THE KENTUCKY STORIES, beautifully crafted and gorgeously wrought

THE KENTUCKY STORIES
JOE ASHBY PORTER
Johns Hopkins University Press
Out of print; available used at Amazon

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In these eight stories, the state of Kentucky becomes a state of mind—a semi-mythical realm of the heart's fidelities and predelictions, of violence, fear, and love. It is a land where the commonplace takes on a new and marvelous glow as quixotic individuals explore the enduring puzzles of human existence.

Joe Ashby Porter brings a distinctive freshness to universal themes: the commerce of love and abandonment, the sometimes mysterious influence of a place on events, the relationship between pride, humility, and justice, and the rewards of allegiance and persistence. His characters—innocents all—resolutely pursue their life's goals through picaresque tales that are continually unfolding from surprise to surprise. From the urbane twins of "In the Mind's Eye" to the isolated mountain family of "A Child of the Heart," Porter's protagonists share a stubborn optimism and trust and a readiness to see things through to their conclusion.

In Porter's half-lost and half-remembered Kentucky, only fiction is true. I beckons the reader with all the promised adventure and exhilaration that drew Daniel Boone to a similarly unexplored land two centuries ago.

My Review: Clearly Porter heard and absorbed the maxim, "Begin as you mean to go on." Eight stories in the collection, and all of them are juicy. Faithful to the Bryce Method, I'll offer a small hit on each one of the stories.

Bowling Green offers a practical country woman's take on the nature of expectations and the role of hope in life. "She was practically a virgin—she'd only had to do with her brothers." The narrator offers this on page three. 4.75 stars

Murder at the Sweet Varsity is a fifty-year-old memory of a violent crime resulting from sordid criminality, told from the viewpoint of the unjustly accused. It's a taut twenty-page murder mystery, and darn good too. 4.5 stars

A Child of the Heart is about the sad endings that follow happy beginnings. "Only a fool will deny that an abundance of flowers can quicken a woman's blood, and that continuing sun can burn years off a man's back. The poverty of life here augments the power of those influences. We lose our vision, and move like wooden toys: one year we wash the curtains, the next we plant a row of cabbages behind the house; and then comes a summer like that one, with grass soft as rabbit fur, and flowers." Of course a price must be paid for abundance and glory. 5 stars

The Vacation takes us into the heart of the human condition: It is human nature to hate those whom we have injured. Tacitus said it two thousand years ago. It's never not been true. 4 stars

Nadine, The Supermarket, The Story Ends purports to be three interconnected shorter pieces about the end of the world...in many ways eerily prescient, as with Ebola and numerous limited wars spreading and metastasizing, and in others a product of the 1970s/80s in which it was written...but in the end not coming together as a satisfying whole, and not strong enough in its parts to reach the heights surrounding it. 3 stars

In the Mind's Eye completely wigged me out...twins raised by a very loosely wrapped widow, sharing one name and one identity, not learning any sense of time because they were each Victor for only one day, then switch, then switch, then...you know, it makes my head hurt to think about it. Sort of a less horrible, less plausible version of Room. I don't know if I've absorbed its real and total implications, or ever can expect to. 4 stars

Bright Glances recounts the simple events of a calm life spent unhurriedly. Vale, Margaret Rideout Utley Kercheval Smoot. I will remember you. Thanks for wishing me well. 4 stars

Yours is a charming valedictory to a quiet journey, and to a little loved companion, and to a time and a place that aren't conceivable in the Internet age. 4 stars

Seek this collection of small gems out and bask in its lovely words, its truthsome stories, and its vanished people.

FANDEMONIUM, a satire with serious bite

FANDEMONIUM
RICK SCHINDLER
Wattle Publishing
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Fandemonium by Rick Schindler uses the colorful world of comics and fantasy as a microcosm and metaphor for media consolidation and the excesses of global mass culture. It is at once a hilarious satire of business and society, a portrait of an artist no longer young, and a sometimes poignant look at a universal challenge: to grow up, face the world, and put away childish things.

Ray Sirico used to have it all. Once, he was the brilliant and outrageous Clown Prince of Comics, who reinvented the venerable superhero Skylord, and ranted and rollicked everywhere from TV talk shows to Hollywood premieres.

But that was in the ’70s and ’80s. Now it’s 1993, and Sirico is a drunken has-been. His wife has left him, his movie flopped, and his comics’ publisher is doing so poorly that its new corporate parent has come up with a radical marketing stunt: the Death of Skylord.

