#258 The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz- Will Self

#258 The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz- Will Self

What do you say about a collection of short stories that begins with a long detailed description of a man smoking crack, a crack rock as big as the Ritz?  More please!

Danny (aka. Bantu, aka London) goes from England, to Jamaica, to Philadelphia to nowhere…and ends up in a recruiting office on his way with the Royal Marines to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. The drug business has taken its toll:

“A year muscling rock in Trenchtown was about as full an apprenticeship as anyone could serve. This was a business where you moved straight from work experience to retirement, with not much of a career in between.”

War changed him, as it does. “Danny had been changed by the army. He went in a fucked-up, angry, potentially violent, colored youth; and he came out a frustrated, efficient, angry black man.”

He vowed to go legit and get out of the crack business, but sometimes the crack business comes to you, surrounds you, seeps out of the ground of your very home…literally. We are what we are, no matter how many times we may change what we call ourself.

Rating: 8-7-7-6 Total=28

#127 Boot- Reginald McKnight

#127 Boot- Reginald McKnight

An old Marine Corps. Private is telling the story of his boot camp.

“You fear the [drill instructor]; you fear looking like a puss in front of the other boots; you fear shaming your family. You fear going to jail. It’s that fear that keeps seventy-five recruits with loaded m-16s from shooting their drill instructors to fucking rags.”

He was his squad’s best marksman. He was told by his Drill Instructor to take the marksmen tests for other recruits so that his squad’s marks would be high enough to get the DI a promotion. When found out, he was caught between being loyal to his DI or loyal to the Corps. He failed both and his future was shot.

I feel like I’ve read this story before, probably several times, seen the TV show and the movie. It’s hard to make marine stories new. This year I read Redeployment, Phil Klay’s collection of short stories about the Marines. Almost everything would pale next to those.

Rating: 6-5-6-5 Total= 22

#120 Relief- Peter Ho Davies

#120 Relief- Peter Ho Davies

O. Henry Award Story Friday!

I read the first sentence and it’s a story about flatulence. Then I look again at the story title, Relief, and groan. Is this really a story about farting? And for the most part I guess it is. There are many topics one might take on while writing a short story, I guess something as ubiquitous a gas would eventual make it into one.

However, the title is a double entendre of sorts, or maybe a triple one actually. The senior officers are gathered at dinner when Lieutenant Wilby makes his social gas-gaff. The men are gathered round and telling war stories. When Lieutenant Chard is asked someone facetiously how it felt being a hero.

“I would have to say, principally, the sensation is one of relief. Relief to be alive after all…but also relief to have learned some truth about myself. To have found I am possessed of – for want of a better word—courage.”

Chard continues to expound on his bravery and reveals himself to be a blowhard. Wilby offers his comic “relief” (yes I went there), and we are left wondering was Wilby’s fart the real flatulence or was it what just can out of Chard’s mouth?

Wilby’s final relief comes when the room shares stories of their own public farting, and it becomes a bonding point between fighting men. All except Chard of course:

“Now that man…mark my words—has never farted in his life. It’d break his back to let rip now.”

Funny story.

Rating: 7-6-8-5 Total= 26