Cool for America by Andrew Martin

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on July 7, 2020

Relationships are complicated. When they aren’t working, they suck. That’s one theme that runs through the stories collected in Cool for America. We are fundamentally incapable of communicating truths to each other, of understanding our parents or partners or feeling understood and appreciated in the way we hope to be. Or maybe the problem (as a character suggests in “A Dog Named Jesus”) is that we are so rarely on the same page at the same time: whatever one partner wants to do (go the Farmer’s Market) is the opposite of the other partner's desire (stay home and read a book). A different character in that story decides that of the “many ways to avoid stupid, crippling loneliness,” the best is to “complicate your attachments to such a degree that they hardly seemed like attachments at all.”

Some of the stories in this collection are set in Missoula, Montana. Characters, mostly transplants from more cosmopolitan places, tend to talk about wolves, forestry, conservation, music, and books they haven’t read. The characters in a few stories overlap. The most memorable of those is a snarky woman in her mid-20s named Leslie who has an affinity for gin. We learn in “No Cops” that she was “thoroughly and expensively educated” but put all of that behind her to work as a copy editor at an alternative newspaper where, she assumes, she’s not expected to turn up sober. Leslie moves from sexual encounter to sexual encounter through the stories, sometimes with short-term boyfriends, occasionally with a stranger. Despite being opinionated, she considers herself “a person without well-established and verifiable thoughts and opinions about anything.” She promises herself she’ll start writing but she’s having difficulty finding purpose or direction. Leslie declares in “A Dog Named Jesus” that she needs to leave Missoula, a place where she is rotting and forgotten. Whether she will do so is up in the air.

The protagonist of “Attention” is a lonely woman who regards her loneliness as a matter of choice. She worries that “the significant disasters of life — illness, marriage, children” approach “less forthrightly than, say, a friend offering her some really excellent cocaine.”

The title story, and my favorite in the volume, is narrated by a man who occasionally travels to Montana to teach a photography class and ends up stuck there on crutches. His friendship with his climbing partner becomes strained when the climbing partner’s wife becomes sexually aggressive, although the wife finds the mess she caused to be “clarifying.”

My second favorite, perhaps because it is so different from all the rest, is “The Boy Vet.” The corrupt vet wants the narrator to pay for surgery for an injured corgi and then to adopt it, an act that the narrator knows will not sit well with his living partner. I also admired “Deep Cut,” about two friends who go to a hardcore concert and sort of have each other’s backs when the crowd becomes both rough and unexpectedly kind. The injured narrator decides against stitches because “preserving the evidence of the wound might keep me from turning my youth into cheap nostalgia. As if a scar, of all things, was capable of that.”

A couple in “The Charged Party” have experimentally reunited after a six-month separation. They are trying to find a mutual path to parenting their OCD daughter. The father has trust issues because his partner had an affair, but since he can no longer trust any women, he might as well live with but not trust the mother of his child. Maybe she’s really a decent person, a thought he prefers to the possibility that “she was a fundamentally different person from the one I’d always thought her to be,” a thought “so painful that I tried not to let myself entertain it too often.

The other stories are less interesting. “Bad Feelings” is essentially a story about a young man who is having a bad day, perhaps as a precursor to a bad life. In “With the Christopher Kids,” Steven and his sister Patricia are having a bad Christmas weekend with their mother, as part of bad lives in which they switch off being active drug addicts and recovering addicts, an arrangement that always leaves one of them sufficiently sober to help the other. “Childhood, Boyhood, Youth” focuses on the members of a War and Peace reading group who are “building these little, yuck, networks for future success by hosting each other in their apartments around the city for the better part of a year under the pretext of discussing Russian literature.” A relationship in “Short Swoop, Long Line” seems to be going well until it goes off track when the man takes note of the bad behavior exhibited by the woman’s child.

Andrew Martin built his first novel, Early Work, out of young, directionless characters. Some of the stories collected in Cool for America were published before the novel, so it might not be suprising that they are cut from the same cloth.

Taken together, Martin’s stories make an argument for avoiding human contact (even before the pandemic gave us no choice) to avoid the kinds of complications that the characters endure or mishandle. The stories are dark, driven by characters who are largely aimless, but they have the virtue of honesty. There are no false promises here that life will get better. Yet there is always a sense that one day, the characters might grow up and find themselves. The characters know that the future is unknowable but they at least seem to have the sense that the future might hold something better if they can gain some wisdom and maturity instead of growing older without branching off from the same uncertain path.

