{"id":640,"date":"2022-04-01T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/greenblotter\/?p=640"},"modified":"2022-04-01T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T21:00:00","slug":"the-god-of-war-exhaling-through-everyones-lungs-at-once-review-of-w-todd-kanekos-the-night-of-the-skywalkers-passages-north-march-14-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/2022\/04\/01\/the-god-of-war-exhaling-through-everyones-lungs-at-once-review-of-w-todd-kanekos-the-night-of-the-skywalkers-passages-north-march-14-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cthe God of War exhaling through everyone\u2019s lungs at once\u201d: Review of W. Todd Kaneko\u2019s \u201cThe Night of the Skywalkers\u201d (Passages North, March 14, 2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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reviewed by Isaac Fox<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

W. Todd Kaneko\u2019s \u201cThe Night of the Skywalkers\u201d is a series of \u201cbecause\u201ds\u2014a string of answers to unasked questions, of causes without effects.<\/span><\/p>\n

The word \u201cbecause\u201d follows each and every white space. It begins each of the essay\u2019s many sections, alternating between snippets of Kaneko\u2019s relationship with his own son, memories of his father\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moving between pro wrestling and father-son relationships, Kaneko parallels subtler forms of violence with the \u201cfake\u201d beatings of pro wrestling. These range from his father\u2019s Aikido, used \u201cto fight while not hurting anyone,\u201d 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\u2019 nemeses, Midnight Express, were wealthy, vaguely effete characters. Kaneko writes, \u201cThe draw for the audience wasn\u2019t so much to see the two teams compete as it was to see Midnight Express get beat up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In another section, the forms of violence grow increasingly ancient and even cosmic. It begins, \u201cBecause the ancient Romans would have loved professional wrestling\u2014all that violence and all that blood\u2026 the God of War exhaling through everyone\u2019s lungs at once.\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine an essay on pro wrestling without at least one quip about its artificiality, and \u201cThe Night of the Skywalkers\u201d fulfills that expectation before the end of the first paragraph. However, the confidence of that joke turns out to be at least<\/em> as artificial as the sport. Late in the piece, Kaneko reveals that the Road Warriors\u2019 midair wrestling match ended in a very real injury. Sure, it was a staged show, but it still had concrete, measurable, and lasting consequences. \u201cBecause nothing is really fake,\u201d Kaneko writes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Passages North<\/em> (https:\/\/www.passagesnorth.com\/issue-43\/the-night-of-the-skywalkers-by-w-todd-kaneko<\/a>) publishes short stories, essays, poems, and more, especially speculative pieces. Issue 43 came out on March 14.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019t assigned, shooting pictures, and playing the clarinet. His fiction and photography have appeared in Rune Bear<\/em> and Heart of Flesh<\/em> magazines, as well as Green<\/em> Blotter<\/em>\u2019s 2021 issue. You can find him on Twitter at @IsaacFo80415188.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reviewed by Isaac Fox W. Todd Kaneko\u2019s \u201cThe Night of the Skywalkers\u201d is a series of \u201cbecause\u201ds\u2014a string of answers to unasked questions, of causes without effects. The word \u201cbecause\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,5],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-isaac-fox","tag-micro-review","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}