by June Pulliam
Bentley Little. The Collection. New York: Signet, 2002. 453 p.
If you’re already a Bentley Little fan, you’ll enjoy The Collection
, his first book of short stories. Little's tales are evocative of Rod Serling’s
writing in that everyday life can have hidden, sinister undertones. Those
familiar with Little’s numerous novels will already know that this sort of
“horrors of everyday life” theme is what he does best.
Two tales in particular, “Estoppel” and “The Man in the Passenger Seat,”
are reminiscent of Twilight Zone episodes. Estoppel is a legal term
which means that something is what it says it is. In this story of the same
name, a man discovers that he and he alone has the miraculous power of bending
reality by simply articulating aloud what he believes to be so. If
he looks in the mirror and muses aloud that he’s fat, suddenly he weighs
100 pounds more. Or if he declares himself to be a history major, suddenly
the transcripts in front of him have been altered to purge any courses not
relevant to this discipline. The narrator of this piece discovered this power
as a child, when his brother bested him in a physical competition and forced
him to admit that he was a yellow bellied coward and give up in womanly defeat.
That night, in the secrecy of his room, the narrator discovers that the skin
covering his abdomen has gone from a peachy pink to a sallow yellow. Eventually
the narrator decides that having the power to alter space and time through
his every utterance isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, and thus, refrains
from speaking ever again.
“The Man in the Passenger Seat” is one of those quirky pieces based on the
human tendency to imagine lives for strangers we see in passing. It was occasioned
after Little spied a sinister looking transient on the street and speculated
how he would react if the man walked over and sat down in his car, demanding
to be taken somewhere. “The Sanctuary,” the first story in the book, was
spawned by a similar impulse. Here Little attempts to understand what goes
on behind the closed doors of the fanatically religious. If one believes
that Christ’s crucifixion was key to allowing him to transcend his mortal
existence, and that it is necessary for humans to emulate Christ, then what
must the believer be wiling to do? “Monteith” is still another of these stories
where the author attempts to project his imagination beyond closed doors.
The title of the story refers to a mysterious word a husband finds scrawled
on a notepad after coming home early one day. The word causes him to ponder
the eternal male question: just what does my wife do with herself all day
while I’m away at work? Of course, housework and child care couldn’t possibly
be sufficient to consume anyone’s day.
“The Idol” and “The Washingtonians” both demonstrate Little’s appreciation
for popular culture. “The Idol” explores how celebrities become larger than
life and as a result, transform the existence of their fans. Here,
a lug wrench carelessly tossed into the foliage of Griffith Park by James
Dean during the filming of Rebel Without a Cause becomes an object
of secret veneration among local women. In what is now a rite of passage,
mothers bring their daughters to become women in the presence the wrench,
enshrined in a remote shack hidden by the underbrush. The wrench can transform
the blushing virgins in a way that contact with a mere man cannot, which
is why their mothers wisely insist that their daughters visit this holy of
holies before lying with a man.
While “The Idol” describes how popular culture invades the private desires
of the masses, “The Washingtonians” is about how popular culture can be used
to create an epic myth, itself in turn used to shape the aspirations of a
nation. In this story, the protagonist has discovered a secret letter from
George Washington, he who chopped down the cherry tree and could not tell
a lie. The letter, however, reveals that the father of our country did something
far more terrible than deny receiving oral pleasure from a zaftig intern.
Instead, George Washington was an enthusiastic cannibal, a taste developed
during the Revolutionary War, when food was scare. But a secret right wing
group of people calling themselves the Washingtonians (they even dress in
frock coats, powdered wigs, and wooden false teeth, the last being a historical
inaccuracy pointed out by one of their rivals) will kill to keep the truth
from coming out about their hero. Although the Washingtonians are also cannibals
(which comes in handy when you need to dispose of the evidence of murder),
they believe that the myth about Washington taught to every school child
is supremely important in maintaining our national cohesiveness. It’s explained
that “historians are not interested in truth . . . they are instead, PR people
for the past.” And these same historians believe that Americans wanted and
needed Washington to be the father of our country, and were all to happy
to believe what historians told them. The hope of bringing the truth of Washington
to light lies in an equally bizarre group of historians who dress in the
red uniforms of the British Army. Only they are up to the task of tackling
the Washingtonians.
One story in the collection that’s a departure from Little’s usual postmodern,
west-coast influenced horror is “The Woods Be Dark,” his homage to William
Faulkner. Generally I cringe when anyone attempts to write Faulknerian prose
(excepting the finalists in annual William Faulkner writing contest), as
the result is about as interesting as the recent remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho. But Little manages to capture the spirit of Faulkner’s Gothicism,
if not (thankfully) his turgid prose. “The Woods Be Dark” is as close to
a traditional horror story as Little ever gets in that it’s about a never
seen vampire who has already claimed one member of a little rural family.
Now that this newly turned member has attempted to return to the fold in
his rustic nosferatu incarnation, the family must rely on a combination of
strange folk medicine and sympathetic magic to save themselves. “The Woods
Be Dark” is one of the more subtle stories in the collection. It is only
in the absence of what is traditionally recognized by fans of the genre as
the supernatural that Little’s brand of horror goes over the top.
So many collections of short stories by genre authors have a 3:1 crap ratio,
with one tale being a good solid piece while the others are half formed ideas
dragged from the authors’ craniums to fill the book. This is not the case
with The Collection, perhaps because so many of the stories have been
previously published in magazines devoted to horror and dark fantasy. Instead,
The Collection is a well-developed sampling of Little’s work for
those not familiar with his writing. Fortunately, fans of Little will also
enjoy this collection, since it is so typical of his work.