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4.0
The most interesting thing about James Burr’s stories, in my mind, is the use he makes of urban fantasy. Fantasy can sometimes be seen to represent ideas and concepts that are entirely relevant to real life; other times, fantasy allows the author to set up plots and situations which would be impossible in a mundane setting. In his short story collection, Ugly Stories For Beautiful People, though, Burr seems to reverse the direction of the flow. In Burr’s stories, the mundane creates the fantastical. When a real-life issue is loaded enough, when the mundane pressure grows and grows, then reality will twist and expand, and the impossible will occur. When reality can no longer contain a story, then the story must turn into fantasy; the fantasy serves to enable the mundane, human story to carry out to its conclusion.
What Burr really pulls off well, then, is resonance. His stories are powerful because they are about pain, conflict, and emotions, and he tries to pick the ones that will be so powerful the reader will believe they are strong enough to warp reality. The impossible happens because the characters desperately want it to—and so Burr grants their wish. The bleak, depressing nature of these stories shows us full well how much confidence Burr places in humanity’s desperate desires.
The anthology opens with “BobandJane: A Tale In Two Indistinct Parts.” Here Burr mocks romantic relationships which substitute cutesiness and narcissism for actual, solid foundation. It’s a sharp piece, criticising empty romantic clichés his readers are probably guilty of at some point or other. This is sure to raise the hackles of those who feel clichés and fuzziness have a constructive role to play in relationships, but knowing that these clichés are often less than sincere is enough to make Burr’s exaggeration seem very familiar.
“Foetal Attractions” is a fascinating piece. An initial skim of the first, say, ten pages or so gives an impression of a story that is bizarre and, well, less than impressive. A reader may understandably dismiss as weird and gimmicky Burr’s choice to tell a story from the point of view of a sentient home pregnancy test kit. Yes, friends, you’ve read that correctly.
…that kind of stuff gets old really fast. Happily, that’s not all there is to “Foetal Attractions”—titular puns notwithstanding.
Once we get past introducing our narrator and setting the scene, the story we observe is one of deep, all-consuming envy. Through this unorthodox but unobtrusive viewpoint, we meet Avril, whose one and only goal in life is to surpass her friend Harmony—in something, anything, everything. The story makes Avril’s jealousy and hatred very real, and very understandable—depicting a vicious cycle where any success or happiness of Harmony’s drives Avril further into her determination and her misery.
The depths to which Avril will sink are truly breathtaking, the conclusion, even more so. And these are all the more powerful for the believability of Avril’s character. By the end, the initial set-up is clear and significant, and it is difficult to imagine how this story could have been written without the early focus on conception and pregnancy. It is perhaps unfortunate that such a substantial story begins in such a ridiculous and discouraging manner, but getting past those first ten pages is well worth your while, and even the bizarre beginning has a certain justification to it.
In “Blue,” Kate is depressed, her life seeming to dead-end alone and in Barcelona. But a mysterious, scarred stranger named Ash has a new direction to offer her. Ash and his acolytes are dedicated to fighting greed and corruption according to a credo which is twisted but compelling: “To suffer is to be aware of suffering,” Ash says, “and only from that awareness can come true empathy,” and so he and his band attack and mutilate corrupt officials, leaving them broken, humbled, and with a new awareness of pain and suffering. Ash sees Kate’s pain and depression and wants her to join him and his cause.
This central idea is intriguing and well-presented. It has a Sin City-esque thrill of, shall we call it, justified brutality; the difference is that in Sin City, the justification is the lack of any other recourse, whereas “Blue” presents a viewpoint which sees violence as a preferred option with intrinsic value of its own. A dissonance is created between our knowledge that this violence is wrong, our feeling that it is nonetheless richly deserved, and the thin thread of justification and idealism that we almost want to allow to bridge the gap.
“Blue” could probably have been shorter and more tightly executed; it is often slow and mostly predictable. Still, it’s quite enjoyable. It is also perhaps the most upbeat in the entire collection; it is the only one in which the protagonist achieves any measure of success or victory over the difficulties she faces.
“It” could perhaps be described as a dry humor essay, in the style of humorists like [a:James Thurber|16839|James Thurber|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1183238729p2/16839.jpg] or [a:Ephraim Kishon|111201|Ephraim Kishon|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1328969448p2/111201.jpg], but that wouldn’t be quite fair. The premise of people who behave like assholes being literally turned into rectums is a bit too absurd and audacious (not to mention crude) to categorize as “dry.” Save for this minor point, though, the humor is very much alike—with straight-faced, deadpan recountings of the patently ridiculous. It’s a fun, light piece, with all the usual malicious joy in throwing darts at richly deserving sitting ducks.
