the surrealism highway: a review of steve gergley’s ‘the great atlantic highway’

by Hugh Blanton

When surrealist Kōbō Abe died in 1993, literary surrealism lost one of its most unique voices. His novel, The Woman in the Dune,s and his play, The Man Who Turned into a Stick, were nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society amid chaos and strangeness. Kafka was a major influence on Abe—Abe even paid a pilgrimage to Kafka's home in Prague in 1957 (it was in '62 that Abe received the prestigious Yomiuri Prize for The Woman in the Dunes). Realism is often a tool that separates literary fiction from other genres, such as sci-fi or horror. However, surrealism, in the hands of skilled scribes, such as Abe (and his influence Kafka), mobilizes the strength of literary fiction and frees its potential. In this new collection of short stories from Steve Gergley, we see what a literary mind combined with a deviously surreal imagination can really do—as if modernism OD'd on LSD.

* * *

The Great Atlantic Highway is Steve Gergley's latest book. The forty-five stories of the book unveil Gergley's acceptance of his demonic gift of absurdism and surrealism. One initially encounters a story about a deranged man with a handgun who has tracked down actor Bill Pullman, who he refers to as President Whitmore (the character Bill Pullman played in the 1996 movie Independence Day). The deranged man tells "President Whitmore" what a great president he was and wishes he was still in office today, but for now he wants to know where President Whitmore is hiding the children. The gun toting lunatic has apparently been spending time on internet conspiracy boards and has come to rescue a group of kidnapped kids. Pullman has little choice but to give the man a tour of the house under point of gun.

            And so we're off.

There are repeating themes and characters throughout the collection—death metal comes up a few times, Topine, New York is a frequent setting, Nick and his girlfriend Kyoko take us on some wild trips. The title story of the book, The Great Atlantic Highway, is about—you guessed it—a highway that spans the Atlantic Ocean between New York and London. (Only two lanes with a concrete barrier between them.) French writer, Andre Breton, who many consider to be the founder of literary surrealism, said the intention of surrealism is to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality." Or surreality. The three essential elements of surrealism—the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions, and non sequitur—are all there in the pages to one degree or another.

One of the more bizarre stories begins quotidian enough—a man comes home after a dentist appointment where the dentist had told him he has cavities that will have to be filled. His girlfriend asks to have a look at the cavities and peers into his mouth with a magnifying glass. "Wow, okay, so I'm not sure if you know this," she says, "but there are like, super small people inside some of your teeth here." The guy takes the magnifying glass to see for himself, and sure enough his teeth have little windows that give a view to the people living in them. He sees a man getting into the shower and pulling the curtain closed—and a man from next door sneaks in with a weapon in his hand (a dumbbell), heads for the shower and lifts it over his head ready to strike.

This is Gergley's second short story collection, his first being A Quick Primer on Wallowing in Despair, published in May of 2022. (He also has a novel, Skyscraper, from May of 2023.) His prose is vivid and humorous: "Huge raindrops snapped like buckshot against the windows." "This was a stupid thing to say, but I savored the shame I felt from saying it." "A muddy smear of a mustache sprouted just above his upper lip." "The suspension-bridge outline of Jan's bra pressing through the back of her shirt." In addition to his books, Gergley's stories have appeared in numerous magazines. A recurring theme in Gergley's work is chance encounters of a surreal nature that suggest a deeper meaning. In an interview with Rebecca Grandsen of XRAY Magazine, Gergley said, "I've had a number of interesting occurrences like that in real life... For me, it's the possibility of an unexpected force or person stepping into your life and taking it in a direction you never would have predicted. The moment that person shows up, absolutely anything can happen. And that's the most exciting thing any story can do."

Aaron Burch, editor of HAD Magazine, said, "...there's something about these stories that is both recognizable and not, both in the lineage of other favorites and also uniquely their own." If Kafka passed a torch from his insurance company office, Gergley is bearing it now in a CVS breakroom with his own modern twists. And much like his predecessor, Gergley doesn't always avoid realism. You'll find here a story of a man, eating in a pizza shop, waiting for closing time to possibly rob it. Someone living in a van in a Wal-Mart parking lot while other homeless guys take a dump right outside his driver side door. A dejected college grad with a fine arts degree working for years at a CVS. Realism itself, ironically, is often surreal.

The Great Atlantic Highway

by Steve Gergley, 234 pages

Malarkey Books, $19.38

Photo of Hugh Blanton

BIO: Hugh Blanton's latest book is Kentucky Outlaw from Anxiety Press (2023). He can be reached on X @HughBlanton5.