REVIEW of Sean Ennis's Rat Aesthetics
Plus Five Questions with the author!
WHAT'S HAPPENING
In the fictional town of Bramble, USA, the narrator, a recent widower, starts dating Vivian, the Communications Director of The Old Rats motorcycle gang. The narrator and Vivian have a string of odd dates—including a trip to a casino where Vivian wins $279,000 and a charity art auction where all the art has been lifted from local businesses—leaving the narrator (and the reader) unsure if his and Vivian’s relationship is on the up and up or if there's something more nefarious afoot.
WHAT WE LOVE
Sean Ennis’s Bramble stories are simply delicious. Ennis has built an absolute masterpiece in Bramble, the ultimate playground for his satirical absurdism and deadpan wit. Bramble is every small town you’ve ever known, but like nowhere you’ve ever been. With its rich and wild history—its satanist years, its skinhead era, its current organized crime situation with The Old Rats—Bramble quickly becomes the MVP of every story. Ennis keeps us on our toes with an odd cast of characters, unexpected situations, and the ever-present, off-kilter town itself. Rat Aesthetics is a gem of a chapbook. Go Prowlers!
FAVORITE QUOTES
“There are places in Bramble, USA where you can best tune into the wavelength of human sadness and sorrow. It’s oppressive. It’s a nuisance. The women’s dormitory at Bramble County Community College was one of these nodes, as well as one particular seat at the TGI Fridays bar in the Bramble Mall.”
“I told her it had been a dream of mine as a child to be on a game show, but there just weren’t enough opportunities to do that as an adult as I had expected.”
“Poor little mall, you’re always a metaphor for something, never the mall itself.”
BOOK DETAILS
Rat Aesthetics can be purchased here.
Published by Sand and Gravel. The volume is 4.75”x 5.5” and is 47 pages long with acknowledgements. The book is handmade with an old-school double-staple binding.
FIVE QUESTIONS WITH SEAN ENNIS
Bramble is such an off-kilter place, and yet it feels so real. It’s got a geography, a stunning number of art galleries, and a motorcycle gang-funded high school basketball team. The world-building is just wonderful. How did the world of Bramble come to you and how has it developed? Also, are there maps? (Please tell us there are maps!)
My other three collections were set in real places that I knew intimately, so it has been fun to build the place from scratch, the underlying logic and systems and history, the geography, etc. So, a lot of pieces for the project have a sort of sociological tone, which could be silly if the setting were real. There’s a lot more to orchestrate. I spent the first year or so winding up the infrastructure of the world, and now I’m letting it run its course.
Of course, the distribution of Bramble maps without the express written permission of The Old Rats LLC is prohibited.
The weather of public life in Bramble is very much set by the Old Rats. Our narrator’s life isn’t dictated by them, per se, and yet so much of his life is caught up in their web. How do you see the themes of public power and persona playing in your work?
Bramble is a sort of municipal system that has outlived its usefulness. The place has persisted (unlike its neighbor, the abandoned town of Dagger), but the adjective I’ve latched onto is hypernormal. TGI Fridays is the spot. Also, on personal levels, I see the characters each kind of playing out their own string, which can be a dangerous way of living. So, The Old Rats motorcycle gang is not only the criminal element, but they also shape the social and moral life of the town. They are violent drug traffickers, keepers of the peace, civic administrators, your neighbors, and superfans of the Bramble High School Prowlers. Regardless of whether they wanted to be, The Old Rats are necessary and entrenched.
Ok, inside scoop. What are the mad scientists at the Bramble County Community College really up to? You can tell us. We’ll keep it quiet.
So far in other Bramble stories, they’ve: launched a misunderstood weather cubesat, codename The Choir; published a scathing but truthful analysis of Bramble wastewater; the twenty-four-hour mall was their idea. I know they’re working on a large grant, but I don’t know for what. They are just a story engine for me, especially if I want to poke at academia or science or any institution that cares about ideas more than people.
Your writing style has a delicious element of wordplay to it, often involving literal interpretations of common phrases (ex., splitting casino winnings by literally ripping a check in two). Where does this come from and how does it inform your sense of story?
Since I’m working under the self-imposed constraint of keeping all of the pieces very short, each word is under a lot of pressure. If I can get a word or a turn of phrase to do double duty, or continue ringing, or even sound too good to ignore, that’s a win. Most of my favorite fiction writers or MCs operate this way, and I'm copying that. Language is the subject, not some deep truth.
Also, my experience has been that lots of fiction readers (me included) will give up any commitment to realism if there’s humor or play at work.
What’s next for the world of Bramble? (Please say there will be more, more, more!)
There’s another chapbook’s worth I’m looking for a home for about the narrator’s friend Shadow and his wife Wanda. They’re going to sex therapy and using the narrator to debrief and process. He adores them both. But right now, I’m working on a section about the narrator’s road trip to Dagger to meet the woman he met on the godforsaken dating app, and another section about the Bramble Mall going twenty-four hours. Structurally, I see Bramble like a TV show with distinct seasons, and while I’m not claiming that approach is particularly inventive, it's been a useful way to think about the long-term project. Go Prowlers.
BIO
Sean Ennis lives in Water Valley, MS where he directs a nonprofit program training students in software development. More of his work can be found at seanennis.net.
BOOKS
Cunning, Baffling, Powerful (Thirty West)
Hope and Wild Panic (Malarkey Books)
SOCIAL MEDIA
Bluesky: @seanennis
Instagram: @seanennis110