Every Man Jack …

By Jack A. Urquhart ©2012 (985 words)

This week I have been thinking about Karma.

Okay, it’s more than that.  I’ve been thinking about foot injuries, too.  And blow jobs.

That is because I have—by reason of an operation to correct a neglected runner’s injury—been put literally off my feet; and in that stasis has come the impetus to examine action and consequence—even (bear with me) among such disparate subject matter.

What?  Gone looking for Karma in things as facile as plantar fasciitis, a common running injury, and (of all things!) fellatio?  Isn’t that a bit self-indulgent?

Well, yes.  But when one is flat on one’s back, it is sometimes difficult to prevent an occasional false start down ‘All-About-Me’ Avenue with all its peculiar twists and turns.

Just so, I’ve been chasing after connections.

Granted, I have only a rudimentary comprehension of Karma’s Indian, Buddhist, and Vedantic traditions—not much beyond the notion that a person’s actions and conduct affects his or her destiny.  I am, however, a little more familiar with Karma’s less sophisticated American cousin, or more aptly, the branch of the family that still thrives in the American South.  In that neck of the woods, the Karmic praxis survives in the phrase, “What goes around, comes around,” and the Biblical axiom, “be sure your sins will find you out.”  It’s a potent legacy—one that defies easy expurgation.

Witness the fact that I’ve been worrying all week, “Maybe I brought this on myself—this injury, this bone-burning immobility.”

It all goes back to 19-sixty something, the year I spent in Bloomsburg, PA, and my high school rival, Dwight Higgins (not his real name) in the 440-yard dash.  I was fourteen, and Dwight, a year older, was my competitor for a slot in the Columbia County All School track meet, the only school-sponsored athletic endeavor that ever caught my fancy.  But Dwight was more than a competitor; he was also my chief tormentor, a homophobe par excellence long before the term went mainstream.

His most memorable abuse against me—which took place hard on the eve of the 440 elimination trials—was to place a twenty-five cent piece on my desk during art class one afternoon during the teacher’s absence and to proclaim for the benefit of the class that the sum was advance remuneration.

“He’ll give anybody a ‘BJ’ for cheap,” Dwight announced, going on to say that I would provide a ‘lip-smacking’ demonstration later that afternoon (downtown behind the Sears Roebuck dumpster, I believe it was to be).

It didn’t help that I had to ask the girl seated in front of me what was meant by ‘BJ’.

“It means you’re a queer boy, a sissy, and that you ‘go down’ (yet another mysterious term!) for guys,” she obliged to ringing laughter.  Words to that effect.

No matter that I rejected Dwight’s twenty-five cents.  From then on, I was marked: “BJ-Jack.”

Oy.

Back then, I didn’t know what it meant to be gay, certainly hadn’t self-defined that way yet.  I knew only that there was something about me that provoked Dwight’s particular brand of peer abuse, something that went beyond having girlishly long eyelashes, being super skinny, and loving Edith Piaf (although those attributes doubtless played a big role).  The worst part was that whatever the mysterious quality, I too was aware of its existence.  I could feel the truth of it—that there was something about the way I related to the world that marked me as different.

“It means you’re a queer boy, a sissy…”  “He’ll give anybody a ‘BJ’.”

And there is nothing that fuels the desire for revenge any better than sensing an iota of accuracy in a peer’s taunt.

It took some doing, plotting a course against Dwight.  Mine involved his Onisuka Tigers (quite expensive running shoes in those days) left unattended in the locker room on the day of the 440 trials, and a bottle of capsaicin topical (I think it was Sloan’s Horse Liniment).  You can probably guess the rest: a quarter bottle of liquid fire per running slipper, a warm day in May, sockless feet?

Poor Dwight.

The short distance he completed before dropping out of his heat that day—before tearing off his Tigers in a howling frenzy—gave new meaning to the term, “hot-footing it”.

So how did I feel afterward, after those first few moments of blistering satisfaction?  I felt afraid—initially of being found out (I wasn’t); then came the guilt.  I was certain my dirty deed would come back to haunt me, that I was a bad person—if not exactly for the reasons Dwight had posed.

Baptist upbringing runs deep.

As I’ve indicated, in the South (where a few civilized folk still read Austen), “it is a truth universally acknowledged” that you can ‘be sure your sins will find you out.’  And sure enough, Dwight Higgins has dogged me across decades.  He showed up in Colorado to thrum my conscience in the early 90s in the aftermath of a training run injury.  And again here in Florida two months ago when my left foot, put wrong, hooked up with a pothole during a 6:00 a.m. run—the event that led me to this recovery bed.  Ever persistent, Dwight was back last night at 3:00 a.m., back to waggle a shaming finger when the place where the bone has been carved away from my left foot underwent an attack of fire and brimstone.

Poetic justice?  Confirmation that what goes around, comes around?  Proof positive that to be vindictive, queer boy or not, is to put a foot very wrong indeed?

Karma?

Or is it all nonsense, another manifestation of how difficult to practice forgiveness of the self-exonerating variety?  Just another way of holding on to a long-gone and best-forgotten past?

As in the still-to-this-day impetus to proclaim (loudly in certain circles), “No!  goddamnit!  I do not give BJs to just anybody!”

By Jack A. Urquhart ©2012 (1400 words)

Readers familiar with the initial installment of Lorinda J. Taylor’s ambitious saga, The Termite Queen: Volume One: The Speaking of the Dead (386 pages, hard copy), know that Taylor is a vastly talented writer.  Happily, Taylor’s storytelling prowess doesn’t often falter in the mostly satisfying conclusion of her epic sci-fi adventure, The Termite Queen: Volume Two: The Wound That Has No Healing, itself a formidable undertaking at 572 pages.

Though the author modestly characterizes TQ as literary Sci-Fi, the description doesn’t begin to capture the full flavor of Taylor’s accomplishment.  Rather, in TQ V 1 and 2 the author serves up a tome that crosses genres as easily as her intergalactic cast of characters crosses from real-time space travel to temporal quantum space travel and back again.  In fact, the complete TQ saga is part traditional love story, part epic adventure tale richly seasoned with mythic and religious overtones, as well as copious references to literary classics (each chapter is introduced by a literary epigraph).  That said, it is not incidental that Taylor’s epic is set in the thirtieth century (2969—2971).  Hardcore Sci-fi aficionados will appreciate that Taylor’s literary recipe includes science so convincingly researched and/or fabricated as to concoct a perfectly plausible and believable future.