Amanda has led a charmed life, free from all misfortune, in “Life’s What You Make It.” Financial, artistic, and social success surround her, her fiancé, and her friends. All that cracks apart when she gets a call from a far less fortunate version of her best friend. This alternate Beth presents details from a harsher reality which seems to Amanda more and more familiar.
It’s a story of paranoia, illusion, and self-deception, touching on some of the themes of the isolation and apathy of the wealthy we saw in “Blue.” The story does suffer somewhat from continuing for too long in the same direction. The general gist of the story is fairly clear from the first phone call, and while it is significantly fleshed out and expanded upon, there is no real twist or surprise until the very end (and even this is slight and not as clear as might be hoped). The result is that the story indeed gives us a sense of schizophrenia and constant tension, but we soon realize that it keeps surprising us in exactly the same way. Even so, the atmosphere of fear and confusion are compelling and well-done, and the story is a very enjoyable read.
We swing back to humor with “The Byronic Man,” where Burr’s recurring character, Dr. Kokoschka, is outfitting an awkward, unattractive geek with a new body and a new self. This reviewer found the story amusing, if little more. “The Byronic Man” lacked the sharpness of some of the other humor pieces and puts one in mind of a reasonably decent comedy sketch—amusing enough for the moment, nothing spectacular, and not really memorable.
A hard breakup catalyzes Jon’s descent into madness and schizophrenia in “Fragments of a Schizoid Dream.” The story takes us along with Jon through his jealousy, delusions, and increasing insanity.
What the story does well is create a vivid, persuasive image of schizophrenia. Jon’s world, where humans are exposed as mindless machines, and the only warmth in his life comes from a talking laptop, seems perfectly easy to fall right into. “Fragments of a Schizoid Dream” is somewhat less successful when it comes to actually directing that power and vividness in any particular direction—and perhaps there’s no such intention. Perhaps the plot is meant only to be the progressive amplification of the original problem. But this reader can hardly help but notice how linear the progression is, and readers who seek more than immersion may feel that each new scene is really just the previous scene with the volume turned a bit higher.
“Menage A Beaucoup,” a tragic romance, is Burr’s most intimate flirt with the mundane. Burr is good with mundane, and the romantic relationships the storyteller describes evoke both immediate interest and broader significance. The story is framed as being a confession by a stranger on a park bench; its atmosphere is of deep melancholy, and its subject is love, a man’s first love—and how he will keep seeking her even after she is lost to him.
There is something very sad and powerful about this story, tucked away behind its actual plot. It’s the overriding sadness and desperation that colors all the characters and events. The storyteller, who finds in Kate a free and energetic spirit—whereas he himself feels deadened and dull. Their relationship, which seems lovingly described but is very reminiscent of the descriptions of BobandJane—as if saying that even when a relationship really is blessed with substance and understanding and love, it is still fragile, naïve, and eminently breakable. These and other tragic elements have great resonance in “Menage A Beaucoup,” all leading up to the final conclusion, in which the storyteller’s tragedy dons a most direct and tangible form, erasing all hope of improvement or redemption. It’s bleak as bleak can be, and being well-done bleak, it’s a well-done story.
The subject of “Mutton Pie” is an extremely driven, single-minded, and forward woman the narrator has met in a bar. The story plays off of two ends—the narrator’s revulsion and discomfort at her offers, and the narrator’s understanding of the woman’s loneliness. Though a certain point is well-made, this felt to me crudely done. Unlike other stories in this collection, the supernatural twist doesn’t reinforce the human interplay going on, but rather simply makes the author’s point, after which he tells us what his point was. All in all, I found “Mutton Pie” difficult to take seriously.
The premise of “The Dada Relationship Police” has a cruel humor to it, particularly to those of us who have ever had the urge to intervene in others’ relationships. The Dada Relationship does precisely that by sending Will mysterious messages pronouncing his relationship doomed. The story describes the self-fulfilling prophesy and the schadenfreude that often go hand in hand with pessimism—with, perhaps, a little push from outside.
The difficulty is that the story’s arc is terribly obvious from the beginning. From the first message Will receives, and his reaction to it, the remainder is entirely predictable. As such, wading through the actual progression was repetitive and unsurprising; a much shorter story could have implied the conclusion and left it at that.
