Scott McClanahan - The Collected Works of Scott McClanahan Vol. I

Quit checking your Goddamn e-mail so much. Flush that cell phone down the toilet. There’s a whole world outside. Let’s break into blossom.

And if I’m far away and gone and you want to find me, go to Rainelle, WV on any given night. The street will be empty at 11:30. So go there and listen for it and I’ll come running. We’ll ride where the black train takes us, deep into the mountains, deep into a place where no one knows our name, like our very own time machine, taking us not far into the future, but deep into the past, before any of the towns were here, before we were even born. We’ll be dinosaurs then and at last we won’t even exist. Thank God.

And so now you’re saying, “What’s that sound?”

I say, “That’s the sound of the coal train coming. It’s coming to take us away.”

ARE YOU READY?

Scott McClanahan is from West Virginia, which, as he has to explain to another person in STORIES II, is not just a part of Virginia, but an entire state of its own. It is at this point in my reading of Scott’s work that I resolved to kill him if I ever met him. To put my hands on his throat and choke him to death as he stares, confused, into my emotionless face. No, actually I never thought that about Scott. I’ve never thought about killing him until I wrote that sentence. Then, when I wrote that sentence, I went off into a staring fantasy where I kind of envisioned it up until the moment he dies. Shit, now that I wrote that, I actually imagined him dying. And you know what, I’m a lot sadder than I thought I’d be, having fantasized in vivid detail about choking tens, nay, hundreds of dozens of people, both faceless and recognizable.

Anyway, Scott wears suits from Sears. He came to Chicago a couple summers ago and we read together and we drank beer out of a glass boot at this German restaurant. We saw German Larry Bird play in a polka band. Scott also showed me his impression of a person laughing while typing a mean comment on the internet. These are things we shared during our first encounter. It was at that point in our meeting that I resolved to live in a glass boot with him — if we ever both needed a place to live and/or had access to a shrink ray.

But that was only the first time we met. The next couple of years saw us drinking forty ouncers in different alleys throughout Chicago, preparing ourselves to read our work to audiences. Scott is really nice, and I’ll say this: he is really good at keeping up the whole “I’m actually from West Virginia” bit. I mean, he does the accent, he affects that “hillbilly politeness” that everyone seems so fond of, and most importantly, he wears suits from Sears.

All of this, plus how much I liked his first book, STORIES, and his new book, STORIES II, has solidified Scott McClanahan as a friend and as an author who I will continue to read. He writes unselfconsciously minimalist stories about people from West Virginia. Both collections in this collection, STORIES and STORIES II, were originally published by Six Gallery Press, a small press in Pittsburgh. I am glad Cameron Pierce is now in control of these books. So glad, that I am now going to vividly imagine choking Cameron’s body into lifelessness.

STORIES was originally given to me by Barry Graham. He told me I’d like it. He handed it to me and I liked the cover. Then I read the whole thing on a bus from Ann Arbor back to Chicago. I sat there quietly reading it, but inside my head I kept putting my hand up to my mouth and going “ohhhhh” like someone does after they see someone get brutally dunked on in basketball. I was a fan of his work immediately. I pretty much dislike everything I read, but I liked Scott’s work right away. Somehow after that we emailed each other and started doing readings together.

STORIES II followed soon after.

STORIES II returns to the themes of STORIES: West virginia, being a person around other people, and figuring things out when you thought they were already figured out.

STORIES II also returns to the signature tone of STORIES. He writes in a way that is conscious of both his own absurdity and that of others, without overdoing either. He makes it really easy to like the narrator and to learn from the narrator’s experiences. Scott also knows how to balance humor and sadness.

Scott’s style is the most lively minimalism I have read. Many sentences begin with “and” or “so” and contain the word “just.” The result is a really smooth minimalism. Not a minimalism that recognizes itself, but one that just happens. If you are ever able to see Scott read, you will understand what I mean. Many of his stories begin as though you just walked up to a conversation. Not “in the middle of things” but “in the middle of thoughts.” For example, one story begins, “I’ve stolen things before though.” The result is that it’s like you are put into an already-begun conversation.

I don’t know what else to say. I called off work today and I’m drinking alcohol. I don’t really drink alcohol that much. I’m sitting on a wood floor. I’m wearing these shorts I just bought from a Salvation Army. I already spilled fucking cocktail sauce on them. I don’t know. I mean, look at how the tone changes from the first half to the second. Maybe I’m not the same person anymore. I think Scott recently became a father. Which is pretty sweet I guess. Anyway, thanks for buying/reading this book. I support it fully. And I really don’t care about much. But Scott is an author of American Genius.

April 4, 2012

Chicago, Illinois.