RECOMMENDED

Members Only by Sameer Pandya

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on July 7, 2020

Some Americans rather vocally condemn anyone who has a higher education as elitist. Pursuing an education beyond high school doesn’t make anyone elite — two-thirds of Americans have taken college courses and nearly a third have a bachelor’s degree — but it does give people tools for exploring new ideas that, without a higher education, they might not easily find. A key scene in Members Only suggests that colleges and universities have value for students and faculty who are “interested in ideas and new ways of thinking.” Perhaps those who deride higher education as elitist feel threatened by new ideas, or change of any sort.

The protagonist of Members Only, Raj Bhatt, lectures in anthropology at a small university. While educational institutions are sometimes criticized for being too politically correct, particularly when students protest faculty members who are perceived as teaching from a racist perspective, Raj finds himself under the microscope when a student records out of context a portion of a lecture “on the history of Indian men who had come to America starting in the nineteenth century and sold religion and spirituality to the masses,” Deepak Chopra and yoga practitioners among them. Raj asks whether Americans became obsessed with eastern religions because they offered an alternative to “our own sense of loss and emptiness,” a “counterpoint to the emptiness of Christianity and western life.” This is pretty tame stuff by ordinary academic standards, but a group of conservative students, rather than debating the point with him, call for his ouster on the theory that he attacked their religious and cultural (western) beliefs.

Raj’s lecture has evolved over the years, driven in part by his own perspective as someone who is caught between two cultures. His parents moved to California from Bombay in the hope of giving Raj a better life. Raj understands that his material life is better than it would have been in India, but there is more to life than money. In high school, he never felt entirely accepted by white or black students. That sense of being apart, of living on an island of his own, has always been a part of his existence.

Members Only is about belonging, being a member of something larger than oneself, being part not just of an insular family but of the human family. The novel addresses that theme from the perspective of a man with brown skin who never feels entirely welcome or understood when he is away from home. It does so in the context of the academic community and the tennis club to which Raj belongs.

The story takes place over the course of a bad week in Raj’s life. He receives news of two health problems, one that might develop over time and another that appears suddenly. Raj is on the membership committee of his tennis club and is happy that another member has invited a black surgeon to apply. During the membership interview, Raj — hoping to create a bond with the applicant — makes a joke that is in poor taste and that some white members of the committee view as racist. Raj agrees that he needs to apologize to the surgeon, but balks at their insistence that he apologize to the other members of the committee, all of whom are white. They have never apologized to him, after all, for making him feel apart in a hundred different ways.

The notion of white people who feel victimized carries through to the conflict with students in Raj’s class who want Raj to be fired for attacking America and Christianity. The university suggests, in a roundabout way, that Raj might want to apologize to the students for advancing ideas that some of them find offensive. Understandably, Raj does not appreciate that suggestion, but he does not handle encounters with some of the more strident students as well as he might. He also deals with a troubled Indian student with less sensitivity than would be ideal. A video of his mild meltdown, doctored to make it seem worse, goes viral on right wing websites as proof that liberal college instructors are indoctrinating students with anti-Christian and anti-American beliefs.

While Members Only addresses timely questions of race and culture, it also makes clear that Raj, as a human being, struggles with all the issues that are common to humans of all colors. He and his wife are raising two sons, one of whom has behavioral difficulties that his teachers find concerning. Worries about his children only add to his mounting stress.

Notwithstanding its subject matter, Members Only avoids becoming a polemic. Sameer Pandya takes time to develop Raj as a person. His nationality is an obvious part of his identity, but he is also defined by successes and failures — as an academic, as a father and son — that stand apart from his skin color. The care Pandya takes in showing the reader all facets of Raj’s personality makes it easier to understand Raj's struggle with belonging in the larger context of a universal struggle to make the best life we can.

During the first third of Members Only, I wondered whether Pandya would simply recycle familiar themes about the hardships faced by people of color. By the end, I was captivated, not just by Pandya’s ability to address those themes in new and insightful ways, but by Raj as a unique human being who learns something about his life during a difficult week. Without moralizing, Members Only has something valuable to say about serious issues of race of ethnicity, but it does so by telling a story that invites emotional bonding with a troubled but likeable protagonist.

RECOMMENDED

The Bones of Wolfe by James Carlos Blake

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on July 7, 2020

Criminal enterprises are more interesting than most legitimate businesses. Stories about crime families are more likely to capture the imagination than stories about upright families because the problems faced by criminals are outside the ken of law-abiding people. A reader might relate to a story about emotionally distant parents or drug dependent siblings, but we are fascinated by Michael Corleone’s decision to put the family business ahead of his loyalty to Fredo, simply because the decision to kill a disloyal brother is one that we’re never likely to ponder. At the same time, criminals like Tony Soprano remind us that members of crime families have problems in common with members of straight-and-narrow families.