Still, Sirico has one last chance to recapture the limelight: Fandemonium, the nation’s biggest fantasy convention. But others are coming to the con too: Harmony Storm, the sex-crazed actress who broke up Ray’s marriage; his former collaborator Tad Carlyle, who now has his own company, and a troubled relationship; Fred D’Auria, a fanboy fleeing adolescent traumas, and corporate conspirators who are plotting to sacrifice Sirico’s greatest creation for motives deeper than even his fevered imagination could conceive.

The publisher offered this book to me hoping for a kind, but asking for an honest, review

My Review: The author's bio says he has 11,000 comic books and a wife. I thought that having one of those things precluded the other. *rimshot*

I'm not a comic book person, and I'm not always sure that satire is a good choice for a whole novel. I'm cynical about fandoms in general. And first novelists are well advised to don protective gear when presenting me with their darlings, as my spleen needs regular venting.

And here I am giving this book over three stars. Will wonders never cease.

I like the novel, hate the characters, and want to shake the writer. The novel is presented in chapters that read like panels in a comic book, interspersed with screenplay bits, transcripts, etc etc. It makes the tedious trudge through the heads and lives of Harm (short for Harmony, and a good nickname for her it is) the horrid harridan, hefty humpster Ray the nebbishy loser, Taffy Poppenberg (how I **ADORE** minor non-character Taffy!) the news lady, so much less onerous. I don't get bogged down in any one PoV for long enough to lose steam. And besides I'm an old Moby-Dick fan, and this technique was superbly used in that book. Set up happy memory resonances for me. (We will NOT be discussing Tristram Shandy thenkewveddymahch.)

The characters are all well known to any follower of pop culture, business culture, or geekdom. As San Diego Comic Con has attained mainstream visibility, geekdom is less and less what it once was, a ghetto for off-kilter fen to celebrate their abnormality safely. I, an oldster without an anime-worshipping bone in my body, know what a furry is, and follow Sailor Moon refs. This is proof that there are no more hiding places for geekdom. The novel doesn't break any new ground limning the characters. It also doesn't miss a single trick damning them. I'm simultaneously aware that I'm being herded into a set of responses and reactions by the character choice and situational comedy, and amused by all the above. I'm outside the story and experiencing my responses as reactions, but then again that's the way satire works in my experience.

I do very deeply want to shake Rick Schindler. What are you doing here?! Why the hell is this book set in 1993?! To avoid the Internet? Yes yes, I was around for the comic-book publishing debacles of the era...I met the guy who started Broadway Comics...and you know what? 1993 wasn't integral to the stories you've chosen to tell and your points are still valid today, which is a damned good thing because nothing on this earth is duller than obsolete satire. Also, dig deeper! Many situations, most notably Sirico the Stout's disintegration, could have been more keenly pointedly stabbed into the reader's heart. It's possible to do this and maintain humor, see Candide for Cunégonde's marriage to Candide. (I refuse to spoiler-tag a 250-year-old book's plot points.) And not least: Really? C'mon. Really?

All that said, all my grumbles aside, there is much to take pleasure in presented here. The quiet and unobtrusive view of fans as owners versus fans as consumers of stories and characters is very relevant to today's world. The vicious and back-stabby corporate culture that exists is never a bad choice of target for skewering. The book is, in the end, about the experience of reading it, and that was a net positive use of my time. Considering the number of ways and times that could have turned out worse, this book deserves any and all praise it earns and gets my recommendation to read. Readers not comics geeks are especially encouraged to give it a whirl.


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THREE ACT TRAGEDY, mystery that lives up to its name

THREE ACT TRAGEDY (Hercule Poirot #11)
AGATHA CHRISTIE
William Morrow
$6.64 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: At an apparently respectable dinner party, a vicar is the first to die...Thirteen guests arrived at dinner at the actor's house. It was to be a particularly unlucky evening for the mild-mannered Reverend Stephen Babbington, who choked on his cocktail, went into convulsions and died. But when his martini glass was sent for chemical analysis, there was no trace of poison -- just as Poirot had predicted. Even more troubling for the great detective, there was absolutely no motive!

My Review: This review is of the novel, eleventh in the series, and of the twelfth-season film adaptation for Agatha Christie's Poirot. They earn the same rating.

What a beautiful-looking film this is! The setting in Cornwall is stunning, and the house they chose for Sir Charles is breathtaking! The story is the same in both media, omitting the unnecessary written character of Satterthwaite as a less dimwitted version of Hastings.

Babbington's death is only the first of three apparently utterly unrelated murders. The second murder is horribly upsetting to all the characters. The third is simply incomprehensible to mere mortals...Poirot, of course, sees it in its proper light almost immediately. When the killer is unmasked, it is a bad, bad day for Poirot and a painful and frightening awakening for the younger characters in the story.

