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Salton Sea: A Collection of Short Stories
George McCormick
references a derelict
landscape with the title
of his debut short-story
collection, “Salton Sea,”
but shared geographies
and sensibilities inhabit
this work and lure the
reader closer to inspect its
resident characters.
While the name of
his work comes from an
inland sea where the
Colorado River breached
shallow desert in in
California over a century
ago, McCormick sets the
other memorable stories
contained in “Salton Sea”
in contemporary times and
places them in other states
Oklahoma, Montana and
Idaho.
McCormick explained how
seeing submerged ruins that
populate the “Salton Sea” in
Southern California in the 1980s
fascinated him and formed the
idea for one story included in his
published work.
“It was this weird place when I
see the ruins of these old hotels
and things,” McCormick said. “Over
the years, I would travel through
there and thought it was such a
strange place. First of all, I liked the
sound of it, and secondly, I thought
it would be a very interesting setting
to have a story,” McCormick said. “I
like the idea of location and place
as a metaphor.”
These sustained metaphors
serve his stories well, especially
since his characters seem to be
drowning due to the vicissitudes of
their lives: They work dead endjobs
and deal with deteriorating
relationships, but carry on and try
Author George McCormick
leading their lives with dignity. In
the titular story, the narrator admits
his marriage dissolving with the
landscape.
When surveying the area that
surrounds the hotel where the
couple once honeymooned, the
narrator describes his hatred for
his wife a “bitter river spilling its
water,” and the algae below the
water are “cumulus, bloody forms
just under the surface.” These
conceits course through each story
in “Salton Sea,” and these details
breathe vibrancy back into a barren
landscape.
McCormick described how
his work shows his preference
for writing about the past, but the
author is averse to reminiscing
about the better days of bygone
eras.
by Sarah Brewer
but the stories that
people tend to really
person narratives that are
grounded in realism and
the world as we see it right
now,” McCormick said. “I
but I do not want to be
trapped in nostalgia.”
Instead of clinging to
and longing for the past,
McCormick allows certain
sensibilities to surface
elsewhere in his work,
and each story crests
with disappointment and
desolation. Sensory
language rushes in and
softens the prose that
surrounds the harsh
situations and emotions the
narrator endure when his
lover leaves him when she leaves
town in another story entitled “You
Are Going to be a Good Man.” He
thinks, “In the best possible version
of things that will not happen,
she will call and cry tonight. But,
the sooner all that won’t happen
happens, the closer I am to the
black and necessary despair I
know is coming. A black despair as
long and white as winter.”
Characters often leave each
other for other opportunities in
“Salton Sea,” but, like the tides,
what returns is a beautiful, aching
poignancy.
Thus far, “Salton Sea” has won
the 2011 Noemi Book Award for
Fiction. One story in the book,
entitled “The Mexican,” won the
PEN/O. Henry Award for 2013.
McCormick evokes an essence
inherent in American literature
authored by both John Steinbeck
and Cormac McCarthy, but his
straightforward storytelling leaves
much more beyond its surface.
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