The Wolfe family has roots in Ireland and Mexico. From its family base in Brownsville, Texas and in concert with the Mexican side of the family, the Wolfes now smuggle guns and engage in other outlaw activities on both sides of the border. The Wolfes place great value on education and family bonds. They operate their business using reliable management techniques, most of which would be recognizable in any legitimate business. Some of their management strategies, on the other hand, are more violent than those employed in a typical family business. Like many other families, however, the Wolfes go to bat for each other. Unlike some families, they inevitably place family ahead of profit.

The Bones of the Wolfe is the fifth novel in James Carlos Blake’s series about the Wolfe family. They are a likeable group.

The story begins with the hijacking of a shipment of guns that are being delivered to a cartel. The family member in charge of security, Mateo Wolfe, orchestrates a quick and successful response. As two Wolfe brothers, Frank and Rudy, are celebrating by screening a particularly good porn DVD that came into their possession during the gun recovery, their cousins — Rayo Luna and Jessie Juliet — insist on joining them, and then on providing commentary about the acting.

Jessie notices that one of the actresses, Kitty Quick, bears a striking resemblance to a woman she saw in an old family photograph. She shares the discovery with the family matriarch, Catalina Wolfe, who at 115 has seen a great deal and is revered by the rest of the family. Catalina instructs Frank and Rudy to find Kitty, who might be a descendent of Catalina’s lost sister. Rudy and Frank would not think of disobeying, so they embark on a quest that takes them to Los Angeles and then to Mexico, where they must persuade Kitty to leave the cartel kingpin with whom she is staying. This leads to a harrowing chase that includes an escape in a boat across the Gulf of Mexico during a hurricane. Fun stuff.

Blake pulls this off because he has mastered the art of writing an action novel with literary flair. He creates atmosphere and characterization without deadening the pace by creating too much. The main characters kill when they deem it necessary but they don’t go out of their way to be violent and in other respects behave quite decently. While the plot is less meaty than some of the earlier books in the series, the streamlined storytelling makes The Bones of the Wolfe a fast and exciting read.

RECOMMENDED

Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

Published in Japan in 2014; published in translation in Great Britain in 2019 and in the US by Riverhead Books on June 23, 2020

Having a familiarity with Japanese history would probably help a reader dive into the full depth of Tokyo Ueno Station. I lack that familiarity, although some googling and consulting the SamuraiWiki (yes, there is such a thing) helped me understand references to the conflict between the Shōgitai and Imperial troops, leading to the Battle of Ueno. In addition, a student of Buddhism, or a reader who is familiar with each of the novel’s references to eastern religious rituals and beliefs, will likely have a more nuanced perspective on Tokyo Ueno Station than I did. Such are the difficulties and rewards of tackling Japanese fiction. The novel nevertheless conveys universal truths, regardless of and apart from history and religion, including the pain of loss and the search for meaning in an apparently random universe.

Kazu, the novel’s narrator, tells the story from his memories of being alive. Those memories are fading, as is his ability to distinguish colors and smells. At the age of 67, Kazu began living in Ueno Park in central Tokyo. By 2010, apparently the year of his death, he was 73. He collected cans for recycling to earn the pocket money that helped him survive. Kazu often wondered whether survival is worthwhile. His status as a ghost suggests that he decided his pain was unendurable. Yet he still wanders through the park and the train station, still listens to conversations, still watches when the emperor’s car drives past, the emperor waving at the people lining the sidewalks, probably without really noticing them. Death has not changed Kazu much; certainly, it has not removed the pain. Fading away is his best hope for peace.

Kazu’s life shared milestones with the emperor’s — they are the same age, their children were born on the same day, the park that became his home was a gift to Tokyo from the emperor — yet their lives are a study in contrast. Kazu worked as a laborer, traveling from one construction project to another. He was rarely home to visit his wife and child. His son died in the middle of life. Shortly after Kazu’s retirement, when he finally had time for his wife, she died sleeping next to him after he came home drunk. Kazu wondered whether his wife cried out in pain, whether he could have saved her if he had not fallen into a drunken sleep. He carried the weight of both deaths. After his granddaughter came to live with him, he decided a 21-year old woman should not be burdened by an old man, so he left her a note saying he was moving to Tokyo and that she should not look for him.

