Strange thing happened after reading the “Short Bus” collection of short stories by Bryan Allen Carr. I found myself enjoying them during the second reading more than in the first. Permit to give an example of why I think this occurred.
Spanish is my second language, but I know it pretty well; I can communicate about anything I care to communicate in it, although sometimes I do have to take the long way around to get what I’m saying across. But it still takes much more attention to listen to a speech or a poem than in English, so I have to listen to the music of the speech or the meaning of the words, one of the two; if I over concentrate on one it will be to the detriment of the other. Multiple listens and reviews are sometimes, the best courses of action.
Come to think of it, the greater poetry and song demand much more off the reader or listener as well. Much as super concentrated food takes a lot of digesting.
So it is with Bryan Allen Carr and his stories. At first I searched for the story line and plot and characters, point of story, what the resolution was, or even what the point of the whole exercise was. After much wild goose chasing, smoke trail pursuits, and journeys down the rabbit hole, I realized that what I was reading was true life put to type. As in real life, the people most real weren’t the rationalizing upper crust types, or the over analytical pretenders, but instead the ones most real were the white bread baloney and beer crowd, who if they had a thought, would not think to provide it with a companion; and who if they even realized they were in a prison of a sort, in their feeble attempts at escape they would in the end, not be just back again in jail, but under it.
Having said all this, in some of the tales here the story line is riveting, and twists at the end surprising.
Sad, sallow, mired in one situational swamp or another, these people have a power over us; it’s because they have no pretense. What you see is what you get. And no phony hope for a better day or a better ending. High praise indeed when I compare favorably Mr. Carr’s scorching bleakness with the great twentieth century king of it: Charles Buckowski.
Also Short Story has some chilling tales of madness as well.
All the treasure I had been looking for in this collection, I came to realize had been hidden in plain sight. It was the incredible prose, short chopping, to the point, no nonsense…then a sudden feint and a flurry of off the wall metaphor, then a jab of poetry coming in from out of nowhere. All of it silhouetted by the bleak story and sallow characters that served as scaffolding and timber for the word dancing exhibition extraordinaire.
One note of interest here: Bryan Allen Carr hails from the Rio Grande Valley. He captures the border essence. In his tale of a madman “Running the Drain” we go inside a mind few dare to go, and we are satiated with the beauty of Mexico and horror in just a few pages.
“Over the Border” and “Not Hearing the Jingle” and “Short Bus” alone are worth the price of the book.
Other stories step into the netherworld where this reality and that and the one we imagined are sparingly, but with loving care defined. There’s more in this book, and it’s worth re-reading. High praise, these days.
