When an Independent in Long Island calls me and says, “Jason, this book, The Thousand, did you read the review…? It’s selling really well.” Then I know reading the reviews, especially when Ms. Kakutani reviews the book, is worth my time, even if she hates the book.  Check out what Terrence Rafferty has to say about Shirley Jackson.  Did you know she died in her sleep in her late 40’s? She also didn’t like to go outside and this from the woman who wrote The Lottery, a staple in every bookstore I’ve ever been in.

Vanishing and Other Stories from the ridiculously talented Deborah Willis is probably the best book I’ve read since Freedom. She writes like a young Tobias Wolff, with a little A.M. Homes around the edges, she’s going to show it and tell it, in equal helpings, and we all can agree that trade paperbacks sell.  You’ll notice there isn’t a link to a review for Vanishing and Other Stories, because there really hasn’t been one… yet.   I just started reading the James Franco collection, Palo Alto (on sale October); I really liked the first story; it reminded me of Carver’s “A Small Good Thing”.  It doesn’t look like Franco will make the same mistakes Ethan Hawke did.

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Hempel selects twenty-five stories, some from writers you know – Dorothy Allison, Padgett Powell, Ron Rash, and one of my favorites, Wendell Berry. Some are relative unknowns, to me at least, like Adam Atlas, whose story “New Year’s Weekend” opens the collection. The unnamed narrator, an American living in Naples, Italy, cuts off the end of his thumb making a lasagna a couple of days before New Year’s. The admitting nurse tells him that he can’t be operated on for three days, but to admit himself early to make sure he gets a bed. So he admits himself and watches from the hand surgery ward as a bevy of fingerless or thumbless characters – children, parents, delinquents – parade through the ward. Also memorable is Aaron Gwyn‘s “Drive” in which a couple just hanging on together substitute the rush of adrenaline from near death experiences for a failing relationship, and Rick Bass’s tall-tale-like “Fish Story,” in which a boy is responsible for hydrating a fish that won’t die.

Lots of good stories in this collection, as always. Go pick one up.

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His central character is a drug dealer, Alfredo Batista, and such is MB’s sublime moral relativism that Alfredo is the hero of Dogfight. I promise that you will love him. Alfredo is worried, and all the gossip-heads in Jackson Heights would pay admission to see, what happens to Alfredo when his brother Jose, who has renamed himself Tariq, gets out of prison.

Alfredo has gotten his brother’s girlfriend Isabel pregnant and put Tariq out of the picture while he has been in jail. You can’t blame Isabel for making this switch. Tariq respects only violence and power. Alfredo has heart and is an artist of the streetwise.

MB inserts Tariq’s parole documents into the text. They recommend anger management sessions. Why do I find this funny? Tariq smashes bowling balls into people’s faces. Good luck with that anger management.

Also funny, because I have to laugh when it doesn’t seem appropriate to cry, is the “traditional gift” that Alfredo hopes will assuage Tariq’s anger, a generous supply of free drugs, sort of like the complimentary chocolate that might be left on your pillow in a nice hotel. Tariq, incidentally, is a chocolate fiend. His pockets are stuffed with candy bars. Kit Kat bars, Snickers, his favorite Charleston Chews, Mr. Goodbars, Hershey’s Kisses. His breath smells of it. MB is a detail man, God bless him. It helps the reader to pin down the characters. I’ll never forget, as long as I live really, the plush wooden parrots that Alfredo’s mother has hanging from strings on the ceiling of her apartment. I won’t forget her name either. It’s Lizette. It sounds like she’s named after some sort of furniture accessory…like…”oh, pull up the lizette and sit down”.

As MB flips the plot levers like a video game master, Alfredo and his drugged-out buddy Winston, he’s the GamePro magazine addict, get hold of some muscle, the youngest and most violence-prone of the “Alphabet” brothers (Alex, Bam-Bam, Curtis Hughes) to mug Vladimir, an immigrant Russian kid, and steal his drugs. They suspect V. is dealing outside his private school. The vacant stares of his classmates, the kid’s inexplicable popularity and his penchant for hanging out on street corners are strong evidence that this is true.

