CANR
WORK TITLE: WHO ARE YOU, CALVIN BLEDSOE?
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 11/15/1968
WEBSITE: http://brockclarke.com/
CITY: Portland
STATE: ME
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 292
http://www.bowdoin.edu/faculty/b/bclarke2/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born November 15, 1968, in Springfield, MA; son of Peter Paslee (an English professor) and Elaine Giustina (a dental hygienist) Clarke; married Lane Ulrich, June 29, 1996; children: Quinn Alonzo.
EDUCATION:Dickinson College, B.A, 1990; University of Rochester, Ph.D., 1998.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, lecturer in English, 1997-98; Clemson University, Clemson, SC, assistant professor of English, 1998-2001; University of Cincinnati, OH, assistant professor of English, 2001-10, director of creative writing program; Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, associate professor of English, beginning 2010, current A. Leroy Greason Professor of English and Chair of English Department.
MEMBER:Modern Language Association, Association of Writers and Writing Programs.
AWARDS:Mary McCarthy Prize for short fiction, 2000, for What We Won’t Do; Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction Series, 2004, for Carrying the Torch; Walter Dakin Fellowship, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, 2002; National Endowment for the Arts fellow, 2008. Wesleyan Writers Conference fellow; Lightsey fellowship; Tennessee Williams scholarship; Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarship; New York State Writers’ Institute award; Christopher Isherwood fellowship.
RELIGION: “Lapsed Catholic.”WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Virginia Quarterly Review, One Story, Believer, Georgia Review, Southern Review, New England Review, American Fiction, Brooklyn Review, South Carolina Review, Massachusetts Review, Mississippi Review, Missouri Review, Journal, Twentieth Century Literature, Southwestern American Literature, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Chronicle of Higher Education. Work represented in the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies and on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. Fiction editor, Cincinnati Review.
An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England has been optioned for film by Warner Independent.
SIDELIGHTS
Brock Clarke has established a reputation as an author of fiction, sometimes darkly comic, about average Americans coping with less-than-ideal lives. He has described the protagonist-narrators of his novels, Lamar of The Ordinary White Boy and Sam Pulsifer of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, as flawed and fumbling people. “Both Sam and Lamar are trying to be good but are ethically compromised,” he told Shawn Miller in an interview for the website Bookslut. “These are the kinds of narrators and characters I’m especially interested in.”
The Ordinary White Boy, set in Clarke’s hometown of Little Falls, New York, is driven by the disappearance and suspected murder of shopkeeper Mark Ramirez, who is also, as described in the book, the “Puerto Rican patriarch of Little Falls’s lone minority household.” Wondering if Ramirez was a casualty of race-based violence, local boy Lamar, a reporter at his father’s newspaper, investigates but is repeatedly sidetracked by his indifference to the man’s fate and the desire to find more entertaining things to do. Lamar eventually discovers that Ramirez was not the victim of racism after all and, in the process, confronts the reality of who he, his friends, and his family truly are.
Some reviewers were impressed with Clarke’s depiction of that reality. Booklist critic Gillian Engberg observed that although the novel’s hero is not very sympathetic, “this messy honesty is the book’s strength.” A different view came from a Publishers Weekly contributor, describing the novel as a “rather dull tale” with a style “as flat as life in Little Falls.” Joanna M. Burkhardt, however, remarked in Library Journal that Clarke offers “insightful philosophy about innocence and guilt, bravery and cowardice, substance and drama,” and a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributor concluded that The Ordinary White Boy is “a subtle commentary on society.”
Sam Pulsifer, the protagonist of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, has served ten years in prison for accidentally burning down poet Emily Dickinson’s historic home and killing two people he did not know were present. After his release, he marries and tries to restart his life while hiding his past. It catches up with him, though, when numerous copycat fires are set at authors’ homes in New England. Innocent but still a suspect, Sam sets out to find the arsonist, bumbling comically and weaving a web of lies along the way.
The novel, written in the form of a memoir, is to some extent a commentary on storytelling, several critics reported. “Clarke’s novel is, in part, a handbook on the dangers, clichés and compulsions of narrative,” observed Jessica Winter in the Los Angeles Times. Winter also remarked that Clarke “suggests that we’re all subject to the whims of the stories we tell ourselves; they’re as merciless as they are irresistible.” Charlie Humphrey, writing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, noted that the book “is stacked with literary references, self-references and clever memoirs within fiction.” Jason B. Jones, a critic for the PopMatters website, said the novel “unsparingly anatomizes our penchant for narrating our lives.”
