Summer
2002
Slow Monkeys
and other stories
Jim Nichols
Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon U.
Press
Publication date: 10/31/2002
164 pp. $15.95
Be aware: you’ll find no action
heroes or epic conflicts in Slow Monkeys, a first collection from
award-winning short story writer Jim Nichols. You won’t come across any wily
detectives or inscrutable medical examiners, any CIA agents or conniving society
mavens. In short, you’ll discover few of the suspects who inhabit the larger
part of modern commercial fiction. Instead, Nichols levels his casual but
penetrating scope on the less trodden world of trailer parks and migrant fruit
workers, of bent marriages and blue-collar disillusion. But in this
thrill-a-minute, Nike/Playstation/Tommy Hilfiger world, who wants to read about
the troubles of ordinary Joes and Janes? Right?
Wrong. You want to read this book.
Nichols voice comes clean and eerie as a loon call on a simple lake of autumn,
thrusting even the most bored and ironic reader into that most epiphanic of
environs—the real world. While this reviewer could hardly be described as a
fan of relative minimalism, Nichols has a subtlety and style that can’t help
but win your appreciation. His language flows with assurance, firmly in the
familiar but seldom stooping to dialect or the outright colloquial. His
Hemingwayesque simplicity of phrase belies a deep interest in the rhythm and
interaction of line and phrase. As a result of strong characterization and
story, this sense of scansion is hardly noticeable on a first
run-through, but upon subsequent or close examination, the lines emit a nearly
poetic feel, like a concentricity of ripples on one of Nichols’s Maine ponds,
each expanding and accentuating the one before. This deep attention to craft is
also evident in his controlled use of symbol. An ancient outboard motor, coins
of ambiguous luck, dead fish, a stolen football: all these symbols could come
across as contrived or labored in the hands of a less accomplished artisan but
Nichols employs them with a light yet resolute touch, making the narrative
resonate with aptness, substance and power.
Knowing that the most universal
conflicts have little to do with political machinations or jewel heists, Nichols
forces us to gaze upon the complexity of the human drama, where the simple
wonder of a child keeps a lost man from the abyss; where in the shattered knee
of a former high school football star we tease out the true marrow and
eventuality of American dreams; where among tip-ups and ice shanties, closeted
tendencies are not discussed openly but grunted at—or better yet, ignored—over
a cold beer; where, everyday, families and individual souls bend, break, and are
made whole again by the subtle heroism of diminished pride or lowered
expectation. These commonplace heroes don’t save the globe or perform
superhuman feats, but they do save those around them from utter despair and ruin
with tight-lipped compassion or a simple determination to persevere. Slow
Monkeys is crammed with distinctly American characters, and with his perfect
apprehension and appreciation of human frailty, Jim Nichols comes across as
nothing less than the broad authentic voice of America.
– CAW –
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