It helps that Taylor’s ‘future’ is inhabited by a cast of engaging and believable characters—human and alien.

Background; TQ characterization and narrative stances

Once again, Taylor’s chief human protagonist in TQ V 2 is the gifted young linguistic anthropologist, Kaitrin Oliva.

Readers of TQ V 1 (which encompasses parts 1 and 2 of Taylor’s saga), will recall Kaitrin’s introduction as the up-and-coming young academic asked to study a giant termite specimen brought back to earth following a disastrous mission to the planet, 2 Giotta 17 A.  Not only does Kaitrin succeed in bonding with the terminally ill creature, she also cracks the termite’s electromagnetic language and in the process earns the respect and affections of renowned entomologist, enigmatic Professor Griffen Gwidian.  Kaitrin’s linguistic triumph secures for her a prominent position in the return expedition to the termite planet—an expedition to be led by none other than Professor Gwidian.

The couple’s romance comes to fruition during the weeks of deep-space travel recounted in TQ V 1.  A moving ceremony performed en route joins the couple in matrimony and provides a window into Griffen’s mind.  It turns out Taylor’s Gwidian is a man who harbors a deep personal secret, a burden so encrypted in guilt and secrecy that even Kaitrin—with all her intellectual and intuitive powers—cannot crack the code.

In both TQ V 1 and 2, Taylor employs alternating storylines that shift between what is happening among the members of the scientific expedition and the dramas unfolding within the termitarium.  It is a strategy that showcases the author’s ability to create fully realized personalities—a talent not limited to Taylor’s human characters.  Indeed, the author manages the same success with most of her aliens—beings as far removed from human sensibilities as Avians (witness the feathery and endearing Professor A’a’ma) and the termites of planet 2 Giotta 17 A.

For the most part, Taylor accomplishes this difficult task with her termites by presenting their storylines in screenplay format.  This narrative stance gives the author free rein to exercise complete directorial control down to the smallest detail of setting and characterization.  In fact, the author’s stage directions in both TQ volumes are so specifically ‘Taylor’ed to the individual termites that it is sometimes possible to tell them apart without glancing at the attributions denoting their complicated names.  By the time the scientific expedition nears the termite planet at the conclusion of TQ V 1, the reader has encountered most members of the termite cast.

Chief among them is the termitarium’s third-highest ranking inhabitant, the noble shaman, Kwi’ga’ga’tei, who in a vision foresees the imminent return of the ‘Star beings’ (the moniker applied by the termites to their other-world visitors).  Charged with maintaining the peace and survival of the termitarium known as Lo’ro’ra, Kwi’ga’ga’tei is not without her antagonists.  The ringleader of these is the crafty Mo’gri’ta’tu, Chamberlain to the termitarium’s highest ranking inhabitant, the Termite Queen.

Even before the scientific expedition reaches 2 Giotta 17 A, Taylor makes it clear that the termites are not immune to the power struggles that foment civil unrest, rebellion—and even murder—on earth.

Volume Two

It is at this point—just as the scientific expedition makes landfall on 2 Giotta 17 A—that Taylor picks up the action in Volume Two: The Wound That Has No Healing, which encompasses parts 3 and 4 of the TQ saga.  Indeed, the first 342 pages of TQ V 2 move, for the most part, at a pace snappy enough to keep the reader fully engaged and, at times, breathless with anticipation.

Soon after the expedition makes landfall, Kaitrin makes contact with Kwi’ga’ga’tei.  As her bond with the shaman deepens, Kaitrin’s understanding of the termite language, social hierarchy and customs, as well as their religious beliefs, increases.  But that is not all she begins to understand.  Indeed, Kaitrin senses the power struggle unfolding within Lo’ro’ra—a struggle that threatens her new friend’s authority.

What Kaitrin doesn’t realize is that the evil termite Chamberlain Mo’gri’ta’tu is the leader of a conspiracy to assassinate Kwi’ga’ga’tei, and that the ‘star beings’ expedition, and more specifically her own evolving relationship with the shaman, has placed her in the conspirators’ crosshairs as well.  Soon after Kwi’ga’ga’tei brings Kaitrin (literally) inside the termitarium—where she finds favor with the termite queen (A’kha’ma’na’ta) and her consort king (Sei’o’na’sha’ma)—the conspirators put their plans into action.

Taylor adds to this mix of tension and turmoil Gwidian’s increasing anxiety as his new wife undertakes risk after risk in the name of science—none more upsetting to him than Kaitrin’s ventures inside the termitarium.  Indeed, Gwidian’s almost pathological obsession with his wife’s safety—an obsession linked to the dark secret of his traumatic youth—fuels his increasing emotional instability.  Things literally begin to fall apart for him when, during what was to have been Kaitrin’s final visit inside the termitarium, the conspirators break into open rebellion.  With his wife in harm’s way, Gwidian, driven by his relentless internal demons, throws himself into the thick of battle.

As the termite rebellion concludes, Taylor finishes off part 3 with several gut-wrenching scenes replete with New Testament overtones and literary references (Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell, to name two)—allusions that will resonate with readers well-read in the classics.  Soon afterward, the traumatized ‘star beings’ abandon the termite planet for earth leaving much unfinished business in their wake.

Unfortunately, in undertaking the novel’s Part 4 conclusion, subtitled “Earth: Absolution,” Taylor relinquishes much of TQ V 2’s forward momentum.  She does so by straying from one of the cardinal rules of fiction: “show it; don’t tell it.”  It is a tendency that crops up from time to time in TQ V 1 as well, but which the author generally abandons after a few pages.  Not so in TQ V 2, Part 4, the focus of which is Kaitrin’s quest to: (1) uncover the dark secret responsible for her husband’s torment, and (2) find expiation for her role in the doomed mission to planet 2 Giotta 17 A.  Taylor chooses to ‘tell’ the story of Kaitrin’s quest almost exclusively in dialogue—i.e., pages and pages of conversation between Kaitrin and several women from her husband’s past.

