Customer Reviews

Dr. King's Refrigerator: And Other Bedtime Stories

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A collection of eight short stories, presented in the guise of fanciful bed-time stories, but definitely not for impressionable kids. These are hard, pointed stories, stories with an edge, and the point each story tries to make is hammered home without much subtlety.

One story portrays a future world where dreams are taxed. Another is a fictional account of a night in the life of Martin Luther King. Still another deals with sensitivity to other cultures. The last story, my favorite of the collection, explores the issue of what is true courage.

Author Charles Johnson writes in an edgy, hard-bitten manner, sometimes trying just a little too hard. The stories are easy to read, in no sense polished or "literary." Each story shocks or disturbs, makes one think. That seems to be their purpose. I'm glad I read this little book. If you like adult fables and allegories, you may like this collection. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

In his long career, American novelist Charles Johnson has published three collections of short stories. His first, The Sorceror's Apprentice, in 1977, was the best. Soulcatcher And Other Stories, in 1998, was solid, if unspectacular, while this third collection, released by Scribner's in 2005, is by far the weakest. Granted, compared to the usual dreck that is released in short story collections, it's a passable, solid offering; but imagine if Mozart had written a hit song for a Boy Band, and you will see the drastic fall from heights I am referencing. While I am averse to the criticism of intent, wherein one critiques claims for a work rather than the work, the genesis of a book can play a great deal of a role in its eventual success or failure, and this is the case in comparing Johnson's three collections.

The Sorceror's Apprentice was an early work, when Johnson still had not primarily gotten known as a novelist, and seemed to really indulge the craft of short story writing. One senses that these were stories he had been working on for a long time. Think of how many rock bands have a first album that's great, because they've spent years on the road perfecting their tunes. Then they hurry up and put out a second album that's garbage. Well, when Johnson released Soulcatcher, twenty-one years later, that was not an issue, but thosee tales did not stem from Johnson's own artistic desire, rather a request he had to write a dozen short stories, in different forms and formats, as a companion book to a PBS television series. And it shows, for while the best of those tales are good, the rest seem to be pre-fabricated form with random storytelling squirted in to fit a mold. Then we come to his latest collection, and these seem to be a rather haphazard assortment of unrelated tales (rather than a real collection or book) that were culled from a variety of sources, and also written on request for assorted occasions. Ask yourself, how many Occasional poems or songs really turn out well? Ditto for these tales. They simply never evolve naturally or organically from their conceptions nor conceits.... Even if one tries to find mitigation of these simplistic stories in the book's subtitle, there is little to be had, as- in terms of depth, they do not rise to the depths that the fables and fairy tales of yore held, where much subtext and psychologically archetypal depth was limned. There simply is no subtlety in these tales, and little to entice a second reading. Johnson has a point to make, and he hammers them home- which fits in nicely with my belief that, since these were made to order stories, they have made to order messages. There are also too many affectations- such as the quoting of statistics, or the use of tired tropes like a tale's all being a dream in the end, to lift this collection up from merely being passable to anything approaching the transcendent. For those who are seeking out Johnson's work, as recommended by others, pass on this book, or you may likely never believe that he is capable of transcendent prose. Seek out and read any of his novels, but most especially start with Oxherding Tale, as it is the sine qua non of Johnsonian thought, and one of the best books ever published in America. This work is unfortunately pedestrian, at best- a 65-70 on a scale of 100. Solid for a beginner, but a great disappointment for fans of his novels that will be read in a century or more.

Again, I have to pin the failing on the fact that none of these tales seems to have been a thing that emerged from an artistic necessity to divulge something, but a request to do so. Hence, the book's tales often seem like coloring inside the lines, rather than a picture drawn from the gut. The structure is often anomic, the tales lack any demiurge, and their flatness reveals a formulaic bent, rather than an artist at the top of his game, bending the art to his needs by sheer force of talent and will. Simply taking a stance- that one is not PC, or one has depth, is not enough. The message, if there is going to be simply one, as a bedtime story implies and entails, has to essentially explicated within the story, not merely explicated as the story. Thus, Dr. King's Refrigerator, And Other Bedtime Stories stands as the sort of middle ground work that artists often produce in between greater works, as a salve to a public that awaits something better coming. Here's hoping that the next book from Johnson will be just such a work, on the order of his greatest novels. This collection, however, we fans can rationalize as....ah, perchance to dream! gone wrong.

This slim collection of eight short stories (all but one have previously appeared in various magazines, reviews, and anthologies) by National Book Award winner Johnson carries the subtitle "Bedtime Stories" for a good reason. Like old-fashioned bedtime stories, these are tales that only have room for one idea, and generally function on the level of fable or parable. And as such, they are likely to elicit widely varying reactions from different readers. On the whole, though, the stories have a self-consciousness and affectation that keeps the reader from ever fully immersing themselves in them.

The first story, "Sweet Dreams," is probably my favorite. It's set in a near future in which the government budget imbalance has grown so bad that it can only be remedied by finding something new to tax. And thus we are presented with the Twilight Zone scenario of a man facing a "dream audit". It's a clever conceit, and one which allows Johnson to satirize the friendly bureaucrat outlining the dream tax system (nightmares are taxed at a triple rate). Those seeking to escape this dystopian America by dreaming must pay for the privilege. "Cultural Relativity" is a modern riff on a classic fairy tale which offers quick little lesson in respecting cultural traditions. The title story may offend some by treating Martin Luther King as a fictional character, but Johnson's already done this in his novel Dreamer, and his portrayal here is richly human. In it, we find a young Dr. King behind schedule in writing his weekly sermon. A fit of midnight munchies drives him to the kitchen where he is struck by how the food comes from all over the world, symbolizing the interconnectedness of humanity.

The collection then takes a turn for the worse with "The Gift of the Ouso." This story is set among the fictional African tribe of the Allmuseri, who were introduced in his collection The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and featured in his award-winning novel Middle Passage. In it, two wizards pose the Cartesian problem of Mind vs. Matter to their king, resulting in a magical folktale that never really worked for me. In "Executive Decision" Johnson attempts a fictional treatment of the dilemma faced by a CEO who must chose between a black man and white woman for a top position in his firm. It's a woefully weak and lame attempt to present the issues of affirmative action. Even worse is "Better Than Counting Sheep", a dashed off joke based on the flat punch line that sitting in an academic committee meeting can cure insomnia. "The Queen and the Philosopher" is woven around the death of Descartes at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden in 1650. It's unlikely to leave an impression on anyone outside the local Philosophy club.

The final story is "Kwoon," which has won prizes, been heavily anthologized, and even used in several high-school textbooks. It's about a young man who starts a martial arts studio in Chicago only to one day be badly beaten in front of his students by an older, tougher streetfighter. While I can recognize the elements that would make it potentially useful for discussing violence, humility, ego, and self-identity, it never drew me in as a story. And that's really the difficulty with many of the works here, they feel almost pedantic in their attempts to hold up an idea for the reader's inspection. On the whole, a very uneven collection with some very nice moments, but nothing that is going to inspire me to seek out Johnson's other work.