Gosh…how can I telegraph this to you…Matt Burgess cares. The quality that I admire most in fiction is intimacy, being close-up and accurate with your character’s feelings. Matt is an awesome detail man. Watch the streets of Queens come alive with a sense of real neighborhood, where even minor players are vividly in your face. Like the old lady who warns A. to stay hydrated during a blackout. Touched by the sympathy of a person who is basically helpless, he wants to walk her home for safety’s sake but knows she would be terrified with suspicion if, as a stranger, he offered.

But MB is a detail man about his characters feelings a well. I loved how in a argument, our couple seems to take turns being “for” or “against”. I loved how Matt can describe how a woman feels when she is pregnant. I loved how, in stressful situations, Isabel mentally leaves her body and tries to pretend she is somewhere else, like up on the ceiling. I loved that Isabel can imagine, while expecting, that her child-to-be, Christian Louis, can give her advice or tell her how he feels. I loved it that Matt can make a prosaic place like Queens, basically a support-borough for Manhattan, seem like the whole world because, like any community, it does seem like the whole world if you live there.

That’s why a novel called Dogfight really is a love story. Women readers, please, please, don’t be turned off by the D word. You’ll love this story. You’ll want to find out what’s happens to Isabel and Alfredo as much as the guys may want to find out what happens between Alfredo and his half-monster, half-human brother. This novel is a humanistic triumph, and in Queens, no less. Dogfight is scheduled as a Fall release from Doubleday.

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In the opening pages of this story I see an increased level of detail, more than what Rabbit says or sees, this is a grand examination of a time and place that no longer exists. Our narrator is John, who is leaving to find a woman in Chicago, the man or should I say, boy, they both seem to be of college age, but that’s undeterminded, who is picking him up is Neil Hovey, who appears wearing a good suit.  John’s family is there to see him off, and they don’t trust Neil, it’s a strange moment when the family releases John to the car that Neil is driving, and Neil promises them all that there son will be safer with him than he would in his own bed.  John looks over his mothers shoulder as she hugs him and takes in the vista of his home and the sky behind it, the walnut tree where his grandfather likes to sit, the house and barn, and the ruts in the soft lawn that the bakery truck left that morning, (I’m sort of loosely quoting here), and it’s a moment like this where John just pushes off into the unknown.  I wonder if Updike had a time like this in his life, where he left the security of his home and went on a trip without knowing more than the name of the place he was going. This paragraph from John’s perspective is brilliantly told, and shows with great ease what a craftsman Updike was. In a few short sentences I know more about the secondary characters than I’ll ever need to know, but enough to help me know them.

Neil wants to stop at a party and John doesn’t really care one way or the other, Neil thinks the road will be crowded for their drive, and both boys seems breathless with anticipation at what might be waiting for them at this bash. This section of the story is severely flavored, smoky without the accompaning dizziness that sometimes follows Updike like a heavy shadow.  Each member of the party is given its moments, and Updike has John describe in only the most glowing fashion a party at a house where the parents have gone out, and somehow returned, and the party goers are not in trouble, and the cops were not called. I especially like how John finds himself thinking about luck, and how men who are lucky enough to get a woman, however you want to think of that process are lucky, but they don’t think of the men who aren’t lucky. When you do have luck, do you ever think of anyone else?

The story peels away at this point, it’s the next morning, and we find John and Neil back on the road, John driving his friends car, a rare occasion, and a crisp set of scenes later were delivered a final blow, a kind of punch line that really makes what you’ve read even more important.  -JR

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Updike swears dangerously close to a meditation on what it means to be young, willfully unknowing, and somehow brave enough to risk what little money there is on a game that is rigged only to take it.  It’s the cynic in me that keeps my son away from the boardwalk, as my money will soon be separated from my wallet if we aren’t careful.  Ben, the pint-sized hero of this story, is exicted by the fact that something new has arrived, driven in while he looked the other way, and then he turned his head and it had set up, tents, games, ferris wheels, cotton candy, and something that can only be seen at night, anticipation.

