Customer Reviews

Humane Society : Stories about Tragedy and Golf

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My godfather's name is Paul Pfeiffer. He is not the twerp from the Wonder Years. He lives on a hill in Wisconsin with his wife June. He used to call me Spike when I was little. He is one of my favorite people in the world.

Paul is monstrously tall, with enormous hands and feet. He walks slowly and swings his long arms like a sloth. He is gentle. He taught high school history for many years, and retired to run a bicycle repair shop out of his garage. When a little kid shows up, wanting to buy a bike for his kid sister and knowing his pocketful of change is not enough, Paul counts up the pennies, declares that the exact price, and sends the kid home with whatever he thinks his sister will like best, complete with basket, streamers, and bell. In Paul's life, kindnesses like this happen all the time; he makes them happen.

I had not seen Paul in perhaps 5 years, so I drove from Georgia to Wisconsin. I didn't call him until I got there. He recognized my voice and laughed and told me to hurry on over. I did. He fed me homemade chowder and cake. We sat in the kitchen and watched the deer in the snow in the backyard, delicately tongueing birdseed from the feeder. Paul talked and talked and I could have listened forever.

He has a warm voice, earthy and kind, like Garrison Keillor's, but without the sleepy-making. Even when I suspect he is making up the story, I do not complain, because he is a trustworthy man. His stories are always the way things should have turned out. It's a farmer's voice. He grows things. I can trust that.

This is all just to say: when I read Jonathan Shute's stories, this is what I think of, every time. It's a similarly reassuring voice. And I cannot get enough of it.

When Jon told me he was writing a book consisting of small stories he'd already published for free on the internet, I was skeptical of any potential success yet still very excited for him. I had every intent to purchase the book and then spend all my free time giving him free advertising. Unfortunately the good lord has seen fit to mold me as both terribly forgetful and unforgivingly cheap.

Several times a month I would remember Jon's book and make an effort to track it down at his website to remind me of the cost. I would check my bank balance to make sure I had sufficient funds to continue the purchase, and make a mental note to do so that day. Then, literally without warning, a warm breeze would tousle my hair, or my gaze would be diverted by some previously unnoticed shiny object, and I would forget. This process was repeated as frequently as reruns of MASH are aired in syndication.

So it was with some surprise when he contacted me and told me he would be mailing me a copy. Presumably he was getting tired of my flimsy excuses about flamethrower wielding polar bear raiders and their affect on my finances. He was right to ignore my pathetic excuses, but now I feel a little guilty about stealing eating money from a man following his heart down the path of the writer. Not guilty enough to remember to pay him for the book though.

I recently received my copy of Humane Society: Stories about tragedy and golf in the mail. It arrived in a yellow envelope and was accompanied by nothing other than the inscription on the inside. I can only imagine that my selfish refusal to give Jon money has resulted in a state of poverty so severe that he can't afford proper letter writing paper. It's also possible that my lack of recompensation has left him with very little to say to me.

I just this evening finished reading Humane Society and it's the sort of book I would recommend to family and friends, mostly friends though. I don't talk to my family very much. Humane Society is a collection of short tales, based upon the life and experiences of the author and cheekily called "Enhanced Non-fiction."

The stories cover a period of time roughly equivalent to the author's own age and span subjects as diverse as the nobility of nonviolent confrontation and the gambling habits of Minnesota youths. More serious topics like the life saving potential of golf and the unforeseen dangers of tennis are explored in depth. At several points the book seems to come very close to inspirational reading before dancing away at the last minute and maintaining a modicum of decent taste.

Shot throughout the book are reoccurring characters, chief among them Billy, the kind of super hero that only lives in the eyes of a little brother. Billy is equal parts action movie star and verbally distant sage and one is often left wondering exactly which parts of his character are enhanced, and which parts understated.

In my opinion, the chief strength and weakness of Humane Society is the fashion in which Jon's memories and stories have been collected into a bundle of short anecdotes related only by the narrator and author's perspective. I would have preferred it if the stories had been blended together into a single cohesive work with an end result similar to Kerouac's On the Road or Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, which is my way of saying that I think Jon could surpass both authors. He clearly has a grasp of language that easily cradles your imagination between well described characters and crisp settings that are elegant yet succinct.

On the other hand, chopping his life's observations up into sixty one short stories allows for quick and easy digestion without the concern for loosing yourself in the pages or the plot. Each story is self contained, like a little prose survival capsule, and is very time friendly to today's high speed lifestyles. The lazy are welcome to read more than one story in a sitting.

That Jon is well on his way to becoming a well recognized author can be seen in the book's Amazon listing. You can only buy new copies of the book from Magnas Press yet used copies of the same printing are already selling for more than double the cover price at Amazon. Jon didn't just provide me with a free book, but an investment for the future. When my kids are off to college, I can tell them how my signed copy of Humane Society: Stories about tragedy and golf could have paid for their way through college, if I could have just been persuaded to part with it.

One of my favorite authors just wrote a book that pulses with energy. Jonathan Shute's characters are vividly drawn and his perceptions resonate in your mind. His stories are Zen koans, snapshots of a life unfolding over many years. And considered as a whole, they illuminate the larger story of a young boy, maturing into a man.

