I’ve set up a new tag, Dzanc, for books from the small press, Dzanc Books. After reading Matt Bell’s How They Were Found (reviewed here), I signed up for the Dzanc Books ebook club. For $50, you get 5 titles up front plus a 6-month subscription for a grand total of 11 ebooks. First up is a collection of ten short stories, Knuckleheads, by Jeff Kass. Knuckleheads is a guy book. Knuckleheads is also a derogatory term. But here, Kass uses it in a more generous spirit to describe your average straight male who has enough insight to know that his sexuality demands more work of him than it does of a silverback mountain gorilla, but not enough wisdom or experience to know how to begin that work. He bumbles along as best he can, a good-natured idiot who catches himself in the midst of his idiocy and hopes to do better next time.
In tone, the stories suggest a kinder gentler Mordecai Richler (à la Duddy Kravitz):
A teen on the school wrestling team learns the hard way that you can’t impress a girl by beating the crap out of her boyfriend at a meet (even if he is exaggerating his injuries). A junior lawyer tries to salvage his failing legal career by calling in a favour from an old friend so his team can win the firm golf tournament. Geek schoolyard bullies threaten to beat up a kid if he can’t prove that his uncle is, in fact, a Hollywood producer who will handle their superhero movie. A man supports his brother in his obsessive quest to rid the beaches of mylar balloon fragments while struggling with his own obsession – his brother’s wife. A couple who met at Berkeley in a class best-remembered for its naked student must now cope with the fact that their 12-year-old deals Ecstasy to his classmates. And so it goes.
Released in April, this is the perfect summer read at the beach. While you’re tanning yourself, position the ereader so you can periodically glance from the words to the women in the water. But don’t let your girlfriend catch you. Or maybe it doesn’t matter. She probably already knows you’re a knucklehead.