I felt a strong pull into these stories with this little sliver, or it’s more like a cloud, or a ripple of mist, something that you know, but can’t quite put a finger on. Ben watches the adults, one with the word Peace written in blue ink on his hand, spin the wheel with the numbers on it, and Ben quickly places his bets, his day is done, and now he wants to forget his life for a while and make some money.  His loose change, almost half a dollar, slips away like clipped finger nails, now you see it, now you don’t.  What Ben doesn’t know is that this is life, it’s all a struggle, a bet to be lost, a feeling that is there as an idea, but never amounts to much, and Ben wants to give into this feeling of something, anything, and maybe he’ll find it at the Carnival.  But now he’s broke, Updike took his money, there was no pause, the wager was made, a number taken, and now your money is gone. Ben, go home, grow up, get married, find a job that you don’t hate, well, don’t hate too much, and try to find happiness. But keep your money in your pocket. This story leads off the Olinger stories, and is a fine introduction for what comes next.  -JR

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Thelma’s mother is the kind of barnacle housewife who is tied to the stove and waiting for her husband to come home, where she insists he take Johnny and her daughter Thelma down to the liquor store to buy a bottle.  Mr. Lutz is a brush-cut brute who seems more likely to beat Johnny than he is to offer a ride to the liquor store.  Thelma and Johnny are left in the car for a moment while Mr. Lutz disappears, and the two start talking to each other like a married couple just past their honeymoon phase.

There is a kind of rural vernacular that runs through this piece; Thelma talks to Johnny in a sing-song voice, and it even sounds a little bit condescending, but in return, he nags on her.  It’s great to read an adult man write from a teenager’s perspective. In this story Thelma has recently visited New York and talks in a kind of slang that makes Johnny’s first name sound like a combination of John and Ann, Johnny. It sticks out just a little bit, but in the end it’s John that has the last laugh, at least that’s what it seems like to me. He keeps telling everyone that his mother is home working in the house, and by the time his father gets home there will be no one to go to the liquor store, and they won’t have wine to offer their friends from Philadelphia that are arriving for dinner. Mothers of those long lost years sending their kids down the block to ask the nearest adult for a favor like that, it seems suspect, and at the same time like something that Harry Angstrom would do. -JR

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DH: It’s a bright moment for any reader of contemporary American literature when they discover a debut novel as self-assured, as well-disciplined, as You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin.

RB’s first person narrator, Victor, is a 60-ish research scientist, a director of a project investigating Alzheimer’s at a privately funded think tank on Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine. If you’ve ever had a desire to sample Maine’s offshore recreational beauty in a book, if you’ve ever wondered what Bar Harbor is like, then this is a must-read novel. Baldwin’s sense of place, his commitment to what it means to be a local, never deserts him.

This is a novel, in part, about science. I consider it fiction from the distaff side, from the non-liberal arts side. That’s refreshing. I’ve had two close friends who were scientists, a physicist and an engineer. So I think I know the mind-set and RB has nailed it. Even down to several references to Singing in the Rain. My physicist friend loved talking about Singing in the Rain. Why? Because it’s the musical for geeks. It’s “plot”, if musicals can be said to have plots, is about the awkward transition from silent pictures to the talkies, making wacky comedy out of all the technical glitches. And yes, I agree that Donald O’Connor is underrated. Throw-away culture lines…there are dozens in this novel.

Film and music references litter this narrative like shells you’d pick up on the beach. But they’re well embedded in the sand. Characters cite twists and turns of classic movie plots to deepen their insights, like when an encounter on the beach reminds someone of a similar encounter in La Dolce Vita. An easy acquaintance with the TCM movie catalog would enhance your enjoyment of this story.

Victor, our middle aged narrator has a dedicated stereo room, costing many thousands. Guys love their cars and stereo equipment. They love collecting recordings. I don’t know why. I found myself ticking off all the classical references in Victor’s collection from Chopin Mazurkas to Shostakovich String Quartets to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians.

The film and music references add some extra heft to RB’s dialogue patterns. And it adds to Victor’s sometime relationship with Regina, a much younger science researcher, that’s she’s an aspiring poet, since Victor’s relationship to Regina is as awkward as his approach to poetry. The liberal arts side of culture comes off as a terra incognita when viewed from the hard science POV and that’s all to the good for this novel’s swing. We’re viewing what the arts look like from the research lab. And RB knows that research lab, what it’s like to work there, what it’s like to scramble for funding. What did you study before you decided to become an novelist, RB? Pre-med? It’s not that often that I come across a novelist who seems like he would make an excellent surgeon.

RB owns great technique for adding depth to his narrative by having his characters talk about other characters, by making Betsy, an elderly aunt, into a gossip hound. We sense the gossip on Mount Desert Island as if it were an off-shore breeze. And it’s neat that Victor ends up as its principal subject. We also get Victor’s memories, most especially of his dead wife, Sara. This is a novel about a man whose profession is to understand how memory twists and turns in the wind, is lost…and the struggle to forestall that loss. Rosecrans Baldwin likes narrative mirroring. This novel is built like a skiff that won’t capsize because every plank in it is mutually reinforcing.