It is unlucky that Part 4, with its enervating narrative stance, stretches to some 200+ pages—an authorial choice that vitiates much of the impact of Gwidian’s dark secret when it is finally revealed.  Equally unfortunate is the fact that the relentless dialogue actually retells much of Part Three, thus all but inviting the reader to skim.

Fortunately, Taylor breaks the tedium by offering a brief but emotionally satisfying epilogue to the novel—one that sees Kaitrin return to 2 Giotta 17 A for the resolution of her unfinished business with the termites of Lo’ro’ra.

Despite the lapses noted, TQ V 1 and 2 amounts to an impressive literary accomplishment.  Indeed, Taylor’s strengths are in evidence on nearly every one of the tome’s 958 pages.  Few writers are up to such an undertaking—one requiring as much meticulous, laborious attention to research and the fabrication of history, language, religion, and science as to a proficiency of narrative technique.  For the most part—and that is a great deal in the case of TQ V 1 and 2—Taylor lives up to the challenge.

Jack A. Urquhart is the author of several works of fiction, including So They Say Collected Stories.

By Jack A. Urquhart  ©2012  (1100 words)

Dear Dillon and Devon,

I’ve never cared for Hallmark holidays the likes of Father’s Day—never thought there was much cause for receiving tokens of appreciation from my children for discharging my parental responsibilities.  After all, you didn’t ask to be born.  Rather, your mother and I made that choice—we brought you both in love into a world that is at best unevenly disposed to kindness, and where struggle is for most of us a quotidian enterprise.  Indeed, I expect you, my all-grown-up kiddies, could make an argument that I should be thanking you for having enriched my life.

It is with that thought in mind, and with Father’s Day fast approaching, that I choose to reverse the accepted order of things this year by serving up this little ditty of memorabilia.  I offer it freely to you—and to any others who care to eavesdrop (you are welcome here!).  It’s not much of a Father’s Day gift.  Merely a sampling of this Daddy’s memories offered in token of my ongoing love and devotion.

Beginnings are a good place to start, don’t you think? And birthdays?  Those memories linger brightly in my mind.

They say first born children often take longer coming into the world, and Dillon, that was certainly true of you.  For the longest time—14 hours and then some—you couldn’t decide:  would it be Wednesday or Thursday?  It took a suction cap, applied to the crown of your diffident little noggin to get the show rolling.  You arrived—scarlet, wrinkled, histrionic to the high heavens—on March 8^th, 4:44 p.m.  It was snowing in Boulder, Colorado, that afternoon—a cold, wet, spring snow swooping down off the Flatirons, the flakes clumping into cotton ball clusters.

My first parental role was to bathe and dress you—a task like trying to swaddle a greased sausage.  As I struggled to master the art of diapering, the attending nurse cautioned that I should be on my guard  “in case your little man decides to squirt”—a prophecy which you quickly fulfilled.  I remember that your PJs featured little blue and yellow choo-choo trains.  And, of course, there is the memory of your Mom, luminous after her long ordeal, laughing, crying, arms eagerly outstretched to receive you when I brought you to her room.

Three years later, your sister Devon was in a much bigger hurry.

You allowed barely three hours, my Dear, between your first timid stirrings and a confident, unceremonious grand entrance, 12:21 p.m., September 21^st .  It was a Tuesday, and from the beginning you were quiet and observant—barely even whimpering in the delivery room.  Even then, you were gorgeous: ruddy from head to toe with whorls of black hair and lips that would’ve put Angelina Jolie’s to shame.  Like your brother before you, I bathed and groomed you for your first family reunion.  I don’t remember your first outfit, Devon, but I do remember how you behaved when I placed you in your mother’s arms, the way you pursed and puckered your lips, as if you were blowing kisses, until you found your mother’s breast.  Nobody had to coax you—you knew just what to do.  Your brother was present as well—the two of you regarding each other askance from opposite sides of the hospital room.

Other memories:  I recall you, Dillon, at eight years, irritable during one of our family hikes in the Sangre de Cristos near Ouray, Colorado.  It was a beautiful summer day, the four of us heading home on the downhill trail, your mother and I dog tired, when you, impatient with the family’s slow pace, decided to go it alone.  I remember, Dill, how, despite multitudinous parental warnings, you went scuttling ever farther ahead, certain that your mother and I would be too exhausted to intervene.  It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes after you disappeared from view when your frightened cries came echoing up the trailhead.  I remember a moment of hackle-raising terror—thinking bears, thinking mountain lions—as I went racing downhill in a guilty panic.  There were so many side trails.  One after another I searched them, desperate to find you, determined when at last I had you locked in my arms, howling like a banshee, that you’d be grounded until your 21^st birthday—a punishment I fully intended to implement—as soon as I could bear to let go of you, as soon as I could stop nuzzling the top of your head, dear stubborn, irreplaceable, devastatingly beautiful little boy.

Children have a way of augmenting your worst days in a manner that rings back ridiculous—and endearing—years later.  As on the day that you, Devon, at age 4, decided it might be fun to shove a peanut up your nose.  In fairness, daughter Dear, how were you to know that I would add to the merriment by choosing that same day to inform my boss that I thought him a bona fide arse—a pronouncement that while immensely satisfying (not to mention, accurate) was enough to get me canned.

Two hours we were at the emergency room that afternoon, the whole family—your mother and I wondering if the insurance provided by my now former employer would cover the expense of extricating that recalcitrant nut from your dainty schnoz.  Meanwhile, you and your brother played in the hallway as if all the troubles of the world amounted to naught.  Eventually it took a team of nurses, aided by your mother and I, to corral you for the attempted extraction.  And then you made us all look like fools.  I shall never forget, Devon, your powerful sneeze and the sight of that snotty missile all but launched into orbit.  Later that evening, you asked for the comforting rhythms and repetitions of Dr. Seuss and fell asleep while making your own rhymes in sighs and saws against my chest.

I could go on wandering down memory lane, kids, but I won’t.  Instead I’ll offer this final bit of hard-earned Father’s Day advice—offer it to you, my children, and to any other interested parties in attendance.  Here it is:

Sometimes (often?) the most priceless moments between parent and child—between any two individuals—barely register in real time. 

