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LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG & OTHER STORIES By Richard Grayson White Ewe Press. $11.95
UNREAL ESTATE By Brian Swann Toothpaste Press. $8.50 paperback A review by David G. Mudd
These two collections of short stories have many likable characteristics. They offer a refreshing alternative to a hungry reader who may balk at the diet of more traditional stories offered by the popular magazines.
Both collections are published by small presses, a good indication that the contents will be challenging. Both books are handsomely bound, the editing is meticulous, and Swann's book features four exquisite line drawings. At one point in "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog," Grayson pauses to explain the invention of its strange name. It seems that a quick study of the print market indicated that best-selling books often concern either Abraham Lincoln, doctors and medicine, or dogs. So, Grayson thought, Why not combine the three areas and capitalize? Pretty clever, eh? Grayson places cleverness above all else a little too often.
However, he proves that he knows how to write a short story with "What Guillain-Barre Syndrome Means to Me," funny, bitter tale about a visit paid by a young woman, her son and her foreign lover to the lonely home of the boy's father. Too many of the other stories are sacrificed to cleverness and tedious one-liners. In the title story, Grayson is constantly teasing the reader. "Are you reading story to escape from your problems?" he chides. "Why aren't you out (or in) having sex?" This is funny stuff, but the whimsy continues in this and other stories until it becomes stale.
An English professor once told that the only true definition of a short story was this: "It has a beginning, a middle and an end. ... Think about it." Brian Swann doesn't want think about it. Swann's stories, all very short, seem to swoop down and catch either the initiation or the tail-end of happening, or they fall into the middle of an event, look around a then keep falling. Swann is an Englishman and it is tempting to explain away his seemingly cursory stories about landed gentry, travel and magic by saying they are veddy British.
I think more highly of them than that. Swann's stories strike me as experiments with time and place, and with what a story can do with those two elements. Swann seems to believe that a thread of a story is more intriguing, more satisfying and ultimately closto reality than the traditional beginning-middle end formula. He be right. His stories are provacative and haunting.
David G. Mudd is a student at the University of Kentucky.