Victor is as disconnected as his stereo system is not. There’s a simply wonderful short scene with his best friend, Randall, who has just concluded a visit and is pushing off. As Randall leaves, Victor realizes that he doesn’t care if he ever sees him again. Just like that. His best friend and he doesn’t care. Randall has asked, imposed really, his looking-for-direction daughter, Cornelia, on Victor until she straightens herself out. RB ties up his story lines as well as an old sea dog can tie sailor’s knots.

You Lost Me There is full of well-drawn women characters. It’s a good sign for the reader when you can remember their names. Betsy, elderly aunt and island native, Regina, sometime mistress, Cornelia, his best friend’s daughter, Lucy, colleague in the lab, and Victor’s wife, Sara. Sara was a writer who didn’t believe in seat belts, living now only in her words. As for the guys: disaffected, prima donnas with penises.

Sara, before she died, was filling out index cards at the suggestion of their marriage counsellor: five sets of cards for five turning points in their marriage. The chapters of  You Lost Me There are divided into five corresponding sections. In each section, Victor goes to read the next set of his deceased wife’s cards. He’s gobsmacked with their POV of key incidents in their marriage, some of which he doesn’t remember or remembers very differently. Sara and Victor were married to each other. But they were both in a different marriage.

If there’s a fault in this grand machine of narrative, it’s near the end where Baldwin falters from showing into telling, into explaining what Victor should be feeling through an imaginary conversation with the spirit of his wife. It’s sort of like the hoary ghost of Sara rises up out of the surf to chasten Victor into the proper mode of mourning for her and for his own shortcomings. There’s not literally a ghost in this story but it’s as close to a ghost as a scientist can get. It’s memories functioning as ghosts.

You Lost Me There is an tight-assed debut of a novel, a terrific, intellectual read. But I’d rather conclude a book and say: “What the hell did that mean?”, than have the writer tell me what it means.

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Woolf v. To move as rapidly as the speed of thought

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I never knew Ken Bruen to be such a great writer, a grab you by the throat kind of guy, and this story is nothing short of asskicking at its finest.  Bruen makes no secret for his love of crime fiction, and this novel is an ode to his favorites, he namedrops them through out the book, his main character takes over a flat once occupied by a lover of crime fiction, and has lined his walls with the greats, Elmore Leonard (not great, if you ask me), James Ellroy (he is great), James Sallis, Charles Willeford, John Harvey and sprinkled over the course of this story Bruen references other greats crimes novelists, quotes them, and generally reminds you that the story your reading wouldn’t be possible without the crime forefathers who he’s standing on.  He even mentions a great movie, John Boorman‘s classic, Point Blank, with Lee Marvin, (rent that right away, a real kickass revenge movie), which this story has more in common with than anything else.

Mitchell is released from prison after serving a three year stretch for assault, he can’t remember doing it, but his friend who picks him up when Mitchell is released assures him he did the crime, (hint #1). Mitch proceeds on an inner dialogue that is both thrilling and unnerving, sometimes hard to follow, but incredibly distinctive, it’s like listening to a person describe good sex to a blind man, it’s short on the details, but the broad strokes are memorable, and leave a permanent mark. I love how Mitchell delivers his message like he would a slap to a unresponsive cadaver, short and sharp.  Mitch goes from post prison life to the straight life in a few chapters, and before we know it he’s got a job on the straight and narrow working for a faded actress (think Julie Christie, right now) and her butler, a man who is harder a coffin nail, (thanks Guy Ritchie), Jordan, (hint #2). While Mitch is getting settled with his new boss, and he gets settled quickly, passionately, and with unique force, we also meet Mitch’s sister, who is a unique form a crazy, and will play a part in Mitch’s life, like all characters in this book will, over time.

