Joseph Riippi's The Orange Suitcase: A Review by P. Jonas Bekker

Do Something! Do Something! Do Something!, Joseph Riippi‘s debut novel, received some harsh criticism (here, for example). Part of that was due to the fact that, due to its fragmented nature, it apparently lacked character definition and conflict. Another part had to do with the book’s hybrid form between novel and story collection. Now, I didn’t read Do Something! Do Something! Do Something!, so I really can’t judge. But I can tell you this: with both the fragmenting and the genre-mixing, Riippi decided to take it up a level with his next book, The Orange Suitcase.

I read a blog that called The Orange Suitcase a ‘novella of sorts’. The editor who sent it to me called it ‘creative non-fiction’. The announcement on the author’s website calls it a story collection. So what the hell is it? Here’s my two cents: it’s a collection of loosely related literary fragments with a protagonist that shares the writer’s name and partial biography.

What is real and what isn’t? Riippi plays that game with a passion. An example: a lot of the book is about the marriage of the protagonist, and at the end of the book, there’s a picture of the author. Just the author. The caption says: ‘Picture of Joe Riippi with his wife.’

To be called a novella, a book would need a much more defined plot and a lot more character development. To be a story collection – or, rather, a collection of flash fiction pieces, as the fragments are quite short – the pieces, individually, would need more bite.

That’s not to say there are no good bits. For example, ‘Something About Marriage pt. 2’, previously published in PANK, is a really well-written, well-rounded story that can stand on its own but also serves a purpose in the bigger context of the book. And it’s bloody hilarious, too.

Another good one is ‘Something About Someone Else’s Poem’, where an old friend emails the protagonist/author a poem. Instead of commenting on the poem, or replying at all, he opens a beer and sits down to write something himself. Because he just doesn’t want to go to bed without ‘getting something done’. He writes something, deletes it, rewrites, redeletes and ponders the word ‘redelete’. He is completely stuck as a line from the friend’s poem keeps going through his head: “I am the right man for the job.”

It is a painfully clear picture of what being a writer is about. As life passes you by, you sit alone at night at your kitchen table drinking. Unable to do what needs to be done, but also unable to just go to bed and call it a day. And, through it all, you are sure you are ‘the right man for the job’. Style-wise, it feels like Bukowski without the bragging.

Or, what about the dazzling imagery and latent sadness of ‘Something About Swimming With Sea Turtles’ (previously published on Everyday Genius). Or ‘Something About Remembering A Couch Or A Person’, which is a prose poem if I ever saw one.

On many occasions, though, Riippi’s prose is beautifully lucid and his images are great and skillfully painted but they don’t take us anywhere. For example, in ‘Something About Borges and the Blind in Chelsea’, he writes: “I’d like to know what a Borges story feels like. I’d like to know what the word goosebumps feels like.” Now, that all sounds very poetic and deep, but what does it tell us, really? In the same story, Riippi has a dream about blind people wanting to beat him to death with their walking sticks. I’d say a writer would need a pretty good excuse to put something like that in a book—the same goes for a fragment of an unpublished novel. Yet, that’s what’s in ‘Something About The Unpublished and Unfinished Novels’.

Sometimes, even Riippi’s fluid, pleasantly casual style forsakes him, resulting in ‘Something About Drinking In Baton Rouge’, a rather bloodless anecdote, and ‘An Exchange’, a dialogue fragment with musings about love and art that just don’t do it for me.

It feels as if Riippi, as a writer, makes things just a little bit to easy for himself. The Orange Suitcase is autobiographical enough not to require too much imagination, but the suggestion of fiction relieves the author’s obligation to be precise. The fragmented, loose form can be a legitimate literary tool but it is also a convenient excuse for not building a strong storyline. The man can write, but he needs to shape up and stop hiding behind his literary tricks.

Joseph Riippi, The Orange Suitcase, Ampersand Books, 118 p., coming in March 2011

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P. Jonas Bekker is a writer and a poet from the Netherlands.