Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #656875 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Customer Reviews

Diverse Collection
Story collections which hover around the same setting can sometimes work, but I'm much keener on those which hop throughout time and space to transport the reader to somewhere new and different with every story. The twenty-two stories collected here have all (except for one) previously appeared in various glossy magazines, literary journals, and even Shepard's previous book "Batting Against Castro." I had never read him until picking up his excellent novel Project X last year, and was so impressed with his ability to capture voice that I had to track this down. And wow, what a dazzling array of voices are represented here! Among the protagonists are: Attorney General John Ashcroft, Who bass player John Entwistle, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Czech WWII partisans, German WWII test pilots, oceanographer William Beebe, an explorer/adventurer from the 1920s, a weak-hitting baseball player in the 1950s, a Serbian soccer player in the 1960s, a few obsessed academics, an assortment of dysfunctional adults and kids, and in the title story, a gay crewman aboard the Hindenberg zeppelin.

A number of the stories feel like Shepard read an interesting work of non-fiction, and then decided to use his reading as the basis for a story. Not coincidentally, many of these were among my favorites, due to their especially strong sense of place. These include: the gay crewman's furtive relationship aboard the Hindenberg (background material drawn from the illustrated book Inside the Hindenberg) in the title story, the aesthetics of Dutch soccer circa 1966 (which draws very very heavily upon a book I have read, David Wimmer's study of Dutch soccer, Brilliant Orange) in "Ajax is Always on the Attack", the moral dilemmas of "The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich" (which draws from Jan Weiner's long out of print The Assassination of Heydrich), the fatalism of the early jet fighter test pilots in "Climb Aboard the Mighty Flea" (which draws upon Mano Zeigler's also out of print Rocket Fighter), and the story of William Beebe's historic descent of half a mile into the Atlantic (drawn from Beebe's also out of print memoir, Half Mile Down) in "Descent into Perpetual Night" in a "bathysphere" (which I think is on exhibit either at the Smithsonian Museum or the National Geographic Society headquarters, both in Washington, DC). There's a definite sense that Shepard is interested in the mysteries the universe holds-in addition to the the tale of Beebe's descent, there's an old-fashioned tale of a a man setting out to find a great shark in "Astounding Stories", not to mention the story told from the point of view of a primordial "Creature from the Black Lagoon."

The other major theme is the American family and the alienation within it. Not subject matter I'm typically a huge fan of, but Shepard usually imbues it with an interesting quirk or angle. In "The Gun Lobby", an ultra-passive husband is held hostage by his gun-toting wife as a SWAT team closes in. In "Mars Attacks", an adult looks back at his troubled relationship with his mentally imbalanced brother through a series of collectable cards (which were the basis for the film of the same name). In "Runway", a father takes nightly walks and sometimes sneaks onto a local airfield to lie on the runways as the planes lands. In "Krakatau", another adult man reflects on his mentally unbalanced brother. In "Won't Get Fooled Again", the "quiet one" in The Who reflects on his place within the wild family that is his band. Shepard also writes very well about the intersection of sports and politics -- in addition to "Ajax is Always on the Attack", there is "Batting Against Castro". This excellent story follows two light-hitting Philadelphia Phillies in the 1950s as they travel down to play for a Winter league team in Cuba.

Not every story worked for me -- I didn't care for "Glut Your Soul On My Accursed Ugliness" (about a kid in a disintegrating family), "Eustace" (about a semi-rebellious kid), "Reach for the Sky" (about a teenager working at a dog shelter), "Alice and Emmett with the 17th Lancers" (about a selfish academic husband and father), "The Mortality of Parents" (about an out of control pair of brothers and their dying father), "Spending the Night with the Poor" (about an adolescent girl who becomes friends with a much poorer girl), "John Ashcroft" (a series of satirical homey sayings), "Messiah" (about a college football player's bizarre friendship with a star teammate), and "Piano Starts Here". But even most of these had a kernel or two worth stumbling across and are well written. Overall , it's a collection that will rewards readers looking for a diverse set of voices and a strong sense of place.