Customer Reviews

The Wrecking Yard and Other Stories

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Pinckney Benedict, The Wrecking Yard (Doubleday, 1992)

Pinckney Benedict writes testosterone-fueled stories that seem, given the publication date of this book, almost to be a rebuttal to the Robert Blys and Sam Keens of the world. I'm certainly glad someone was doing it.

The ten stories here (actually, nine stories and one radio play) have an eighties-fiction feel about them; they are simple slices of life that don't seem to be about much of anything. However, sometime in the late eighties, writers began to take the eighties-fiction tenets and play with them, creating stories with the same mediocre presentation and writing really, really good stuff within the frame. Barry Hannah and Ethan Canin are obvious examples; Pinckney Benedict can be put on the same shelf. Where Hannah pokes his nose into the life of the American south, Benedict reins his vision in a little tighter, sticking with rural West Virginia, and the myriad strangenesses to be found there. For example, "Horton's Ape" deals with two travelers who find themselves at a roadside bar that has a small zoo out back; "Washman" deals with a mountain man who exacts a horrible revenge on a man who tries to kill his mule, and Washman's own punishment for his acts.

It's possible that the best story in the collection is "Rescuing Moon," about a man who goes to save a friend of his from life in a surreal nursing home. However, every reader will likely find a favorite in here, and it could be any of the ten pieces presented. All are written with the confidence of a guy who writes fine short stories, and knows it. Benedict is one of America's lesser-known literary lights, and that's a shame; his books are a lot of fun, in the same way Barry Hannah's are (and with, especially in this case in "Washman," the same genial mean-spiritedness that is likely to disturb more than a few readers). This is stuff worth reading. ****

Benedict is hit-or-miss in this, his second collection of short stories...if a rule could be ascribed to the collection, he generally has more succeess with the commonplace than with the absurd. Thus, gems like the funny, pathetic "Horton's Ape" and the vivid, moving "Odom" appear right alongside curious little failures like "Washman" and "The Electric Girl". He is also more at home with the self-pitying losers of "Getting Over Arnette" than the Americans abroad in "At the Alhambra". Occasionally, as well, his metaphors are made to bear more descriptive weight than they can really handle. But all in all, a recommended read, and an author to watch.

Thanks to my creative writing professor, who loaned me this book (signed by Benedict), I now know one of the best short fiction writers living today. These stories are such a welcome depature from the abstract sentimentality that so many young writers are putting out these days. Benedict avoids all abstractions, keeping his fiction rooted in cold, hard, wonderful reality. The unsettling (and believable) weirdness of Benedict's rural environment comes through fantastically in stories like "Bounty" and "Odom", and then there's "Washman", which is so surreal that it's almost beyond description. The opening story, "Getting Over Arnette", is especially funny (if you like dark comedy).

Any serious reader of short fiction ought to read Pinckney Benedict.

Benedict shares some dark, chilling, and exciting tales with us. He is extremely talented, and the reader is able to feel the fear, anxiety, and sweat that cover the characters. Particularly compelling stories are Washman and Odom.