In the best of the collection, Almond truly inhabits his characters. Not only the protagonist, and not only the male characters; he also writes secondary characters who matter. The lively characters are the key to these stories in which, as Almond says, "What they do, and quite vigorously, is have sex and suffer heartbreak."
I really like that Almond uses sex to develop characters. In his stories, a sex scene or an emotional discussion doesn't halt the action; it's a means to explore conflict, to move the story forward. However, the earthiness of the stories gets strong reactions. Almond says his early reviews included headlines like "A Pervert Among Us" (NY Times Book Review, Apr '02), and "How Low Will He Go?" (Us, Jan '03).
The stories
Heavy Metal, Run Away My Pale Love, and Body in Extremis share a protagonist, a callow twentysomething who initially has his cake and eats it too. Some ten years later, he gets his just desserts. (Thank you, Steve Almond, for making your characters face their various assitudes. That twist provides an extra layer of development that's sometimes missing in short stories.)Among the Ik
A widower feels his loneliness at a family gathering. A surprisingly touching story of loss.
Geek Player, Love Slayer
Almond creates a 30-something female journalist with a rapid cadence and a flip, hip way with words. Despite the irreverent, one-of-the-guys persona, she's vulnerable. She poses a good question, too, adding a dimension of social commentary:
How did Computer Guy become the Lifeguard of the decade? How did the mild-mannered Systems Manager morph into an omnipotent Geek Player, Love Slayer?GP,LS is a favorite in the collection. Not because the protagonist is a woman (though Almond writes a great woman), or because I've experienced the pseudo-intimacy of the Geek Player crouching between my knees under my desk. From the first sentence the language makes me smile. Almond's sometimes rude, always lively narrative voice is especially strong here, even over the top in places. And despite its familiar plot, the story is meticulously structured to make for a satisfying resolution.
The Last Single Days of Don Viktor Potapenko
A 19-year-old would-be rebel meets a number of characters who genuinely live outside the conventions he grew up with. Among the least emotionally hooky stories in the collection.
The Law of Sugar
A strange little interlude between a librarian in a bar, a crank and his sister, and a... pack of feral dogs? Is this a shaggy dog story? It has all the makings, including the inconclusive ending. Enjoyably weird.
The Pass
A collection of ships passing in the night. Some good passages, some mawkish. Two strangers stranded at an airport.* A blind date. A bar pickup. Two gay soldiers far from home.
A man in a bar makes a pass at a woman. It's not a good era for passes, but he's giving it his all.I enjoyed some of it very much, but the self-conscious pronouncements really got up my nose.
*This setup gave me déjà vu until I remembered Anne McCaffrey's Stitch in Snow. It even involves the Denver airport.
Moscow
Three pages of memories, of a phone call to Moscow and a factory tour in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Too oblique for me.
Valentino
A teenage boy spends the summer before college thinking about his status low in the social order. His train of thought is altered by a tale of Rudolph Valentino's emergence from overlooked to beautiful, from obscure to legendary.
How to Love a Republican
Two lobbyists--one for the left, one for the right--try for love without politics. He's deeply depressed over the lingering end of the 2004 presidential race; she's elated, energized, aware her party is taking her places. He wants to discuss their differing ideologies; she's deeply suspicious of the word, and perhaps of the whole conversation. Can they, and should they, go on?
Even the couple's sex life is mediated by their politics:
The female sex was, in political terms, the equivalent of the inner city: a dark and mysterious zone, vilified by the powerful, derided as incapable of self-improvement, entrenched and smelly. Going down on a woman was a dirty business, humiliating, potentially infectious, best delegated to the sensitivos of the Left.
I relished the act, which I considered to be what Joe Lieberman would have termed, in his phlegmy rabbinical tone, a mitvah. It required certain sacrifices. The deprivation of oxygen, to begin with. A certain ridiculousness of posture; cramping in the lower extremities. One had to engage with the process. There were no quick fixes.
- The full text is on Almond's website.
Pornography
A vignette on women, violence, and men who are mesmerized by the two.
- The full text is at the SmokeLong Quarterly.
Interesting reading
Steve Almond on Moby Lives:I view plot, most centrally, as a mechanism by which our heroine is forced to face her deepest fears and desires.Bookslut has a great interview of Almond:
Why do you think so many authors have trouble writing sex scenes?
I don't know. I love it. I think it's, well, I don't know. It's hard to do, I guess. I think of it as… not easy, but you've got a lot to work with. You can talk about all of the senses, and it's a very emotional experience. I think it's in my work a lot because emotionally it's very extreme. It's a very vulnerable state, and I'm kind of an emotion junkie.
I know the culture at large is still stuck at the age 11 or 13 when it comes to sexuality. Everyone is so freaked out about it, even if they're "liberated." People are so fearful of their own desires that it becomes prurient, that sex doesn't feel very emotional to me. Sex in Hollywood movies seems so not hot. Porn is so stupid and terrible. You know what there isn't enough of is good, emotional, sensual writing, filmmaking, music. There just isn't enough of it, period. It's not just writers who struggle with that.
Overall grade for the collection: variable.... A few stories showed such an unique voice that I'll call it an A-.
