Quality Snacks

by Andy Mozina

In a wide range of forms and tones, the fifteen stories in Andy Mozina’s new collection, Quality Snacks, center on high-stakes performances by characters trying to gratify both deep and superficial needs, often with unexpected consequences. Driven by strange ambitions, bungled love, and a taste for—or abject fear of—physical danger, the collection’s characters enact the paradox in the concept of a quality snack: the dream of transmuting the mundane into something extraordinary.

Two teenage boys play chicken on a Milwaukee freeway. A man experiencing a career crisis watches a seventy-four-year-old great grandmother perform an aerial acrobatics routine at the top of a swaying 110-foot pole. Desperate to find a full-time job, a pizza delivery man is fooled into a humiliating sexual demonstration by a couple at a Midway Motor Lodge. A troubled young man tries to end his father’s verbal harassment by successfully hunting a polar bear. After an elf civil war destroys his Christmas operation, Santa Claus reinvents himself as a one-man baseball team and ends up desperate to win a single game. And in the title story, a flavor engineer at Frito-Lay tries to win his boss’s heart with a new strategy for Doritos that aims to reposition the brand from snack food to main course.

While some stories embrace pathos and some are humorous and some are realistic and some contain surreal elements, all of the stories in Quality Snacks share striking insight and a cast of compelling, well-conceived characters. This collection, in an earlier form, has been a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award, the Dzanc Short Story Collection Contest, the Elixir Press Fiction Award, and the Autumn House Fiction Contest, and a semi-finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize. Readers of fiction will be satisfied by the variety of fare offered by Quality Snacks.

Genres: Short Stories

216 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2014

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) Middle America, middle age, middle management, middling happiness: the majority of these 15 stories, many of them set in the Milwaukee / Chicago area, show burnt-out middle-aged men reconsidering their marriages and careers. That might sound boring, but the waste ground of suburban angst is a surprisingly fertile territory for humorous fiction. (See my “Related reads” below.) As the narrator of “Proofreader” laments, “I hated the idea that our character stays basically the same and that it follows you around your whole life.” Can all these average Joes change for the better?

The title story is about a Frito-Lay senior project scientist whose best idea is to create Doritos flavored like a whole meal (e.g. beef enchiladas). The ironic look at so-called achievement is also key to “A Talented Individual,” about a man whose career is tanking, whose children’s book series plan is dubious (Grandma’s Getting a New Hip! and other surgical tales), and who’s putting on a bit of fat. The moment when he finds himself (figuratively) floored by a 73-year-old woman’s tightrope act at the local fair is bizarrely touching.

“My Nonsexual Affair” reminded me of “Three Wishes,” the novella from Antonya Nelson’s Funny Once; “Woman of Peace” is a lot like “The Juniper Tree” from Lorrie Moore’s Bark. “Always the Same Dream” is about a metallurgist with a brain cyst who keeps having wonderfully weird dreams, while “The Bad Reader” features a budding writer who goes crazy and shoots up all the bestsellers in a bookshop; his uncle’s unheeded advice had been, “Write if you have to, just don’t hurt any thing or any body.”

I didn’t care for the last story, “No Joy in Santa’s Village” (in which Santa uses replicas of himself to play perfect baseball games and the elves gang up to take him down), or for the bizarre autoerotic porn in “Self-Reliance.” In some ways the most unusual of the stories is “Pelvis,” a first-person narrative from one of Elvis’s harem of virgins.

My favorite, though, is “Dogs I Have Known,” the first story: “sometimes I think dogs have taught me everything I know, that they have made me the man, and the litigator, I am today,” confides the protagonist, a confirmed dog-hater. This story also contains my favorite line (gotta love neologisms): “We amoebaed into the kitchen.”

Hip and current. I’ll read more from Mozina.

Related reads:
• White Man’s Problems by Kevin Morris
• Inappropriate Behavior by Murray Farish
• The Heaven of Animals by David James Poissant

Also from Wayne State University’s “Made in Michigan Writers” series:
• Strings Attached by Diane DeCillis
• Making Callaloo in Detroit by Lolita Hernandez

[Darrin Doyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have found a kindred spirit, and his name is Andy.

