Thaddeus Rutkowski's new novel in fictions Safe Colors asks if perhaps all of us aren't in some ways living in Nowhere wishing we were Somewhere—or at least knew The Man who could get us there.
Rutkowski travels a chronological line in this novel from childhood to adolescence and "escape", and on to adulthood. It's divided into three parts and by part two the hero is a college freshman, finally free of his parents' home. By the end, he's a father, though still very much with one foot in his youth.
I didn't actually write this about Safe Colors, but about Rutkowski's previous flash fiction novel Haywire. In this sense, readers are on a familiar path with Safe Colors. We revisit the hero's childhood in Nowhere USA and his journey to Somewhere. Everything you loved about Rutkowski before is still there: the stony-faced comic thread that winds its way through his work and his ability to write so little and to say so much, mostly because of the wide gaps in his intensely relatable prose. The meaning in Rutkowski is found between the lines rather than what many of us have come to expect: within them. This is the recipe—clean, lean prose in miniaturized form and always that ribbon of comedy underneath—that gives this book its power.
While I was riding, I felt an intense nameless fear, though
it wasn't really nameless. It was a common ordinary fear, the
kind I felt to a lesser degree most of the time.
While we are with the hero in his despair, whether it is about his lack of connection in his small USA town, racism, his insecurities, his seemingly inability to please his inexplicable father (an artist who is not an artist or is he?), his musical mother (a musician who is not a musician or is she?) and his own unrecognized ambitions (or are they?), the undercurrent of Rutkowski's deadpan humor is more than arm's length away.
While riding my bicycle, I saw a man step into the
street in front of me. I steered around him—I didn't
slow so he could pass. He saw me roll close, and when he was
within earshot he said, "Get a light." Either that, or "Get a life."
While Rutkowski's hero fumbles forward, struggling to make even the most basic connections, the author succeeds in connecting him to the reader in his own blur-the edges-style. This is a character/location driven work; the peel is slowly removed—in bite-sized chunks--to reveal the author's heartfelt message about childhood, family, growing up and growing old.
Full Disclosure: I was given a PDF copy of Safe Colors in exchange for a review.
Cover illustration by Shay Rutkowski, daughter of the author.
PUBLICATION DATE: November 6, 2023, New Meridian Arts, www.newmeridianarts.com