DEAD MAN'S GUN – Ed Gorman

Nearly every genre is more respectable than the western. So says Ed Gorman in this collection of a few of his western stories. [pause for readers who want a moment to scratch their heads] He goes on: But what foolish snobbery that is...the modern western is just as good, and many times better, than any other type of modern fiction. Unfortunately, not enough modern readers—or editors—know this yet.

I could name some of the authors and their works Gorman lists as examples, but we're here to talk about the stories in this collection, which make his point equally well.

Admittedly I lean toward the snob side in the respectability equation of western fiction, knowing better but unable to completely shake the yippee ki-yay sense I've carried from boyhood of blazing sixguns, flaming arrows, and inevitable battles between the white hats and the black. In fact, the boy in me identifies poignantly with “Bromley,” the writer of westerns in “Pards,” one of my favorite stories in Dead Man's Gun. The tale concludes with me marveling at Gorman's deftly droll wit, which, with his generous heart and narrative mastery, leaves me with a pang of sympathy for the two main characters who in less-skilled hands likely would have come off as ridiculous.

This heart of Gorman's beats strongly throughout the collection. Human decency at odds with its opposite rules the range of these stories, although the distinction is rarely as obvious as the symbolism of hats. Bad guys and good guys alike can give us pause in our judgment of how best to navigate life's fickle rapids. If there's a common theme that threads through Dead Man's Gun it might be that it ain't always easy being human. I came to this collection not for nostalgia or the vicarious freedom of wide prairies or whiffs of gunsmoke, but because it includes a story I'd heard about called “The Face.”

The Consequences of Desire - Dennis Hathaway

Awfully good writing about awful people. This can be said of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction's namesake as well as the award's 1992 recipient. Commonality beyond these two broad distinctions, however, if they exist, are hard to find

The late Ms. O'Connor's style follows one of the basic commandments of good writing: she shows us what's happening. She doesn't tell us Grandmother is a domineering, self-centered hypocrite. We get to watch the old gal in action, bossing her unattractive family around to suit her fancy. In his winning collection of stories, The Consequences of Desire, we see little outward action involving Dennis Hathaway's characters. But inside their heads, oh, mercy. We're immersed in the kaleidoscopic battling of their thoughts and emotions.

Themewise the stories could hardly be further apart—on the surface. O'Connor, while keeping obvious signposts of her Roman Catholicism deeply camouflaged in subtlety, pushes her characters to extremes of happenstance, including death, where their mortal actions can bring them heavenly grace. Religion or spiritual faith are absent from Hathaway's tales. His self-absorbed characters invariably find their dreams, their hopes, their desires coming up short or crashing to pieces when they find themselves face to face with stark reality. Teenager Justine feels the dream she's had most of her life of becoming a private eye blink out when she loses her nerve tailing a mysterious stranger into a rough part of town.