[Lynai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Also posted in It's A Wonderful Bookworld.

I was browsing some titles on Net Galley and on a whim I decided to request Andy Mozina’s Quality Snacks only after reading that it is a short story collection. I have been on a short story collection quest these days, you see, and I can not resist the temptation of sampling this collection even if I haven’t heard about the author yet.

Quality Snacks is a collection of fifteen stories — some bizarre, some hilarious, some haunting, all of great writing and philosophical — and I had a grand time enjoying the reading experience.

I must admit that the first few stories did not really speak to me that well (the first two stories actually baffled me), although five stories in, I finally got the hang of Andy Mozina’s writing. What made me continue to read was the prose, because it was matter-of-fact, and the tone, because it was funny. Admittedly, several stories are “for adults only”, but as an adult, I appreciated the way Andy Mozina depicted his characters. The characters were dominantly male who are either disillusioned, dispirited, narcissistic, or desperate, I cannot help but be reminded of Raymond Carver’s pathetic characters in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

If I were to pick out my top 5 favorite stories, the list would include the following, in no particular order, with my favorite quotes in them:

A Talented Individual. “He didn’t want to be that guy. The people he read about in magazine profiles never needed bracing slaps from their life partners — they were arrogant bastards, floating on clouds of success.”

Quality Snacks. “It occurred to me, as I pondered these judgments, that while Americans had overcome the challenges inherent in producing quality snacks, we were not as good at fostering quality human relationships…”

Self-Reliance. (This story really had me LMAO.) “Yes, they had seen everything about me, but it occurred to me that you can’t rely on yourself if you feel ashamed of yourself, so I told myself I was not ashamed.”

My Nonsexual Affair. “There is a natural progression to things, which, you could say, we resisted, but I believe our adventure was singular, and as a result it is something to be cherished.”

No Joy in Santa’s Village. “He had retired from gift giving and turned to baseball because no one believed he could deliver so many presents in one night, and so people had, more and more over the years, gotten used to making their own arrangements for gifts…”

Runners-up:

The Bad Reader
Always the Same Dream

All in all, Quality Snacks is a surprisingly good read; not bad for a random pick. I am thoroughly pleased. :)



3/5 stars.

My copy: ebook from Net Galley.

[Zinta · Rating 5 out of 5]

It begins with a lie. A good one. The author, after all, is an expert liar. He disarms you for only a moment when he admits it, his expression unchanged.

Andy Mozina, an English professor at Kalamazoo College since 1999 and author of the new story collection, Quality Snacks (Wayne State University Press, May 2014), makes his admission, or confession, on air in a recent interview for the Arts and More program at the WMUK radio station, Kalamazoo’s NPR affiliate. Yes, he lies, he says.

As do all fiction writers, and Mozina is fast gaining notoriety as such. Quality Snacks is Mozina’s second story collection. His first, The Women Were Leaving the Men, also published by Wayne State University Press (2007), won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award and was a finalist for the Glasgow/Shenandoah Prize for Emerging Writer. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, including Tin House, Ecotone, Fence, The Southern Review, and The Missouri Review, and has received special citations in Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the Midwest. His critical work, Joseph Conrad and the Art of Sacrifice, was published by Routledge in 2001.

On the morning of his radio interview, talking about his new book, Mozina enters the studio breathless. He abandoned his car, he says, realizing that he was running late. The car was beached like a whale on the grass, he says, with hazard lights blinking and doors swinging open as he tore up the campus in his race to the studio.

Really? Not quite. As it turns out, Mozina’s car is parked in its parking spot, squared between the yellow lines, doors locked, lights off, engine cool.

Mozina grins, just a little. This is how he tells stories, building on near nothing, embellishing, adding twists and surprises and horseshoe turns on every page. He says he often begins his story idea with the twist, then builds the story around it.