But the murders and the motives survive intact between the media. There isn't any need to change all that much in this installment of the series; no one's motives are altered and no action omitted. And that is a very good thing. I really enjoy a puzzler, and this one was. The ending is better on film because of Suchet's pitch-perfect delivery of his last line.

But all in all, the reason I like the story so much is that the older, distinguished gentleman gets the young and comely love-object because he is, simply put, irresistible. As we were watching along, my (absurdly younger) Gentleman Caller started to giggle. He noticed the plot point, and was highly amused that I'd suggested we watch this particular episode. I like that about him, that he sees the humor that I see.

Another delightful outing for the Little Gray Cells. Each version is a treat. Pick one, or do as I do and savor both.


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CARDS ON THE TABLE, a delightful psychological mystery book and film

CARDS ON THE TABLE (Hercule Poirot #15)
AGATHA CHRISTIE
William Morrow
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: It was the match-up of the century: four sleuths--Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard; Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, famed writer of detective stories; Col. Race of His Majesty's Secret Service; and the incomparable Hercule Poirot - invited to play bridge with four specially invited guests, each of whom had gotten away with murder! But before the first rubber was completed, the host was dead.

My Review: This review is of Christie's novel and the tenth-season film adaptation for Agatha Christie's Poirot. They earn the same rating.

One of the ways couples reinforce their pair bond is shared entertainment. My Gentleman Caller and I read a lot; I'm a big mystery fan, where he is less interested in the genre. We both enjoy mystery movies a good deal, though, and the Poirot series especially. Through the amazing and wonderful Internet, we can watch episodes together, discussing them in real time, or just canoodling in cyberspace. I think I'd go bonkers if I didn't have my fix of looking at his face this way.

So this evening we watched two of the movies. First up was this very entertaining adaptation of Christie's novel of psychology. Ariadne Oliver, an author surrogate character for Mrs. Christie herself, makes her first filmed and literary appearance here. Zoë Wanamaker is a wonderful choice to play Mrs. Oliver, being husky-voiced and of a distinctive and memorable appearance. It's one of the pleasures of the films that the actors cast in Christie's roles are uniformly excellent craftspeople, and Wanamaker is no exception.

In watching this adaptation, I felt a wee bit seasick. All the roles were there, just as in the book; but they had different names, unrecognizable motives, and switched-up personae. Colonel Race, a recurring Christie character, is called something else although it's only his name that's different. Rhoda and Anne completely switch purposes, though I have no earthly notion why. The motivation for the central murder is *completely* unrecognizable. It would, in fact, have been impossible for Christie to write it in 1935 and get the book published. The Superintendent is renamed and good gracious me how he is changed up! I mean to tell you, Ma Christie would likely be apoplectic over this particular bit of modification.

The victim, Mr. Shaitana, is portrayed by Alexander Siddig, who enacted the role of Doctor Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine about twenty years ago. I hadn't recalled that the man was so very tall and so very lean. As Shaitana, a furriner and an ethnic in racist 1930s London, he (Siddig) is perfectly chosen: He looks exotic and strange, skin of brown and eyes of green and wardrobe chosen to exaggerate the actor's dramatic silhouette. Mrs. Oliver as a stand-in for Christie herself comments on his foreignness by saying he "gives {her} the jitters." Really. Yech.

The mundane murder motive in the novel is considerably spicier in the film, and actually more fun for this modern audience of two. The book presents a more complete Christieverse experience, drawing the four sleuths and one suspect from the well she reused freely. Each decision has its advantages; on the whole, I can't say that one of the media is preferable to the other. I, and certainly my Gentleman Caller, don't subscribe to the Purity Test for films. The source material will always be altered to suit the demands of the medium. That's the way it works, and more often than not has to; not infrequently the adapted film is superior to the source material, if rabid ardent nut-level fans would simply see it. (And of course there are reverse cases by the scores, it's not a one-way street by any means.)

This film, substantially altered from an excellent novel, finds a different and equal excellence. The spirit of the story is intact, and is well served by the changes made for film. And as always, the role of Poirot is complete and entire in David Suchet's hands. And mincing feet. And waxed mustache. The story, either medium, is delicious and savory and a treat not to be denied oneself.


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MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, Poirot at his peak

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (Hercule Poirot #10)
AGATHA CHRISTIE
William Morrow
$3.99 Kindle edition, availble now

Rating: 5* of five, mostly for the Agatha Christie's Poirot adaptation

The Publisher Says: Just after midnight, a snowdrift stopped the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train was surprisingly full for the time of the year. But by the morning there was one passenger fewer. A passenger lay dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside.