Some critics also praised Clarke’s lampooning of literary trends—book clubs, memoirs of questionable veracity, the Harry Potter novels—and of the pretensions of academia. “Clarke’s satire scorches a wide expanse of our cultural landscape,” noted Daniel Dyer in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer. Elizabeth Hand, a contributor to the Village Voice, took pleasure in the novel’s “many priceless setpieces skewering the literary life.” Although she found the book “eventually overplotted to the point of overkill,” New York Times Book Review critic Janet Maslin thought it “still manages to remain sharp-edged and unpredictable, punctuated by moments of choice absurdist humor.” Humphrey recommended the novel “to anyone who wants to read the best, newest manifestation of great American writing,” while Jones called it “a splendid book: original and funny, smart and dark,” adding: “Clarke’s book ought to make us think about the stories we tell ourselves to keep the howling demons at bay and, hopefully, to laugh honestly at them for what they really are.”
Clarke’s short-story collections, What We Won’t Do and Carrying the Torch, have both earned praise from several reviewers, with some noting that Clarke continues to punch holes in the concept of the American dream. Reviewing What We Won’t Do, a Publishers Weekly contributor commented that the author “probes the hearts and minds of the disaffected and the unfulfilled.” The reviewer felt that while Clarke sometimes falls short of conveying his premise effectively, the collection has “intriguing conceits … as well as flashes of talent.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor deemed the author “too fond of novelty” in his stories, resulting in an “uneven debut.” On the other hand, Tim Feeney noted in the Review of Contemporary Fiction that the stories “combine the comic and the deeply sad to create something at once bleak and radiant.”
Carrying the Torch won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction Series in 2004. The nine stories in the collection, related a Publishers Weekly reviewer, illustrate “the plight of … unfaithful husbands, dissatisfied wives and angry children in search of home and meaning.” Booklist reviewer Carol Haggas found the tales “both subdued and effusive, simultaneously bitter with hard-won wisdom and giddy with dewy-eyed optimism.”
Exley: A Novel, commented National Public Radio host Rebecca Roberts on Weekend Edition Sunday, exemplifies Clarke’s blurring of the distinctions between fiction and reality. The protagonist is nine-year-old Miller Le Ray, who, as Roberts observed, “may or may not be telling the truth about a real book by a real person named Exley, who may or may not have been telling the truth about his own biography. Also involved are Miller’s psychiatrist, who may or may not be telling the truth himself, Miller’s dad, who may or may not be dying from wounds he sustained fighting in Iraq, and Miller’s mom, who may or may not believe Miller, or Miller’s dad, or the psychiatrist.” The book, declared San Francisco Chronicle contributor Heller McAlpin, is a “metafictional pastiche” that “relies heavily on Frederick Exley’s 1968 National Book Award-nominated A Fan’s Notes.” Exley’s book, McAlpin continued, “concerns the tragic pursuit of fame and better fortune of an alcoholic writer, English teacher and mental patient named Frederick Exley. Clarke interweaves his narrative with frequent quotes from and references to Exley’s book, about which he and two of his characters are over-the-top passionate. In doing so, he explores the rub between the actual and the imaginary.”
“Clarke gets the big stuff right: Exley is nothing if he’s just bile without heart,” declared Vadim Rizov in an A.V. Club review, “and Clarke pays fit tribute to him with a generous portion of both.” The author “has turned Exley into a figment of Miller Le Ray’s imagination and given Miller a good reason to hold Exley so dear,” wrote Maslin in the New York Times. “Miller’s father, Tom Le Ray, was such a hard-core Fan’s Notes acolyte that he taught his son to speak in Exley dialogue and to revere the places that Exley visited. The places have a seediness that suited Exley’s adult dissipation. But Miller is such a monomaniacal kid that he barely seems to notice.” “What is clear, and what gives the novel its emotional weight, is that Miller feels a painful kinship with Exley and his errant father, discontented dreamers whose inability to deal with the real world is the despair of sensible women like his mother,” explained Wendy Smith in the Washington Post Book World. “Clarke swiftly rings down the curtain … leaving us to decide whether it’s better to grow up and face facts, or to cling steadfastly to the illusions that make life bearable.”
