by Ryan Ridge
Dark Sky Books
ISBN: 978-0-9830674-5-0
A BULL review by Curtis Dawkins
Ed. Note: Though Ryan Ridge is on the BULL staff, our reviewer, with no access to the internet, had no knowledge of such.
In these twenty-four very short stories—except for a novella, which at 34 pages doesn’t technically qualify as a novella, but compared to the others is practically War & Peace—something strange has happened, and is happening, west of the Mississippi. There are surly Girl Scouts armed with bullwhips selling the last of their cookies at black market prices, a war with armed hippies, a James Frey-esque plagiarist dreaming of the best-seller list again while wondering how to pay his hotel bill with past “greatness” (it doesn’t take a genius to see the metaphor for the U.S. here), and the city of Galveston swept away by a Category 1 hurricane while the only remaining man dies atop a treasure left by buccaneer Jean Lafitte. It gets weirder, but you’ll have to read the book.
Meanwhile, in “reality,” as I write this, Manhattan and a dozen other cities are being rightfully occupied by people sick of having their elected officials bought and sold by big business. Democracy has been taken hostage by capitalism, yet there are idiots on TV who continue to defend the hostage-taking. None of this is conducive to a peaceful outlook, and I wonder, after reading Hunters & Gamblers, how any writer worth the ink in their printer can write about anything using a traditional, straightforward narrative? The fractured style of this book fits its purpose. Things are broken, and that’s how these stories hit: brief, timely protests directed at the state of America today.
If things are broken, we may as well make art out of it. We may as well laugh about it. We may as well entertain ourselves while we sit waiting for Godot, because guess what—he ain’t coming. Some of us elected him in 2008 and have come to find he's not yet tough enough, not seasoned enough for the bullies on the right. Or he has yet to learn that sometimes bullies only listen after they’ve been punched in the nose.
Or perhaps politics and money are beside the point. These are only short stories, though most of them are too short to be considered actual stories. They seem more like crazed, angry jabs in the direction of people who rule the country. But stories or not, the great thing about fiction is that nothing is ever beside the point, and should it become so, it’s time to fit the tie around the neck and write ads for boner pills.
The writing in these stories is beautiful. Perfect. The author and editor(s) have a sharp ear for the rhythm and poetry of a sentence. For example, take this short paragraph from "Tomahawk Cuts Rain", featuring not only an admirable pitch and cadence, but a perfect summation of the book’s philosophical structure:
“Things get complicated quick, things can break. And the pieces never fit back together again, like an avant-garde narrative edited by tomahawks and scotched by historical drizzle.”
Yet perfect writing alone doesn’t save the novella, "The Holiest of Holies", from crossing the line from meaningful absurdism to pointless surrealism. It ends cheaply, too, in prison. Too many real lives tragically end up in here to put one's characters here nonchalantly.
These are small problems, and none of this is to say that these little letters from the revolutionary wasteland are soulless and inconsequential—they aren’t. Small publishers like Dark Sky Books are so important because they're doing something different. For instance, Hunters & Gamblers has a open-mindedness with regards to spiritual matters, which is refreshing, as so much fiction skips that part of our existence. There is an equally smart and playful sense of humor throughout as well, which suits it's irreverent theme. Comedy is often just as protestful as anger, because the people in charge—while they think they are funny—are not, never have been, and never will be.
“Christmas is coming. What are you going to get mom and dad?”
“Something nice,” I said. “Something gleaming.”
“What, like one of those phony certificates for a star?”
“Yes, exactly.”
The big New York publishers will be publishing things like Hunters & Gamblers in twenty years, but by then it will all be over. Things are starting now and, as usual, the adventure begins out west. With this book, it seems the revolution is already being written about.
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BULL's book reviewer Curtis Dawkins graduated from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and earned an M.F.A. from Western Michigan University. He is currently an inmate at the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia, Michigan.
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