“Blot” was my least-favorite story in this collection. When mediocre psychiatrist Klein runs up against a particularly disturbing patient, he loses his grip on sanity, and his thoughts become sick and perverted. On the one hand, little plausible explanation is given for Klein’s sudden unhinging; his madness is far less convincing than those presented or hinted at in “Fragments of a Schizoid Dream,” “Life’s What You Make Of It,” or “Menage A Beaucoup.” And on the other hand, the actual description of the madness (and the meat of the story) make much of a series of blots and graphic/text tricks that are so obviously manufactured that the story loses credibility entirely. None of this is helped by the fact that the author gets the concept and the purpose of Rorschach blots entirely wrong. Alack.
Ever since Bernie arrived in Camberwell, women have been flinging themselves at him and into his bed in “Bernie Does Camberwell.” It’s not very long before Bernie is unnerved by this odd “blessing” and finds that nonstop casual sex can be taken to extremes.
“Bernie Does Camberwell” suffers from the same repetitiveness that afflicts many of Burr’s stories; once you get the point, you’re still in for another half-dozen iterations of the same thing. I found this particularly annoying here because the particular theme—that one can actually grow tired of sex, and that a surfeit of pointless sex can be wearying and depressing—was one I found neither new nor interesting. Burr has also created a counterpoint, porn actress Desdemona, who suddenly finds all her heretofore-lost inhibitions and wants a demure and loving relationship. Unfortunately, this thread is even sillier and more pointless than Bernie’s and clearly relegated to playing second fiddle to the main thread while not actually connecting to it at any point.
Closing the anthology is “BobandJane: A Postscript,” which continues both “BobandJane” and “The Dada Relationship Police,” and serves well to give the reader the satisfaction of hearing the other shoe drop on both these stories.
Few of the Ugly Stories For Beautiful People are outstandingly good, yet almost all of them are comfortably solid and enjoyable. They suffer from overstaying their welcome, each repeating a theme or idea with little variation—but those themes and ideas are compelling and intriguing to encounter, and each story seems to offer a new one. And if the atmosphere is one of quiet despair from the human race, its foibles and follies—well, such despair is powerful and poignant, in moderation. This reviewer cheerfully recommends this collection to anyone who might care to get their hands on it, though he does advise that limiting oneself to smaller doses may increase one’s enjoyment.
Ziv’s Final Tally
Stories: 13
Severed Relationships: 9
Byronic Figures: 3
Stories Best Not Read Where People Can See: “Blot”
This review originally appeared in The Fix in 2008.
What Burr really pulls off well, then, is resonance. His stories are powerful because they are about pain, conflict, and emotions, and he tries to pick the ones that will be so powerful the reader will believe they are strong enough to warp reality. The impossible happens because the characters desperately want it to—and so Burr grants their wish. The bleak, depressing nature of these stories shows us full well how much confidence Burr places in humanity’s desperate desires.
The anthology opens with “BobandJane: A Tale In Two Indistinct Parts.” Here Burr mocks romantic relationships which substitute cutesiness and narcissism for actual, solid foundation. It’s a sharp piece, criticising empty romantic clichés his readers are probably guilty of at some point or other. This is sure to raise the hackles of those who feel clichés and fuzziness have a constructive role to play in relationships, but knowing that these clichés are often less than sincere is enough to make Burr’s exaggeration seem very familiar.
“Foetal Attractions” is a fascinating piece. An initial skim of the first, say, ten pages or so gives an impression of a story that is bizarre and, well, less than impressive. A reader may understandably dismiss as weird and gimmicky Burr’s choice to tell a story from the point of view of a sentient home pregnancy test kit. Yes, friends, you’ve read that correctly.
It was like a religious experience. The earth shook, the cardboard sky opened up, and then came the light, a blinding, dazzling glare that washed all the fears and worries from my tortured soul. And beyond that light, there she was. The naked, pink form of Avril Simple, transcendent in her cellulite, her halo of dry blonde hair surrounding her fleshy face, the look of dull concentration as she read the instructions on my box a tribute to an enlightened simplicity. Yes, I took an instant liking to her. And as she lifted me from the box and placed me between her legs, my affection grew; I have after all, always had a weak spot for natural blondes.
And then it came, like manna from heaven, divine fulfilment from Above, a golden stream of Salvation, as I suddenly had Purpose, my life had meaning!
…that kind of stuff gets old really fast. Happily, that’s not all there is to “Foetal Attractions”—titular puns notwithstanding.
Once we get past introducing our narrator and setting the scene, the story we observe is one of deep, all-consuming envy. Through this unorthodox but unobtrusive viewpoint, we meet Avril, whose one and only goal in life is to surpass her friend Harmony—in something, anything, everything. The story makes Avril’s jealousy and hatred very real, and very understandable—depicting a vicious cycle where any success or happiness of Harmony’s drives Avril further into her determination and her misery.
