One of the greatest illusory effects in literature was achieved by Ernest Hemingway, who likened his writing to the dignified movement of an iceberg, the critical mass of which remains concealed from sight. His prose was so pared down that what had been left out still seemed somehow present, part of the effect. 

The illusion lies in how easy it seems. Hemingway’s approach has been extraordinarily seductive for generations of writers, so in a way it’s hard to fault Montreal author John Goldbach for falling under its spell in his debut collection of short fiction, Selected Blackouts.                  

The blackouts in the title are mainly self-induced, with alcohol featuring prominently in almost all of the stories. The characters are, for the most part, young slackers who attend parties, drink, do drugs, and try to hook up. They seem to be going through life without a great deal of purpose and don’t care very much for each other or for themselves.  

The homage to Hemingway is in the book’s style, which is deliberately, almost painstakingly, flat. The narrative doesn’t so much progress as extend through matter-of-fact statements about what is happening, which is rarely anything special. The language does not employ any rhetorical flourishes, and the dialogue in particular tends to repeat simple, common words like “good” and “nice” with distressing frequency.  

Pulling off this kind of writing is not easy, and here it doesn’t work. There’s never any indication that more is going on than meets the eye. And the laconic dialogue, both in terms of rhythm and vocabulary, often seems unnatural.

It is in the few experimental pieces that the book is most successful. In the final story, a single-paragraph account of a woman watching a wedding show on television, there is a subtle feeling of inner drift, and in the paranoid interior monologue “How Much Do They Know?” the narrative voice has a manic energy that is absent in the rest of the collection. Among selected blackouts, these stories provide flashes of light.