Perpetual Care and Other Stories

Perpetual Care is chock full of stories that never make you want to put the book down. For anyone interested in literature, not just stories, this is the book for you. I was blown away by each story's wit and description of characters and places. Each piece certainly makes you think. James Nolan is a master story teller.

JAMES NOLAN is a comedic genius. "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard," British actor Sir Donald Wolfit reportedly pronounced on his deathbed. We all love comedy, but few can do it. I believe comedy is something you are born with and that it cannot be learned. The great performance comedians of the 20th century you can count on your fingers and toes: Allen, Ball, Bruce, Burnett, Carlin, Cosby, DeGeneres, Gleason, Goldberg, Hope, Jessel, Murray, Nichols & May, Pryor, Radner, Williams -- and I'm about running out, with three digits still left. Among writers, the humorists number more, but there are not many. James Nolan is one of the best. His humor is dry, dark, acerbic, subtle, but occasionally Rabelaisian: Aleichem, Almond, Allen (again), Baggott, Beckman, Bombeck, Franklin, Montaigne, Thurber, Twain, Vidal, Vonnegut, Wilde, Wisniewski, and Wylie come to mind. Nolan is a Southerner, but not a "downhome" type. Nolan is sophisticated, well-educated and widely traveled. So he has a context to put his Southern characters in, and a rich, rich one it is! In PERPETUAL CARE, he moves from city to city with ease, hunting down great stories and delivering them with wit, aplomb and savoir faire to leave you breathless. As with Philip Wylie's "Mom" ("the thin, enfeebled martyr whose very urine. . .will etch glass"), women in general, and "Mom" in particular -- in the hands of Nolan -- get a drubbing: "In belligerent silence, Jake pushed his mother's wheelchair up the steep ramp to the cemetery office, her right leg sticking straight out like the prow of a frigate." "Like an ostrich, Mrs. Hokum strained her wrinkled, pointy face to the height of a long, curved neck, trying to see over the top of a paneled counter." As do teenagers: "Why couldn't Jay have become a normal gutter-punk? . . .with green hair and a shirt-stud in his tongue to click against his front teeth for attention?" The title story, "Perpetual Care," is the funniest one. The situation -- I'm not giving it up here -- will absolutely blow you away. Southerners (I am one) can carry prejudice and discrimination against people, places and things not Southern to ridiculous extremes, and Nolan pokes hilarious fun at all of it. But this is not to say that PERPETUAL CARE is all comedy; far from it. Below the surface, Nolan lets us know that prejudice is a serious matter, that moms and teenagers deserve to be taken seriously as human beings, and that San Francisco is. . .well, let Nolan tell you! James Nolan's deep love and compassion for the zany characters he portrays is always apparent, heightened by the contrast between his true feelings and the shallowness of widespread attitudes he dramatizes for us in his lively and resonant fiction. His writing is the greatest, his incredible sentences like multifaceted jewels polished to a high sheen: I challenge you to find English sentences more perfectly and movingly crafted than James Nolan's. Read these stories. Savor every word.

For all of us who have reread out Tennesee Williams, Carson McCullers, Truman Capotes, John Kennedy Tooles, etc., until they are falling apart there is good news. A new kid is in town and he's fantastic. James Nolan's new collection, Perpetual Care and Other Stories, is right up there with these southern icons. There are echoes of all the above there, but a clear and gorgeous voice all his own. These are some of the best stories I've read in years, each creates a wonderful mood and ambience. His characters are true originals. If you love southern fiction, here's a true rebirth. I will love reading them over and over. It's like a drought is over.

James Nolan's new collection of short stories redefines and transcends the kind of "New Orleans gothic" work we have previously seen in Fat White Vampire Blues and Confederacy of Dunces. Stretching from San Francisco to New York and back to New Orleans, he takes the reader on some heavy trips inside the soul of the Crescent City. He has the knack of speaking from personas not his own with great authority. I can say this because I have known all the characters he presents, just in different bodies, in different times with different names. His accounts of New Orleans life, pre-and post-Katrina are unblinking and affectionate all at once. If you want a clear look inside the gloriously messy, dangerous, weird and illogical psyche of New Orleans, here is the closest chance you will ever get without living there.