Backswing

by Aaron Burch

Throughout Aaron Burch’s debut full-length collection of fiction nearly everyone is seeking some kind of perfection. Despite their attempts falling short, going stray, or sometimes not even making it off the ground, they keep swinging—at latent nightmares and glaring domestic lives, at severed limbs and redemptive baptisms, at the awe of what has been taken and the bewilderment over what remains. Nevertheless, in these stories ranging from the magical to realism, from Biblical allegory to everyday relationships, the characters of Backswing, faithful that forward motion will someday strike, keep driving toward grace.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

206 pages, Paperback

First published July 14, 2014

About the author

AARON BURCH grew up in Tacoma, WA. He is the author of the memoir/literary analysis Stephen King’s The Body; a short story collection, Backswing; and a novella, How to Predict the Weather. He is the founding editor of Hobart, which he edited from 2001–2022, and more recently he founded and edits HAD and WAS (Words & Sports). He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

His first novel, YEAR OF THE BUFFALO, was released in November 2022 from American Buffalo Books, which is available here:

https://americanbuffalobooks.org/

Reviews

[Lee Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is the editor of Hobart, a site and journal I've known for about a dozen years. He's married to Elizabeth Ellen, author of the excellent Fast Machine -- I indirectly set them up when they got in touch after her Eyeshot Literary Escort Service appearance way back when. So I was psyched to see Aaron had a collection of stories out, having some idea what his fiction (and what the guy) is like. I'm happy to report, after burning through this nicely sequenced and formatted collection, that expectations have been met and even exceeded. I cracked myself up as I read the last story en route to work this morning and concocted this phrase: "Mr. Burch is unbeleagured by polysyllabic phraseology." He'd never write a sentence like that. His letters stand upright, neither leaning forward with forced urgency/swerve, nor skating backward on the ice of overattentive and precious care. Straightupness serves him well. The collection could be called "The Hall of Growing-Up," as mentioned in a story toward the end, since each story sort of frames a souvenir of becoming, growing into one's skin with hesitancy and hope. The historical psychic standpoint is marked by a pre-technology innocence, a coming of adolescence in the late-'80s or a little later (mentions bands like Poison and Warrant, Woody on "Cheers," MTV, print Playboys -- not dot coms, texts, cellphones, the socials) -- and post-adolescence delayed into early adult slackerdom, sleeping in cars, delivering pizza. The most vivid and affecting stories are the most realistic, those slotted in the collection's batting order as power hitters, the cleanup hitter and its protection, "Flesh & Blood" and "Fire in the Sky," both of which involve nary a magical nor inventive moment, cruising on a sense of reality that feels real, striving for connection and winding up physically punished for it but feeling sort of fulfilled somehow nevertheless: in the first, a kid struggling to acclimate to adolescence and a new junior high tries to impress skater kids with fast and reckless jumps, busts open his face, and then is cared for by a friend's hot sis, sharing a moment of intimacy and tenderness despite the blood and mangled teeth. In the second story, old friends reunite for a wedding and there's a mishap with fireworks that viserally affected me, made me momentarily avert my eyes from the book, before the narrator takes off running for the Space Needle. The stories don't so much revolve around violent moments -- more so their search for connection and intimacy gravitates toward a smackdown, an obstacle to achievement they're first required to overcome. When a bit of magic is added to the adolescent groping as in "Unzipped" the results are totally rewarding too -- a makeout session on a waterbed and she's reaching for the zipper on the dude's chest that holds in his warm and beating heart. Pretty awesome stuff. Some stories experiment, are less conventional than others, are more willing to err on the side of elusivity and suggestion, sort of tracing the splotches of blood and light of rubbed eyes that might be fireworks or something much farther off and celestial (but also grounded; "we find God in our cars"), but generally this seems to want to make a straightforward, honest, tender connection with readers -- and its lingering images attest to success: a day-glo golf ball solidly hit and streaking away into a night of distant glowing stars above a nearby and ambiguous emotional environment neither entirely unfriendly nor wholly familiar.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every May, I try to read as many short-story collections as I can to celebrate short-story month. This year I only read one, but it was remarkable.

Backswing by Aaron Burch, published by Queen's Ferry Press, gathers a collection of stories about young American men who are mostly white, suburban and college-educated. We meet these men on the cusp of a transition: moving to a new school, taking the next step in a relationship, buying a house. Whether it's junior high or a mortgage, "the next big thing" looms like a great wall over which the characters cannot see and whose vastness inhibits their desire to overcome.

"It seems too real, too soon, we said, like we should keep looking just to be sure despite all the research we'd already done."

That scene comes from "Night Terrors," in which a young couple come to terms with their reluctance to make an offer on a house because of a strange omen: When the Realtor showed them the property, they found a dead bird outside the back door.

Although many of the stories seem fairly straightforward, there's a discomfiting strangeness that's both deep and dark. Burch is particularly adroit at rendering these scenes so that they don't seem strange to their protagonists, and the dislocation can be dizzying.

The story "Fire in the Sky" is an arresting example. The set-up is right out of a buddy comedy: A group of friends gathers for a bachelor party the night before the groom's wedding. The protagonist decides to return for the wedding in his hometown by car. He intends to drive cross-country and take in all that America has to offer, but that's not what happens:

"Once I got on the road though, my plans to see the country fell away. I couldn't help it, barely felt in control of my car at all. The driving felt good, the road pulling me forward, not wanting to let go. I stopped only for food and gas and then, by the time it was too late and dark to continue, a cheap motel room."