Kazu tells us that the homeless do not usually tell each other stories, but a couple of the men he encounters in the park tell him about their past lives. A sense of guilt and shame is their unifying feature. Many of the park’s homeless occupants come to a sad end, sometimes by being beaten to death for sport by Tokyo teens. Their stories are in sharp contrast to the snippets of conversation that Kazu overhears, the idle gossip or comparison of purchases at the mall, the chatterers oblivious to the lives around them.

Tokyo Ueno Station suggests the importance of noticing the unnoticed. “To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past while still being in full view of everyone.” Watching a young man read the prayers for health or success at a temple reminds Kazu that, when he was a young man, he “had no interest in other people’s hopes or setbacks.” The experience of homelessness triggered an empathic awareness of the world that Kazu lacked when he lived a more fortunate life. It is an empathy that government lacks, as he learns when park management displaces the homeless and their cardboard huts so that the imperial family can enjoy the park and its museums without being troubled by reality.

Yet empathy cannot cure the sadness that Kazu feels. The sorrow of death has captured him. Whether he has imagined or witnessed his granddaughter’s fate is unclear, but he has seen enough death to consider whether the time has come to for him to die.

Tokyo Ueno Station might be read as a critique of the Japanese government, its post-war drive to become an economic superpower at the expense of family and a meaningful existence. On a more personal level, the novel stands as an examination of the choices (or lack of choices) that shape life and death. The novel tells a bleak story in spare prose that suits its subject matter, but it encourages readers to recognize the importance of the only life we have and the value of all that lives that we choose not to see.

RECOMMENDED

Interlibrary Loan by Gene Wolfe

Published by Tor Books on June 30, 2020

A sequel to A Borrowed Man, Interlibrary Loan is Gene Wolfe’s final novel. Wolfe reportedly turned it over to his publisher shortly before his death, but it feels incomplete. Perhaps if Wolfe had survived, an editor might have wanted him to flesh out the story, or at least to provide additional context for the ending, but Wolfe died and the manuscript is what we have, take it or leave it.

The 22nd century world established in A Borrowed Man makes cloned authors available to library patrons. Check out a cookbook author and you can get a hands-on cooking lesson. Check out Ern A. Smithe, a “recloned” mystery writer, and perhaps you can get help solving a mystery.

The background is interesting but it was largely established in A Borrowed Man. I’m not sure that Interlibrary Loan adds anything noteworthy to the concept.

The plot sends Smithe and a couple of female reclones (one a cookbook author, the other a romance novelist) to a smaller library on an interlibrary loan. Smithe prefers the library where he was residing but any chance to be checked out is welcome. Being checked out once a year pretty much guarantees his future. A prolonged period of being ignored might cause the library system to burn him as an unwanted book.

The little girl who checks out Smithe at her mother’s direction explains that a dark spooky shape invades her mother’s bedroom at night. The mother, Adah Fevre, wants Smithe to solve a mystery involving a treasure map pasted into a book. The map has hallucinatory properties. Why this should be true is, like much of the plot, is never adequately explained. The beginning of the story seems like a collection of false starts that might have been trimmed away if Wolfe had lived to give the manuscript the rewrite it needs.

The story sends Smithe and a reclone named Audrey (famed for writing books about her adventures as an explorer) to Corpse Island, where Adah’s estranged husband finds cadavers that his anatomy students can dissect. The husband is busy having sex with the reclone romance writer (who doesn’t seem to mind) and Smithe gets busy with Audrey (to their mutual satisfaction, at least in Smithe’s opinion). Adah is jealous but Adah is also crazy so nobody pays much attention to her unless she’s holding a knife.

Something like an adventure story that turns into a treasure hunt follows the arrival on Corpse Island. A treasure is located but its purpose or properties are never explained. Reclones come and go, sometimes returning as different reclones of the same dead author. It’s all a bit confusing, made all the more so by an unexplained portal to an ambiguous place through which nebulous beings travel for mysterious reasons. Perhaps Wolfe intended to elaborate on the other world in a later book. Perhaps he simply sent off an unfinished manuscript because he didn’t want his estate to refund his advance for failing to submit the book. We’ll never know.

The story and the relationships are sort of intriguing, but the novel’s merits are balanced by its flaws. Fans of A Borrowed Man might want to read Interlibrary Loan simply to immerse themselves further in the strange future that Wolfe created. Other readers might find it more satisfying to read or reread Wolfe’s earlier and better books.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS