Troy James Weaver’s Selected Stories
Available from Apocalypse Party
Reviewed by Adam Van Winkle
Really good authors, at least as I see it, are the ones able to write things as I’ve always seen or thought or sensed it. I may never have thought that particular sequence of words, but that author’s words capture perfectly an anxiety or elation I thought was mine alone.
In the best possible way of art, good literature shows me myself.
John Updike does this for me. So does Larry Brown, so does Bonnie Jo Campbell, so does Harry Crews, so does Bud Smith. And so does Troy James Weaver.
No I’ve never lived in Wichita, Kansas nor do I have a transvestite parolee brother. But somehow, I know the people in Weaver’s previous short story collection, Wichita Stories. I smell their smells, see their dirty carpet. I get the way Angela Lansbury can become a cultural touchstone that connects to one’s sexuality and pity for his mother.
Weaver’s writing is unbelievably real to me.
Wichita Stories (2015, Future Tense Books) is unquestionably one of my favorite short story collections of the past decade so I couldn’t wait to sink into Troy James Weaver’s newest collection, Selected Stories, coming soon from Apocalypse Party.
It did not disappoint. As in WS, Weaver here somehow paints these perfect fleeting moments of the underbelly of our lives. We keep the Zippo fluid in the Bible drawer. We leave the pieces of the material obsessions we buy to fulfill our emotional absences in boxes, unbuilt. We wonder how real the people, our lovers next to us even, are.
Weaver writes frenetically. At points he’s just drawn you in around the edge of a happening before he chops it off with a gut punch of an ending in a wonderful dance of flash fiction. At others, his stories weave narratives of characters with deep complexity, often delivered in a few sparse phrases. He jumps from mothers-to-be to college buddies and romantic rivals to a preacher’s contemplation with mastery.
The author isn’t scared of a freak either. In the way Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters or Tom Waits’ cavalcade of carnival characters are meant to actualize the freak everyone keeps inside, the torso women and widowers with mannequin wives in Weaver’s newest collection make our perversions and fears as real and tangible as the stale smell emanating from the yellow-tinged taped polaroid on the collection’s cover (a stunning one from publisher Apocalypse Party).
All of this coagulates and coalesces like the mess in a dirty sink into a wonderful hairball of grime and scum you won’t want to put down.
And it goes right next to Wichita Stories on the special shelf.
Troy James Weaver is the author of Witchita Stories, Temporal, Visions, and Marigold. He lives in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and dogs.
Available from Apocalypse Party
Reviewed by Adam Van Winkle
Really good authors, at least as I see it, are the ones able to write things as I’ve always seen or thought or sensed it. I may never have thought that particular sequence of words, but that author’s words capture perfectly an anxiety or elation I thought was mine alone.
In the best possible way of art, good literature shows me myself.
John Updike does this for me. So does Larry Brown, so does Bonnie Jo Campbell, so does Harry Crews, so does Bud Smith. And so does Troy James Weaver.
No I’ve never lived in Wichita, Kansas nor do I have a transvestite parolee brother. But somehow, I know the people in Weaver’s previous short story collection, Wichita Stories. I smell their smells, see their dirty carpet. I get the way Angela Lansbury can become a cultural touchstone that connects to one’s sexuality and pity for his mother.
Weaver’s writing is unbelievably real to me.
Wichita Stories (2015, Future Tense Books) is unquestionably one of my favorite short story collections of the past decade so I couldn’t wait to sink into Troy James Weaver’s newest collection, Selected Stories, coming soon from Apocalypse Party.
It did not disappoint. As in WS, Weaver here somehow paints these perfect fleeting moments of the underbelly of our lives. We keep the Zippo fluid in the Bible drawer. We leave the pieces of the material obsessions we buy to fulfill our emotional absences in boxes, unbuilt. We wonder how real the people, our lovers next to us even, are.
Weaver writes frenetically. At points he’s just drawn you in around the edge of a happening before he chops it off with a gut punch of an ending in a wonderful dance of flash fiction. At others, his stories weave narratives of characters with deep complexity, often delivered in a few sparse phrases. He jumps from mothers-to-be to college buddies and romantic rivals to a preacher’s contemplation with mastery.
The author isn’t scared of a freak either. In the way Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters or Tom Waits’ cavalcade of carnival characters are meant to actualize the freak everyone keeps inside, the torso women and widowers with mannequin wives in Weaver’s newest collection make our perversions and fears as real and tangible as the stale smell emanating from the yellow-tinged taped polaroid on the collection’s cover (a stunning one from publisher Apocalypse Party).
All of this coagulates and coalesces like the mess in a dirty sink into a wonderful hairball of grime and scum you won’t want to put down.
And it goes right next to Wichita Stories on the special shelf.
Troy James Weaver is the author of Witchita Stories, Temporal, Visions, and Marigold. He lives in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and dogs.