reviewed by Isaac Fox
W. Todd Kaneko’s “The Night of the Skywalkers” is a series of “because”s—a string of answers to unasked questions, of causes without effects.
The word “because” follows each and every white space. It begins each of the essay’s many sections, alternating between snippets of Kaneko’s relationship with his own son, memories of his father’s life and death, and his childhood obsession with pro wrestling. The title refers to a wrestling event involving his favorite tag-team duo, the Road Warriors. On The Night of the Skywalkers, the Road Warriors faced off against another duo while balancing on a scaffold dangling 25 feet above the ground.
Moving between pro wrestling and father-son relationships, Kaneko parallels subtler forms of violence with the “fake” beatings of pro wrestling. These range from his father’s Aikido, used “to fight while not hurting anyone,” to the slow pain of chemo and the abruptness of cardiac arrest. He also critiques other, less literal, kinds of violence within wrestling. The Road Warriors’ nemeses, Midnight Express, were wealthy, vaguely effete characters. Kaneko writes, “The draw for the audience wasn’t so much to see the two teams compete as it was to see Midnight Express get beat up.”
In another section, the forms of violence grow increasingly ancient and even cosmic. It begins, “Because the ancient Romans would have loved professional wrestling—all that violence and all that blood… the God of War exhaling through everyone’s lungs at once.” In the following sentences, Kaneko compares pro wrestling to an Old Testament Story and to angels taking fallen soldiers up into the afterlife, and his gradual progression from image to image makes those comparisons, absurd as they are, feel natural.
It’s hard to imagine an essay on pro wrestling without at least one quip about its artificiality, and “The Night of the Skywalkers” fulfills that expectation before the end of the first paragraph. However, the confidence of that joke turns out to be at least as artificial as the sport. Late in the piece, Kaneko reveals that the Road Warriors’ midair wrestling match ended in a very real injury. Sure, it was a staged show, but it still had concrete, measurable, and lasting consequences. “Because nothing is really fake,” Kaneko writes.
Passages North (https://www.passagesnorth.com/issue-43/the-night-of-the-skywalkers-by-w-todd-kaneko) publishes short stories, essays, poems, and more, especially speculative pieces. Issue 43 came out on March 14.
Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. He spends his free time reading and writing things that aren’t assigned, shooting pictures, and playing the clarinet. His fiction and photography have appeared in Rune Bear and Heart of Flesh magazines, as well as Green Blotter’s 2021 issue. You can find him on Twitter at @IsaacFo80415188.