Onyx reviews: Creative Types and Other Stories by Tom Bissell

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 08/14/2020

The cover of Tom Bissell's second short story collection shows six pencil-sketch figures, their faces obscured by huge daubs of paint. It's bright and inviting, yet it hints at something hidden. Often it's the past, arising to remind characters of some shortcoming or failing. The protagonists of these seven stories (six have been previously published; only the closer, "The Hack," is original to this collection) are all in some way connected to the arts.

Two stories deal with struggling couples. In "A Bridge Under Water," the couple are newlyweds on their honeymoon in Rome. He writes "worst-seller" travel guides about generally neglected locales, and she is pregnant. He's an atheist, she is an agnostic Jew. Their reactions to Rome reflect differences in their personalities, but religion proves to be their biggest sticking point. She (the couple is nameless) wants to raise their child to appreciate his tradition, whereas he mansplains to her how being Jewish isn't a religion in his opinion, for a variety of reasons. He drags her through every cathedral in the city despite knowing how uncomfortable this makes her. In a feeble attempt to atone, he takes her to a synagogue, where his boorishness leads to an awkward confrontation that sets the tone for whatever remains of their marriage.

In "Creative Types," the focal couple, Brenna and Reuben, are new parents. He published a short story collection years ago and has written nothing since; she is involved with an unscripted reality television show. Since the birth of their son, their sex life has evaporated. To rekindle the spark, they hire an escort in an attempt to recreate a spontaneous incident that has fueled their fantasies ever since. Reuben's classism gets in the way of the main event, leading the escort to relate her history since leaving home, along with the sad fate of her best friend. None of it is conducive to the romantic evening they anticipated.

Another would-be couple is featured in "Love Story, with Cocaine," one of two stories set in Tallinn, Estonia. Maarit is the daughter of a wealthy "businessman" with connections in high places. She meets Ken, an American ex-pat writer who lives a few doors away. He has an affinity for cocaine, whereas she is trying to cut down on her partying. Her other siblings are successful, whereas she dropped out of Cambridge after a few months. Ken made his money working and investing in video games. There's a decade difference in their ages and Ken is determined to not get involved with the attractive younger woman, despite her obvious interest in him, although at times she also seems to despise him. An amusing anecdote involving her pet greyhound provides the story's centerpiece. Bissell is clearly fond of Tallinn—in both this story and "The Fifth Category," he rhapsodizes about the city's beauty and charm.

"Punishment" is about two former school friends, Mark and Steve, who bullied the other kids until Steve's father moved the family out of town in the eighth grade. Away from Steve, Mark flourished, more or less. After graduating from Yale, he's now working in New York as the assistant to the editor of a struggling literary review tabloid. He has encountered Steve a handful of times over the years. He thinks often of his behavior with Steve and becomes interested in philosophers like Nietzsche and his work on "the banality of evil." Steve invites himself and his girlfriend to stay with Mark for a weekend. Steve proves to be a racist homophobic bigot addicted to steroids and bodybuilding. It doesn't help that he's also making much more money than Mark. Over the course of the next two days, Mark tries to get Steve to talk about why they did what they did all those years ago, and he also tries to connect with Danielle, Steve's girlfriend, attempting to "educate" her in a way that will improve her prospects. Things don't go well.

"My Interview with the Avenger" is presented as an Esquire essay about the journalist's face-to-face encounter with a vigilante who has been disrupting New York City's criminal element. In an earlier article, the journalist accused the Avenger of being dangerous, noting that few of the people he assailed were ever convicted of anything, although he does have the admiration of those whose safety he assured and even the mayor has given him the freedom to continue his "work." Although the Avenger has shied from publicity, the article inspires him to request a clandestine meeting with the journalist. The encounter doesn't go the way the journalist expected, with the Avenger turning the tables to dig into the journalist's reasons for writing about him. A detail of his personal history should be revealed to his readers, the Avenger argues.

When "The Fifth Category" opens, a teacher and lawyer named John—who wrote a memo for the CIA outlining his thoughts about the legality (but not the morality) of certain torture techniques used on enemy combatants—is on a flight from Tallinn back to America after appearing at a conference on International Law and the Future of American-European Relations. Attending this convention was risky—his memo was ultimately declassified and disavowed, and he has been named a war criminal in several countries after its recommendations were used to justify rendition and waterboarding against people outside its scope. Even in America he is a pariah to many. He awakens to find the airplane empty and the world outside its windows black, even though it's not a night flight, a scene reminiscent of Stephen King's "The Langoliers."^* The story could be an episode of The Twilight Zone, but it dives deep into America's controversial actions during wartime all the way back to the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War.

The closing story, "The Hack," is an odd piece told from the perspective of Daniel, who is personal assistant to a man he identifies only as James but who is clearly meant to be James Franco (who starred in the movie adaptation of The Disaster Artist, based on a book co-written by Bissell). The title refers to a hack on Sony's servers that led to the pirating of several as-yet-unreleased movies, as well as reams of embarrassing emails. James is in New York to host Saturday Night Live , and Sony is concerned that any mention of the hack during his skits or monologue could incite the perpetrators to further action. Daniel name-drops all the people he meets during rehearsals and preparations. He's a fawning young man who adores his boss, even though he isn't treated particularly well. A miscommunication leads to an awkward meeting with his boss.

Bissell has a prodigious vocabulary. Readers will find themselves encountering words like enfleurage, mephitine, parlieus, canthus, tatterdemalion, samizdat and viridescent, even in stories told from the perspective of less educated people. He doesn't seem to care that his characters are, on the whole, not very likeable or even particularly sympathetic. He is more interested in their reactions to being caught in situations guaranteed to increase anyone's anxiety. These are, for the most part, awkward encounters, whether with lovers, spouses, old friends or total strangers. The stories generally end without resolution, although readers can probably imagine what will happen next.

* Stephen King is name checked in "Punishment," where Danielle is a fan of the author and wonders if her boyfriend's friend has ever met him. "The Fifth Category" was reprinted in the anthology Flight or Fright, edited by King and me.