# The Event

![Book cover of The Event](/books/covers/the_event.jpg)

by [Henry Bean](/books/authors/henry_bean/)
★★★★☆

## Review

_The Event_, by Henry Bean,
is a short story about the destruction of Israel and Palestine, narrated by a
researcher who can barely keep his own life together.

_The Event_ takes the form of a fake academic report, published in [Jewish
Currents][the_event], about a supernatural fire that engulfed Israel and
Palestine. It explores how some topics can't be acknowledged or discussed:
they can only be approached indirectly. The mysterious fire is one such
subject. Little is known about it, people are starting to forget it, and they
subconsciously avert their gaze when near it. This plays out at every scale,
from satellites going blind to the armies of Egypt crossing into the fire,
unaware that the troops ahead of them have been incinerated. The narrator has
the same problem with his own life, unable to face his failures or the people
he's hurt; it slowly leaks into his report. And the story itself, of course,
is a way to address the [Israeli--Palestinian conflict][ip] obliquely.

[the_event]: https://jewishcurrents.org/the-event
[ip]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict

The structure reinforces the theme. It starts as a dry academic report
complete with citations, but the footnotes, at first ordinary, soon begin
revealing the narrator's life: his failed marriage, calling his Jewish ex-wife
at 1:30 AM, and then trying to take it back by stating it's all irrelevant. By
the end, the report is more about him than the research. The story is a mix of
Danielewski's _House of Leaves_, which uses footnotes to
tell a parallel story, and [qntm](/books/authors/qntm/)'s [_Lena_](/books/valuable_humans_in_transit_and_other_stories/#lena) and [Chiang](/books/authors/ted_chiang/)'s
[_The Evolution of Human Science_](/books/stories_of_your_life_and_others/#the-evolution-of-human-science), which use dry formatting to heighten the
emotional content of the prose.

_The Event_ is similar to [Arkady](/books/authors/arkady_strugatsky/) and [Boris Strugatsky](/books/authors/boris_strugatsky/)'s [_Roadside Picnic_](/books/roadside_picnic/); both have a mysterious zone that humanity is trying, and
failing, to understand. Using fiction to approach a taboo subject is what [Fall](/books/authors/isabel_fall/) does with gender in [_I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter_](/books/i_sexually_identify_as_an_attack_helicopter/). And the way people can't quite
comprehend the zone, going so far as to literally not look at it, reminds me
of the antimemes from [qntm](/books/authors/qntm/)'s [_There Is No Antimemetics Division_](/books/there_is_no_antimemetics_division/).

Henry Bean does a great job of fitting so much into this short
story---politics, grief, the narrator's self-destruction---all without
focusing on any of it directly. It is [free to read][the_event]; I recommend
giving it a shot.

## Related Books
- [_Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories_](/books/valuable_humans_in_transit_and_other_stories/) by [qntm](/books/authors/qntm/) --- ★★★☆☆: Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by qntm.
- [_Stories of Your Life and Others_](/books/stories_of_your_life_and_others/) by [Ted Chiang](/books/authors/ted_chiang/) --- ★★★☆☆: Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang, is a collection of 8 short stories and novellas. The concepts range from alien linguistics to the literal nature of God, but reading them together reveals a strict logical formula that sometimes lets the ideas overshadow the narratives.
- [_Roadside Picnic_](/books/roadside_picnic/) by [Arkady Strugatsky](/books/authors/arkady_strugatsky/), [Boris Strugatsky](/books/authors/boris_strugatsky/) --- ★★★★☆: Roadside Picnic, by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, is a Soviet sci-fi novel. It’s essentially four short stories—each presented as a chapter—about the life of Redrick “Red” Schuhart, a “stalker” who illegally enters an alien-contaminated Zone to retrieve items for the black market.