That is because we Dads and Moms—we human beings—are too busy, too distracted, too tired, and/or too selfish to recognize and appreciate them: the wonders transpiring right under our noses.  Yet, inevitably, these casualties of inattention come back to haunt us, their visitations triggered by old photographs, by bizarrely altered dreams, by family stories told and retold.  They come back to remind us of times lost.

This little fact of life, my Dears, is my Daddy’s Day gift to you.  I offer it in the hope that you might profit from my oversights and omissions.  In the hope that you, better than I, might savor all the little miracles that come your way—as much in the present tense as in the past.

Yours with love,

Dad

By Jack A. Urquhart, ©2012 (1000 words)

Full Disclosure: When my spouse Raymond L. Boyington undertook the editorial role in bringing his former partner’s work to print posthumously, I had not expected to play a role in promoting the finished product.  I had read previously a few of the poems penned by Peter Marshall Bell, who died in 1994, but never any of his heretofore unpublished fiction.  Indeed, save for a minor role in translating one of Bell’s stories from the original French to English, I thought it best to keep my distance from a project that was deeply and privately motivated.  In short, I did not wish to intrude on the editor’s labor of love.

All that resolve vanished when I sat down to read Invitation to the Voyage, the Selected Poems of Peter Marshall Bell, and more recently, Nocturne, the slim volume of his nine stories.  I confess this latter enterprise left me reeling with a sense of loss.  That is because on every page was the evidence of a talented writer evolving toward distinction—an advancement in artistry that continued literally to within a few whispers of Bell’s untimely death from the complications of AIDS at age thirty-five.  Indeed, part of the pleasure and the sadness in reading Nocturne lies in witnessing the progression of Bell’s talent (the nine stories are presented in chronological order, 1979—1990).

The author’s early tales, most notably “The End of Tribute,” “Nocturne,” and “The Enemy,” introduce Bell’s lifelong thematic obsession: the human struggle toward wholeness and personhood, a battle that for many—gay and straight alike—pits a survivor’s instinct against the forces of an externally motivated self-hatred.  It is a struggle that presents formidable and particular challenges for the homosexual and latent homosexual protagonists peopling Bell’s fiction.

Interestingly, the early stories sometimes mirror the author’s own history of personal and familial strife.  Witness Bell’s story “The End of Tribute,” in which Walter, the gay protagonist engaged on a Sunday afternoon tour of Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery (Bell lived in Paris, 1985-86), is inspired to consider his own losses while standing at the grave of the American rock star, Jim Morrison.  Reflecting on the lyrics of Morrison’s classic Vietnam era anthem, “Riders on the Storm,” Walter muses on his rebellious sister’s untimely death (Bell’s own sister died quite young)—and the resulting familial fallout:

“Oh, sister!  She had been the only one in the family who rallied to that music’s cry.  She had angered her family by rejecting accepted American values like fighting in Vietnam.  Now she was dead.

“I hated her,” his older brother had told him, years after … and although they’d drunk plenty of scotch before Ed let this out, Walter realized … a brother hated his sister in defense of his America.  Let him have his America, Walter thought angrily.  Standing before that grave, he knew his sister had been right.”

In the collection’s title story, “Nocturne,” Bell’s thematics find expression in a child’s early recognition of unacceptable difference amply cued by parental disappointment.  Perhaps drawing on personal experience, the author offers almost a case study of how children may internalize and process—usually at the expense of their psychological well being—a steady diet of subtle and not-so-subtle censure.  In “Nocturne,” the resulting damage is manifested (initially) in secrecy and insomnia:

“The important thing was not to be discovered.  His insomnia was his secret world—the fear that kept him awake was unknown to all those around him… He especially feared the derision and admonition of his father, who would only interpret his insomnia as a sign of cowardice and weakness.  “Like a little girl,” he imagined his father commenting with a sneer.”

Indeed, the impetus to avoid discovery drives several of Bell’s protagonists to self-harm—as in “The Enemy,” where two men, complete strangers from opposite sides of a war zone, meet, and manage to bridge their political and cultural chasms in a few moments of almost romantic sexual congress—before one of them self destructs.

These early stories by Bell, an untrained writer whose natural storytelling gifts appear to have been honed through years of rigorous intellectual pursuit and curiosity, showcase a writer’s steady progress toward proficiency, understanding (of the human condition) and a command of language (several languages in Bell’s case).  It is an evolution that reaches its apex, in my opinion, in Bell’s final four stories.  My particular favorite is the wonderfully full-bodied “We Have Always Been the Same Person”.

That the term ‘full-bodied’ should so perfectly apply to a ‘ghost story’ is one of the delightful ironies of Bell’s mature fiction.  For in this tale, the author weaves a richly atmospheric sojourn reminiscent of Henry James—but without the Gordian sentence structure.

Set in the French coastal city of Dinard, Bell’s literary excursion comes complete with haunted hotel, mysterious portrait, and a helpful female spirit named Louise who favors fireside chats that sound very much like a session in psychotherapy.

“Dear Charles,” she said softly.  “I am not trying to do anything here.  We are simply fulfilling our destinies…

I thought this over and realized that Louise was right, and yet still responded irritably.  “I’m not used to having someone around who’s able to see through me.”

Louise smiled slightly.  “Perhaps it’s a level of intimacy you’re not used to.”  She left the window and took the seat next to mine.  “Charles, I’m really not here to vex you.  If I serve any purpose for you, it is as a mirror of your own conscience.”

Like most of Bell’s fiction, “We have always been the same person” does not present a definite conclusion so much as open the door on several possibilities.  In this case, I prefer to think that Charles, the story’s narrator, will—like the story’s author—eventually find safety, self-acceptance.  Love.

And if I may indulge in one final moment of personal reflection, it is strange for me to consider how my life would have unfolded along a different trajectory had Peter Bell’s not been so tragically curtailed.  Stranger still to consider how the lives, perhaps even the spirits, of people who usually never meet face-to-face—an author and his or her readers—become inexorably intertwined through literature.  Such is the wonder and the mystery of the human quest to create and experience art.  That seems to me a good enough reason to play this small role in sharing and celebrating Peter Bell’s Nocturne—in which his spirit and his artistry remain very much alive.  Page after page.

