Unrepairable Men

 “Repairable Men”- short stories by John C Walker, 2014

If you don’t read fiction much, maybe short stories are your slug of coffee?  This is a group of 10 stories that show men to be pretty messed up.  Actually almost unrepairable. Set in the Central Valley of California around Fresno, and also in Oregon, these fathers, brothers, husbands and sons seem to put their foot in it big time.  They lose wives and girlfriends, their lives or toes, their temper and always their dignity.  I’m not sure what the point is, but it’s mostly depressing. 

Many of these men are small business owners and rural, so that explains some of the stupidity.  It is a familiar collection of damage.  A man calls his brother to kill the family dog.  A physically strong father tries to force his son to be a star baseball player.  Two sons humiliate a disabled Mexican farm-worker.  A boy ruins his father’s employee picnic.  A professor loses it at a faculty retreat.  An obnoxious husband forces his weak wife to raise wolves.  A father and son try to do impossible earth-friendly logging.  A wife moans over a dead rabbit to her uncomprehending husband.  A Vietnamese girl is handed a heavy Vietnamese sword by her father’s boss.  A man fighting the Nile Virus and ‘bird flu’ takes it too far.

Images from the book depict men with wrenches and wood bits for heads and arms.  In effect, they are tool heads.  A miasma of raisin farming, violence, food issues, racism, marginal women, drunks, infidelity and suicide are in the soup.   

Yeah, weird shit.  If you’ve met your share of damaged men or man-boys, you’ll wonder why women put up with them.  The women in these stories either leave or are somewhat pathetic.  Hey Walker, who is the audience for this?!  Is it men trying to correct their own flawed masculinity of tools, toys and toughness?  Or women who already understand this stuff?

There are bits of kindness and adaptability, but these exceptions are few.  A portrait of certain men, but certainly not all. 

Streaming Snapshots:

Underground Railroad:  So far, endless slavery misery and pretentious fantasy.  Clang, clang, rumble, rumble.  Distorted history that some will actually believe.  My suggestion is that modern African-American film makers start doing movies on the present.  The story of slavery is by now politically safe.  Underground Railroad is like a more artistic and cruel version of 1977's Roots.

Atlantic Crossing:  PBS soap opera about platonic romance between FDR and Norwegian princess.  She lectures him on democracy.  No mention of the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling, one of the greatest collaborators of WWII.  No mention of the Norwegian Labour Party which was dominant during this period – just some irritating anonymous ‘cabinet’ members who take advice from royals.  A royalist fairy tale that fits well with BBC fare.

Handmaid's Tale - S4. So far, June doesn't know whether to be a rebel or a mother.  Finally escapes the patriarchal sadism of Christian Gilead in Canada. 

Mare of Eastown and Too Close:  Misery trains running through dysfunction junctions.  Dead children! Kidnapped girls! Suicide!  Murder! Guilt. Sadness.  And a real Kate Winslet, which is the only reason MoE became what it is. It asks the question, are detective series now really soap operas.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left to investigate our 14 year archive of reviews:  “The Permanent Guillotine,” “Game of Thrones,” “The Age of Uprising,” “Citizen Tom Paine,” “The Hermitage and Winter Palace,” “Redbreast,” “Viking Economics,” “Why the U.S. Will Never Be a Social Democracy,” "Sometime a Great Notion."

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

May 24, 2021