Livability, Jon Raymond's collection of nine short stories about life in contemporary America, is a showcase for the author's deep literary talent and his profound observational powers. This is a somber anthology; each of the nine tales includes a significant measure of sepia in the emotional palette on display.
The nine tales are diverse, ranging from failed attempts at new romantic relationships, to the creative angst of artists, to two teenagers (a boy and a girl) literally trapped in a mall as well as being figuratively trapped in the mall-like tawdriness of American life. In one, a young boy struggles through a day in which he has been commanded to participate in the male ritual of physical combat in front of an audience (a ritual that is now formalized in the enormously profitable Ultimate Fighting franchise). In another, a well to do man that loves to prepare fantastic gourmet meals for friends invites his Mexican American day hire workers in for a suckled pig meal after the original invitees fail to show. Train Choir, made into a movie called Wendy and Lucy, traces the inexorable descent of a young woman into homelessness and loss of both human and canine companionship.
It's a fair bet that some readers of this collection will struggle with the relentless physical and/or emotional shabbiness of human life that Raymond's pen tends to gravitate toward. Those readers that persist, though, will find their thoughts provoked repeatedly by the author's observations, whether or not the reader agrees with them. Consider the revelation that teenager Kendra arrives at, as she provides oral sex to a semi-willing male teenager: "No one was pure. No one was good. Anyone would fold given the opportunity and the cover of night. It was an important thing to understand. It was the secret of history itself. And knowing, she knew the ground beneath her would never move." One character, a sculptor, takes aim at the profession of writing itself: "Writing, Jen thought, seemed like a very sad pursuit. Like painting, but worse. At least paintings had color. Writing, though was just black marks on paper, standing in for people and objects and events that could never be seen or felt. It seemed pathetic in a way. Nouns were the saddest words of all, trying so hard to summon real objects to life."
It has been said that the most difficult human emotion for an actor to accurately portray is joy. The musculature of the face is complex, and when a person attempts to feign happiness, the grin happens, but the eyes give it away: sincere joy involves a subtle crinkling of the skin at the lateral margins of the eyes, as well as the more familiar upward turn of the lips. Author Jon Raymond is a master at capturing a wide range of human experiences and emotions, but that subtle crinkling near the eyes eludes him. It's a small thing, but the effect is pervasive. His characters can be funny, but it is a cold humor. There is lust in Livability, but not love. The characters can grin, but radiant smiles are beyond their powers. There is light in Livability, but it is the light that filters in through a basement window, rather than pouring in through a skylight. The lighting conditions in human life seem to me to range from complete darkness to radiant luminescence. Jon Raymond's perception of the human condition seems lit up by a truncated spectrum of emotions, and the wavelength that is missing is simple human joy.