By Jack A. Urquhart, ©2012 (725 words)

Karen Russell, the gifted author of the debut novel Swamplandia!, has been making quite a name for herself the last few years.  In 2009 she received a 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation and last year she made The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list.  And yet, a first taste of her Pulitzer-nominated novel Swamplandia! might seem to suggest a brackish cup of bog water to readers whose conventionally refined palates do not bend toward bizarre ingredients.

What constitutes bizarre in Russell’s literary world?

Consider the Sawtooths, a family of lily-white Ohioans pretending to Native American tribe status (The Big Trees) on their backwater island in the swamps of South Florida.  The Sawtooths, who run the second-rate, failing tourist attraction referenced in the novel’s title, join the growing list of eccentric family-centric best sellers of the last year (Kevin Wilson’s wonderful The Family Fang springs to mind).  But indeed, one would be hard pressed to find a stranger concoction of weirdos than Russell’s alligator wrestling, Ouija board reading Big Trees—and that is before she throws in a balding bear named Judy Garland, a bird man whose expertise is crow removal, and an amorous ghost named Louis Thanksgiving.

Granted, the mix sounds like a dish best enjoyed by readers with an acquired taste for the outré, and in less skilled hands that might be true.  But Russell is an extraordinarily talented literary chef who seasons her Sawtooth saga with a smattering of suspense, a soupçon of eccentric comedy, and a dash of myth that is at all times hauntingly engaging—and even enthralling.

The author’s recipe for success starts with bringing the Sawtooth children forward as her central protagonists.  The trio, two sisters and a brother, take center stage after the cancer-related death of their mother, Hilola, formerly Swamplandia’s star attraction.

There is Ava, an eleven year old alligator wrestler in training who aspires to replace her mother as Swampladia’s main attraction, her sixteen year old sister Osceola whose boyfriend just happens to be a ghost named Louis Thanksgiving, and their eighteen year old brother Kiwi, whose common sense leads him to flee Swamplandia for a rival theme park, but whose lack of social skills seems at times to suggest Asperger’s syndrome.  Any one of the three could easily carry an entire novel, but in Swamplandia! Russell stirs them in one at a time alternating her point of view regularly to tease the reader’s appetite for turning pages.

Ava, the novel’s only first-person narrator (her siblings’ stories unfold in third-person), is the roux that holds Russell’s story together.  When her sister Osceola elopes into the Hellish deep swamp (the notion of a mythic Hell runs rampant all through the novel) with her fiancé, the ardent and very much deceased Louis Thanksgiving, Ava sets out on a risky rescue mission that alternates a child’s desperate and at times comically private myth-making with just enough danger to keep the reader on tenterhooks.

By novel’s end, Kiwi, who has become a star attraction in his own right at a more successful theme park (the aptly named ‘World of Darkness,’ where customers are called ‘Lost Souls’ and enjoy attractions the likes of the ‘Vesuvius Blast Off’ while chowing down on Hellishly hot ‘Dante’s Tamales’) joins his sister in her mission of rescue.  In the interim, Ms. Russell spins a family story that seems determined to keep readers wondering what (in Hell) it’s all supposed to mean.  Hint: all three of the Sawtooths seem to be haunted—in a good way—by their mother’s spirit.

It doesn’t hurt that Russell dishes up a banquet of colorful prose and dialogue along the way.  Consider this example of the latter between father (Chief Big Tree) and son (Kiwi) when Osceola develops a sudden attraction to a Ouija board summoned ghost:

Chief Big Tree: at least she’s not wasting time with “some mainland jackass with a motorcycle” he argues, or, “some loser with an earring”; to which Kiwi replies: “Could it not perhaps be better, Dad? … that’s the bright side here, that the dead man does not have a piercing?”

The exchange amply demonstrates Russell’s skill at showing, instead of telling, and it is but one of many examples of Russell’s art that makes Swamplandia! a literary delight to any reader willing to savor its unconventional ingredients.

Conclusion: Highly recommended

Book Review by Jack A. Urquhart  ©2012

The early chapters of Rob Kaufman’s tensely wrought and engaging novel, One Last Lie, seem to herald a predictable story of ‘gayfluence’ brought low by tragedy.  Indeed, Kaufman appears to be going for that familiar paradigm by setting his novel in the wealthy enclave of Westport, Connecticut, and by employing a narrative stance that immediately establishes the fact that misfortune has already befallen his protagonists, Jonathan Beckett and Philip Stone, a successful, loving, same-sex couple who previously lived the good life in Westport’s privileged environs.

But once the novel kicks into high gear via Kaufman’s flashback storytelling, the trappings of Westport’s “A-list” gay life—designer showcase homes, couturier fashion and fragrance, celebrity restaurants (Tim Gunn couldn’t have done a better job at name dropping)—take a back seat to the novel’s unrelenting march toward a carefully plotted, suspenseful climax.

There is something simultaneously unsettling and thrilling (at least to this reader) about foreknowledge—something that keeps us turning pages in the same way that we continue perversely toward the scene of a roadside accident even when the flashing emergency lights are visible from miles away.  Those lights begin to flash in One Last Lie the moment Kaufman introduces Angela, his fascinating villainess.

Perhaps the novel’s most compelling character, Angela, a friend from Philip’s college days, charms her way around Jonathan’s neuroses-fueled mistrust (a condition described by his therapist as an “irritated state of being”) to become part of the couples’ lives.  But as with many a great villainess, Angela’s charm serves a sinister agenda—one she sets about achieving by convincing the men to have a child with her via artificial insemination.

For sheer deviousness and evil intent, Kaufman’s Angela approaches the likes of the Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Lady De Winter in The Three Musketeers.  Almost as soon as the ink is dry on the co-parenting legal contract prepared by Jonathan’s and Philip’s attorney, Angela leads the increasingly anxious fathers-to-be (Jonathan is ostensibly the sperm donor) on a relentless, and at times, excruciatingly tense journey toward tragedy and the revelatory denouement foreshadowed in the novel’s title.

Speaking of denouement, it is difficult for this reader to imagine that any reader who has experienced a lasting, deeply committed loving relationship could fail to be moved by the conclusion that Kaufman offers in One Last Lie.  Tender-hearted readers should have their hankies at the ready.

