#361 Red Sultan’s Big Boy- Chuck Palahniuk

#361 Red Sultan’s Big Boy- Chuck Palahniuk

Randall was divorced and lived on his family’s land. He was divorced and had a thirteen year-old daughter he would do anything to make happy. What made her happy, were horses. Her last horse suddenly died, so Lisa and her father bought a new horse she had seen on the internet called Red Sultan’s Big Boy.

Randall didn’t see the horse on this internet, he would prefer if the Internet didn’t exist, at least for his young daughter, he desperately was trying to keep from growing up.

“…lousy Internet access wasn’t tragic, not when a single keystroke could bring all the filth and degradation of the world into a person’s peaceful, bright kitchen. These days it took real effort to keep purity in a child’s life.”

The horse bought, Lisa happy, Randall was barraged by phone calls from neighbors. They warned him that the new horse was not allowed on their property and as long as it was on his, no neighbor would be coming to visit. They called the seemingly docile horse a murderer. Confused by this turn of events, he learned that there was a viral video of Red Sultan making the rounds. After getting several calls for unheard of offers for the horse, he decided to watch this video for himself. Bad idea…some things cannot be unseen.

It was “…like watching Mother Nature get revenge for all the global warming the white patriarchy had inflicted on the environment.”

And like the subtitle of this collection of stories states, this is a story you can’t unread. I’m not saying you shouldn’t read this, I’m just saying…you know…not every story about a horse it like the Black Stallion.

Rating: 9-8-9-7 Total= 33

#248 Knock Knock- Chuck Palahniuk

#248 Knock Knock- Chuck Palahniuk

We start 2016 with some excitement. For avid readers, there is nothing quite like beginning a new book. So, you can imagine my excitement in knowing that over the next 3 weeks I will start no less than 15 new short story collections! Add to that a few leftover from last year and a couple of The Best American series, and the first half of this year is going to be some fun around here.

None of the authors I plan on reading during this span is quite like this one. Chuck Palahniuk is such a singular voice in fiction, writing some of my favorite books like Rant, Survivor, and Fight Club, but this is his first collection of short stories. I have the feeling that Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread is going to be quite a ride.

We get the story Knock Knock right out of the gate. It’s a story about a young kid being raised by a father ill equipped to raise a child. All he knows how to do is tell jokes. The kid is way too young to get most of these off-colored, dirty, racist jokes, but he’s not to young to understand that laughing is good, and laughing at Dad’s jokes is all that’s required of him.

“How I learned to say I Love You was by laughing for my old man—even if I had to fake it.”

The Dad gets cancer and will die. All the kid knows how to do is tell jokes and try to heal his father through laughter like he’s seen in the movies. But of course that doesn’t work. Now the kid is all alone having learned nothing but dirty jokes that he doesn’t even understand.

At times touching, at times heartbreaking, Knock Knock, like you would expect from Palahniuk has a dark uncomfortable strain that is like a truthful coat of paint laced with lead poisoning.

Rating: 8-8-9-8 Total= 33

#161 My First Fee- Isaac Babel

#161 My First Fee- Isaac Babel

Babel is one of many brilliant artists that suffered under the dark cloud of Stalin. Believing him to be a Trotskyite, he was tortured and forced to confess to treason before being executed. The heavy oppressive culture killed off thousands of talented writers, but such adversity often creates its own art, deep meaningful and serious art.

Just reading some of these passages, you can tell immediately they came from that pace during that period:

“Since childhood, I had invested every drop of my strength in creating tales, plays, and thousands of stories. They lay on my heart like a toad on a stone. Possessed by demonic pride, I did not want to write them down too soon, I felt that it was pointless to write worse than Tolstoy. My stories were destined to survive oblivion.  Dauntless thought and grueling passion are only worth the effort spent on them when they are draped in beautiful raiment.”

“I was a dreamer but did not have the knack for the thoughtless art of happiness.”

“Other people’s lives bustled in the hallway with peels of sudden laughter. Flies were dying in a jar filled with milky liquid. Each fly was dying in its own way—one in drawn-out agony, its death throes violent, another with a barely visible shudder.”

Can’t you just feel that this is Russian?

Notable Passage: “I had no choice but to look for love.”

Rating: 9-7-7-8 Total= 31