Assistant Editor Toni Judnitch: “Sam Less” by Jonathan Cardew demonstrates the limits of language by subverting the need to find the correct words in order to form self-knowledge. Cardew plays with identity in a way that seems at first to be lighthearted, but looking deeper, we see that at its core, this story is rooted in loneliness and disconnection.
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Sam Less
Sam sammed his way through life, samming out of a loving relationship with his dad, samming his studies in school hard, his teachers urging him to sam less for the sake of his education, for the sake of others’ concentration levels, but samming was all he knew, samming was the sanctuary, he inhabited his samness like a pelt, a layer between the world and Sam, just a sliver, but enough to remain samintact, his mother suggested he sam in his mind, it was something people did the world over, he could sam all he liked there, samming was meant for there, it was called mindsamming, but Sam said no, he was Sam, and he was going to sam like he’d been samming all this time, Sams sammed, it was in their chemical makeup, kept them ticking, his mother didn’t know because she couldn’t sam, she’d lost the ability after her second pregnancy, the moment Sam became Sam, the moment the door slammed and out came Sam, gone, at least sam a little less, she said, at least look at me, Sam, but the problem with samming is the more you sam the more you want to sam, it’s a snowball of sam, it’s a never-ending torrent of sam, it’s a sam grand slam.
Jonathan Cardew is a British writer living in the Midwest. He is the blog editor for Bending Genres and contributing editor for the Best Microfiction 2021 anthology (Pelekinesis Press). His stories can be found in CRAFT, Atticus Review, Cream City Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Wigleaf, among others.
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