My Review: Well, that was a concise-to-the-point-of-terseness summary. But I suspect most of us who are voracious or even simply serious readers of mystery fiction don't need too much more than that to recall the details to mind.

The novel, published in 1934, is a bit of a stretch for a modern mystery-reader's sense of fair play. Poirot's famous/infamous "little gray cells" are pumpin' full-bore and lead him to near-miraculous feats of deduction. The novel's Poirot is, at the end, almost cavalier about the hugely out-of-character ending. It almost feels as if Christie said to herself, "Self, I've had enough of this character's ethics and am writing MY ending not his."

Her book, her rules.

The filmed version offers more scope for fair play with the reader as Poirot is seen to do things and discover things that lead him to a startling and evidently disturbing conclusion. In keeping with the films' expansion of the Poirot character, the book's resolution is more nuanced, and affords a modern viewer more satisfaction in that the character of Poirot is clearly emotionally involved in the murder's resolution and becomes a richer, more relatable person as a result.

Both versions of the story are so improbable as to be absurd, on the face of it. But in a world run on decent principles, such a story and such a resolution would be more common than not. I feel very Old-Testament-y about people who harm children or animals for cruelty or sport.

The film's other deviations from the novel are also deepening the sense of Poirot's reality as a person, and indicative of just how very surprising this ending is within the understanding Christie has given us of Poirot's essential relationship to crime-solving. A scene at the beginning of the film, between Poirot and a soldier, is particularly important in setting the tone for this story's exceptional place in the Poirot canon. Another early scene in Istanbul is, in my opinion, gratuitous; well conceived, but not necessary, and frankly unpleasant in the light it sheds on Poirot.

But the sheer visual beauty of this film! The pitch-perfect Poirot of David Suchet! Ah mes amis, this is the treat most exceptional, this feast is the repast most gustatorial for the lover of the how you call a crime drama. It is the pleasure most complete. Replenish yourselves and your little gray cells!


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WHY ARE YOU SO SAD?, or Updike's Rabbit in the 21st century

WHY ARE YOU SO SAD?
JASON PORTER
Plume Books
$4.99 ebook platforms, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Have we all sunken into a species-wide bout of clinical depression?

Porter’s uproarious, intelligent debut centers on Raymond Champs, an illustrator of assembly manuals for a home furnishings corporation, who is charged with a huge task: To determine whether or not the world needs saving. It comes to him in the midst of a losing battle with insomnia — everybody he knows, and maybe everybody on the planet, is suffering from severe clinical depression. He’s nearly certain something has gone wrong. A virus perhaps. It’s in the water, or it’s in the mosquitoes, or maybe in the ranch flavored snack foods. And what if we are all too sad and dispirited to do anything about it? Obsessed as he becomes, Raymond composes an anonymous survey to submit to his unsuspecting coworkers — “Are you who you want to be?”, “Do you believe in life after death?”, “Is today better than yesterday?” — because what Raymond needs is data. He needs to know if it can be proven. It’s a big responsibility. People might not believe him. People, like his wife and his boss, might think he is losing his mind. But only because they are also losing their minds. Or are they?

Reminiscent of Gary Shteyngart, George Saunders, Douglas Coupland and Jennifer Egan, Porter’s debut is an acutely perceptive and sharply funny meditation on what makes people tick.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM LIBRARY THING'S EARLY REVIEWERS PROGRAM

My Review: Reading this book is like watching Jim Carrey play Rabbit Angstrom in a shelved TV pilot of Rabbit, Run. It's like reading John Updike's hitherto-unknown draft of a spec script called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's quite similar to a lost Seinfeld episode in which George and Kramer get drunk and fool around...or was that an ayahuasca-fueled nightmare...?

I'm not quite sure why the publisher labeled this satire. It's black comedy, and quite dryly amusing in many spots. It's satirizing...what? Modern Society? Permaybehaps I'm no longer With It and don't get the satire. That's more than a little possible.

Porter has an MFA (ruh-roh, Raggy) from Hunter College and is blurbed by my dote Colum McCann. I entered these portals an eager acolyte in the making. I exited the service entrance wondering just how the hell I got onto the loading dock. The not-really-an-ending felt like I was here at the business end of the edifice but there wasn't a delivery truck in sight.

But two things have stuck with me, two contributions to my ever-smaller stock of Stuff I Want to Remember:
1) The image of happiness, complete and sincere and freshly made happiness, as like the feeling of putting new socks on clean feet. Can't pull the quote without spoilers. But the image is instantly relatable and also fresh (pun optional).
2) The Fearless and Searching Moral Inventory (how twelve-steppy I'm feeling today!) that Ray passes around in questionnaire form. I love it!