Quality Snacks is a collection of 15 stories, each one with Mozina’s signature sense of wry humor. The stories, for the most part, are built around the efforts of middle-aged men struggling with relationship issues.

Santa Claus as a baseball player may not qualify as middle-aged in the final story, “No Joy in Santa’s Village,” but he nevertheless struggles with deteriorating relationships with his elves, who have come to resent him for what they consider Santa’s shortcomings. In fact, the elves in the dugout are showing a dark side as they clamor for Santa flesh in retribution for those long winter nights.

“His dugout was filled with elves. Some never moved, some never sat still—whittling a piece of wood into a bat, whittling the bat into baseballs, whittling the baseballs into tiny bats, which were whittled into still tinier baseballs. Some were incontinent, some respired entirely through their pores, like plants. Some rooted for Santa, some cast spells against him. At each game they created a locked-ward atmosphere in the dugout. Last year, one or another of the elves would occasionally streak onto the field in the middle of a game, tear up a piece of turf, and retreat toward the bench, gibbering hysterically, holding the turf aloft.” (Page 184, No Joy in Santa’s Village)

As for Doritos, a popular snack by Frito-Lay, Mozina says he once had an addiction for the chips, but, happily, has been able to conquer it. His title story, “Quality Snacks,” is a story of a team of Frito-Lay employees brainstorming new and vitamin-fortified flavors for the snack (burrito, chicken quesadilla, enchilada, refried beans), perhaps even marketing them as a main meal rather than just a snack.

Mozina won’t admit to a fear of dogs, but his opening story, “Dogs I Have Known,” begs to differ. He’s convincing. In one mini-story after another, the narrator describes dogs that have made an appearance in his life, none truly vicious, yet Mozina manages to make even the nicest pup at least a little unnerving with toothy potential.

The banker and the college professor meet over sandwich wraps and keep on meeting into what warms and then sizzles into “My Nonsexual Affair: A Tale of Strong and Unusual Feelings.” Lines are not exactly crossed but toed and danced upon with increasing insistence, and Mozina manages his signature effect on the reader once again.

Again: Mozina’s ability to make us see ourselves at our nerdiest, geekiest, weakest, most vulnerable and so also most human. Even as we wince and sigh, glad that’s not me … we have to admit, some of it is. The silly human condition, the offbeat element of truth that is stranger than fiction, unless it’s Mozina’s fiction.

Mozina is riding along on the Michigan Notable Book Tour that began in April, reading with Michigan notable authors Patricia Clark, Arnie Johnston, Ron Riekki and Phillip Sterling. With Quality Snacks officially off the presses on May 1, the book launch party will be held at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit on May 21, where Mozina will read with fellow Wayne State University Press authors Lisa Lenzo, Lolita Hernandez, Diane Decillis, and Kalamazoo College favorite, professor emeritus Conrad Hilberry.

It's the meal that leaves you licking your fingers, Doritos dust and all.

[Trevor Vader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andy Mozina is the Richard Hamilton of short story writing. You remember Richard Hamilton, right? He was a shooting guard for the Pistons when they won the championship in '04. This metaphor is excellent and interesting and I promise you won't be disappointed if you follow me down the road to Sports Metaphor Town.

First, let's look at the tale of the tape. Richard Hamilton (actually, the Pistons' announcers always called him "Rip" so let's call him that here) was tall (six-foot seven) but a mere hundred and ninety pounds; quite spindly for an NBA player. Yet, despite seeming like he was borderline-malnourished, he was a physical specimen who could easily run a mile in under five minutes for most of his playing career and frequently left dudes with ornately-sculpted biceps gasping for air in the second half as he ran circles around them. Mozina doesn't write like a bodybuilder with a bunch of useless beach muscles who parades around on a stage in a speedo looking like a human cartoon. He writes like a guy who hits the gym to do deadlifts and build muscles that you can actually use, dammit. His stories are sinewy and strong as all-git-out.

