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Modern Love and Other Tall Tales
A review of Modern Love and Other Tall Tales :
With prose as clean as Hemingway’s and a Kafka-esque sense of the absurd, Greg Boyd delivers a memorable book in Modern Love and Other Tall Tales . But these tales are not quite so “tall” as the title might suggest; in fact, their distinction lies in the way they negotiate a fine line between veracity and the farcical. Each narrator seems to fancy himself “the rational one” while elaborating the most bizarre situation with little or no comment. Boyd exploits this irony by mingling a crushing sense of isolation with a host of eccentric, straight-faced characters whose predicaments become the reader’s source of stupefaction and endless mirth. In “Horny,” a man walks around town carrying a heavy wood cross on his back, convinced that suffering will erase his primal instincts; “listen” is a one-sided conversation in which the narrator formulates a sad and defensive logic that falls on dead ears or―as one might imagine―no ears at all; and “The Further Adventures of Tom, Huck, and Jim” transports Twain’s classic characters to Southern California and brings us hilariously up to date. But Modern Love isn’t just one laugh after another. Though Boyd makes light of unfortunate circumstances, there is an underlying feeling of loneliness and sadness throughout, as if his characters’ idiosyncrasies were born from an acute sense of helplessness or an inability to participate in or relate to typical activities. The characters themselves seem real but flimsy, as if they will at any moment be blown off the page by a Kafkan ill wind, as if they were all once, as in “Unglued,” “shy and sickly, largely ignored by the other children.” Boyd’s writing, like his characters, is straightforward and descriptive. There’s no need for verbal trickery here because the author’s imagination provides us with more than enough to digest. In Modern Love it’s quite possible to become so engrossed in a story that you forget you’re actually reading at all.
With prose as clean as Hemingway’s and a Kafka-esque sense of the absurd, Greg Boyd delivers a memorable book in Modern Love and Other Tall Tales . But these tales are not quite so “tall” as the title might suggest; in fact, their distinction lies in the way they negotiate a fine line between veracity and the farcical. Each narrator seems to fancy himself “the rational one” while elaborating the most bizarre situation with little or no comment. Boyd exploits this irony by mingling a crushing sense of isolation with a host of eccentric, straight-faced characters whose predicaments become the reader’s source of stupefaction and endless mirth. In “Horny,” a man walks around town carrying a heavy wood cross on his back, convinced that suffering will erase his primal instincts; “listen” is a one-sided conversation in which the narrator formulates a sad and defensive logic that falls on dead ears or―as one might imagine―no ears at all; and “The Further Adventures of Tom, Huck, and Jim” transports Twain’s classic characters to Southern California and brings us hilariously up to date. But Modern Love isn’t just one laugh after another. Though Boyd makes light of unfortunate circumstances, there is an underlying feeling of loneliness and sadness throughout, as if his characters’ idiosyncrasies were born from an acute sense of helplessness or an inability to participate in or relate to typical activities. The characters themselves seem real but flimsy, as if they will at any moment be blown off the page by a Kafkan ill wind, as if they were all once, as in “Unglued,” “shy and sickly, largely ignored by the other children.” Boyd’s writing, like his characters, is straightforward and descriptive. There’s no need for verbal trickery here because the author’s imagination provides us with more than enough to digest. In Modern Love it’s quite possible to become so engrossed in a story that you forget you’re actually reading at all.
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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June 13, 2021
Modern Love and Other Tall Tales - Eight Greg Boyd short stories collected here, providing readers with an excellent sampling of what our American author of experimental fiction is all about. Take a good look at the following openings for five of the tales. At the bottom, I'll hone in on one Boyd blaster that truly hit home for me, featuring modern day counterparts of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Jim.
MODERN LOVE
A strange woman called me on the phone and told me she wanted to be my love slave. I asked her if she was joking, and whether she's simply picked my number at random from the phone book. "It doesn't matter," she said. Then she told me in great detail exactly what she'd like me to do to her and the kinds of things she was capable of doing to me.
ROBOT DAD
My mother's dead. A train slammed into her car when she stalled on the railroad tracks. I was in the front seat with her seconds before it happened. I heard the horn blow and felt the rails vibrating beneath us. I opened the door and tried to pull her out with me, but she'd frozen up completely, locked her hands on the steering wheel.
LISTEN
No, really, why do I even bother? You're not listening to me. And don't think I can't tell the difference. I see how you pick up your coffee cup, hold onto it, swirl what's left around inside. You aren't paying much attention so you don't hear a word I say. Why pretend? Nobody listens anymore. It's a lost art.
HORNY
I wake up horny. God's punishing me again, testing my endurance, so I fall to my knees and pray for strength. But evil thoughts come through my mind like a polluted stream. I try my best to purify them. I am chlorine, lava soap. I bubble and foam, but in the end it happens again anyway. It's always the same. My soul screams at the exact moment of my body's release.
THE CONFERENCE
Next to me on the kitchen table, set neatly on a plate to catch the blood, is my landlady's head. As soon as the water on the stove comes to a boil I'm going to drop it into the pot to make soup.
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TOM, HUCK AND JIM
Tom moved from Missouri out to California six years ago. Los Angeles was booming back then and Tom cleaned up as a real estate agent. Then things went bust and Tom had to switch to salesman for a media company.
Tom's back in the gravy, single now that his wife left him since he could never keep his hands off the pretty ladies. Anyway, one hot afternoon Tom stops in at a convenience store and a giant of a man sticks the barrel of a shotgun in his face. Tom's ordered to get down on the floor. He watches shotgun and his short partner clean out the till and snatch everyone's wallets and purses. Added to this, Tom watches the pair pull out of the driveway - in his car!
Tom gets a call from the detective on the case - they think they might have the big guy and will Tom please come down to the station to take a look at the lineup. Tom does and a funny thing happens when he's eyeballing the men - although he tells the detective he's sure none of these guys is the robber, Tom recognizes the guy on the end and asks about him. The detective looks at his papers and says, "Small time hustler by the name of Sawyer. Huck Sawyer. Lists his occupation as an actor. Currently unemployed."
At this juncture in the story, Greg Boyd writes, "On his way back from the bank, Tom wondered if he wasn't making a terrible mistake. He knew that in all likelihood he and his childhood friend has drifted so far apart that they would probably have little in common except for their past, and thus little to say to each other. Still, his conscience told him that to turn his back on someone who'd once been like a brother to him would be an unpardonable sin."
Turns out, Huck is a homeless drifter who has hooked up with a childhood buddy who fought in Vietnam, a black man by the name of Jim. The way Greg Boyd shapes his tale of life along the Southern California river will delight readers of that other Huck-Tom-Jim tale published in 1884.
American artist and author Greg Boyd, born 1957
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