****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Seeing as how he's the founder of a punk rock `zine, you'd expect Sean Carswell's stories to reflect that particular anti-establishment ethos. And yes, there are shots taken - at Republicans, at advertising (car sales in particular) and `that racist fear that's instilled in all Americans' (a sentiment that ignores 40 years of civil rights progress, affirmative action, racial hiring quotas, not to mention Condoleezza Rice!) - though, thankfully, the majority of the stories in Barney's Crew are more about showing you characters in unique and/or stressful situations rather than telling you what to think.Half the pieces in the collection can be categorized as childhood/adolescent coming of age stories. The boy and girl in "Fourteen and Small" are further integrated into the mysteries of adulthood when they spy on one of their sisters having sex; a boy who's never been the best at anything determines, no matter what, he'll outlast his classmates in a gym teacher's typically sadistic test of endurance in "The Third Grade Chair"; the food chain within the species Homo Sapiens is revealed to a young boy being chased by a bully in "Tommy Smedley's Nose"; and in "Pucker Up, Little Camper" (one of the book's best stories, though, also, one of the most curiously titled) a teenager with the unfortunate last name of Dickgraber comes out of his shell at a party where nobody knows him, only to be humiliated in front of his erstwhile date by the arrival of some kids from his school.The rest of the stories in Carswell's collection are not so easily lumped together, although two of them share a character, Sid Harper, named by his philosophy professor father after the Herman Hesse novel Siddhartha.The first Sid Harper story, "How To Outsmart a Fish", finds Sid contemplating the human condition on the dawn of the first Iraq war, aided by some magic mushrooms and a head filled with Nietzsche, Berkeley and Spinoza. Not to mention, dear old dad.The second Sid story, "Sid and the Dragon", is years later, after Sid's been sprung from the loony bin by his wife. Now, they are fugitives living the surf bum lifestyle down in Costa Rica. Sid holds court for the guests each night at the rundown bar of the hotel he and his wife live at -- and Sid works for -- regaling them with bits and pieces of philosophy he's grown up hating. [Didn't some big-time philosopher once say something about `we all eventually become that which we hate?] His wife plays a trick on him one night, forcing the issue by planting the seeds of the event that will make Sid's ramblings gospel truth: a turtle flying from the sea May 4th at a certain strip of beach. To her surprise, the rumor of this revelation takes on a life of its own and, come May 4th is `witnessed' by a number of believers on a storm-swept shore who were already sold on the idea before the proof exploded from the waves. It might have been a manta ray, but everyone there who wanted to believe in the turtle is convinced that's what it was.It was easy to be cynical. You could make funof anything. The real strength came in beingable to believe in something. To let go ofyour ego and believe that maybe these higherpowers took control over all the things youcouldn't control.It is hard to reconcile the profundity of this statement with the backward-looking one cited earlier about racism being instilled in all Americans (as if racism is something uniquely American?), but that just shows the humanity of these stories, the contradictions that one minute have you cringing with indignation and the next reading something that confirms some of your deepest held beliefs. Carswell, like all of us, can lay down the dogma, but is smart enough or intuitive enough an artist to make it all better with an astonishingly universal insight farther on down the page.Every once in a while I receive a package in the mail from Gorsky Press, which never fails to make my day. The Gorsky folks have quietly been publishing books for over five years now, starting with Sean Carswell's first novel, Drinks for the Little Guy. I say quietly because Gorsky is a tiny press that focuses on authors unlikely to be noticed by larger publishers. However, the books they publish are anything but quiet. A perfect example is Carswell's latest story collection, Barney's Crew, illustrated throughout with line drawings by Art Fuentes.The book consists of a handful of short stories and two longer pieces, "The Opposable Digit" and "Sid and the Dragon." Carswell's characters are an odd but endearing mixture of working class folks, college students, artists, drifters, and kids growing up in what can often be a cruel world. There's Sid, offspring of a philosophy professor who seems to have permanently scrambled his son's brain by forcing philosophy on him at too early an age. Sid wanders through two stories in the collection, testing the patience of his companions with his constant wondering and questioning. We also see the curse of an unfortunate name in the character of David Dickgraber. And there's Jack, the artistic photographer who may or may not be trying to deny his working class roots as a mason. All of Carswell's characters seem to be at odds with something, be it their past, their present, their future, or the impact of the world around them. But their dissatisfaction comes laced with a bittersweet fatalism that they ultimately accept, allowing them to move on.On a stylistic level, two features of the collection stand out. First, Carswell alternates between first and third person narration in the stories. In his acknowledgments, he gives notes on the stories, explaining that some of them are based in truth or at least tangential to experiences he's had. It's these latter stories that appear in the first person, and the switch to third person in between provides good contrast. Second, certain characters appear in multiple stories. For example, we see Helen in an early story as a frustrated young teenager unsure of love, and then she appears later on as a college student foiled by a misreading of love. Poor Helen just doesn't seem able to catch a break. But this tactic of sharing characters between stories serves to mesh the book into a cohesive whole, ultimately leading to a more satisfactory reading experience.Overall, Barney's Crew is a strong collection and I highly recommend checking it out. Carswell's voice is unique, and he will show you pockets of our society you may not have seen before. I don't think we can ask much more from a writer.