Why are you so sad?
Are you single?
Are you having an affair?
Are you who you want to be?
Would you prefer to be someone else?
Are you similar to the "you" you thought you would become when as a child you imagined your future self?
When was the last time you felt happy?
Was it a true, pure happy or a relative happy?
What does it feel like to get out of bed in the morning?
Do you realize you have an average of 11,000 to 18,250 mornings of looking in the mirror and wondering if people will find you attractive?
Do you think people will remember you after you die?
For how long after you die?
Do you believe in life after death?
Do you believe in life after God?
Are you for the chemical elimination of all things painful?
Do you think we need more sports?
Have you ever fallen in love?
If yes, were you surprised that it, like all other things, faded over time?
Do you hear voices?

It's like a sociology class exercise designed by someone who's drunk and lonely. I was bemused that this questionnaire was a central organizing device of the sort novel. It took up a lot of space that would have been more satisfactorily used in traditional means of character development, either of Ray himself, or the people answering his trippy survey. But it made me smile, of itself and as a shortcut to the purpose of making readers invest in the lovable loon that is Ray.

My life may not be changed by the book, but my smile muscles are exercised and my chuckle-box got wound up a time or three. I call that a win.

MOTHER OF A MACHINE GUN, a mother of a wallop in under 100pp

MOTHER OF A MACHINE GUN
MICHAEL SEIDLINGER
Lazy Fascist Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.95 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: What happens when a woman gives birth to a machine gun?

"Mother has something else to say but music won’t stop music is here to stay. For ‘music’, read language. In this headlong tumble of a novella, we see not only an (unhinged/possibly murderous) Mother searching for her (autistic/possibly murderous) son, but also we see language itself, banged up and tripping, a bleeding anatomy of Biblical, crime show, tabloid, service industry phrases joined into a body, hurtling towards impact, and wondering where its human inmates are."

—Joyelle McSweeney, author of Salamandrine: 8 Gothics

My Review: McSweeney's blurb strikes the perfect tone for this novella. Perfect, and no one really can do any better in summing up a work that clearly fell out of Seidlinger's head, sharp-edged and lethally shaped, whole and entire.

I've read three of Seidlinger's books, this being the second of them and The Fun We've Had being the first. I'm getting a picture here. A young man determinedly deconstructing identity. A tyro artist making big bold gestures in small constrained spaces. A soul in search of a mate.

So that's the art.

Now the craft: Every writer needs a trope. Seidlinger's is musical brevity. He'd be called a poet if he made less sense. It's to your taste or it's not, but it's a technique that feels to me organically arrived at, a natural result of being part of the zeitgeist this youth has sucked in with his breath and taken in with his mental food.

The short and virtually unpunctuated sentences of the piece aren't visually appealing to me. It looks like poetry, not a novel, when there is so much white space on a page, when the entire novella is only 90pp, when the one-line paragraphs are dotted hither and thither. I'm an older person, schooled in an older-still tradition of reading long, windy (both pronunciations and meanings) sentences and paragraphs and pages. I don't take to, appreciate, this technique naturally.

So I read it aloud. The dog doesn't much care. She pays attention to me while it suits her and then goes to sleep. Meanwhile the human is making noise, yeah well so what else is new.

I got a lot out of that exercise. I've come to know Michael a little, and appreciate how very hard he works to make the world around him more intense and interesting than it would otherwise be. I approve of this desire on his part, and enjoy the efforts he's made as a writer, an editor, and a publisher. Speaking aloud the words in this book made it clear to me what a scouring, cleansing thing it is to make a question out of an answer. Mother. Mother? The Mother A Mother Some Mother...and to make a question out of the verb forms of this frighteningly large concept, Mother: to Mother, to Be A Mother...activities, identities, aspirations, longings...and the object of Mother is Son. Matthew. Some mother's son. The object of mothering, the subject of being a mother.

I suspect sons wonder more about mothers and mothering than daughters, potential/actual/present mothers, do; we will never know motherhood, the condition of Mother. Daughters can be mothers, even if they choose not to be. It's a mystery sons can't enter into, and many of us wish we could comprehend it better. We would be free of Mother if we could, we tell ourselves, free at last! So what does Seidlinger do with his Mother angst? What an artist does with every lump in the throat: Speaks it into being, limns it onto the air, strokes it onto pages physical or virtual.

Reading this Mother's journey around the bend, I Mothered myself. I found it good.