Something else I'd like to do this month is go back and pull up some old short story collection reviews I had written for the EWN, most of them back in the days of emailing the reviews, or at least pre-blogging them. In the majority of these cases, I will probably be pulling out reviews of books that most people I talk to STILL don't know of (and I'll probably cringe a little bit over some
of the reviews as written as well).
First up is one that I ALWAYS include when asked to list five books I'd bring along to the desert island or that sort of thing. It's By the Light of the Jukebox by Dean Paschal (Ontario Review Press) and it really is one that I've yet to meet somebody and talk to them and have them know who I'm talking about. Which is sad, and amazes me, all at the same time.
The following is the review I wrote back in May 2002:
Dean Paschal's writing reminds me of a car crash on the side of the expressway. You feel slight embarrassment, but cannot help the turning of your head in its' direction as you pass on by. This collection of eight short stories can be described as chilling and wondrous. I don't remember squirming so much in the reading of a collection of short stories since reading Clive Barker's Books of Blood. These are frightening in the same way, there's no monsters, no boogeyman, just something slightly outside reality, but close enough to be eerie.
The topics are enough to bring some squirming: 'Moriya' is about a mechanically minded boy who discovers, with a robotic doll, sexual pleasure; 'Death of a Street Dog,' is the last couple of grueling days told from the dog's point of view; 'L'Annonciation (the story of m.)' is told from the point of view of m's most consistent lover. She lives for lust and desire, often lighting a candle and telling the person or persons with her to do whatever it is they've dreamed of doing to a woman until this candle goes out. As much as it disgusts him, he watches, gets involved, and does whatever he can to please her; 'Sauteing the Platygast' is a story that would do T.C. Boyle proud. It combines evolution and the culinary arts in a manner that has to be read to be fully understood; 'Python,' is the story of a female python, in a zoo, who through the story remembers her past life as a woman, re-living the erotic moments in her life; and 'The Puppies' is told from the view of the runt of a litter that, along with his big brother, died shortly after their birth. They tell this story from a steel pan, inside the freezer of the owner of the mother dog.
There's a quote from Richard Burgin on the back of the book that refers to a quote from Gide regarding a painter. To paraphrase, it isn't reality that his art covers, it is the hallucination that reality creates. I have to agree with Burgin on this aspect of Paschal's writing. There are certainly moments of reality spread throughout the collection, 'Death of a Street Dog,' is a truly sad story that is portrayed in complete realistic fashion. That is, realistic, once you get past the fact that it is the dog telling the story, and he fully understands the English language and can interpret photographs.
As both 'By the Light of the Jukebox,' and 'L'Annonciation' come to their conclusions, events occur that should be completely unbelievable, but in Paschal's writing, the reader glosses by these incidents without blinking. It isn't until later, after absorbing everything that one has read, that the reader is really hit by these facts.
In a recent interview, writer Brady Udall stated 'A good writer is like a hypnotist: he can tell his reader just about anything, no matter how implausible, and the reader will have no choice but to believe.' This is completely true in Paschal's case. What he does with his writing is take chances. He puts ideas that are way out there onto the page and demands the attention of his readers. His writing is economical, but not minimalistic. He writes everything that he needs to, and then goes a little further.
In 'Genesis,' told from the point of view of an emergency room surgeon (which Paschal is by both day and night by the way), involves a drug and alcohol abuser coming in, his body completely shot. The doctor is determined to save this individual, who has come through the hospital numerous times and been told each and every time that he'd kill himself if he didn't stop the abuse, to no avail. The doctor does not plan on letting this individual die this way; he has his own plans on how the death should occur.
The reader is the only one privy to these thoughts as the doctor goes through the frantic process of saving this man. The doctor is on his third consecutive 8 hour shift, of which he got no sleep prior to the first. At times his thoughts run towards the dreaminess of sleep, but not so much that the reader is led to believe his plans are not real. The farther the story goes along, the more frantic his efforts to save the man become, leading to further anticipation within the reader as to how he's going to kill the man himself. Again, the car crash syndrome and the squirming at your own behavior as reader.
While I am sure that not everybody is going to have the same reaction as myself and plow through this without setting it down, I don't believe for a second that there is anybody who shouldn't pick it up and start it. This is the type of writing that brings some excitement into the literary world;
chance-taking, pushing envelopes, and prose so efficient it is nearly poetic. Try it, you just might like it.
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