Brock published the novel The Happiest People in the World in 2014. Danish cartoonist Jens Baedrup is brought to Broomeville, New York, by the CIA after he becomes a target of a Muslim for perceived insults against Islam. There, he works as a high school guidance counselor and assumes the name Henry Larsen. Henry falls for bar owner Ellen while Locs, the CIA agent who rescued Jens, falls for Ellen’s husband, a school principal. As secrets come exposed, Jens’s life unravels.
Writing in the Kennebec Journal, Bill Bushnell said that “despite its catchy title, the goofy characters in Portland author Brock Clarke’s satirical fourth novel would not know happiness if it landed on them.” In a review in Maine’s Portland Press Herald, Ellen O’Connell found that “this novel has plenty to appreciate: the zany dialogue and narration, for one, and its refusal to be one kind of book. Perhaps most interesting is the outsider’s view, stripped of familiarity, it provides of what it is to be a modern American and what exactly we mean—what we are willing to give up—when we strive to be happy.” Writing on the Millions website, Matt Seidel commented that “Clarke’s breezy pacing and comic resilience can only keep the violence at bay for so long. Guns multiply—this is America after all—as the novel’s space contracts and the characters find themselves with ‘absolutely nowhere else’ to go. The first law of farce is that bodies in motion will eventually collide, and Clarke orchestrates the inevitable collision by beckoning each character from across the world and assembling them at the Lumber Lodge under the watchful eye of the moose.” Reviewing the novel in the Boston Globe, Greta Rybus noted that “whenever The Happiest People in the World trains its hidden camera on the quotidian absurdities of high school, it’s all good. No, great.” Writing in Dallas Morning News, Joy Tipping suggested that the novel “might just make you the happiest reader in the world.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly concluded that Clarke’s “comedy of errors is impossible to put down.”
Clarke’s 2018 collection, The Price of a Haircut: Stories, gathers eleven tales, beginning with the title piece, that looks at contemporary racial tensions and attitudes in the United States. Other stories take on the subjects and themes of PTSD, marital unhappiness, and what happens to child actors. Marriage falls under the lens in stories such as “The Misunderstandings” and “Considering Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife.” In “Our Pointy Boots,” a group of childhood friends is viewed through their love of their boots and their service in Iraq. In “The Pity Palace,” set in Florence, Italy, a reclusive man convinces himself his wife has deserted him.
A Kirkus Reviews critic noted of The Price of a Haircut: “Where Clarke’s novels veer toward social satire, often hilariously so, this uneven collection ranges from the inscrutable to the astounding.” Higher praise came from Booklist reviewer Alexander Moran, who dubbed it a “bleak yet hilarious collection [that] constantly mixes the seemingly mundane with the profound.” Moran added: “Clarke shows he is constantly willing to push boundaries. The resulting tales are hilarious, haunting, and original.” A Publishers Weekly contributor was also impressed with the collection, noting, “Clarke’s disquieting, droll work reflects humanity like a dark funhouse mirror.”
With his 2019 novel, Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?, Clarke offers an updated pastiche on Graham Greene’s classic Travels with My Aunt. Calvin Bledsoe grew up in the long shadow of his famous theologian mother, an expert on Calvinism, who was the dominant person in his life. Even after he married, he lived at home and has never really grown up. Then, at his mother’s funeral, he meets his aunt Beatrice, a relative he never knew existed. Quickly she snatches the inexperienced Calvin off to travel in Europe for some adventure. Adventures, however, soon turn dangerous, as he must deal with thieves, secret agents, and his stalker ex-wife. When his aunt disappears and someone burns down his house in Maine, Calvin figures it is high time he figures out who he really is.
A Kirkus Reviews critic had high praise for Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?, noting: “An innocent abroad, all but kidnapped by an aunt he never knew he had, experiences his belated coming-of-age through a series of madcap European escapades.” The critic added, “Unquestionably the funniest novel ever written about Calvinism.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, August, 2001, Gillian Engberg, review of The Ordinary White Boy, p. 2084; February 1, 2002, Bonnie Johnston, review of What We Won’t Do, p. 921; September 1, 2005, Carol Haggas, review of Carrying the Torch, p. 62; October 1, 2010, Donna Seaman, review of Exley: A Novel, p. 28; February 15, 2018, Alexander Moran, review of The Price of the Haircut: Stories, p. 26.
