Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990 TAG: 9003143290
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by KURT RHEINHEIMER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ESCAPES. By Joy Williams. Atlantic Monthly Press. $18.95.
TERRIBLE KISSES. By Robley Wilson Jr. Simon and Schuster. $17.95.
Like a good run or a fine meal, a good short story has the blend of form, duration and sensory touches to assert itself as the high point of a day. It provides a half hour or so that is remembered and appreciated until another of similar magnitude comes along to move it over just a bit. A collection with eight or 10 such stories becomes something to be savored over successive days - to be enjoyed slowly and missed when it's completed. And when the collection provides, as a sort of bonus to the stories themselves, the opportunity to learn more of the writer's evolution or niche or viewpoint, then you've got a book to be treasured and returned to.
There are ample measures of all three aspects in each of these three volumes, especially in the Carver retrospective, "Where I'm Calling From," which provides not only three dozen good stories, but also a chance to watch Raymond Carver work toward full voice. His early stories, peopled with the same near- the-edge characters as the later ones, and marked by the same eye for the telling event, are nonetheless clearly building blocks toward such masterful stories as "Feathers," "A Small, Good Thing," "Where I'm Calling From" and "Vitamins."
But the themes - alcoholism and the misconnections of men and women moving through life too close to their surfaces to realize what they're causing and allowing - are consistent throughout. And as Carver smooths his dialogue and sharpens his scenes, they become all the more compelling. One side note: In happy refutation of the Jim Croce syndrome, Raymond Carver has not been spuriously deified since his death. In fact, his rise from unknown to cult figure to mainstream star was complete - and deserved - before his death, at age 50, in 1988.
The last collection of stories from Joy Williams, 1983's "Taking Care," has remained a favorite because of its keen sense of place, its straight-ahead narrative style and its wonderful images ("ropy contorted trees with all the roots exposed like tendons in an arm"). The new volume, "Escapes," reveals a more daring writer, one whose narratives jump around a bit in time, and whose themes have come to include such unpleasant things as death and the abandonment of children. A favorite here: "The Last Generation," the story of a nine-year-old boy's attempts to cope with the disappearance of his mother and the reactions of his father and brother.
Robley Wilson Jr, long-time editor of the University of Northern Iowa-based North American Review, dedicates his collection to Raymond Carver, "a generous friend." Wilson's is the most uneven of the three collections, with about equal shares of glorious moments and lesser ones. "Africa," with its enraged 60-year-old man; "Terrible Kisses," with its surreal comment on love and "Nam," with another view on broken love, seem strongest and most telling, while several others linger near the realm of academic fiction.
In all, three collections well worth owning.
by CNB