Metaphysics in the Midwest

by Curtis White

Book by White, Curtis

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

204 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories are set in Illinois, where White was raised and professored, where now he raises and professors, and each mingle local history, cultural references, taboos, and surreal humour with varying degrees of success. The titular story concerns a Professor Feeling, a crazy scholar of metaphysics who each night visits a boy called The Commissioner to talk about baseball. In ‘A Disciplined Life’ an Italian immigrant finds himself locked up prison upon arriving in America, and his wife and chlild housed in the prison warden’s home. In ‘More Crimes Against the People of Illinois’, an office typist attempts to perpetrate a rebellion by baring her breasts in the office, before being arrested for her protestations of office prostitution. ‘Howdy Doody is Dead’ finds a puppet seeking vengeance on his evil double. ‘Critical Theory’ describes a road trip between Horkheimer and Adorno in America after fleeing from the Nazis. White captures the vernacular of the region and sends it up at the same time in bawdy stories like ‘The Order of Virility’ and ‘Malice’. These summaries fail to capture the sort of freewheeling antics at play in White’s often cruel and sexually lurid stories, so take a dip into the White waters. His strongest works are the novels Memories of My Father Watching TV, with the rare boast of a David Foster Wallace blurb, and Requiem, which I consider his masterpiece.

[🐴 🍖]

so remember that guy who was appointed ambassador to the netherlands and as soon as he got over there the dutch were like "why do you keep making stuff up about muslims in our country, you idiot?" and he was like "i never said those things" and they were like "here is you saying literally those things on video" and all he could do was stammer "fake news"? i found out just recently that in 1997 he tried to get congress to strip n.e.a. funding from fc2 bc he thought chick-lit 2 was "an offense to the senses." small world huh? anyhoo i tend to think my man curtis's fictions are way more an existential threat to the hoekstras of the world than any vanilla lesbian sex scene, what with the imploding nuclear families & all the destabilizing of various american mythos-es, all laced with (egads!) continental philosophy... republican congressman beware, you're in for a scare