Bruen is a classic story teller, each part of this puzzle means something to the story (details are just background rendering), each character has a unique set of identifying marks, and while we’re admiring the quicksilver prose and rapid dialogue that sounds more real than real, like running water it comes at you in the shower, and before you know it, Jordan, Mitch, and the actress are all wrapped tighter than a Chinese yo-yo. Mitch runs afowl of a gangster named Gant (who will be played by Ray Winstone in the movie adaptation, which is perfect casting), and gets involved with another heist, all while managing to bed the actress and another woman he Fancy’s, and being a handy man around the mansion occupied by the actress and Jordan.  You see, that’s his day job, doing odd jobs for the actress, being indispensable, irreplaceable. (hint #3).

It would be unkind of me to spoil this great story, as I’ve mentioned, the book is being adapted for the screen, by none other than William Mohahan (The Departed, Body of Lies) with Colin Farrell playing Mitch. This book is easier to read than falling out of a boat, but much more fun. -JR

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Malcolm is asleep. His steel rim glasses, which he doesn’t need, lie on a table by the bed. He’s compared to the keel of a ship. What I’ve noticed right off in my first JS story is that the writer is a master of the suggestive fact…of facts that have vaporous ghosts of abstractions clingiing to them as if the facts could be haunted.

There are priorities in what Salter wants to talk about. I notice that JS goes on for about half a page, associating M with images of strength…steel glasses (one), he doesn’t need them (two), body parts like the keel of a ship (3).

It’s only after we’ve been though half a page of Malcolm asleep that we are introduced to Nico, his partner. She’s already awake and has gone out to the terrace after her bath. Since I’m myth-saturated, I associate Malcolm with the sleeping Eros…Eros is often depicted in art as sleeping. It’s very dangerous to wake him. It’s not necessary for Salter to have thought of this at all. But the myth helps me to see something…that Malcolm is being presented as a god and maybe, I’m wondering, to Nico he is one.

I’m indebted to Salter for the slow elevator approach to storytelling. Nico goes down the slow elevator of her building to get Malcolm a morning coffee from a restaurant. Can you guess that Malcolm likes it black? “Solo” he says. And that Nico is getting it for him and likes getting it for him?

There was a time in my life when I was on a slow elevator off Spring Street in Soho a great deal. Christ, that elevator took forever. It must have been a hundred years old. But I understand about slow elevators. JS has a great line: as the lift drifts down from floor to floor, it’s like Nico is passing through decades of her life. In my opinion, you have to be in midlife to appreciate a slow elevator.

The slow elevator approach to story telling…you see, we’ve passed down another floor in my post. You don’t discover how the reality of another person changes right away. It happens slowly, like a play, scene by scene. I’m paraphrasing Salter here. This is what Nico is thinking. Reminds me of that Boulez piece, Pli Selon Pli…fold after fold.

Salter goes on to introduce fold after fold of cognitive dissonance until “the story” can’t take it anymore and breaks up into a sputtering coda of non sequiturs. I’m a great fan of having the structure of a story buckle with the sense of what’s happening.

Let’s all go to the beach. Who doesn’t want to go to the beach? So JS sends his characters and his readers to the beach at Stiges. But S introduces a new character, Inge, Nico’s friend from when she was going solo, as the agent of dissonance.

It’s awesome how the great JM piles on pleat after pleat of disturbance, all of it MINOR, but the effect is to overwhelm.

First off, it’s genius to have Malcolm encounter Nico’s old girlfriend, Inge, from her unattached days. This excavates Nico’s old personal history…rarely a positive experience for anyone. Shows the boyfriend what you were like before he met you.

Here are some folds for you: They go to the beach in Inge’s car. She doesn’t realize it’s a piece of junk, Malcolm drives but Inge leans over to use the horn uselessly when they get stuck in traffic. Even though Inge owns a piece of shit, she talks about owning a Mercedes someday…several. She is overweight but wears a dress that’s too short. She talks about the boys in a bar not being able to buy you a dinner. She wants to run on the beach in front of expensive villas so she can be ogled. She berates her boyfriend who she called at 5 in the morning because he didn’t call her back the previous night. She dreams that every guy who lays her for one night may want to marry her.

It’s genius that Nico becomes emotionally exhausted and falls asleep on a couch in the restaurant she selects for the trio afterward. The real nightmare occurs when she wakes up, groggy I would think, and sees Inge in a tete a tete with her boyfriend.

I’ve mentioned just a few of the minor key measures that shadow this less than five page story. It’s called ‘Am Strande Von Tanger’ and it’s in Modern Library’s wonderful reissue in cloth of James Salter’s collection “Dusk and Other Stories”.

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