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Paradise Stories

Dustin Heron

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Nov 28, 2007 Dustin rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author)

Shelves: all-time-favorites

You can buy it here: Small Desk Press ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 05, 2007 Jim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, read-and-kept

I cannot be objective about this book for a number of reasons.

One: Dustin was a student in a class I was a teaching assistant in. I count him as a good friend.

Two: In that class he brought in early drafts of the short stories that became the crux of this book. I and others offered him critiques on those drafts.

Three: Dustin is a hopeless 49ers fan. They had a couple of "okay" quarterbacks in the 80s, but that's as far as this Raiders fan will admit.

Now, on to the book itself.

Paradise Stories is I cannot be objective about this book for a number of reasons.

One: Dustin was a student in a class I was a teaching assistant in. I count him as a good friend.

Two: In that class he brought in early drafts of the short stories that became the crux of this book. I and others offered him critiques on those drafts.

Three: Dustin is a hopeless 49ers fan. They had a couple of "okay" quarterbacks in the 80s, but that's as far as this Raiders fan will admit.

Now, on to the book itself.

Paradise Stories is a counter-vision to the dominant theme of 20th Century American literature: the life and death of the American dream. In Paradise Stories, the American dream is already dead. There's no fighting it, no bemoaning its passing, no Willy Loman blindly driving himself off the road (although one story involves a car accident for quite different reasons), no liquor-soaked scenes of self-pity and woe-is-me. The family is in the shit on page one -- literally -- and they don't even bother to put up air fresheners. No one dast blame this man? No one dast think twice about this family -- until Dustin Heron trains his sight on them.

This is important because the American dream has transformed in the past twenty years, and American literature must recognize this rather than curse it. Paradise Stories gives this shift its due. No whitewash, and no glamourization either. Each story is a little gem, and best of all, Dustin gives his characters the dignity they're due, even when they're placed in some of the most undignified circumstances imaginable.

One of the discussions we had in that class was whether these stories should be viewed as magical realism or fantasies of the family's psychoses. (In one story, a pile of shit talks of immortality; in another, a six-foot tall miscarriage asks his mother for breakfast.) I say, as I said then, it doesn't matter. I for one am tired of imagination and fancy being crammed in the backseat of "serious" American literature. Let this book mark a counter-vision of another kind as well. ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Nov 23, 2007 Spencer rated it liked it

Shelves: short-stories

Mar 26, 2010 Ezra rated it it was amazing

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