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SHORT STORIES DON'T GET ANY BETTER THAN PAINE'S

Scar Vegas and Other Stories
by Tom Paine
Short stories, Harcourt, 215 pp, $22.00
Rating: 5 stars
It seems as if just about everybody on St. John is reading the "Scar Vegas" stories. That one of them – "The Mayor of St. John" – is set on this island has a lot to do with it. As does the fact that it bares a startling island secret known to all. As does the further fact that the author formerly lived on St. John.
Of greater import, however: These are among the best short stories written in the last several decades. Sinjins have a taste for the best.
A good short story is written by the reader; the writer merely provides the plan, the plot, the outline, the map, the cast of characters, the … Well, actually, the author has to provide a lot – but must provide it in a light-weight kit that will go with readers for the rest of their lives. A good short story is not simply a memorable tune popping out of a toaster; like a broadcasting tower, it carries a lot more power than its light-weight framework would suggest. (More about these images in a moment.)
Like all good short stories, Paine's are stripped of all unnecessaries. Occasionally the bare framework will appear – but only when it's artistically as well as technically useful. There is no gratuitous row of bricks dangling suspensefully overhead, no peek-a-boo curtains behind glaring glass, no million-dollar billboard campaign promising a $1.98 cure.
Paine's stories are not post-modernist découpage, with "traditional motifs" preposterously pasted about for decoration. The works are both timely and timeless. He does not tease; there's no suspense. When the ton of bricks falls, it's because it's designed to surprise – not to kill.
As architect and engineer of the short story, Paine (who preceded Tom Oat as editor of the Tradewinds newspaper on St. John) is a pro; as landscape architect, he is at once subtle and astonishing. His traditional techniques (exposition, counterpoint, finale) are impeccable.
In his short stories, Paine draws marvelous characters with a few strokes. A master adapter, he introduces a personage in patois, slang or jargon and – ever-so-slowly – moves him into unjarring English. He turns caricatures into characters, reminding me of Michelangelo's caryatid "cartoons," carried away in the mind to be detailed in retrospect. In a metaphor of yore, these short stories are seeds of mutable ideas which will germinate with each reader differently. We're not obliged to follow every agonizing misstep in the lab with experimental designs that didn't work.
Sinjins have simple, elegant tastes. All that ugliness, stupidity and pretension comes from someplace else.
Each of the 10 stories in "Scar Vegas" is embedded in some architectural irony. Melanie Applebee, MBA (Stanford) down on her luck, frying Mr. Chicken, and about to be rescued, kidnapped, or something. An American yachtsman rescued by Haitian boat people.
"Unapproved Minutes of the Carthage, Vermont, Zoning Board of Adjustment as Recorded by Town Secretary Betty Bradley" is as much about St. John (and the zoning it ought to have) as it is about a town meeting (which is St. John's political destiny).
"Unapproved Minutes" is ostensibly about a communications tower that Maryann Gingus thinks ought to be "blown the heck up" versus the Communications Act of 1934 in which Congress gave America's radio waves away to the Federal Communications Commission (oh, and the bigwigs who have the FCC in their pockets, of course). The radio tower suddenly erected in Carthage is being blamed for musical toasters and drowning out other stations – so like that raw nerve on St. John. It's a tale of insensitive technocrats versus oversensitive technophobes, with a handful of Luddite walk-ons for comedic counterpoint.
At another level, though, the story is about how the simplest people with the worst problems can still govern themselves. It is unpleasantly pertinent to St. John's plight as the Virgin Cinderella trying to cope with a distant Palace of indifference, two wicked stepsisters and the frustrated quest for municipal independence. We Virgins do not take self-government seriously the way Vermonters do.