The novel has a few possibly temporary flaws, some of which seem related to Amazon’s troubled HTML conversion technology for e-books.  In a few instances, the reader is jarred abruptly backward or forward in time—literally from one paragraph to the next—without benefit of a section break; however, these imperfections may also be related to Amazon’s conversion technology and its tendency to obliterate the author’s formatting choices.  Future iterations of the e-book (this reader purchased an early version) may well have eliminated these problems—snags that are hopefully altogether absent in the novel’s soft-bound version.

Ultimately a story of undefeated love couched in a tense drama of deception, betrayal, and violence, Kaufman’s novel puts the lie to the genre labels often attached to works that place gay protagonists center stage.  Indeed, One Last Lie transcends tags such as ‘gay fiction,’ ‘gay romance,’ or even ‘gay suspense/thriller’ by offering a satisfying mainstream reading experience (from the nail-biting to the hankie producing) that is suitable for a broad cross-section of discerning readers.

Jack Urquhart is the author of several works of fiction including the short story, “They say you can stop yourself breathing” and So They Say Collected Stories.  He can be followed on Twitter @jackaurquhart.

by Jack A. Urquhart,  ©2012 (477 words)

Lately I’ve been dreaming about my children.  I say ‘lately’ but it’s actually more of a long-standing thing, almost habitual.  Several nights a week they scamper across the landscape of my subconscious, practically careless, still small children, still obsessed with learning how to tie their shoelaces, practicing the latest breakdance moves, making igloos out of a spring snow in the back yard, squabbling over whose turn it is to feed the dog.  For those few small dreaming hours, they are no longer the grownups their years dictate.  And I can look out for them.

Then I awaken.

Then the real world closes in—that place for which I am increasingly fearful I’ve ill prepared my babes.

I encounter the evidence of this secondhand these days from the other side of the continent—a host of problems posted via e-mail, text message, Facebook, that I can’t ease away (as if I ever could).  It seems my children struggle in ways I never did, forced to make a go of it in a world governed by the things I failed to teach them—lessons that I encountered early on in the classroom, on the playground, on the job site, in Sunday school.  Want to talk about a failure of the education system?  Look no farther than the homefront!  I see the consequences of my negligence now—how my children flail in the absence of survival skills I might have drummed into their pliant, young heads.

Like the times tables of a rote intelligence; the ever useful craft of simulating respect where it isn’t deserved, or the expedience of abiding rules that ought rightly to be broken.  And, of course, the fine art of invoking God’s will toward any ends.

Silly me to have been so remiss.

Instead, my poorly educated children struggle to make ends meet by making art instead of stock portfolios, by attempting music instead of marketplace cacophony, by parsing the lingo of the street instead of spouting superstitious scripture.  Instead of brandishing parchment credentials, they parade their worldly ignorance, their emperors clothing, before the ogling eyes of the world as if were the latest fashion.  Or at least, that is how it often looks to these distanced eyes—as if I’ve sent them naked and ill-armored, no more than serfs, into a world that lords it over vulnerability, over naiveté.

Yet somehow they survive, if not exactly thrive.  Somehow they cope, even managing to display occasional acts of valor.  And how miraculous is that in today’s world?

And yet in the still of the night, I go on dreaming.  I go on dreaming my children safe.  I go on  despite awakening day after day to the same old sun-up questions.  Like:

Who would’ve guessed it could be this difficult, this excruciating, this inescapable—paying quotidian witness to the evidence of parental oversight?  Who would’ve guessed it could be this painful—watching from the sidelines as children become themselves?

Not me.

Book Review by Jack A. Urquhart 

Denis Johnson’s novella, Train Dreams, is one of those elegantly understated, deceptively simple works of fiction that sneaks up on you while you thought nothing much was happening on the page. The author’s protagonist is Robert Granier, an ordinary day laborer and woodsman/quasi hermit living in the forests of the Pacific Northwest at the beginning of the 20th Century.  Shattered by the loss of his family, Granier struggles to make sense of a rapidly changing world and in the process, becomes a small American tragedy unto himself.

Johnson’s novella—it’s only a little over a 120 pages—is steeped in the mysteries and magic of nature.  For my money, the final two sentences are worth the purchase price all by themselves.

Reading Train Dreams drove home (for me) the travesty of the Pulitzer Board’s decision to forgo an award for fiction in 2012.  If Johnson’s novella–one of this year’s fiction finalists–isn’t award-worthy, then I’d like to know whose is.

A marvelous read.

Sci-Fi Page Turner: Expedition into the realms of the human and the alien heart

Book Review by Jack A. Urquhart; The Termite Queen: Volume One: The Speaking of the Dead; author, Lorinda J. Taylor

Lorinda J. Taylor’s ambitious science-fiction novel The Termite Queen: Volume One: The Speaking of the Dead marks an auspicious literary debut.  A writer possessed of considerable narrative and storytelling talents, Ms. Taylor creates a 30^th century adventure that, with but few interruptions, keeps the reader turning pages.

At the center of the action is Ms. Taylor’s young, ambitious, and rule-pushing protagonist, Kaitrin Oliva, an ‘Associate’ Linguistic Anthropologist (apparently there are no doctorates in the 30^th century; rather, the academic hierarchy, from lowliest to most exalted, runs ‘assistant,’ ‘associate,’ ‘professor’).  Kaitrin’s expertise is brought to bear in the aftermath of a disastrous off-world expedition.  Her task: decode the bioelectric communication patterns of an alien specimen—a giant termite—collected during the unhappy mission.  Kaitrin’s linguistic and intuitive gifts soon yield a surprising conclusion: the termite, who suffers an untimely and poignantly rendered demise once removed to earth, is an intelligent life form.

Soon preparations are afoot for a second expedition to the termite planet and Kaitrin joins the team headed by the enigmatic (and sometimes downright oblique!) Griffen Gwidian, Professor of entomology.  The two get off to a rocky start, but gradually their relationship morphs into the novel’s central love story.

