ISBN 0-88748-379-8
Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002
$15.95
In 1991, Jim Nichols took a fiction-writing course through the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance after having had a story published in Esquire magazine. No one in that class imagined it would take him 11 more years to get a book published. We all knew he’d be published sooner or later. He was that good, as you will find out when you read Slow Monkeys and other stories.
These wry tales with their dead-on mix of humor and poignancy by this born-and-raised native are set in rural, blue-collar Maine and every one rings true. Nichols has supported his writing life by tending bar, driving taxis, and other such idea- and experience-rich, ear-bending jobs that have given him a view of Maine not everyone gets to see.
The first story hooked me by starting, “The last time I was in jail, the Sheriff suggested that if I were to jump off the Bucksport Bridge, it would save us both a lot of future trouble.” A couple of pages on I fell for the telling: “I sprawled on the warm grass, tangled in damp shirts, jeans and Holiday Inn towels.” Those Holiday Inn towels just got me. Then, a few pages later, a friend shows up at the protagonist’s trailer with a bottle of coffee brandy and a gallon of milk. Nichols writes, “He stomped down to my little tin kitchen, dumped half of the milk into my sink, emptied the bottle of coffee brandy into what was left, put the cap on the milk container and gave it a shake as he came back… He passed me the jug. A Sombrero, the blueberry rakers called it. I took a gulp and handed it back. We worked at it silently, and before long the booze was half gone, and so were we.”
Nichols describes scenes simply, but visually and with rhythm. In Mackerels, he tells of students cutting classes to go fishing the first day of the draft lottery. He writes, “We could see the mackerel moving through the water, swimming in unison like some sort of underwater mobile just below the surface.”
Another story, The Dilly, told in stream-of-consciousness, uses a Coast Guard lighthouse repairer as the protagonist. Away from home for extended periods, he thinks about the woman he’s returning to. He follows a tractor-trailer on the highway and wonders if the driver’s wife will make a point of being awake when he gets home, if she’ll make love to him no matter what time he arrives.
Continuing the thought, Nichols writes, “Then I wondered if I’d be as lucky, if we’d both have our women, their warm bodies, their sweet eyes.” A couple of pages on, the character, as he passes from state to state, picks up architectural detail. “In another hour I was driving through Rockland, where all the buildings have false third floors, like a frontier village.”
In C’est La Vie, a young French-Canadian football player sidelined by a knee injury takes a job in a shoe factory, his hopes and dreams shot.
Nichols has a good ear for nuance. In Giant, a man separated because of his wife’s infidelity agonizes, missing his son, wife and married life. Carrying a book his son forgot on his last visit, he walks to the family house in the cold and dark. Unable to make himself go to the door, he jumps up and down, waves his arms to keep warm, and blows his nose “on a rough piece of newspaper that [he] found in the weeds” because he doesn’t have a tissue. “Then the door opened and she was standing there holding her robe shut. Her hair was up in the bun she always wore to bed unless she was planning on something.”
In Jon-Clod, a twelve year-old who spends his days trying to emulate Jean-Claude Killy, says, “I tried to ski like Killy, walk like Killy; I gave myself pep talks with a French accent. I even practiced smiling like Killy, trying desperately to force a long dimple into my cheek.” At the same time, the boy observes a rift between his parents, not realizing his French-catholic mother has told his protestant father he is going to have to support yet another child. Surreptitiously, he watches his father steal a carefree moment. Then Nichols shows his ability to shock with a powerful, unexpected ending.
In Loons, a philandering writer tries to change his ways and take his marriage of ten years and two kids more seriously. “‘I’m a married man,’ I said, taking my wife’s hands. It was a little like declaring at an AA meeting, but never mind that, I meant what I said. And six months later, I went off to this workshop still full of resolve. … And there was no reason I couldn’t, even if the first woman I saw, this Kate, happened to look like Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not.” This ending, I’m sorry to say, is neither powerful nor unexpected.
In Jade, a Viet Nam vet, years later, still needs to “wrestle the images to a halt.”
Nichols considers himself a novelist rather than a short story writer. (Turns out he spent those eleven years writing and trying to place three novels, “all needing work,” he said in a phone interview. When he finally got around to sending out his story collection, it brought immediate acceptance.) No less a personage than Norman Mailer has written, “His dialogue has that fine strain of the just which is always so startling. I think I will go so far as to say that in Jim Nichols we have one more of a rare breed: the born short story writer.”
I would put it differently. I believe Jim Nichols is simply a born writer. It gives me great pleasure to recommend adding Slow Monkeys and other stories to your Christmas shopping list.
