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by Jeremy Griffin

Little Wolves by Thomas Maltman

I’m almost always a fan of books that can turn a landscape or region into its own kind of character. Cormac McCarthy comes to mind, and of course Mark Twain. I’m inclined to add Thomas Maltman, author of Night Birds, to this list: the eloquent grittiness of Little Wolves derives in large part from the author’s masterful understanding of setting.

Based loosely on true events, Little Wolves takes place in the stark Minnesota prairies some thirty years ago. The story begins with the seemingly unprovoked murder of the town sheriff by a troubled teen named Seth, whose father Seth, Sr.–or Grizz, as he is known around town–suddenly finds his quiet farmer’s life overturned as the townsfolk rally against him for justice. In the midst of the turmoil following the sheriff’s death, Grizz befriends Clara, wife of the town’s new minister and Seth’s (former) English teacher. In fact, as the plot wears on we come to find that perhaps Clara knew more about the troubled outcast than she or anyone else really knew.

While Clara and Grizz are not exactly original character types (the gruff, down-on-his-luck farmer who just needs to be loved; the secretly faith-doubting English teacher who just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the town’s conservative Lutheran women), they balance each other out nicely, and Maltman takes pains to ensure that they are well-developed, especially Grizz, whose tumultuous relationship with his late son is rendered with unsettling realism, as are his manic efforts to move past the tragedy and instead focus on his own grueling farm life.

If there’s any strike to draw against Little Wolves, it’s Maltman’s tendency toward artsy, only-kinda-relevant subplots, namely Clara’s fascination with Norse and Anglican mythology. Several of the gods of this pantheon are employed for symbolism, which isn’t entirely uninteresting, but it doesn’t really seem necessary, either. Rather, it seems at times like exactly that, a heavy-handed attempt at symbolism, one that ultimately doesn’t contribute much to the narrative. The same could be said for the back story concerning Seth and the sheriff: I have no doubt that these things could be engrossing in a Grishamy sort of way, but at the moment they feel unfinished, like roads left unpaved.

But then, one gets the impression that Maltman was actively working against the Grisham thriller model, focusing instead on character and place and letting the tension unfold from there. Which it does, and beautifully so. Little Wolves is flawed, certainly, but in a way that seems strangely fitting considering its gritty aesthetic. Most of its missteps are minor and are largely the result of Maltman’s commendable efforts to maintain the story’s integrity.

The Bartender’s Tale by Ivan Doig

I tried to get into this one. I really did. I thought, A coming-of-age story set in rural Montana in the 60s? That’s got me written all over it!

But of course, as anyone will tell you, there’s only so much you can do with this kind of tale, and it takes a truly masterful writer to really surprise his/her audience with a new spin on it. Unfortunately, Ivan Doig is not that writer.

We begin with 12-year-old Rusty Harry, our narrator, being picked up from his aunt’s house–where he’s been living for the past several years–by his father Tom Harry, who has abruptly shown back up in the boy’s life. Tom owns and operates the Medicine Lodge, the only decent watering hole in the tiny town of Gros Venture. It’s a predictably shabby place frequented by minors and truckers and any number of disreputable characters whom Rusty eagerly observes from the back room of the bar, where his father stashes him during business hours. Not surprisingly, things take a turn for our narrator when 12-year-old Zoe Constantine (really, that’s her name) movies into town with her parents. Rusty finds himself drawn to her for reasons he doesn’t understand, this friend with whom he explores the strange little town and blah blah blah.

I mean, look: it’s not that it’s a bad story, it’s just that it feels incredibly anachronistic, even wistful. And I get that that’s not exactly the author’s fault–we write what we know, don’t we? Except that, well, it sort of is, because a lot of the things that were interesting in books during Rusty’s era (Tom’s pompadour, for instance, which Doig is really just waaaaaay too excited about) aren’t interesting now. And in fact, one could argue that Doig is actually channeling the restrospectively streamlined early sixties of, say, Leave it to Beaver; NPR‘s Carmen Gimenez Smith, for example, points out that even the drunk, unruly, unrefined bar patrons speak in PG prose, as does pretty much everyone else in the book.

