The short, happy stories of T.C. Boyle There is a lunatic quality to the stories of T. (for Thomas) C. (for Coraghessan) Boyle that can be found in the writing of most of the great humorists. But there is also something more. We find this quality in the best of his novels - in "The Road to Wellville," in which a man attempting to regain the affections of his wife is forced to attend a health clinic where daily enemas are mandatory and sex is forbidden. It is there again in "Riven Rock," in which the heir to a considerable corporate fortune is never allowed to enter a room in which there are women, for fear he will attack them. It also turns up in many of these wonderful short stories. You find it, for example, in the story "Big Game," which may be the single best piece in this collection of more than 70 stories, a large number and an important part of the output of this very good writer. Bernard Puff, once a great white hunter but now somewhat reduced in circumstances, has a reservation in California where the wild animals roam. If rich people want to try their hand tiger hunting or lion hunting or elephant hunting, they can, although the cost is enormous. Puff spends such resources as he has in buying up toothless tigers and lions, although he would prefer, for financial reasons, that these no-longer-wild animals not be shot. A Hollywood couple comes along, however, and demands to try its hand at lion hunting. The husband is so inept that he almost gets him self killed by a tired old lion who never hurt anyone. An elephant of equal age eventually proves too much for him and his wife. This story is perfect in itself and even better as a spoof of Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." The final death agony of Mike Bender, the would-be hunter, and his wife, Nicole, from the fury of the tired old elephant Bessie Bee is delicately described: "Bender seemed to be naked - or no, he didn't seem to be wearing any skin either - and his head had been vastly transformed, as much more compact now. But there was something else going on, too, something the insurance company wouldn't be able to rectify, of that he was sure, if only in a vague way - "I'm in shock," he repeated. This some thing was a shriek, too, definitely human, but it rose and caught hold of the preceding shriek and climbed atop it, and before the vacuum of silence could close in there was another shriek, and another, until even the screams of the elephant were a whisper beside it." "The Hit Man" is pure farce. The story purports to tell, in true crime fashion, the life and times of a notorious hit man. The story is divided by several subheads, each dealing with a different episode in this gangster's life. But the subheads simply serve as lead-ins from one series of jokes to another. This is pretty " stuff. For example, under the heading "Early Years," the story begins: "The Hit Man's early years are complicated by the black bag that he wears over his head. Teachers correct his pronunciation, the coach criticizes his attitude, the principal dresses him down for branding preschoolers with a lit cigarette. He is a poor student. At lunch he sits alone, feeding bell peppers and salami into the dark slot of his mouth. In the hallway, wiry young athletes snatch at the black hood and slap at the back of his head. When he is thirteen he is approached by the captain of the football team, who pins him down and attempts to remove the hood. Five years, says the judge." With all this emphasis on the truly lunatic and the truly funny, what about the "something more" that we spoke of before? It's there, in many of the stories in which there is hurt as well as humor, stories that recognize the pain in life that may seem funny to others while it hurts the one that experiences it. It's there in a story called "If The River Was Whiskey," in which the alcoholic son of an alcoholic father learns that his drinking has shattered his own marriage and is taking his children from him. The man dreams of death while, in the background is a song his father sung: If the river was whiskey, And 1 was a divin' duck, 1'd swim to the bottom, Drink myself back up. The same note of sadness, of people in over their heads with problems of their own making, can be seen in "King Bee." This story is about a wealthy childless couple who adopts a young boy and gives him the best of everything. Gradually, the boy becomes dissatisfied with his adopted parents and the dissatisfaction increases, even as they try harder to make him happy. Along with his unhappiness goes his delusion that he is a bee, the head of a hive. By the story's end, the boy has renounced his adoptive parents and is threatening their lives. Few writers can amuse us so much as Boyle can but, as is so often the case, there is considerable passion and pain behind the funny stuff. |