Interspersed with Kaitrin’s and Griffen’s story is an equally tempestuous second storyline unfolding amongst the inhabitants of the termite planet.  This reader confesses to savoring the termite chapters—written in the manner of a play—for the communal culture mindset Ms. Taylor skillfully creates.  Her termite aliens—despite genetically embedded caste and belief systems (the latter understandably rooted in a ‘Great Goddess’ concept)—mirror mankind’s record for machinations of the type that flare when competing egos collide.

It should be noted that Ms. Taylor, an active member of the ‘conlang’ community (constructed or planned languages) has devoted extraordinary attention to developing, explicating, and rendering in text, the varied languages of her cast of dozens.

Given the author’s interest in linguistics, it is not surprising that The Termite Queen is propelled by dialogue—a writerly skill at which Taylor excels.  Volume One features pages and pages of dialogue rendered in character-specific voices.  With few exceptions, these conversations, and a minimally intrusive narrative voice, drive the story, building tension and momentum while revealing and/or suggesting the mysteries and foibles of the human and the alien heart.

A word about those rare exceptions.  Some readers may stumble over the portions of the novel that seem inserted to provide context and historical background (this reader had occasionally to resist the urge to skim).  For example, chapter 14, part one, pauses to summarize 900+ years of earth history prior to the 30^th century; chapter 9, part two, presents a discussion (between characters) of interplanetary religious customs and practices, while chapter 10, part two, introduces an overview of interplanetary marriage customs and practices.  These interludes are not without interest, but they do suspend—however briefly—the story’s forward momentum.  Yet, given Ms. Taylor’s remarkable attention to detail, this reader is willing to trust that nothing has been included that will not eventually—with the release of volume two (?)—serve to facilitate a richer, fuller understanding of the novel.

Finally, a word about Ms. Taylor’s interplanetary cast of characters and their otherworldly, tongue-twisting, eye-ball-popping appellations.  The Termite Queen Volume One is filled with names to which the reader may occasionally have trouble attaching a personality.  Some examples: Mo’gri’ta’tu, Kwi’ga’ga’tei, Ki’shto’ba Huge-Head, Hi’ta’fu, A’a’ma, to ‘name’ a few.  The phonetically challenged reader may find it useful, as I did, to develop a sight vocabulary—a 21^st century strategy for navigating a vividly rendered, rewarding, and compelling 30^th century universe.

Avid readers of science fiction may also find it useful to visit Ms. Taylor’s blog site http://termitewriter.blogspot.com/ for additional information and explication of her 30^th century world and its human and alien inhabitants.

Conclusion: Highly recommended.

A Short Story (approximately 1780 words)
by Jack A. Urquhart © 2012

Anyone with eyes could’ve seen them—the pedestrians approaching behind the car.  It wasn’t his fault Declan hadn’t.  True, he could have spoken up.  But it had all been so obvious.

It’s not my responsibility to play lookout for a grown man, Luke told himself.

Declan apparently thought otherwise.

“Another second, and I might’ve hit them,” he barked, his face collapsing into a bull-doggish grimace.  “How come you didn’t say something?”

Luke turned to look out the window.  Leave it to his partner to pass the buck—and to disallow room for response.

“I don’t know why people can’t wait five seconds when they see a vehicle backing up!”

Luke opened his mouth and then thought better of it.  No telling what might pop out; probably something leading to more bickering and they’d already squandered enough time on that for one day.

Like the squabble that had erupted an hour earlier.

“Sorry.  Closing went long.  Par for the course in Real Estate,” Declan had offered peremptorily, like it was no big deal being late three times in as many days.  “Difficult to phone home when there’s a twenty-thousand dollar commission in the balance.”

Luke had been unable to resist biting back.  “Right, Dec.  I can see how a phone call would be too much for your secretaries.  Either one of them,” his riposte.

The end result—would he never learn?—had been a clash that accomplished nothing save to further delay their departure for a rare evening out.  As usual, Declan managed the last word.

“I don’t know why you need to go for the jugular when I mess up.  I said I was sorry.  Why pour sarcasm on the small things?”

Small, indeed!

And now on top of everything, this incident in the parking garage.  The whole thing avoidable.

Who in their right mind pulled into a one-way entrance, and then backed right back out again—across a crowded sidewalk!  All for a savings of two dollars!

“Why pay ten bucks when we can park for eight down the street,” Declan said testily when Luke had asked what he was doing.  “You’re so ready to throw money away?”

Before Luke could reply, they were in reverse, Declan looking over his shoulder directly at—or so it seemed—the pedestrians heading their way.  A miracle they hadn’t hit the leader of the pack.

An even greater miracle a worse scene hadn’t ensued.

“Stupid Fuck!” the thuggish young man—sporting more piercings than a pincushion—snarled, thrusting his face up against Luke’s window.  “Buncha fags!  Get a fuckin’ horse!” he’d screamed, smashing his fist down on the car roof.

Luke had known immediately the blow would leave a dent.

Twenty minutes later, after they’d found parking in another garage, he examined the damage.

“Looks like we’ve got a war-wound,” he said, forcing a calm he didn’t feel.

Standing next to him, Declan examined the dimpled roof, lips curled into a smirk.

“Jerk was a homophobe!” he snarled.  “Bunch’a hoodlums and hustlers.”  And then, perversely, “I don’t see a dent.”

Luke clenched his jaw.  A crater the size of a hubcap and the man’s response would’ve been the same, he felt certain.

“Let’s eat,” Declan said turning on his heel to head for the exit stairs.  “Only an hour till the movie.”

Right.  The movie.  The one they’d never make.

Five flights later, engulfed in the crowds along Polk Street, Luke paused to zip his jacket against the brisk San Francisco evening.  When he looked up, Declan was already well ahead, same as ever.  No matter that Luke had longer legs; Declan consistently outpaced him.

“How about calzone?  Sound good?” Declan, holding up, called back to him.

Luke pondered the question.  A hundred restaurants to choose from, and none appealing.  Why wasn’t there a place, a decent place that served ordinary food?  “Sure, Calzone’s fine, if you like,” he replied.  And then, “what else is there in this neighborhood?”

Declan thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away.

“There he goes,” Luke mumbled, irritated.  These days cross-eyes was enough to snap Declan into a sulk.