Boston Globe, November 6, 2014, Greta Rybus, review of The Happiest People in the World.
Dallas Morning News, January 2, 2015, Joy Tipping, review of The Happiest People in the World.
Entertainment Weekly, October 8, 2010, Keith Staskiewicz, review of Exley, p. 79.
Kennebec Journal, December 4, 2014, Bill Bushnell, review of The Happiest People in the World.
Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2001, review of What We Won’t Do, p. 1625; January 1, 2018, review of The Price of the Haircut; June 15, 2019, review of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?.
Library Journal, August, 2001, Joanna M. Burkhardt, review of The Ordinary White Boy, p. 159; August, 2010, Reba Leiding, review of Exley, p. 65.
Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2007, Jessica Winter, “Seared by Childhood Tales, a Man Examines His Compulsions,” p. 5.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 2, 2001, review of The Ordinary White Boy, p. E9.
New York Times, September 30, 2010, Janet Maslin, “A 9-Year-Old Fan of A Fan’s Notes, Finding Truth in His Own Fiction,” p. C6; November 30, 2014, Janet Maslin, review of The Happiest People in the World.
New York Times Book Review, September 10, 2007, Janet Maslin, “Burn Down a Poet’s House, and the Mail Just Pours In,” p. E7; September 23, 2007, David Bowman, “Torchlit Crit,” p. 30; January 2, 2015, J. Robert Lennon, review of The Happiest People in the World.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 2, 2007, Charlie Humphrey, “Comic Novel a Real Barn Burner,” p. E5.
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), September 2, 2007, Daniel Dyer, “Thread of Fire Binds Brock Clarke’s Scorching ‘Arsonist’s Guide,’ p. 41; July 18, 2005, review of Carrying the Torch, p. 62.
Portland Press Herald (Portland, ME), November 2, 2014, Ellen O’Connell, review of The Happiest People in the World.
Publishers Weekly, August 6, 2001, Judith Rosen, review of The Ordinary White Boy, p. 47; August 13, 2001, review of The Ordinary White Boy, p. 283; December 24, 2001, review of What We Won’t Do, p. 41; July 18, 2005, review of Carrying the Torch, p. 62; July 26, 2010, review of Exley, p. 42; September 8, 2014, review of The Happiest People in the World, p. 1; January 22, 2018, review of The Price of the Haircut, p. 58.
Review of Contemporary Fiction, September 22, 2002, Tim Feeney, review of What We Won’t Do, p. 154.
San Francisco Chronicle, November 17, 2010, Heller McAlpin, review of Exley.
Village Voice, August 21, 2007, Elizabeth Hand, “The Literati Get Some Heat in Brock Clarke’s Blazing Comic Novel.”
Washington Post Book World, September 25, 2010, Wendy Smith, review of Exley.
ONLINE
Arsonistsguide.com, http://arsonistsguide.com/ (January 19, 2007), brief biography.
A.V. Club, http://www.avclub.com/ (October 7, 2010), Vadim Rizov, review of Exley.
Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (September 1, 2007), Shawn Miller, interview with Brock Clarke.
Bowdoin College website, http://www.bowdoin.edu/ (July 20, 2019), faculty profile of author.
Brock Clarke website, http://brockclarke.com (February 25, 2011), author profile.
Collected Miscellany, http://www.collectedmiscellany.com/ (February 25, 2011), Kevin Holtsberry, author interview.
Millions, http://www.themillions.com/ (January 22, 2015), Matt Seidel, review of The Happiest People in the World.
Monsters & Critics, http://movies.monstersandcritics.com/ (February 25, 2011), “Warner Independent Set to Adapt Brock Clarke’s ‘Arsonist’s Guide.’”
PopMatters website, http://www.popmatters.com/ (February 25, 2011), Jason B. Jones, review of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England.
Shelf Awareness, http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ (October 15, 2014), Jen Forbus, author interview and review of The Happiest People in the World.
University of Cincinnati website, http://www.uc.edu/ (February 25, 2011), Wendy Beckman, “Brock Clarke Continues to Set the Literary World on Fire: UC Associate Professor Clarke Receives 2008 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship.”
