|
May, 2000
Gist: What's it like to be a young, white, middle class
American male? This debut short story collection
from a startling and important new voice in fiction has
a few answers.
Upshot: Matthew Klam's men are the kinds of guys
who went through college with a keg nozzle rammed
down their throats, and who are, several years later,
in pretty much the same place development-wise.
Frat guys, basically, sex-and-status-obsessed
creatures who burp and fart and get zits and have sex
and get women pregnant, fellas who have miserable
human thoughts and miserable human hungers. Klam
writes in a plain-speech style about sex and love and
money (don't let's confuse the three) with an energy
and an immediacy that few other writers possess.
The narrators in these stories -- always beset by
problems on the homefront (the girlfriends' dangerous
charms lasciviously described) -- are often pitted
against cheesy go-getter rival guys who say words
like "terrific" and "fantastic." Klam has the timing of a
stand-up comic. Witness this exchange from the title
story. The narrator has called an acquaintance
named John, a musician, ostensibly to gauge John's
interest in writing a jingle for the narrator's client, a
taco company.
"I can't remember what else I told him. But then I
said, 'Can I ask you a question?'
'Shoot,' he said. 'What?'
'Hey, would you come over tonight and I could make
you dinner?' I figured if I just said it. Because it was
that or not say another word.
He said, 'This isn't about the tacos, is it?'
'I could make tacos.'
'Are you gay?'
'What?' I said. 'No.'
'Forget it,' he said, and hung up.
'Forget what?' I said, but I was too slow.'"
Klam is a master of the quotidian detail, and his world
is a world that we recognize as our own. Like the
stories of Salinger and Cheever, these will
doubtlessly be remembered as a chronicle of their
time, place and class. Few short story writers are
funnier than Klam. Few are so horribly true.
Adrienne Miller
Adrienne Miller is Esquire's literary editor.
| 
|
|