Next, let's look at the way Rip Hamilton and Andy Mozina play the game. Rip Hamilton was not a particularly flashy scorer but he was an utterly beautiful player to watch, nonetheless. He didn't take defenders off the dribble, and I can't recall him ever dunking once. He did most of his work without the ball, running from one side of the court to the other then down the baseline and up to the top of the key, bouncing off two or three picks before clapping for the ball to the right of the free throw line, catching it half a step in front of his exhausted defender and launching a jumper--a jumper, it must be said, that would have inspired any ancient Greek sculptor worth their salt to pick up their chisel and work feverishly through the night--over their outstretched, yearning arms. The ball would then float effortlessly through the air in a perfect arc, then drop through the net as if its fate were preordained somehow.

Mozina is the master of the literary midrange jump shot. There's never really any question that he's trying to score points some way or another--that is, after all, what writers and basketball players do. But he's not the type to just take somebody off the dribble and drive to the basket. Mozina runs, simply and elegantly, around a zone defense (in this particular Sports Metaphor, the zone defense consists of all the various indignities and absurdities of modern life) until all of his work pays off and he comes off the pick and launches his shot. He usually nails it because he has done so much work to get open, though you'd never notice all of his running unless you were looking for it. It all seems so utterly effortless, and, at the end of every story, you find yourself gasping, bent over, hands on knees, wondering how in the hell you arrived at this particular insight about the nature of life while Mozina gets back on defense.

And here, regrettably, the Sports Metaphor Train must be delayed for a moment, because it is time to talk about how funny Quality Snacks is, and Rip Hamilton never seemed like a particularly humorous dude, although that is probably because he always had to wear that weird clear plastic mask because he broke his nose so many times and it was kind of scary. Mozina is a very funny writer in the best possible way: he makes you laugh out loud (do not read this book in public unless you are comfortable with being shushed by people with furrowed brows) while using that laughter to get at something bigger and make the reader feel something.

Regarding broken noses and funniness and feeling things: the most important thing about this collection is that all of these stories make you feel something. All the insight and all the laughter in the world are but clashing cymbals without a strong cardiovascular system. Mozina isn't a detached, post-whatever writer. He's got heart. He's the kind of writer who would probably keep playing if he broke his nose, and he'd probably put up thirty points, too.

[Benjamin Champagne · Rating 4 out of 5]

made in michigan.
these stories are a lot like drinking the end of a bag of chips and discovering meat stuck in between your teeth afterwards. how'd that get there? it went down so smooth, i don't remember chewing. the stories are so playful. his attack on literature is literal and yet bolstered by a theory of universalism that is supplied by antagonists. complex ideas about our cultures rote and most simple offerings are dispersed between characters you recognize as being family.
a particularly great story plays with language while discussing childbirth and death. the metaphor is beautiful. it works. there is a conversation happening that wants to explain creativity. that wants to make use of relationships to show how we really think in correlation to ice cream stains on our shirts. are you the type of person that tells someone or do you let it go? what if you are their secret lover? what if you are their secret lover and yet you don't fuck? what language does that person use?
and when i see it as a stretching animal, yawning its jaws and passing on opportune carcasses, i see this book as the hunter it really is. mozina has synthesized his environment into a loose connection of the small things in life. the dna in them is magnified vision. they are speaking to me about me. because watching an 80 year old woman jump from a high dive and santa claus play baseball all by himself against a full team, whether they fail or triumph, these are the same as me. i am trying to read reality and piece it together correctly. i am a bad reader. i want dorito's to provide me a days nutrition when they cannot. mozina knows this. i want everyone woman to love me even though i cannot articulate myself properly. these wants are real.
so, apparently i don't have enough pride in my homestate. i wanted to read this as a comparison read. i heard he was a professor at western down in the zoo and my first thought was, it can't be spectacular. i was wrong. it was an enlightening read. i would be honored to meet the guy. anyone learning from him must feel fulfilled.
this collection is on par with Saunders and a lot of the others name dropped with him. i hope it grows to be successful on the coasts. especially in the concrete east. it is deserving. if this collection didn't add a new dimension to move the genres forward, it did expand upon it. if anything it is a tribute to his ability to see and explain what he sees. and it is a tribute to locals that good writing happens near the water

[Patrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is always difficult to rate a book. This is especially true for a collection of short stories written by friend and colleague (at Kalamazoo College). Being from Sweden I'm a universalist, always applying the same rules and standards to all people, thus I want my review to be fair.