OTHER
Weekend Edition Sunday (radio broadcast transcript), National Public Radio, October 10, 2010, Rebecca Roberts, “In Exley, a Story by a Not-So-Wise Child,” interview with author.
Brock Clarke
Affiliation: English
A. Leroy Greason Professor of English, Chair of English Department
Massachusetts Hall - 103
207-725-3252
bclarke2@bowdoin.edu
Brock Clarke is the author of four previous novels, including the bestselling An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, as well as three collections of short stories, the most recent being The Price of the Haircut. He lives in Portland, Maine, and teaches at Bowdoin College.
QUOTE:
An innocent abroad, all but kidnapped by an aunt he never knew he had, experiences his belated coming-of-age through a series of madcap European escapades." The critic added, "Unquestionably the funniest novel ever written about Calvinism
Clarke, Brock: WHO ARE YOU, CALVIN BLEDSOE?
Kirkus Reviews. (June 15, 2019):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Clarke, Brock WHO ARE YOU, CALVIN BLEDSOE? Algonquin (Adult Fiction) $26.95 8, 27 ISBN: 978-1-61620-821-9
An innocent abroad, all but kidnapped by an aunt he never knew he had, experiences his belated coming-of-age through a series of madcap European escapades.
Command of narrative tone has long been a hallmark of the underheralded Clarke's (An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, 2007, etc.) fiction, and here he sustains a tightrope balance between the matter-of-fact observations of the titular protagonist and the increasingly outlandish adventures he finds himself in. It's a little late in the game for Calvin to be coming-of-age, but here he is, on the cusp of 50, divorced from a woman who won't leave him alone, living in his parents' home, recently orphaned with the death of his mother. She was the bestselling author of an inspirational book on John Calvin, whose aphorisms provide the novel's thematic underpinnings. Her only son is one of two bloggers for the international pellet-stove industry; his ex-wife is the other. They often communicate with and about each other through their chatty blogs. His life changes irrevocably when a woman he has never seen before introduces herself at his mother's funeral as the twin sister of the deceased. Without his knowledge or consent, she somehow procures for him a passport and a trans-Atlantic plane ticket, telling him, "It's never too late to grow up, Calvin." Then it's off to the races, as the plot hurtles across Europe through various manners of deceit, duplicity, mutual betrayals, stolen vehicles, stolen identities, odd nicknames with odder backstories, and climactic revelations concerning Calvin, his mother, his aunt, and his destiny. As an oracular voice intones, "In order to see…you must open your eyes," the eye-opening discoveries of the narrator provide a mind-bending experience for the reader.
Unquestionably the funniest novel ever written about Calvinism.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Clarke, Brock: WHO ARE YOU, CALVIN BLEDSOE?" Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2019. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A588726988/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a39407f8. Accessed 10 July 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A588726988
QUOTE:
bleak yet hilarious collection constantly mixes the seemingly mundane with the profound.
Clarke shows he is constantly willing to push boundaries. The resulting tales are hilarious, haunting, and original.
The Price of the Haircut
Alexander Moran
Booklist. 114.12 (Feb. 15, 2018): p26.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* The Price of the Haircut.
By Brock Clarke.
Mar. 2018. 240p. Algonquin, paper, $15.95 (9781616208172).
