Why We Chose It: “Character Sketch for the Oil CEO” by Alyssa Quinn

“Character Sketch for the Oil CEO” by Alyssa Quinn will be featured in an upcoming issue of Mid-American Review.

“Character Sketch for the Oil CEO” by Alyssa Quinn is an astounding metafictional work that shifts the authorial lens back onto the author (fictional, in this case). Though the story maps out the traits and behaviors of an oil CEO, the story also reveals the biases and preferences of the writer, an implicit character in the narrative. The writer deliberates over whether the CEO can be blamed for the cataclysmic oil spill his company has likely caused. The writer agonizes over this guilt in the same way the character might: “he is just a single person in such a large system, does he really matter that much, can he really be blamed? Can he?” The unfamiliarity of hearing this wavering from the writer exposes the tendency of writers to replicate themselves in their characters.

This story also challenges perceptions of how real characters are and what their creators owe them. Intimate description is usually considered a fundamental tool of characterization: an achievement when used well. Quinn makes it feel like an invasion. “You could follow him into the shower, describe the way he washes.” We chose this piece not because it sketches an Oil CEO well—though it does—but because it makes us doubt whether we should be sketching him at all. Perhaps he does not want to be “summoned by every sentence.”

—Daniel Marcantuono, MAR

Why We Chose It – ‘Book of Dolls 3’ and ‘Book of Dolls 8’ by Bruce Bond

“Book of Dolls 3” and “Book of Dolls 8” by Bruce Bond were selected last autumn and published in Mid-American Review Volume XLI in 2022.

Something in MAR that we gravitate toward is the peculiar and uncanny. Work that tugs at our emotions on a deep human level and won’t let go. In poetry we look for things that as editors and readers we can’t get out of our head. Lines that we keep returning to long after putting the packet away. We love a poem that knows who it is and what it wants. The doll poems by Bond do a wonderful job at using repetition to bring a sense of movement and unsettling-ness to the piece, but also comfort. For our editorial staff, it was a deep and whole-hearted yes.

-Megan Borocki 

“I take them to my therapy session, / the one I have online. To my surprise, / my therapist is broken, arm here, foot / there, lonely head weeping on a chair.” – From “Book of Dolls 3”

I really admire how Bond makes the strange familiar in these two poems. In “Book of Dolls 3,” he characterizes the dolls as a kind of burden, though is closely connected with them, and it feels almost delightful that the speaker gives the therapist a doll. There’s a strange innocence there, I think. In “Book of Dolls 8,” there is this sense of inevitability with this growing doll: “Soon it will become a horror.” which Bond follows up with, “Go on, hold it,” gesturing again to connection. There is a closeness in these burdens, and a strangeness that feels emotionally accessible.

-Michael Beard

“Imagine a real-time feed of the beach / so tedious with heavy objects it cannot / be imagined. Only suffered, held.” – From “Book of Dolls 8”

In comments shared among readers, Bond’s use of surreal doll imagery—to untether otherwise banal human experiences from the familiar, before bringing them right back to earth—was met with high praise. I felt a keen pace and music in these poems too, speeding unrelentingly to weighty finishes. Dolls are the perfect catalyst for Bond’s exploration of pain: these almost-human objects can be broken, made up, filled with whatever we wish, and exist utterly at the mercy of our imaginations. Bond’s “Book of Dolls” poems ask that we imagine ourselves, too, with such customizability, able to rearrange, detach, and repair our broken parts, or fill ourselves with sand that we might live with a weight which feels truer to a life beyond our often ungraspable suffering.

-Samuel Burt