THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 17, 1994 TAG: 9407130408
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
THE GEOGRAPHICAL CURE
MICHAEL PARKER
Charles Scribner's Sons. 287 pp. $20.
MICHAEL PARKER is a charmer.
The Geographical Cure, his collection of six short stories and novellas, glows with quirky yet believable characters and twisting plots. But best of all is Parker's prose - lush, penetrating, almost always dead-on.
In the story ``As Told To,'' Parker describes a 4-year-old at a family reunion: ``When we all laughed, Claire got excited, twirled, shrieked, begged us to keep laughing. She wanted us to laugh so hard we shook, shake so hard the porch shook, shake the porch so hard the earth shook, town shook, state shook, shake the world.''
In ``Cursive,'' a story of teenage lovers, Parker draws a riveting portrait of the boy, Walter, who is nicknamed Walker for his all-consuming hobby: ``He did not walk for exercise, nor because it was conducive to meditation. He walked because he heard a cadence, steady and undeniable, too slow for freestyle, cross-country or crew.''
The nickname - ``hard consonant exchanged for another'' - doesn't faze him: ``He'd heard crueler nicknames - the square-headed boy in his Biology class called `Box,' a girl known around school only as `Burnt Cheese.' ''
There are so many more arresting passages. Whether Parker is describing a teenage girl who captivates while playing pool or debunking the everyone-knows-everyone-else theory of small-town life, his language is powerful and precise. His accomplishment is all the more impressive because The Geographical Cure is only his second book.
Parker, an assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, was cited by The New York Times for writing one of last year's ``notable books,'' his novel Hello Down There. This collection, like his novel, focuses on the South. His characters are often groping to reshape their identities - returning to their pasts, speeding to their futures, moving elsewhere.
But they're hardly cut from the same mold. Parker writes about a noble bail bondsman, a sullen teenager, an elderly intellectual, with equal grace and conviction.
The longest entry in the book, ``Golden Hour,'' brings together an unlikely threesome - a prissy trade-school administrator, her good-ole-boy assistant and a Marxist band member - in a zany tale involving the takeover of the school and an impromptu rock concert.
Here, Parker takes aim at the corruption of language, whether by political ideologues or educational bureaucrats (``Don't you sacrifice a certain integrity when you ameliorate by artificial means?'').
But the best story is ``As Told To,'' in which the narrator wades through his brother's bland autobiography, searching in vain for clues to his character. Only at a family reunion, which ends in acrimony, does the narrator learn the roots of his brother's lifelong resentment.
``As Told To'' illustrates one of the flaws common to several of the stories - sudden, startling epiphanies, brushes of realization that too neatly complete the picture and provide closure. But with all the strengths of these stories, that may be merely a blemish. Parker could well become Carolina's next literary treasure. Read him and see. MEMO: Philip Walzer is a staff writer. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
C. PARKER
North Carolinian Michael Parker charms with his second book.
by CNB