In some senses the coming of age story is the only story. The essential tale of our very existence. Every writer grapples with this theme sooner or later. The quality and talent an author displays in telling it, is often a watershed event in their artistic life. Mr. Shute has gotten this book out the door, a major accomplishment in and of itself, and in the process, he's presented us with a world view that is finely honed, and somehow, ironic without being cynical.

The world often seems inexplicable, just doesn't make sense. This struggle to find order in a chaotic world is a constant theme in Humane Society. The inadequacies that we all feel when we are confronted with life's twists and turns, bumps and knocks, are brought into sharp relief as we experience the world through Jon's eyes. Each of Shutes' 61 koans encapsulate an event that was formative or iconic to him. Some of them feel so familiar, as if you were remembering them yourself. Other stories are just so damned weird and cool, that you'll find yourself laughing out loud and squirming in your seat.

I'm not going to provide any spoilers here, because I'd rather that you go buy a copy of the book, but here are some teasers for your consideration:

* Billy, is a ninth degree black belt who, inexplicably, lets some moron beat the stuffing out of him in a bloody Fandango.

* The Bunny Man gets burned, badly.

* The Lord's Barn is violated by hoodlums.

* There's Casual Cruelty, Dangerous Ideas, a Melancholy Monkey and a Demonic Poodle who has a bad Christmas.

And, last but not least, The Willow weeps. This tale is iconic in its intensity, and perhaps, represents the culmination of Jonathan's journey as a writer thus far. It seems wonderful to see these words in hardcopy on the printed page of a nice thick book.

Humane Society is a beautifully made book with excellent bindery and large readable print. As a physical object, Humane Society has heft and substance. The cover is navy blue with gold letters, and there's no silly dust jacket to get ratty and tattered. My copy smells a little like stale smoke, adrenaline and crumpled bar napkins. There's a proper table of contents, a foreword by Dr. Ben L. Collins, and an insightful Introduction by Ryan Postma of Everything2.com. Humane Society is dedicated to Mary, the author's wife, who we hereby nominate for sainthood & den mother for presiding over much of the mayhem described therein.

In the final analysis, Humane Society represents a very talented and promising writer getting the first one off his chest. This is Shute's first book, but he's promised that it won't be his last. He's got lots of interesting stories left to tell us, and I for one am looking forward to reading them.

To quote Ryan Postma, "What you've got here is a book." Nuff said.

A package was left on my doorstep yesterday.

The manila envelope gave way to a dark blue hardback with gold lettering:

Humane Society
Stories about
tragedy and golf

Oh well, I thought, somebody just sent me the wrong title. But on the title page was a handwritten note that jogged my memory. This was the book that our very own Halspal had asked to send me a few weeks ago.

The note was appreciated, though I'm not sure I'm deserving of the details. I'm sorry to say that I don't remember any particular interaction with him when I was an editor and he was a god, and only one of his writeups has stuck with me, though I well remember reading it, C!ing it, and sharing a short discussion with him about it.

In dem bones's introduction to the book (in which he lavishes praise on the writings therein, and unknowingly almost makes me ashamed to post my own efforts on E2), he includes a large excerpt from Why the willow weeps. I remembered reading it, and immediately turned The Truth Book to the page containing it, and was a bit confused because the name at the top of the node was not "Halspal". Turns out it was written by him under another nodernym, and the only two writups by barefoot are the first and last chapters in the book before me. Yes, the entire book comprises Jonathan's writeups, virtually all of which are no longer on E2 for reasons best known to Jonathan, I suppose.

Apart from the occasional node audit, one doesn't generally read a noder's entire nodeshare at one sitting. I don't know if Jon would prefer that his book be read that way or not, or even sequentially, but I took a stroll to the park and began to do that very thing. I am usually in the middle of seven or eight books at any one time; the last week has found me reading only one, America's Great Depression by Murray Rothbard, and I had intended to read it through. About three quarters of the way, though, it has been supplanted by Humane Society. I have about ninety more pages to go of the 290 total, and am thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.

The cover describes it as "enhanced non-fiction"; it is slices of life from one man and those close to him, possibly tinged with the slight inaccuracies of old memories, with a bit of what the foreword calls "hyperbole and poetic license". It is split into three parts, the first of which is stories from childhood; while I haven't gotten to Part III yet, I will assume that the each part tends to come from later in life than the preceding ones. The stories are not dated, and unless they're about grade school or college or marriage, not particularly attributable to specific periods in the life of this man that I don't know. Nonetheless, the parts are clearly ordered, and it may be that the stories within them are also, to the extent that ordering would be significant.

Some of the mostly two-to-four page snippets are quite humorous; some of them are touching; many of them make one reflect on how he's living his own life. Every single one is a good read. Having listed the extant writeups of Halspal and seeing that the ones in the book are no longer there, and so far having come across none that I'd read before, I'm very glad that this book found its way to me, and I thank Jonathan for sending it to me. It is certain that I never would have read these stories had he not, and I am richer for having done so.