Does anyone really like short stories? I mean, besides grateful middle school students who are just glad they don't have to read a whole book. Everybody who I mentioned this book to so far has said, "Yeah, I don't really like short stories. They're just so________." Fill in the blank. For me, the blank is two things: short and dark. Wait, I'm criticizing short stories for being too short? That's a bit obvious. I should have known what I was getting myself into there. But what I mean is that they leave me unsatisfied. I just get into the characters, figure out the setting, and then bam, the story's over. I'm the opposite of middle school students in that regard, I guess. The other thing is that every short story that's been written for adults after about 1950 is required to be incredibly depressing. I think they're trying to be very real and human and all that but it's not my reality that there are no happy endings.
Jess Walter's book of stories doesn't change my mind about the genre one bit. He is, admittedly, a MASTERFUL writer. I am blown away by how simple his writing seems yet how incredibly well crafted, from the purity of the voices to the tightness of the pacing to the endings that manage to surprise every time. And YET. Every single story is about drugs, homelessness, crime, rape, dysfunction, or wait for it...zombie. Yes, there is even one zombie story and while it's a very smart zombie story, it's still about the one supernatural, not-real thing that terrifies me (thanks to a combination of the movie "28 Days Later," Halloween, and pregnancy hormones. I don't want to talk about it).
I do have to say that if Jess Walter was to read this blog, I think he would say that I missed the point. He'd say he was being intentional with all the druggie stories and even the zombie one, that he's showing the effect and character of the poverty and education problems in our culture and especially in Spokane, that he tried to elucidate that with a list of facts and anecdotes (A LIST! I LOVED THAT PART!) he calls Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington. And I get it. I do. He humanizes a very deep cultural issue. I guess I just don't want my light reading to be about how society is failing. I get enough of that in my education books. So thanks, Mr. Walter. I'll read your next novel and skip the story collections.
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