The point being, I suppose, that The Bartender’s Tale doesn’t necessarily present us with a version of the past so much as another family-friendly version of the past, one that I’m sure Doig remembers fondly but that nonetheless feels stale and plastic. It’s a shame, too: all the pieces are there for something really special, but the author is reluctant to take any risks. The book is quaint and charming, but probably not in the way he intended.

Lara Santoro’s ‘The Boy’ Needs to Grow the Hell Up

by Jeremy Griffin

The Boy by Lara Santoro

I like to think of myself as a pretty progressive guy. I mean, I’m no Ghandi or anything, but I try to be open-minded and empathetic. And so whenever I have a particularly strong reaction to a book by a female author, either good or bad, I always ask myself if I would have felt the same had it been written by a man. It’s a fair question for those of us interested in overcoming the biases that prevent us from viewing any work of art from the proper objective distance, and I’m certainly not above acknowledging that being a 30-something white middle class dude has most likely affected my worldview in any number of unfortunate ways. And in the case of Lara Santoro’s The Boy, the question seems especially pertinent considering that, man, I hated this book.

It isn’t because our main character Anna is a reprehensible person; quite frankly, I usually enjoy people like this in books. Bad people generally make for interesting characters, in my experience. But a bad person is far different from a bad character, which is what Anna is. And I mean really bad.

Here’s the situation: After a bitter divorce, Anna has abandoned her career as a photojournalist and relocated from Africa to New Mexico with her eight-year-old daughter Eva and their sort-of live-in housekeeper Esperanza. At a party hosted by her neighbor Richard Strand, Anna meets Jack, Strand’s twenty-year-old son, who is instantly infatuated with her. Anna manages to keep him at bay for a little while, but soon enough the two strike up a torrid sexual relationship, much to the disgust of Richard and Eva.

Notice I’m saying “sexual relationship” here and not “affair”; the latter, it seems, would indicate a degree of secrecy. But there’s nothing secret about Anna’s and Jack’s involvement (and let me be clear that the relationship itself is not the problem here; it’s actually the most interesting thing about the book, even despite the fact that Santoro devotes an oddly small amount of attention to it). Quite the opposite, in fact. Anna seemingly goes out of her way to broadcast it, all the while believing that she is somehow a victim in the ordeal: “I have zero control here,” she complains to Strand when he politely asks her to end the relationship. When Jack moves in, despite her daughter’s and Strand’s protestations, she appeals to a close friend for advice, and then promptly ignores it, as she does the advice from her shrink: “What about me?” she replies. “Who takes care of me?…I have been constrained beyond all reasonable parameters. I have been enslaved, shackled like some goddamned convict and I’m tired. I need this.”

Enslaved? Shackled? Anna does not work, not like the rest of us anyway. She lives in a comfortable split-level with her daughter, who is closer to the housekeeper than she is with her mother. Her ex-husband lives in England. Ostensibly, her life is free of the kind of strictures that such a claim might suggest, including any abstract framework of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

The problem for me, then, isn’t whether or not Anna actually believes these things, it’s whether Santoro does. Several reviews have praised The Boy for its depiction of Anna’s “downward spiral,” but downward from what? What are the circumstances that compell Anna to behave so horribly to everyone around, to blame her daughter when pothead Jack stops returning her calls, to load the child into her car for a drunk driving spree and then, after totaling the car and landing Eva in a coma, preoccupying herself with making sure that her ex–by all indications stable and blissfully devoted to his daughter–doesn’t file for sole custody?

For me, there are three possibilities here:

1.) Santoro actually intended The Boy to be read as an absurdist exercise in existentialism, a la The Stranger, whereby the main character’s utter lack of conscience and/or personal identity illuminates some aspect of our conceptions of meaning and morality. Except that Anna does have a conscience, she does have feelings, and she does understand right and wrong. There are numerous instances in which this is elucidated for us. But for whatever reason, she chooses to disregard her understanding of these things. Why is anyone’s guess; she isn’t lonely, nor does she feel particularly fond for Jack.

2.) The story is meant to be read through a feminist lit lens by which we see that our main character’s flatness and emotional immaturity is really evidence of her being empowered, actively bucking against the conventions of the male-centered Western narrative structure. But this too seems unsatisfying, not to mention insulting to actual feminist lit: clearly, Anna is disappointed by motherhood and the general malaise of suburban life, which isn’t unreasonable. But this isn’t enough of a catalyst to transform unrepentant cruelty and selfishness into some virtue of postmodernism. Rather, it just feels like bad character development.

3.) The final and most plausible explanation I can think of is that Santoro really did just want to craft the most unlikable character she could. In which case, bravo, well-done. Artwise, I can actually see the value in attempting something like this, if only because it sends dudes like me scurrying to their blogs to whine about it. But then, it doesn’t offer readers anything to take away. The Boy doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen before, other than ignore that pesky notion of character development. You’re better off downing a couple painkillers and watching reruns of Two and a Half Men or Sex and the City: sure, both are equally tawdry and mindless, but at least stuff actually happens.

Everything’s Not Alright in the Suburbs…Again.

by Jeremy Griffin

In Between Days by Andrew Porter

I remember this one lit theory course I took in grad school in which someone once argued that John Cheever had established the private-and-more-than-likely-self-induced-problems-of-middle-class-white-Americans-living-in-the-burbs trope as its own sort of fiction subgenre. I’m not sure if this is true or not, if Cheever was ultimately responsible for this, but I think we can all agree that this subgenre does indeed exist and that a lot of writers, both excellent and terrible, have gotten a lot of economy out of it. That’s not to say that this is altogether “bad” territory; it is, after all, the wheelhouse of folks like Phillip Roth and Tom Perrotta. But for a lot of lesser writers, this seems to be a kind of go-to motif, a comfort zone that, because most of their readership would likely live in these placid little worlds, aren’t worth stepping out of.

Now, I am reticent to lump Andrew Porter’s In Between Days into this category: I truly did enjoy reading it. Porter’s prose is crisp and controlled, and his devotion to his characters, to giving them each their own unique presence, is admirable if not a little heavy-handed. But these aren’t exactly mold-breaking characters. In a lot of ways, they are dangerously familiar. There’s Elson, a forty-something architect who, having separated from his wife, is now involved in a dubious relationship with a much younger woman. His wife Cadence has also sought out new mates, though we get the sense that, like Elson, these are mostly time-killers, ways of filling some kind of void. Richard, their son, spends his days waiting tables and his nights at ad hoc poetry workshops led by a professor at Rice whose interest in his work is questionable. And then there’s Chloe, the youngest child, who finds herself embroiled in a potentially murderous fiasco while away at college.

The real story begins when Chloe, accompanied by her boyfriend Raja–the supposed perpetrator of the crime in question–returns to Houston, where Richard arranges for the two of them to be smuggled into Mexico. Upon catching wind of their daughter’s return to town and her plans to flee, Elson and Cadence find themselves coming together in hopes of salvaging their family.

The real crux of the book, however, is the way that each character continuously gets in his/her own way, sabotaging his or her own plans, making unforgivably stupid choices. This is In Between Days’ book’s biggest problem, I think, the way it clobbers us over the head with the very notion of character fallibility. Because here’s the thing: there is no reaon for these people be so feckless other than the fact that there would be no story without it.  That’s what this particular subgenre does, it reassures us that all those outwardly happy, easily mockable suburbanite families are really just as fucked-up and miserable as the rest of us. Very few–if any–of the problems this family faces are brought about by anything other than their own naivety and/or selfishness. And after a while it gets hard to sympathize.

This is not to say that the obstacles a character faces can never be self-imposed. Hell, look at Hamlet, Willy Loman, or almost anything by Poe. Self-destructive characters can be a lot of fun–when there’s a reason for them to self-destructive, that is. In the case of In Between Days, however, we seem to be reusing a well-worn Desperate Housewives-ish template that assumes characters are only as interesting as the problems they cause for themselves. The book is a good read, maybe even great in some places (the creepy professor character is particularly fun, although this may be the disgruntled MFA grad in me talking), but there is very little to take away, which is a shame because it’s clear from Porter’s prose that he’s capable of so much more.

From Socrates to the Apocalypse: new stuff from Paul Johnson and Peter Heller

by Jeremy Griffin

Socrates: A Man for our Times, by Paul Johnson

In the world of philosophy, Socrates is something of a conundrum: while he is widely regarded as the father of philosophy, he never actually wrote anyhing, or at least nothing that has survived from antiquity. Pretty much everything we know about him comes to us from the works of others, namely Plato, a devout follower of of the Athenian sage. Unfortunately, many of Plato’s works distort or misrepresent Socrates’ teachings to suit his own hypotheses. And this bugs the hell out of Paul Johnson.

Not that this is necessarily surprising coming from the author of such critically acclaimed works as A History of Christianity and Modern Times: Johnson expects from other historians the same uncompromising honesty with which he approaches his own writing, and he has no problem calling out those he sees as failing in this regard. And so it makes sense that he would devote a large part of Socrates: A Man for Our Times to clarifying the inaccuracies surrounding the eponymous philosopher’s life, including the bizarre circumstances surrounding his execution (Johnson devotes a significant chunk of the book to the 24 hours preceding the philosopher’s death). The vigor with which Johnson approaches this task underscores his immense respect for the intellectual realm at large: his prose is accessible, though not at the expense of the ideas’ integrity, and the protrait of Socrates he presents to us is as vivid as I’ve ever seen–though, to be fair, I know very little about Greek philosophy. But this kind of what makes the book so remarkable: Johnson exalts Socrates for his repeated claim that he didn’t actually know anything, that he was simply inquisitive, a lifelong Athenian patriot whose days were spent strolling through town, talking with whomever he happened to cross paths with. Endlessly fascinated by human behavior, Socrates’ primary–maybe even only–goal was determining what it means to be “a good person.” While the book does not necessarily advocate any one form of moral philosophy, Johnson still praises Socrates’ position of moral absolutism: “Socrates says plainly in Crito, ‘It is never right to do wrong, or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.’ It is this clear view that marks the point at which Socrates turns his back on moral relativism, in any guise or circumstances…If you know a thing is wrong, never do it, ever.”

In addition to an biography of Socrates, the book is also a brief history of Athens itself, though in this regard it doesn’t hold up quite as well. Johnson casts a big net here, touching on everything from Greek theater to the Peloponesian War to the Greeks’ general views on homosexuality, all in 200 pages. No surprise then that some of these minor forays seem tacked on, unnecessary, maybe even a little distracting at times. Of course, I have no doubt that all of these things played a role in Socrates’ worldview, it’s just not made quite clear how.

Nonetheless, Socrates: A Man for Our Times is a stunning read. Johnson writes not only for long-time scholars of philosophy but also for anyone who’s ever questioned the very nature of human existence. If you’re looking for an overview of Western philosophy, this is an excellent starting point.

The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller

A flu-like virus has wiped out something like 99% of the world’s population. Gangs of grizzled marauders roam the country, raping and pillaging and generally being end-of-the-world-style nasty. Those who have somehow retained their sense of civility have armed themselves and hunkered down on secluded farms or military strongholds or, in the case Hig–our narrator in The Dog Stars–a small regional airport. Having lost his wife to the unnamed illness, Hig now shares the considerable plot of land with his neighbor Bangley, a survival expert whose cold and unfeeling demeanor balance out Hig’s own overtrusting tendencies (he makes regular supply visits to a colony of disease-ridden Mennonites, much to Bangley’s frustration) nicely. Oh, and there’s a dog too, of course, a blue healer named Jasper–because every post-apocalyptic survivor story needs a dog.

Which is to say that author Peter Heller isn’t exactly breaking new ground here, though he seems to understand this, which I think contributes to the book’s success. Told from Hig’s first-person POV, the book offers few details regarding the superflu in question; even Hig seems to understand that what he’s experienced, however terrible it may have been, really isn’t anything new in a narrative sense. What we get instead is a gritty but hopeful exploration of human frailty and the strive to maintain a sense of identity in the wake unspeakable disaster. Like most post-apocalyptic stories, The Dog Stars focuses heavily on themes of isolation, using a stream-of-consciousness voice to emphasize this feeling. It’s an interesting tactic, once that highlights Heller’s poetic sensibilities, though at times it gets confusing, especially when it comes to dialogue:

The words are easy to remember: just the title over and over. Followed by the exhortative: We know you are here. You will become dog food like many before you.

Bangley made me add that.

Fuck no, I said. That’s unnecessary and disgusting.

Bangley just stared at me, his grin half formed.

It’s true ain’t it? Ain’t it Hig?

Hit me like a punch.

Add it, he said. This isn’t some debutante ball.

Indisputably, the book owes a lot to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,  which is a hard to act to follow and which, consequently, establishes some very high standards. Luckily, The Dog Stars meets most of these (the ones that count, anyway ['cept for that whole Pulitzer Prize thing]); it’s a unique spin on some well-tread territory, and while the prose can be jarring and hard to follow, it serves the story well, making for a rewarding read.

Adam Prince’s Beautiful Wishes

by Jeremy Griffin

A review of The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men by Adam Prince

Black Lawrence Press, 2012

I met Adam Prince once. I was visiting a friend in Knoxville who allowed me to tag along to the Prince house for dinner. Prince and his wife, poet Charlotte Pence, prepared a lovely ginger curry dish. After dinner we watched Mad Men. They were charming and polite, the picture of suburban contentment.

Strange to think that this is the same man who wrote The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, which author Bret Anthony Johnston calls the work of “a writer who understands the intimacy of violence and the violence of intimacy.” Combining the thematic grittiness of Stewart O’Nan with the narrative passion of Raymond Carver, The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men signals the debut of a writer whose vision is at once both alarming and utterly  mesmerizing.

To a large degree, the stories in here are analyses of character motivation, or rather the often frightening circumstances from which those motivations are borne. Take, for instance, “The Island of Lost Boys,” which snagged the Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize for Fiction in 2010: a junior high school teacher–who for reasons he can’t yet fathom has recently made a pass at a male student–finds himself at his wealthy mother’s house on Newport Island, where he is confronted with cruel truths about himself and his past. This story exemplifies Prince’s affinity for turning dispicable people into fantastic characters. Same with stories like “Action Figure,” a skillfully crafted portrait of meth-induced paranoia, and “Tranquility,” in which a recently married woman struggles to comprehend her husband’s creepy new habit of bringing young women home under the pretense of finding her a friend; it isn’t that these people are “bad,” per se, but rather that they seem to be grappling with a kind of self-destructive drive, one that they don’t entirely understand but that seems to have seized them like an illness. Prince is interested in what it takes for seemingly decent, ordinary people to make spectacularly bad decisions.

None of this is to say that Beautiful Wishes is flawless. There are a few speedbumps, like “No Women Tonight” and “Six Months In, Another Kind of Undressing,” short-shorts intended offer the reader a breather between some of the larger, heavier pieces but, in so doing, slow the book’s otherwise thrilling pace. But even these throw out a stumbling block in a way that  seems almost intentional; in a book rife with calamity, they are subtle reminders that the author is always, always in control. 

And to be sure, it is this sense of control that makes these stories so engaging; even instances of humor, like those in “Tranqulity,” are tinged with threat, a haunting reminder of the close relationship between laughter and fear. Prince’s characters are all trying to make sense of their flaws, they want to know what it means to survive as imperfect beings, which line of reasoning often leads them toward catastrophe. With prose that is both accessible and lovely in its complexity, Prince maneuvers these characters through failing relationships, family tragedy, and drug abuse, all with an unyielding authority that surprises the reader over and over again.