|
S. Craig Renfroe, Jr.'s You Should Get That Looked At...reviewed by Henry Berne |
|
|
You Should Get That Looked At
S. Craig Renfroe, Jr.
Main Street Rag Publishing Company
ISBN Number: 1-930907-42-7
Reviewer: Henry Berne
A book of short stories, this combines acute observation of the human scene with equally acute wit, the often self-deprecating wit of an outsider, who looks into places others pass by and lights them up.
The first story, called "Romantic Cupidity," begins in a sorority house at a small private college. A party is in progress. Here is what the narrator says:
"I made my way to the desperate and lonely section of the House...a veritable couch graveyard. All the non-dancing, temporarily non-screwing types found their way here."
There are many encounters with women, most of which are unsatisfactory, sometimes because of no interest on the narrator's part, others because he feels love but does nothing about it, and is then overtaken by anger at himself and at whomever the "Her" is at the moment. What is unique about these encounters is the strange eloquence with which they are described, some of these descriptions almost wildly funny, others reflecting deep hurt, sometimes both at once.
An example occurs in the embalming room of the sorority house-- which once had been a mortuary. The narrator, waiting for his date, is confronted by his poetry professor, Ms. Malpass, as he uncovers a fully-dressed mannequin on the embalming table. Ms. Malpass attacks, bearing him down on his back atop the mannequin and attaching her lips to his mouth ("more Hoover than woman"):
"She began squirming and writhing. I pushed her dark hair out of my eyes, and there, at the door, was Irene. She stood staring at me, and I was on top of the red-headed mannequin and Ms. Malpass was on top of me, a strange sandwich."
Some of the stories are magical, posing questions which remain unanswered, but leaving their flavor behind. One of these is "Biopsy Doppelganger," in which a cyst growing on the narrator's lip requires surgery and transforms itself into an eye and gradually, but not obviously, takes over his entire life.
Even more mysterious is a story called "Tickle, Me?" The story begins in a graveyard, where
"Paul Tickle got up from his mother's grave. Martha McClain Tickle, the stone said, in the line beside the other two. Twenty years before, Paul's father, in a fit of morbidity, bought the plots and head stones. Said if he were going to have to spend all the money anyway, he wanted his grave and tombstone while he could enjoy them."
Paul's job is that of a watcher in a meat factory: he counts the number of rats which fall into the black hole where the animals are turned into food. If there are too many rats, he must pull a switch and stop the processing.
"He ate his lunch there: three peanut butter sandwiches and a Mars bar."
Leaving work to go home, Paul encounters a woman carrying a dying bird, and asking him to do something for the bird. Paul twists off its head and carries it to his own grave, where he scrapes a hole in the ground and inters the bird.
"The wind in the trees sounded like ghosts, ghosts who might not even have died yet but were waiting to quietly haunt those who would never hear them."
Throughout these chronicles of desperation at a society which to the narrator's mind seems deranged, there is a twinning motif of his observations, told in a knowing accuracy, and the bizarre quality of his engagement with this world's weirdness. In the closing story of the book, he wakes up
"to find that every single woman in the world, at least every single one I could lay my eyes on, had become a nudist. Not one woman wore a single stitch of clothing. Not the morning news editor. Not my mother. Not my sister."
'What's wrong? Is something wrong with me? Do I have a booger hanging out my nose?' his sister had asked."
At first rather enjoying his x-ray vision, he soon finds that it becomes a burden, which leads him to a church where the preacher engages the devil in a holy struggle, and the narrator finds himself joining the action as one possessed. But, possessed or not, his acute vision can't avoid the sight of
"the gasoline tanker leading the choir...Mrs. Henderson. She takes a seat right in my line of sight. I can't keep from looking at her, like a moth to a welder's torch. Those mammoth thighs are road-mapped with blue veins trekking up varicose rises to look over scenic pock parks."
There is a kind of horror in this trapped vision, from which he may find release, if only....
The satire is so broadly drawn in these sketches that the reader laughs and then realizes that the author is creating an outsider's picture of the world in which we all live, a Pandora's box, a scene of the emperor's new clothes, a place of wars and struggles, evident to the one who stands aside and watches, incredulous, wondering what these people are doing. There is great pain in this watching, this "take" which will not allow connection to flower, this loneliness.
The stories are told convincingly, and the reader joins this world, much as he might join the world of Harry Potter or that of certain politicians, preachers, and others who are absolutely sure of their rightness.
Renfroe has a rich talent, which allows him to engage the reader in a dance with the bizarre, the obvious, the ridiculous, and the despair of an unrelated world. This book is an experience of looking in with new glasses which cut through many layers of persona to seek the reality of self. It's a challenging read which entertains and frightens.
|
|
 |
|
