Visigoth: Stories

I bought this collection for a friend of mine, I enjoyed it so much. These stories are masculine, tough, and sharp as a sliver of broken glass. Very enjoyable, this collection deserves a wide audience.

The short story is my least favorite form of fiction but this book made a believer out of me. I could not wait to finish it and want to read it right through again. Starts off pretty dark, actually it remains pretty dark, but something in the beauty and the honesty of the writing gives one hope and a desire to keep reading. Excellent!

The stories in Gary Amdahl's Visigoth are overwhelmingly male, narrated by men who are wrestlers and hockey players, bouncers and dog sled racers. The protagonists are generally strong men given to fits of violence or dark thought who also reach out for connection and absolution from the men and women around them. Neale, the narrator of the collection's title story, begins his story by explaining how the same year he lost his teeth he won the Hobey Baker Award, a prize given to an outstanding college hockey player, and how he was subsequently injured while playing. During the following season, his hockey career and his relationship to his girlfriend Ruth (also his freshman composition teacher) both disintegrate spectularly and violently, until finally he attacks a pair of figure skaters from a traveling ice show. Why? Because he does not want the "ice desecrated with sequins," as if using a hockey rink for the light entertainment of the Ice Capades is a moral affront he simply can't take. Not that's it's that simply, of course, at least not until the adrenaline stops flowing and the cool cool rush of reasoning begins, bringing with it hindsight and analysis. Amdahl's men tend to be deliberate only when looking backwards-- They are capable of feats of great introspection, but only after the damage is done and it's too late to save themselves or the ones they love/worship/injure. Some of the characters regret this but all of them learn in some way to accept it, creating a sense of deep sadness that streaks through each of these stories. Visigoth, the 2006 winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, is by far the best debut collection I've read this year and possibly in any year. Several stories seem destined to be collected, anthologized, and loved for years to come, especially "The Flyweight," "The Barber-Chair," and the title story mentioned above. I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you buy one book this year by someone you've never heard of before, please consider making it this one.

A friend of mine who knows my admiration for the late Vladimir Nabokov very kindly sent me VISIGOTH STORIES by Gary Amdahl, saying that she had been following Amdahl's progress as a storyteller and she believes he is the American Nabokov. Reading the newly published book I began to follow her fancies however dimly. A lot of the stories seem to be taking place in Minnesota, or in a California that disappoints the immigrants from the Midwest, sometimes in shockingly violent ways. Poor fates await their pets, whose suffering Amdahl sensitively outlines. He is admirably tough-minded and never lets his characters, even the ones he cares for most, get away with any misbehavior. In "The Volunteer," Bill and Martha are employed by a huge controlling corporation and Martha advises Bill that, if he would want to advance in the town business, he should spruce up the 'civic duty' aspect of his resume. So Bill volunteers to coach tiny tots between the ages of 5 and 8 the game of ice hockey. These junior leagues are humorously known as mites, pee-wees or squirts. "They would bear down as fast as they could and at the last second throw themselves to the ice,sliding through the man's legs on their stomachs, piling into each other, blades flashing, against the boards on the other side." Amdahl's very sentences are perfectly balanced and constructed like slight machines of grace. Bill is furthermore thrown off his game by his attraction to Debra, the sexy stranger he meets at a cocktail party, the kind he has vaguely read about in stories by John Cheever or John Updike. Though he's never cheated on Martha Axelsen, either in a broom closet or on the floor of the kitchen, he'd like to, and when he encounters the taciturn Garth, Debra's husband, a fellow Pee Wee Coach, violence is in the air. Amdahl's great theme is violence, and the threat of the masculine to men themselves. I liked most of the stories, bar the long novella that takes up most of the second half of the book, dedicated to the late Paul Wellstone. Amdahl's forte is not dialogue, unfortunately, and the beauty of his writing trembles slightly when the story calls for human words to be spoken. "The Free Fall," another exploration of "sudden rage, at once white hot and infantile," but drawn out to absurd lengths by unlikely and picaresque divagations told in such a manner that one loses interest far before the shocking conclusion. Outside of that our American Nabokov has arrived. He is one of the best authors around, and his book will go far towards establishing him as the owner of a rueful, sophisticated and coruscating voice, like someone who has seen a lot of the bitter side of life and has many secrets to tell those he left behind.