Paine's stories presented here have appeared in The New Yorker, Story, Harper's, The New England Review, Playboy and other high-test sites. In addition to "Unapproved Minutes," they are:
"Will You Say Something, Monsieur Eliot?" – the bittersweet story about the American rescued by Haitians;
"General Markman's Last Stand" – which opens with Gen. Trevor V. Markman, USMC, annoyed that his red panties are too tight, throwing his new bra across his Camp Lejeune office;
"Scar Vegas" – the eponymous story of a hopeful "internal immigrant" to Las Vegas;
"The Spoon Children" – about a rebel who goes to an Anarchist Convention and discovers, well, not anarchy but convention;
"The Hotel on Monkey Forest Road" – about some international engineers "pouring concrete over the [Third] world" (with second reference to Tortola, regarding warblers);
"Ceausescu's Cat" – a study of petty political paranoia (with a lover named Liana suggesting some strangling reference to V.I. politics);
"The Mayor of St. John" – about donkeys, if one will (the mayor's passion is named Eustacia), with a subcurrent similar to that of "Unapproved Minutes";
"A Predictable Nightmare on the Eve of the Stock Market First Breaking 6,000" – which may or may not be a sister twister in the sardonic manner of Saki (HH Monro), arguably the finest short-story craftsman of the ever-more-remote last century; and
"The Battle of Khafji" – an insight into Desert Storm which asks at one point, "Is it still a war if nobody dies on one side?"
What Paine does, he does so well that only later does one come to ask: What's missing? Romance? Women? "Scar Vegas" has women, but they are almost all walk-ons and pick-ups or – as in "A Predictable Nightmare" – seem to bear an indecipherable alert to some nice lady I can't place at the moment but who really ought to be warned.
Like Arthur Miller's writing – even more like Norman Mailer's, perhaps – these stories, while not cold-blooded, are chilling. Even when a man "makes good" or makes "the right move" (as in "Spoon Children") or "takes heart" ("Scar Vegas" himself), the choice is somehow inappropriate. Even those that end in inevitable "compromise" ("Unapproved Minutes") leave one satisfied artistically and intellectually – but come back to haunt, like some midnight indigestion after the least bit of overindulgence at le Chateau. The price of perfection is that all else is thence measured thereby.
The stories are of men in men's landscapes toured by a responsible man, an organized man, a tactician. There's no unpaid bill, no gush, no misstep or misfire. Paine is analytic and calculating, eagle-eyed, civil to a fault, unapologetic, and tactically detached enough to tell the truth. He's a mapmaker, not a scribe wanderering aimlessly about in metaphysical falderol.
It's refreshing these days to find a male writer who isn't feeling sorry about his feelings. Payne might agree with me that feelings are unthoughts. Having thought out all the details, he has no unresolved feelings about them. It's litérateur laissez faire. We haven't seen that kind of American writer or writing for years, and it's a welcome return. I find it refreshing, rejuvenating and vindicating.
Paine has survived deconstructionism intact and has the good sense to put
the building blocks of writing and living back as the structural units upon which our civilization is built. Somewhere under the rubble of literary criticism, one might find the women missing here (and there and everywhere – and don't ask Joyce Carol Oates where they are).
Paine's internal relationship of the artist-craftsman to his art and craft reflects the skill and wisdom of the good parent, not the possessive parent. So often in "romance," characters are either the slaves of the writer (left unredeemed) or at the mercy of inexplicabe forces (as if the work they appear in is premature). Paine knows that his job is to explicate, expedite and let go.
These are not short stories "of promise" but "adult" works prepared to face the rigors of marketplace competition and literary criticism – ready to go with the readers who can now write them, individually. "Adult" does not mean "salacious." It is not sexual tension which holds these stories together, nor anything like romance; it is imminent reality, and Paine employs it masterfully.
A Princeton man with an MFA from Columbia, Paine is a masterly fine artist. Perhaps it's his teaching career at Middlebury College, where he lives in the pragmatism of Vermont, that gives his prose an enriching economy. He is as entertaining and as skilled in his own American way as John Mortimer (in his "Rumpole" series, for example). Indeed, by the end of these stories, one will want a "character" series from Paine.
As for the bared secret in "The Mayor of St. John," well, for those who don't already know, some things have to be left for the short story reader to write.
And now, is St. John basking in its sudden literary stardom? Phoo! St. John is as utterly insouciant as ever. We've been too busy reading to pay any mind to the hoopla. St. John doesn't have tourists, you know; we have guests. Paine was a great guest. We ought to have him down again.
* Richard Dey rates the books he reviews for the Source on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. He defines the ratings thus:
5 stars – Beyond serious criticism
4 stars – A fine read
3 stars – Good, fascinating, with caveats
2 stars – Interesting or shows promise
1 star – Cautionary tale

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