The depths to which Avril will sink are truly breathtaking, the conclusion, even more so. And these are all the more powerful for the believability of Avril’s character. By the end, the initial set-up is clear and significant, and it is difficult to imagine how this story could have been written without the early focus on conception and pregnancy. It is perhaps unfortunate that such a substantial story begins in such a ridiculous and discouraging manner, but getting past those first ten pages is well worth your while, and even the bizarre beginning has a certain justification to it.
In “Blue,” Kate is depressed, her life seeming to dead-end alone and in Barcelona. But a mysterious, scarred stranger named Ash has a new direction to offer her. Ash and his acolytes are dedicated to fighting greed and corruption according to a credo which is twisted but compelling: “To suffer is to be aware of suffering,” Ash says, “and only from that awareness can come true empathy,” and so he and his band attack and mutilate corrupt officials, leaving them broken, humbled, and with a new awareness of pain and suffering. Ash sees Kate’s pain and depression and wants her to join him and his cause.
This central idea is intriguing and well-presented. It has a Sin City-esque thrill of, shall we call it, justified brutality; the difference is that in Sin City, the justification is the lack of any other recourse, whereas “Blue” presents a viewpoint which sees violence as a preferred option with intrinsic value of its own. A dissonance is created between our knowledge that this violence is wrong, our feeling that it is nonetheless richly deserved, and the thin thread of justification and idealism that we almost want to allow to bridge the gap.
“Blue” could probably have been shorter and more tightly executed; it is often slow and mostly predictable. Still, it’s quite enjoyable. It is also perhaps the most upbeat in the entire collection; it is the only one in which the protagonist achieves any measure of success or victory over the difficulties she faces.
“It” could perhaps be described as a dry humor essay, in the style of humorists like [a:James Thurber|16839|James Thurber|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1183238729p2/16839.jpg] or [a:Ephraim Kishon|111201|Ephraim Kishon|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1328969448p2/111201.jpg], but that wouldn’t be quite fair. The premise of people who behave like assholes being literally turned into rectums is a bit too absurd and audacious (not to mention crude) to categorize as “dry.” Save for this minor point, though, the humor is very much alike—with straight-faced, deadpan recountings of the patently ridiculous. It’s a fun, light piece, with all the usual malicious joy in throwing darts at richly deserving sitting ducks.
Amanda has led a charmed life, free from all misfortune, in “Life’s What You Make It.” Financial, artistic, and social success surround her, her fiancé, and her friends. All that cracks apart when she gets a call from a far less fortunate version of her best friend. This alternate Beth presents details from a harsher reality which seems to Amanda more and more familiar.
It’s a story of paranoia, illusion, and self-deception, touching on some of the themes of the isolation and apathy of the wealthy we saw in “Blue.” The story does suffer somewhat from continuing for too long in the same direction. The general gist of the story is fairly clear from the first phone call, and while it is significantly fleshed out and expanded upon, there is no real twist or surprise until the very end (and even this is slight and not as clear as might be hoped). The result is that the story indeed gives us a sense of schizophrenia and constant tension, but we soon realize that it keeps surprising us in exactly the same way. Even so, the atmosphere of fear and confusion are compelling and well-done, and the story is a very enjoyable read.
We swing back to humor with “The Byronic Man,” where Burr’s recurring character, Dr. Kokoschka, is outfitting an awkward, unattractive geek with a new body and a new self. This reviewer found the story amusing, if little more. “The Byronic Man” lacked the sharpness of some of the other humor pieces and puts one in mind of a reasonably decent comedy sketch—amusing enough for the moment, nothing spectacular, and not really memorable.
A hard breakup catalyzes Jon’s descent into madness and schizophrenia in “Fragments of a Schizoid Dream.” The story takes us along with Jon through his jealousy, delusions, and increasing insanity.
What the story does well is create a vivid, persuasive image of schizophrenia. Jon’s world, where humans are exposed as mindless machines, and the only warmth in his life comes from a talking laptop, seems perfectly easy to fall right into. “Fragments of a Schizoid Dream” is somewhat less successful when it comes to actually directing that power and vividness in any particular direction—and perhaps there’s no such intention. Perhaps the plot is meant only to be the progressive amplification of the original problem. But this reader can hardly help but notice how linear the progression is, and readers who seek more than immersion may feel that each new scene is really just the previous scene with the volume turned a bit higher.
