Campaign for the American Reader: Pg. 69: "Wide Eyed"

Trinie Dalton is the author of the story collection, Wide Eyed.

I asked Trinie to apply the "page 69 test" to her book. Here is her reply:

I wouldn't say that page 69 in my book, Wide Eyed, is indicative of the rest of the story collection, because it's all about an early Nintendo video game called Burgertime. If you want to learn how to play Burgertime, I'd highly recommend page 69. But how many out there are really dying to play an obscure, outmoded video game?

This begs the question, why read Wide Eyed? Page 69 is about more than Burgertime, to be fair. It's introduces a story, "Animal Party," in which the narrator grapples with overwhelming loneliness that results from her living alone in a remote part of the Mojave Desert. She's also fighting depression induced by coyotes who munched her cat. Without her pets, she is doomed to endless rounds of Burgertime. The level of detail she reveals about game knowledge simultaneously reveals the obsession as an escape from herself:

"I used to play a lot of Burgertime. I was living by myself in the Mojave Desert, and coyotes had just eaten my cat. Burgertime is a Nintendo game where the player is Chef Pepper, best burger-maker in the world. Chef Pepper positions buns so that lettuce, tomatoes, and yellow cheese will fall onto them from outer space. Since the game design is primitive, the ingredients are chunky and squared and the colors are flat. The lettuce doesn't have the real thing's multiple shades of green. The buns are solid brown, and their round edges look zigzaggy, as if they're cross-stitched. Since Burgertime is my favorite video game, I sometimes think I should embroider a quilt covered with hamburgers and Chef Pepper's arch villains: Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Egg. Quilts are also useful in the fight against loneliness."

This fake autobiography slips in and out of reality by describing the narrator's preoccupations with various games, rock star ghosts, animals, and horror movies, among other things. Each story features an aspect of the narrator's eccentricity, to hopefully create a character who embraces what she fears while rejecting the tedium of daily life by injecting it with heavy doses of fantasy.

Many thanks to Trinie for the input.

Read an excerpt from Wide Eyed.

Among the praise for Wide Eyed:

"With linked anecdotes substituting for plot, Dalton's 20 quick, vibrant, wild tales read more like fantastical diary entries than short stories . . . The latest in Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery series, the work is ripe with sensuality and playfulness . . . Dalton's unique blend of dream and bracingly honest observation makes this a delightfully weird and disarming read."
--Publishers Weekly

"Trinie Dalton's voice is so charming in these stories and they fly right by, so it takes a little time to realize how deftly she is talking about death and sex and fear and love and fur and slumber parties, how lightly she touches upon heaviness, making an imprint so gentle you don't know it's there until later, when the story floats back up in your memory, light as a butterfly or a blood-oil lilypad in the bath."
--Aimee Bender

"Trinie Dalton is as radically original a young writer as I've ever come across: a post-punk, post-apocalyptic, post-everything sensibility, casting spells of willed innocence against the powers of darkness she knows terrifyingly well."
--David Gates

"These charming stories vibrate with innocence and awe. Trinie Dalton is an effortless purveyor of wonder, strangeness, and love. She is a writer of high spirits and unguarded vision, and this debut collection is an absolute pleasure to read."
--Ben Marcus

"In Wide Eyed, a wonderfully eccentric and vibrant collection, Trinie Dalton showcases her ability to put a fresh spin on the world, leading the reader into places never explored--sometimes dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, always riveting. Her vision is wholly unique and memorable."
--Jill McCorkle