“The Great American Everything” Is a Quiet, Memorable Debut https://ift.tt/p78drQC
It’s not every day that a reader comes across a compilation of short stories where every story is a win, but Scott Gloden was able to do just that in his collectionThe Great American Everything. Throughout the ten short stories in Gloden’s debut, we’re introduced to a range of characters and their seemingly simple but also complicated lives.
In the opening story, “The Birds of Basra,” a young woman finds work assisting Marta Fontaine, an elderly woman in need of at-home care. The narrator’s live-in girlfriend, Telly, is a voice of reason throughout the story – a narrative that subtly portrays the exploitation of the elderly in America, and how they are wrung dry to receive basic human care. In the opening paragraph, the narrator states, “Telly was reading to me about the city of Basra […] Telly is always talking about the horrors of the Middle East, saying how our occupation is just like what we did to South America in the fifties and sixties.” What’s ironic, though, is that despite the moral opposition Telly feels towards her girlfriend’s job and the atrocities happening in other countries, there is also a real and true dilemma happening right on our own soil.
Each story thereafter portrays a variety of social injustices plaguing the US: climate change, racial injustice, sexual assault, loss and grief. In “Scenario,” parents play a game with their daughter called Watershed. During the game, the parents imagine a worse-case-scenario and come up with a plan of attack to evade the horrors that have become commonplace in our world today. They try to teach their daughter how to negotiate hostage situations, active shooter scenarios, or kidnapping, all while keeping calm and collected. The narrator states, “We acclimated as parents, discovered trust in the universe, but the day we signed up for the workshops we were reminded of her survival – of what unrelenting effort it takes to actually secure your child’s life.” Could these parents be categorized in the “helicopter parent” category? Possibly. But the real crux of the story is that in this day and age, precautions are necessary. The world can be a scary place and the characters want to prepare their child for the reality of those scary scenarios.
In the title story, “The Great American Everything,” two brothers work together after their grandfather dies to discover the possibility of the secret life he led in New Mexico. In “Tennessee,” the closing story, a man works to find a sense of stability and normalcy as he starts his own family, only to be thwarted by his mother’s unraveling into dementia. “We need a depth to the hideousness,” the narrator states while referring to life as his mother slipped further into her disease. “If someone’s fingernails are pulled off in a torturous manner, we know it’s bad, we do; but we know it’s worse if boiling water is poured over what’s exposed […] In many ways, then, the phone calls became just that.” The horrors in his life were everyday things like a phone call explaining his mother was stealing dozens of hammers from the hardware store. In other words, the truly horrific events weren’t necessarily large, gruesome events, but the everyday terrors of losing a parent, slowly but surely.
Each story is quiet in its own right, but relevant to the complexities we face in America each day. Gloden takes ordinary occurrences and relays them in such a way that they feel immense. He traverses the South in each story, from New Mexico to Tennessee. What’s most appealing and fascinating about Gloden’s stories is his chameleon-like ability to shed the traits of one character and move into the next so effortlessly. Whether from the point of view of a twenty-something lesbian, middle-aged war heroes, a vapid frat boy, or dual perspectives of a man and wife and their experience as first-time parents, Gloden slips into the identities of these individuals, embedding the tone of their thoughts, voice, and perspective into each word and sentence. There is never a moment when we question who the narrator is or who the story is about. Gloden seamlessly eases the reader into the lives of every character with his language and story development, which makes even the most obscure story line feel relatable.
The Great American Everything is not a loud collection of stories. The portrayal of social issues is subtle but immense in scope. This collection is a reminder that it doesn’t take a roller coaster of events to take us on a great ride.
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