Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin
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Fort Worth native RICK BASS has loaded his earthy story collection, THE LIVES OF ROCKS, with three-way relationships of all stripes—platonic, romantic, familial, adversarial—and with characteristic economy of language, he mines a wide range of human emotion from these mélanges à trois. “Goats” is a gentle slapstick about two teenage friends doing a poor job of raising heifers (encouraged by oddballs such as Goat Man, whose misprinted sign reads “Baby Claves, $15”) while they tend to an elderly grandfather through his mental decline. At the other end of the spectrum, pathos permeates “The Lives of Rocks,” the tale of an outdoorswoman with a grim cancer prognosis who finds solace in the visits of two fundamentalist kids to her isolated mountain cabin. Ultimately, Bass aims to deliver enlightenment as well as entertainment, and he laces fervent pro-environment messages throughout, sometimes overtly (“Pagans” and “Fiber”) and sometimes subtly (“The Windy Day”) but always with conviction and passion.
Elroy Bode
Trinity University Press
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It’s tempting to focus on ELROY BODE’s celebrations of life’s simple pleasures (birds, interesting strangers, barbershops) in this El Pasoan’s new collection of microscopically short ruminations, IN A SPECIAL LIGHT. But there is no denying the insistent melancholy (verging on depression) that gives the book grit and balance. Bode cuts a solitary figure throughout: He’s a lonely divorcé at the grocery buying a can of unnecessary peas; he’s a walking man traipsing the poor streets of East Austin and the rocky riverbeds of the Hill Country. His physical remove seems to sharpen his gift for summoning poetry out of the pedestrian, whether it’s a tiny poisoned mouse at his hunting cabin or a gay high schooler’s identity crisis (Bode taught in Texas public schools for 48 years). But it is the eloquent, unvarnished heartbreak of the concluding piece, “Looking for Byron,” that makes closing the cover a bittersweet finale.
Robert James Waller
Shay Areheart Books
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At a mere 158 pages, THE LONG NIGHT OF WINCHELL DEAR calls to mind that kvetch of the hoary Catskills resort patron: “The food is terrible—and such small portions!” To be fair, the latest from brand-name Hill Country novelist ROBERT JAMES WALLER is not terrible, but it is disappointing—slapdash and mediocre. The premise, if not original, is interesting: Winchell Dear is a world-weary gambler whose ranch outside El Paso will become ground zero when a combustible cast of characters—smugglers, hit men, rattlesnakes, Indians—converges and reaches critical mass. But Waller expends too much energy on Dear’s background and not enough developing the story at hand. His likable prose and folksy approach are outweighed by his stilted dialogue and inexplicable tendency to repeat tedious details (the hit man’s shirt cost $80; Dear’s housekeeper is saving money for a better life). Long night? Indeed.
Douglass St. Clair Smith
The SubGenius Psychlopaedia of Slack: The Bobliographon is—how to put this—the most unusual text most folk will ever encounter. Its Fort Worth–bred author-editor midwifed the birth of the for-profit Church of the SubGenius (“the only religion to pay its taxes”) more than 25 years ago and remains the wizard behind the curtain of the postmodern (some say satirical) faith to this day.
Where and when exactly did the Church of the SubGenius first appear? Doctrine has it that the SubGenius concept was first delivered to the Saint of Sales, J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, by ageless alien space monster JHVH-1 in 1953, in Bob’s rumpus room in the basement of his house in Wichita, Kansas, where he was living at the time. I personally caught the SubGenius concept like a sudden illness, or a bolt of badly aimed lightning, in late 1978 while standing with my new friend Dr. Philo Drummond and my old, late friend Dr. X [Monte Dhooge] on Merrimac Avenue in Dallas. The three of us had been wondering why we weren’t rich yet, even though we were “obviously” smarter than the average Joe. (We had a lot to learn, especially about smartness.) Philo said, “Well, it’s probably because we’re not geniuses, but just … subgeniuses.” Upon hearing that word, suddenly I knew what all my otherwise useless skills were good for: identifying and corralling an entire subspecies—or überspecies—of Homo sapiens sapiens and making money off of them.
(Read the full interview.)
The Book of the SubGenius : The Sacred Teachings of J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs, published by Thunder’s Mouth Press.
