"The Rememberer" by Aimee Bender

In a strange coincidence, I came upon Bender's story, a surreal exploration of reverse evolution, on the same day I read some Charlie Darwin for my Coursera Philosophy class.  I love coincidences; they make me feel like I'm the star of my very own movie.  

Bender is the author of numerous award-winning short stories and a novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which is a lovely sounding title isn't it?  I was thinking about how lovely for about two seconds before I was overwhelmed with hunger.  

"The Rememberer" is the story of Annie and Ben.  Ben undergoes a curious metamorphosis one evening, transforming from a brooding boyfriend into a baboon.  When he finally becomes a salamander, Annie, like many women who came before her, realizes he can never meet her emotional and physical needs, and she promptly drops him into the ocean.

But maybe the joke's on Annie, because Ben gets the best dialogue in the story:

On his last human day, he said, "Annie, don't you see? We're all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there's too much thought and not enough heart." 

I love when writers throw convention out the window, whether in form or in content, and Bender succeeds here by starting with a bizarre premise that she connects to very real and legitimate questions about self in society.  These are heavy questions that Bender presents lightly, like a piece of sweet lemon cake.  I prefer mine gluten-free.  

You can access a non-bootleg version of the story online, thanks to The Missouri Review.  Happy reading.