Full of sharp left turns and unexpected narrative choices, Clarke's (The Happiest People in the World, 2014) bleak yet hilarious collection constantly mixes the seemingly mundane with the profound. The opening title story sets the tone, as the narrator's concerns over pricey haircuts arise due to events caused by racial inequities in the criminal-justice system, leading to a blend of the innocuous and the serious creating a charming and confounding story that is unexpectedly poignant. Clarke pulls this off again in "Our Pointy Boots," as the love a group of childhood friends have for their boots is contrasted with their later service in Iraq. As well as such juxtapositions, Clarke also plays with styles, such as the long, run-on sentences that form "The Grand Canyon" and when he switches the tone and setting to Florence for the wonderful closing story, "The Pity Palace." Filled with exceptionally imagined minor characters--the couple who visit "The Pity Palace" are particularly memorable--these stories often echo the absurdities of Donald Barthelme, Nikolai Gogol, Joshua Ferris, and David Foster Wallace. In trying to illuminate how we discuss race, war, and family dynamics, Clarke shows he is constantly willing to push boundaries. The resulting tales are hilarious, haunting, and original.--Alexander Moran
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Moran, Alexander. "The Price of the Haircut." Booklist, 15 Feb. 2018, p. 26. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531171529/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=255af50c. Accessed 10 July 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A531171529
QUOTE:
Clarke's disquieting, droll work reflects humanity like a dark fun house mirror. (
The Price of the Haircut
Publishers Weekly. 265.4 (Jan. 22, 2018): p58.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Price of the Haircut
Brock Clarke. Algonquin, $15.95 trade paper
(240p) ISBN 978-1-61620-817-2
In his third short story collection, Clarke (An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England) offers 11 satirical, sometimes surreal, tales that investigate broken individuals and flawed societal expectations. In the title story, emotionally fragile middle-class white men suffering from bad haircuts debate whether to patronize a racist but affordable barber. In "The Misunderstandings," a family's dysfunctions inadvertently challenge the local restaurant community and its patrons to rethink their assumptions and beliefs. "The Grand Canyon" airs a woman's breathless grievances against her new husband after they honeymoon in a tent near the famous national park. In "What is the Cure for Meanness?," a teenage son attempts to differentiate himself from his abusive father by giving his mother a series of gifts that only make things worse. The narrator of "Good Night" struggles to accept affection without caustic commentary. In "Our Pointy Boots," soldiers on leave search for relief from the horrors of war in a distant, fond memory they all share. Clarke's disquieting, droll work reflects humanity like a dark fun house mirror. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Price of the Haircut." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2018, p. 58. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839754/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=901cded7. Accessed 10 July 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525839754
QUOTE:
Where Clarke's novels veer toward social satire, often hilariously so, this uneven collection ranges from the inscrutable to the astounding.
Clarke, Brock: THE PRICE OF THE HAIRCUT
Kirkus Reviews. (Jan. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Clarke, Brock THE PRICE OF THE HAIRCUT Algonquin (Adult Fiction) $15.95 3, 13 ISBN: 978-1-61620-817-2
This collection of short fiction features writing as straightforward as the perspective is askew.
Readers might find themselves asking a couple of questions when reading Clarke's (The Happiest People in the World, 2015, etc.) latest story collection. The first is What is this story about? The second, Why would anyone write a story about this? These are mostly first-person narratives featuring hopelessly deluded protagonists who live in a world where the usual principles of human behavior don't seem to apply. The title story, which opens the collection, proceeds from this premise: "On Monday, an unarmed black teenage boy was shot in the back and killed by a white city policeman. On Tuesday, there was a race riot." A simple statement of cause and effect, until the mayor determines that the explanation is too easy, that the riot had in fact been sparked by a white barber who offered cut-rate haircuts and allegedly made a racist remark while giving one. The explanation satisfies the narrator and his white cohort but leaves them in a quandary. Should they go protest at the barber shop? Or should they get one of those discount haircuts that are such a better value than their expensive ones? They expect black protestors when they arrive at the barber shop, but all they see is a long line of white customers wanting their own bargain haircuts. A parable? Then there's "Concerning Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife," in which a mystified husband finds himself invited without explanation to join his wife--who had recently kicked him out of the house--at a B&B in the former home of the notorious ax murderer, where he joins other equally confused guests. For pure literary pleasure, the concluding "The Pity Palace" shows a masterful command of tone on a number of different levels. Though written in the third person, it focuses on an Italian man, Antonio Vieri, despondent because his "wife had left him for the famous American author who wrote those best-selling novels about Italian gangsters in New York." In other words, Mario Puzo, whose name Vieri can't bear to hear spoken and who happens to be dead. And was dead at the time Vieri suggested to his wife that if she liked those novels so much, like the one whose translated title was The Patriarch of the Gangster, she could just leave him for the author. If he ever actually did that. If he ever actually had a wife. If any of this signifies anything more than words on a page in a book. Vieri's dialogue seems to have been inspired by idiomatic English translated into the Italian vernacular and then back into English, a virtuosic feat.
Where Clarke's novels veer toward social satire, often hilariously so, this uneven collection ranges from the inscrutable to the astounding.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Clarke, Brock: THE PRICE OF THE HAIRCUT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520735841/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7b76c1c4. Accessed 10 July 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A520735841