SHORT STORIES AND ESSAYS OF DON MCCORMICK

by Don McCormick ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Short stories, plays, and essays sit side by side in this volume.

A mélange of topics and forms is found in this omnibus of McCormick’s work, both fictional and nonfictional. In the “sovereign citizen”–tinged short story “Just Harry,” a man destroys his license and credit cards in order to become a nobody, but his antics soon land him on the wrong side of the law. In the play Trapped, a couple engage in a bit of improvised theater about getting trapped by an avalanche—which proves to be grimly prescient. More speculative elements crop up as well. In “VR17,” a dystopian tale about a future where people are divided into lowly “Cheeses” and elite “Cakes,” a group of lab workers discovers an alarming variation in the medical data related to a virus. The novella How Death Lost to Walter Williams is narrated by the eponymous man who has just committed suicide after murdering his wife and neighbor. With his soul trapped in the woods where he died, he thinks back on all that has led him to this tragic end. The essays range from the personal to the political. The humorous “Age 75: An Inside Look” laments the pitfalls of growing old. “I do not expect to get better at this ‘doing stuff,’ ” writes McCormick, “and I expect to hear and see less and less until I fall into the lake and my diamond back water snake eats me. He is getting very large now and I saw him eat a catfish that had a head as large as mine so I will not be hard to swallow.” The essay “Children of Darkness” explores America’s state of decline, comparing it to the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire. Another essay offers a proposal to alleviate poverty in the developing world by creating “Another Sunday,” a weekly protest during which people abstain from working on Mondays. Also included are several short pieces by members of the author’s family. The book ends with the family trees of both McCormick and his wife as well as a dozen color photographs of his loved ones.

Despite the wide range of subjects, McCormick’s prose is reliably plainspoken. Here the newly disenfranchised Harry wallows in prison: “On the morning of the sixth day they served S.O.S. on stale toast. It was gray and sticky and had too little hamburger meat in it, but Harry ate it anyway. He asked the guard for something to read and the guard gave him an old copy of ‘People’ magazine.” The short stories are the best of the lot, though they often have structural problems that keep them from making as much of an impact as they should. The plays are less entertaining given the author’s relative weakness for sharp dialogue. The essays range from the oddly captivating to the drafty and undercooked, and they often include elements of Roman Catholic theology. In total, the book feels like a series of odds and ends pulled from a computer hard drive rather than a volume of finished works. But while there isn’t much order to them, they deliver occasional moments of imagination that will delight readers.

An intriguing but uneven grab bag of assorted pieces.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 338

Publisher: Manuscript

Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2021

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | SHORT STORIES