivers
A young couple balance art and love with the demands of precarious work
A musician plays a fateful gig at high altitude
A naïve journalist is inspired by adversity
A couple struggles to conceive
When stripped of their particulars, these stories do not sound very remarkable. Indeed, upon discovering that a white man in his 70s was to narrate the first, ‘A Beckoning Candle’, I was unimpressed. I read a few pages and was bored. But then, in Carman’s hands, it turned out to be anything but ordinary.
It all comes down to Carman’s style. Each sentence is loaded with loquacity, sometimes to the point of clutter. Reading one of his heady lines is like having an exorcism or spiritual conversion; the language itself enacts a rapture which is almost unbearable. Take this one, for example, in the story I just mentioned (which I won’t even transcribe in its entirety, so long is it’s reach):
‘…Elvis began to sing, and he bent down so that his voice had to will his body to straighten up, and when he did rise there was a power you could feel in the depth of his timbre, from the deep darkness of universal despair his voice reached out like a dancing ember’s glow, and before our very eyes the light began to increase, so that he seemed to cast out that dark star that resides in every heart like a saint might draw demons from a tortured body, and as he sang, sweating and shuffling on the stage, rocking and wracked like a man whose ghost is trying to overcome some enmity, every eye in the room was transfixed on the act, and every ear in the room was filled with his power, and across the world, in every home, on every television, the same mystical conversion was underway…’
I hear Carman actually did an Elvis impersonation at the book launch, and this is something I would have loved/hated to see. We’re not meant to conflate the author with his work but I use this piece of trivia to point out how it mirrors the way the stories, and, on the line level, the sentences actually work. The language is so voluptuous it’s almost obscene. It would be hard to read if it weren’t so compelling.
This is what impressed me most about An Ordinary Ecstasy: it raised my hackles in such a way. There were points at which I had to pause for breath or to recoup. There were points at which I laughed/cried/shuddered/cackled. In each story Carman raises tension, building to a point of unbearability which is either sustained or relieved depending on what’s needed. How utterly fascinating. How almost manipulative it felt, which upset and excited me in equal measure.
Admittedly, it sometimes dragged. It’s a problem with the words; there are just so many. In these places Carman’s authorial voice gets like an overbearing, excitable director, and you must be willing to take a back seat. I feel ambivalent about this trait. Usually I like to have a little say in how I read a book; the book gives me a dog, say, and I’m free to imagine what the dog is really like. Not so with Carman’s stories. Their language is excessive but it’s tightly wrought, the adjectives flamboyant though precise, and to some readers this may feel a little stifling.
The real highlight is ‘Tears on Mainstreet’. Essentially it’s a story about a quest; one involving love, friendship, an enigmatic Fijian, a foul-mouthed Irish woman, Nimbin, martial arts, revenge, redemption, a terrifying mystic Mr Baldy. At the end there is healing, and the kind of irresolution which feels like just the right thing. If you do not read any other, I urge you to read this.
If I were a high falutin’ reviewer with no qualms as to the excesses of my own language, I’d describe Luke Carman using words and phrases like ‘phenomenal’ and ‘singular talent’. But because I’m too embarrassed to use those words, I’ll simply say that I enjoyed it. An Ordinary Ecstasy is ecstatic in the sense that it is hilarious, strange and sometimes unbearable, and you may need to go slowly or re-read parts to appreciate its brilliance. But read it, I say! It prompted me, as it should have, to stand outside myself.
And if you are still looking for a reason, I will say only this:
Never have I read an edibles trip so aptly or so painfully described.
Miriam writes in and around Naarm/Melbourne. Her writing has appeared in Aniko Magazine, Island online, swim meet lit mag and certain zines. She is a 2022 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow and this year placed runner-up in both the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize and the Olga Masters Short Story Award. She is working on her debut collection.