The Reverse Cowgirl

by David Whitton

Keen, intense, darkly comic, and accident-prone, the short fictions of David Whitton are full of sullen his characters clean up real nice, but can't help but unravel back to their original fallen and fascinating selves. Their mistakes and misdeeds, temptations and transgressions trample through these stories, twisting out intricate surprises at each turn. Whitton navigates contemporary and future, real life and fantasy worlds, continually setting up, if only to send up, modern romantic scenarios. Ultimately, if the boy does get the girl?or vise versa?whether they meet online or on acid, at a wedding or in battle, the object of affection always topples from the pedestal in radical and delightfully refreshing ways.

Genres: Short Stories

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2011

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Whitton's stories fall somewhere on the continuum between off-kilter edginess and playful whimsy.  His aesthetic is clearly subversive and the world he creates is one in which just about anything can happen and often does. These are stories that thumb their nose at narrative convention and reader expectations, but also charm with their audacious plotlines and absurdist flourishes. They are wildly inventive and do not settle for straining credibility when they can blast it out of the water. His characters come from various backgrounds, but tend to be young and at odds with or indifferent to conventional social values. Some are involved in enterprises of a dubious nature or emotional relationships that are in the process of breaking down. There are casual drug users who suffer blackouts that result in memory gaps. Lust is ubiquitous. Sex is frequent, even when (or especially when) the participants hardly know each other. In "Gargoyles" a girl who suffered a freak head injury finds herself able to see how peoples' lives will turn out. In "The Lee Marvins" a couple of cocky young guys working for a towing service are unexpectedly stymied by a girl who prevents them towing her car. In "Where Did You Come From?" a husky construction worker registers as a student at the Evelyn G. Ameli School of Beauty and drives the director of admissions over the edge. These are stories of the recognizable here and now. But Whitton has no reservations about shifting his settings elsewhere. "Twilight of the Gods" takes place on some sort of vessel that is under siege in a futuristic and vaguely Nordic landscape, and the Paris of the title story is one in which bursting bubbles cause time to warp and people to dissolve into muck. These are stories that will challenge the reader to keep up with an imagination in overdrive. Whitton obviously does not care that some readers will give up on him (and to be sure, some will). But for those of us who persist, the rewards and delights of "The Reverse Cowgirl" are abundant.