Wanting Only to Be Heard

Jack Driscoll, Wanting Only to Be Heard reviewed by David LeGault Jack Driscoll has painted a dark, isolated landscape that his readers can not help but become engulfed in. Throughout his 1991 award winning short story collection, Wanting Only to be Heard, Driscoll manages to paint the desolate scene of northern Michigan, a region with a harsh climate matched only by the reality of its inhabitants' lives. Whether it is the cold and lonely winters or the intensity of baseball season, Driscoll has shown us that northern Michigan life can be brutal, although morbidly fascinating. Wanting Only to be Heard primarily deals with the tense relationships between fathers and sons. Although this theme may seem limiting when you consider that there are eighteen stories in the book, Driscoll manages to keep every scenario fresh and poignant. In one story, Driscoll writes about a father's violent reaction to being stood up on a date, his son witnessing the entire scene: "I felt the whole house shake and thought then of passionate killing, my father's phrase for the quick and merciful execution of what we had raised in the sties and coops of the farm." Although the single parent and child connection is very apparent in that story, the theme is better hidden in some of the other stories-such as "The Wilderness State"-where a community college professor who is frustrated with life chooses to sleep with one of his students in the hope of getting fired. From early childhood to midlife crisis, Driscoll captures the troubles of fatherhood brilliantly. Although the collection is fixated upon the troubles of single fatherhood, it subtly touches on many other recurring problems of northern Michigan, particularly substance abuse. Driscoll does an excellent job of capturing not only the sadness and desperation of alcoholism, but also the informality-practically acceptance-of it in the Upper Peninsula. In his story, "Wish Pennies," Driscoll writes: "'Slow down,' Howard had his last beer between his legs, and he kept straddling the broken white lines, drifting into the opposite lane." The narrator is simply concerned with the car's speed-not the drinking-when Howard drives them around, driving drunk because there's nothing better to do. As a native of the region, I caught myself relating characters like Howard to people from my own childhood: neighbors, drunk drivers from the police bulletin in the newspaper, and classmates. As regrettable as this behavior can be, it shows that Driscoll has made the alcohol in his work-whether it be in drunk driving or parental indifference to their children's experimentation-a believable and essential part of the northern Michigan story. Growing up in the region, I have always been quick to dismiss Upper Michigan writing for its stereotypical portrayal of our lifestyle as a natural wonderland full of simple minded hunters, fishers, and miners. However, Jack Driscoll's work has captured everything about the culture-the obse

These stories capture the essence of real life in middle America. At the heart of each story are human beings--plain 'ol, flawed human beings. The people you meet in Wanting Only to Be Heard are the people you might meet at an Upper Peninsula (Michigan) tavern on a Friday night. You won't find a trace of a cliche anywhere in this book, not an ounce of phoniness.