“There must be a dozen places on the next few blocks,” Declan bawled back at him.  “If not calzone, then what?  It would help to know what you want,” he grumped.

“Calzone’s okay,” Luke sighed.  “No time to look anyway.”

“Fine!” Declan snapped, quick-stepping ahead.

At the end of the block, waiting for the traffic signal, Luke approached the window display at the corner liquor store.  An unfamiliar brand of vodka was oddly displayed as on a lady’s fancy vanity table, mirrors and costume jewelry coupled with the opalescent-colored bottles, everything draped in strands of fake pearls.

He was studying the arrangement, trying to fathom the window-dresser’s marketing strategy, when it began—a collective shuddering, like all creation attempting to shake a chill in a simultaneous shiver.

It was the vibrating plate glass, the bottles chattering in the window—the way some of the pearl strands slipped off—that made him realize the motion wasn’t from passing traffic.  And then the strange sensation of lateral movement, and the noise—like a locomotive moving underground.

Before Declan shouted, Luke knew it was a quake.  Two seconds more and somehow Declan was behind him, yelling, pushing him away from the storefront.

“Stay away from the window!  It could shatter!”

And just like that, it did.

Luke heard the crackling sound behind them, like breakfast cereal on steroids, followed by the crescendo of shattering glass.  Ten seconds more and it was over.  The tremor rolling away, a wave headed for a distant shore.

In its wake, several car alarms were left crying wolf—the racket wah-wahing up and down the length of Polk Street.

A group of teenagers yelped from the opposite corner.  “Shit!  That was fun!” one of them cried.  Next to the liquor store, a less ebullient group of tourist types spilled from a Thai restaurant.

“Good gracious!” one of them, matronly in her pastel pantsuit, whooped, eyeing the shattered glass.  “Thank the Lord we don’t have nothing like that back in Arkansas!”

“Only an occasional twister,” Declan deadpanned sotto voce.  And then, “Prob’ly just a 4-pointer.  Happens everyday somewhere.”

Shaken, Luke tried to remember the last quake—difficult since he often thought he could feel the earth moving.

Sometimes deep in the night, with Declan asleep beside him, the house seemed to quiver, as if something at the earth’s core had stirred in its dark slumbering place.

“Looks like the touristas had a scare,” Declan said, ready to move on.  “You all right?”

Luke half laughed.  “Just a bit, a bit—rattled.  I guess you never get used to these.”

Quakes were like seismic temper tantrums, it came to him—snatching at the earth beneath your feet, roiling away in seconds, leaving you stunned and embarrassed, newly acquainted with what it meant to be…breakable.

Declan shrugged.  “Goes with the territory,” he said.  “Better hurry.”

It was when Declan turned that Luke noticed the glass shards, like trapezoidal raindrops, clinging to Declan’s shoulders, to the back of his good wool jacket.  And something else—a tiny drop at the nape of Declan’s neck the size and color of a holly berry.

Instinctively, he reached for Declan’s arm.

“Wait.  There’s glass all over you.  And you’re—I think you’re bleeding,” he gulped, searching for his handkerchief, wondering why it was that the sight of blood brought flutters.

Not Declan.  Already he was craning his neck, positioning himself in front of a window searching his reflection.  Luke had to restrain him from brushing barehanded at his shoulders.

“No!  You’ll cut yourself!  Let me do it,” he said, grasping Declan’s shoulders, pivoting him toward the street light as he swept away the shards with his handkerchief.  “Give me yours,” he added, all business, reaching for the monogrammed linen square in Declan’s hand.  “Is it clean?”

Still twisting his head to see, Declan pulled a face.  “Com’on, it’s just a nick.”

Luke wasn’t convinced.  “Be still.  Turn around,” he barked, eyes riveted to the scarlet spot soaking through white linen.  Proof of life.  Proof of something.  But what?  “Maybe you’ll need a stitch,” he said, lifting the handkerchief before blotting again.

Declan sighed.  “Maybe I won’t.  Maybe it’s just a scratch.”

“What if it had been a bigger piece?  You could’ve been killed!” Luke croaked, swallowing hard.  “A cut like that—next to your jugular!”

Declan eyed him askance and allowed a small laugh.  “My jugular’s over here,” he said, placing his finger on the spot.  “And it wasn’t a big shard.  It was a splinter.  See?  The bleeding’s stopped.”

But Luke wasn’t listening.  “I couldn’t have stood it.  I’d die,” he said, his mind galloping into an imagined future that seemed all too plausible.

This time, Declan’s laughter echoed up the street.  “No, I’d have died,” he said.  “Remember?  It’s me there, decapitated, in your little imagined soap opera.”

Shocked back into his skin, embarrassed to be caught singing ‘solo’, Luke laughed self-consciously.  But there was no hiding from it—nothing to do save acknowledge the ridiculous, the ludicrous moment of smallness and egotism and naked regret.  “Well then…we’d both have died,” he parried, teetering on the verge of laughter, or was it—Oh God, he hoped not!—something else.  And then, letting go: “I’m so sorry!  It was my fault back there,” he gasped.  “I was stubborn, self-centered.  I should’ve spoken up in the…”

“You should’ve thought twice about moving into quake country, you mean,” Declan interrupted, shoving his arm through the bend in Luke’s elbow to lead him across the street.  “But then, you’d never have finagled a prize like me, would you?”

No.  No, I wouldn’t have, Luke thought.  Not in a thousand years.

“Like I said, comes with the territory,” Declan said, maneuvering them through the bustle of imperfect humanity.  “Some days are shakier than others.  Nothing like living in a fault zone.  Now about that calzone…”

Luke blew his nose into the handkerchief balled in his hand, noticing too late the single scarlet spot on white linen.  He laughed in spite of himself.  “I’d rather have Chinese,” he said.  “Screw the movie.”

Declan, laughing out loud, squeezed his arm.  “Just waiting for you to say, Babe.  Can’t blame me for that.”

Luke shook his head and swayed closer to his lover—until they were shoulder-to-shoulder.  Until there it was—rhythm, the two of them moving apace.  Step for step—at least for the time being.

Sure I could blame you, Luke thought, considering how easy, in fact, that would be.  Sure I could, he admitted, smiling to himself.

Comes with the territory, he allowed.

END