Reviewed by Aaron Hightower
Not many of us know how to exist; in the roles we must perform, the roles we can’t escape, or the roles we choose. How each of us try to be human, varies from muscle to muscle, and personal obligation to personal freedom. From a famous painting’s subject dying on the toilet, a prisoner’s suicide, a movie star’s escape from abuse, and the musings of a relative, Haskell’s short story collection, Trying To Be, explores the strange flesh ghost each human has to exist as. We are all trying to be something, and we all used to be something, but is that something, and the something we are becoming, a shape we want to be?
Haskell meshes genre entirely by incorporating fictional narratives with historical narratives as well as aspects of a memoir’s narrative. From story to story, the reader finds Haskell alongside another character as they narrate together the attempts to exist in past and present, and where that concludes the human state. Haskell projects a narrative voice similar to his own and sometimes onto one completely unlike himself, but the narrative through-line from story to story is the reader’s third person perspective into the internal bone, muscle, and mind connection of every character who struggles to find meaning. From a voice speculating the trying to be of his aunt, to the trying to be of a Japanese woman in a film, the trying to be of a dancer, a gangster and mother, Sophia Loren, Francis Bacon and his boyfriend, Haskell speculates how the connections between our bodies and minds mislead or determine who we exist as in our forms, both physical and spiritual. How does one become intertwined with Yvonne Rainer? How does one become a famous model while simultaneously owning your body? How does one explain to a passionate fan you aren’t the author of the book you just signed?
The collection of short stories does not have an overarching plot, and stylistically they each vary in grammar and structure. However, they all have the same themes and questions. If you enjoy pondering your place on this planet, or you find peace in studying other’s lives, then Trying To Be is a must read. While heavy themes and honest descriptions of grief and death persist in most of the stories, Haskell’s contemplative tone and empathetic writing lends itself to allow most readers to leave the collection feeling more assured in this trying to be human that we all have to contend with. You might never have thought about who Francis Bacon was using for his portraits, but his breath is not wasted now that readers can live through what he might’ve felt at being a speculative subject not loved after death. You might never have heard of Trio A, nor the relevancy of the photo on the cover to the progression of modern dance, but in reading the complicated lives of artists trying to be something relevant, voices no longer alive can be felt in the movements and stretches of anyone trying to connect to themselves through replicating art.
Through the blending of fiction and memoir, I found myself asking how these characters who were at one point real would feel about their portrayal in this collection. Even if events are possibly inaccurate, as this book is under the genre of fiction, would they heavy a sigh of relief at their emotional cadence being explored in a kind and nuanced way? Who doesn’t want to be understood after death? Not just understood from a timeline of events, but in the secrets we refuse to show in our work and art, but regret not shouting as we realize death was sooner than anticipated? I found myself becoming fond of the complexity and sticky state of Haskell’s characters, and relived at the possibility I am not the only human trying to be, when I don’t know how to exist either.