“Menage A Beaucoup,” a tragic romance, is Burr’s most intimate flirt with the mundane. Burr is good with mundane, and the romantic relationships the storyteller describes evoke both immediate interest and broader significance. The story is framed as being a confession by a stranger on a park bench; its atmosphere is of deep melancholy, and its subject is love, a man’s first love—and how he will keep seeking her even after she is lost to him.
There is something very sad and powerful about this story, tucked away behind its actual plot. It’s the overriding sadness and desperation that colors all the characters and events. The storyteller, who finds in Kate a free and energetic spirit—whereas he himself feels deadened and dull. Their relationship, which seems lovingly described but is very reminiscent of the descriptions of BobandJane—as if saying that even when a relationship really is blessed with substance and understanding and love, it is still fragile, naïve, and eminently breakable. These and other tragic elements have great resonance in “Menage A Beaucoup,” all leading up to the final conclusion, in which the storyteller’s tragedy dons a most direct and tangible form, erasing all hope of improvement or redemption. It’s bleak as bleak can be, and being well-done bleak, it’s a well-done story.
The subject of “Mutton Pie” is an extremely driven, single-minded, and forward woman the narrator has met in a bar. The story plays off of two ends—the narrator’s revulsion and discomfort at her offers, and the narrator’s understanding of the woman’s loneliness. Though a certain point is well-made, this felt to me crudely done. Unlike other stories in this collection, the supernatural twist doesn’t reinforce the human interplay going on, but rather simply makes the author’s point, after which he tells us what his point was. All in all, I found “Mutton Pie” difficult to take seriously.
The premise of “The Dada Relationship Police” has a cruel humor to it, particularly to those of us who have ever had the urge to intervene in others’ relationships. The Dada Relationship does precisely that by sending Will mysterious messages pronouncing his relationship doomed. The story describes the self-fulfilling prophesy and the schadenfreude that often go hand in hand with pessimism—with, perhaps, a little push from outside.
The difficulty is that the story’s arc is terribly obvious from the beginning. From the first message Will receives, and his reaction to it, the remainder is entirely predictable. As such, wading through the actual progression was repetitive and unsurprising; a much shorter story could have implied the conclusion and left it at that.
“Blot” was my least-favorite story in this collection. When mediocre psychiatrist Klein runs up against a particularly disturbing patient, he loses his grip on sanity, and his thoughts become sick and perverted. On the one hand, little plausible explanation is given for Klein’s sudden unhinging; his madness is far less convincing than those presented or hinted at in “Fragments of a Schizoid Dream,” “Life’s What You Make Of It,” or “Menage A Beaucoup.” And on the other hand, the actual description of the madness (and the meat of the story) make much of a series of blots and graphic/text tricks that are so obviously manufactured that the story loses credibility entirely. None of this is helped by the fact that the author gets the concept and the purpose of Rorschach blots entirely wrong. Alack.
Ever since Bernie arrived in Camberwell, women have been flinging themselves at him and into his bed in “Bernie Does Camberwell.” It’s not very long before Bernie is unnerved by this odd “blessing” and finds that nonstop casual sex can be taken to extremes.
“Bernie Does Camberwell” suffers from the same repetitiveness that afflicts many of Burr’s stories; once you get the point, you’re still in for another half-dozen iterations of the same thing. I found this particularly annoying here because the particular theme—that one can actually grow tired of sex, and that a surfeit of pointless sex can be wearying and depressing—was one I found neither new nor interesting. Burr has also created a counterpoint, porn actress Desdemona, who suddenly finds all her heretofore-lost inhibitions and wants a demure and loving relationship. Unfortunately, this thread is even sillier and more pointless than Bernie’s and clearly relegated to playing second fiddle to the main thread while not actually connecting to it at any point.
Closing the anthology is “BobandJane: A Postscript,” which continues both “BobandJane” and “The Dada Relationship Police,” and serves well to give the reader the satisfaction of hearing the other shoe drop on both these stories.
Few of the Ugly Stories For Beautiful People are outstandingly good, yet almost all of them are comfortably solid and enjoyable. They suffer from overstaying their welcome, each repeating a theme or idea with little variation—but those themes and ideas are compelling and intriguing to encounter, and each story seems to offer a new one. And if the atmosphere is one of quiet despair from the human race, its foibles and follies—well, such despair is powerful and poignant, in moderation. This reviewer cheerfully recommends this collection to anyone who might care to get their hands on it, though he does advise that limiting oneself to smaller doses may increase one’s enjoyment.
Ziv’s Final Tally
Stories: 13
Severed Relationships: 9
Byronic Figures: 3
Stories Best Not Read Where People Can See: “Blot”
This review originally appeared in The Fix in 2008.
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