Saturday, February 17, 2018

Review: God Bless America: Stories

God Bless America: Stories God Bless America: Stories by Steve Almond
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wonder if it’s possible to have too much talent. (It would be nice to think that was one of my problems, wouldn’t it?) That possibility comes to mind because, as strong as almost every story in this collection is, there’s a sense in which they don’t quite fit together. Almond has so many different arrows in his quiver – so many different kinds of strong stories he can work on – that some of these feel as if they undermine others.

I met Almond very quickly at the beginning of the summer, and he is staggeringly gifted as a reader. He has mastered what I think of as the “manic style,” and when he’s writing in that mode he is in the conversation for being as good as anyone I know who’s going now.

The best example of that style in this collection is “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched” in which a psychotherapist gets drawn into playing high stakes poker against one of his former patients. I love being able to describe the story so neatly and to feel the humor and tension that spill out of the premise alone. Even better, Almond has a way of writing sentences that go on a beat longer than you’d think, that push something that looks like the everyday into absurd, manic dimensions. As you read, you almost run out of breath and then, when that extra tacked-on fragment arrives, you laugh enough that you do become breathless.

Take for example the last sentence of this excerpt: “Oss was secretly thrilled to be treating Sharpe. The depth of his rage was refreshing. It returned Oss to his adolescence, to the loathing he had so lavishly apportioned to his own father, who sold hardware, who developed pathetic infatuations with his prominent customers.” It’s almost like overhearing someone else’s therapy, as if our speaker can’t help clumsily revealing too much about himself as he talks.

Another good example of stories in this manic style is “Not Until You Say Yes” in which an older TSA worker is assigned to look after a con-artist kid who’s doing everything he can to delay flying cross county to a father who doesn’t really want to see him. Our TSA worker comes both to admire the kid and to resent him; she feels a flicker of a maternal impulse, but she also wants to get back to her own life. The more she suspects she’s being manipulated, though, the more she respects the kid for his savvy and even deeper emotional neediness. It’s a sad story in many ways – Almond is generally sad even beneath the mania – but it moves quickly and it’s compelling.

Toward the second half, though, these stories tend to come in a very different form. There are a handful that turn on Jewish themes – “A Jew Berserk on Christmas Eve,” “Hagar’s Sons,” and “A Dream of Sleep” – but none of them quite fit the manic style that seems Almond’s signature. They are solid stories, stories I’d be proud to have written, but they don’t have quite the same distinctive feel as many of the earlier ones. I’d probably admire a collection comprised exclusively of such stories, but they bring a seriousness in tone and style that, next to those earlier ones, feels decidedly unfunny. Almond is never merely about making you laugh, but he’s great at evoking the nervous laughter of the discomfort that comes before disappointment or disaster. In these “Jewish” stories, though, there’s none of that leavening, none of the sugar that makes the horseradish go down. (Maybe I should call these Jewish stories the “matzoh stories” since they are unleavened in such fashion.)

And, finally, if I’m being honest, I simply don’t like “First Date Back,” in which a returning Iraq War vet moves clumsily toward assaulting the flight attendant who’s welcomed him back when there’s no one else to meet him. It’s a disturbing story, and I don’t think Almond quite earns the credibility it takes to level such a serious account in a context so removed from everything else he’s written about. Even here there’s plenty of skill, but it’s so out of the focus of the rest of the work that it distracts from the effect of the whole in yet another direction.

I plan to continue reading Almond’s work, but it may be a while before I go for a full collection. At his best, in that manic mode, he’s doing something I envy and admire; he’s finding a new voice for the short story that makes you laugh, think, and feel. The rest of this is generally good, but its “ordinary impressiveness” makes clear how much better that best work is.


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