I'm also unsure what the protocol is for short stories; are you supposed to rate each story and then calculate the arithmetic mean? Do you choose the median as the number of stars? Perhaps the mode? Or do you give the rate of the "best" story?

I give Quality Snacks 5 stars, since several of the stories were great (to me); some stories made less sense to me (probably the "literary great" ones, I usually read zombie books).

Another reviewer pointed out, correctly, that "[t]he stories, for the most part, are built around the efforts of middle-aged men struggling with relationship issues." Many stories are also placed in the mid-West (Kalamazoo, MI) and describe business situations.

Since I'm a 45-year old man, living in Kalamazoo, with an interest in economics/business, I should not have any trouble relating to these stories. And I didn't (despite the fact that I don't have many relationship issues)... Actually, I really enjoyed Quality Snacks - although the violent death of Santa Claus was a bit disturbing.

[Azahara (The Reader and the Cat) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quality Snacks is a collection of apparently random short stories that as a unit make an amazing creative world.

The narration is detailed and well taken care of. It took me some time to get into the narrative rhythm because I am not used to reading short stories. Though after I read the first 5 I really get into the story.

One of the things I liked the most were the surprises that where behind each short story. It brought suspense into the narrative. My favourite short story was Pelvis, it get stuck in my head even after I finished the book. I also enjoyed the Santa one, I was thrilled for reading an elf civil war. It was refreshing and funny.

Quality Snacks is the perfect mix of humor, fun and inner reflexions. A very suitable reading for fiction lovers!

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A random, unrelated collection of mostly quirky short stories. For me, they were a little uneven - some humorous and fun, and a few that I just didn't get. (I thought “Self-Reliance” was hysterical, although some might be put-off by the subject matter.) I prefer connected short stories, so I am probably not the target market here, but an interesting collection none-the-less.

This was a bookclub pick with a visit from the author. He was a delightful speaker and an interesting guy. I appreciated the stories much more after he explained the inspiration behind a few of them!

[Sean Kottke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of the first five stories, only one resonated with me ("Overpass"), and I almost put it away. But I thought I'd give it one more story, which was a good idea: the next story, "A Talented Individual" was sublime, and sustained my motivation for the rest of the collection. The title story is excellent, as are "Self-Reliance" and "My Nonsexual Affair," all of which depict men on the margins of changing economies and expectations of male roles. The final story, "No Joy in Santa's Village," is masterful satire in the vein of James Morrow and Max Apple.

[Loreen Niewenhuis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed Mozina's earlier collection of short stories -- The Women Were Leaving the Men -- so I was eager to read this new collection. It is a delightfully wry look at life in the Midwest. Mozina has been compared to George Sanders (another favorite writer of mine), but Mozina has his own voice and place and way of using a rusty can opener to get at the souls of his characters.

Great read.

[Mark Wisniewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mozina is one of America's best short story writers. His work has long been underrated, his upside from now on huge. The stories in QUALITY SNACKS are sharp, funny, striking, thought-provoking, poignant, surprising, and written as well as any. They'll electrify you. You'll cherish them.

[Reading Fool · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

Andy Mozina has written an entertaining, eclectic, sometimes funny but always thought-provoking set of short stories. The topics are seemingly random and Vonnegut-like. Enjoyed this a great deal.

[Rhonda Lomazow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book of short stories that brings forth every emotion .you will laugh feel sad &enjoy every story.For all those who really love reading wonderfully written short stories grab this book.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not my thing. A couple of stories were okay, but the rest was not for me. I rated it 2 because it's a Michigan author.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laughed continuously and aloud throughout "Self Reliance."