Propelled by forces he can't explain, he rushes across the country to find his friends more or less unchanged. Dressed in their wedding-day tuxedos, they kick off the bachelor-party festivities by setting off a small arsenal of fireworks, a tradition from their more rambunctious days.

"Try two mortars, twisting their wicks together. Two mortars and two packages of bottle rockets. One mortar and three packages, four, five, as many as can be crammed in, the just-right number of sticks to fit the exact diameter of the mortar tube."

You don't need an advanced degree in literature to see that this isn't going to end well. I don't want to give anything away, but suffice to say, this isn't an Adam Sandler movie.

After a trip to the hospital, the protagonist leaves with the other wedding guest who has also moved away. They end up at a bar and order a pitcher of beer, and instead of talking about the terrible thing that has happened, they tell old stories about other nights, other hijinks, as if to reassure themselves that everything will be OK even though they both know that nothing will ever be the same.

The story's ending resonates on so many levels. "Fire in the Sky" speaks to the lack of connection the protagonist feels about a place that is home in name only. He yearns for such a place yet runs from the obligations of being part of a community, the responsibilities of connectedness.

As themes go, "you can't go home again" is neither groundbreaking nor new, but Burch is on to something here. His protagonist is educated, self-aware and has good intentions, but I think his reluctance to accept the larger issues that attend the accident says something about our society's inability to deal with the aftermath of tragedy.

We like to think of ourselves as problem-solvers, as being good in a crisis, but I don't think that's true anymore. In fact, we have repeatedly shown that we are incapable of addressing problems that other societies have successfully solved. Instead of directly dealing with issues that have created an epidemic of violence, we declare that they are "too real, too soon" and commit to further study and additional research.

With Backswing, Burch reminds us that things can always get darker for those who flee from the real.

[Kevin Maloney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Backswing is a 4th of July barbecue where your dad accidentally sets his hand on fire. A first kiss that ends with your girlfriend’s teeth falling out. Something’s not right in Aaron Burch’s America, and that’s what makes this collection so riveting. The stories alternate between nostalgic realism and Kafkaesque horror. The best stories do both, like “Church Van,” where the protagonist tries to reclaim a piece of his churchgoing past and inadvertently becomes a hermetic, freakshow saint. With his beautifully curated literary journal Hobart and this fierce collection, Aaron Burch stands at the forefront of the next generation of American writers.

[Aaron Burch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is super good, you guys!!
(I mean... there's a weak story or three, but OVERALL, it's super good.)

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a haunting quality to the stories in Backswing. A gnawing loneliness, the sort of quiet existential ache you feel deep in your chest sometimes. Each story seems to have an undercurrent of emotional tension that continues to build but never quite breaks, leaving the reader with a vague uneasiness and sense of disquiet. Some standouts for me were Flesh and Blood, Night Terrors, The Stain, and Prestidigitation (I particularly enjoyed the bits of magical realism in these last two). Really enjoyed this story collection!

[Amy Amy]

One of the best things I've ever acquired through ill gotten gains. Can't wait to come across more now that I know what/who I'm looking for.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Backswing, Aaron Burch
Queen’s Ferry Press
ISBN-13: 978-1938466304
$16.95, 214 pages

Backswing, a mix of Raymond Carver-esque slice-of-life and the dystopia of The Twilight Zone, is the debut full-length collection of fourteen short stories from Aaron Burch, editor of the literary journal Hobart. Each story is told from a male point of view—a twenty-first century man or boy trying to figure out what the hell is going on around here anyway, frantically chasing the next and the next and the next without realizing that, as the cliché goes: Life is not the destination, it’s the journey. Clichés usually become such for a reason, yes? The cover art of Backswing reminds me of Jim Hightower’s There’s Nothing In the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos, and many of the characters in this collection are always practicing something—golf swings, sleight of hand, Tae Kwon Do—chasing perfection while simultaneously hugging that stripe in the middle of the road, bewildered and terrified of choosing. Decisions are hard; perfection is harder. You can’t get there from the middle of the road.

“Flesh and Blood” is the story of Ben, a pubescent boy uprooted from his home and moved halfway across the country when his father takes a new job. I alternately smiled and sniffled my way through this one, eloquent with pre-adolescent yearning to understand (everything, anything); to survive hormonal turmoil (for instance, is it gay of him to notice how ridiculously blue Bret Michaels’s eyes are?); to find your tribe and be recognized as a member—of belonging. I grinned and wished I could’ve given Ben a high-five (which would have mortified him—adults are so embarrassing) at the conclusion of his tale. Near the end of this collection we will meet Ben again as an adult in “The Neighbor” and, unfortunately, he seems to fit right in. An intriguing character, Ben has the potential to carry a novel.

The nameless protagonist of “Fire In the Sky” returns to his hometown to join his college roommates for the wedding of a friend. The reunion is awkward as they try to recreate the past, a (mis)remembered idyllic interlude of all-for-one camaraderie, while attempting to reconcile unrealized dreams and good intentions of eternal friendship that have fallen to the demands of jobs and families and the inertia many of us seem to think is required for responsibility. When the evening ends in tragedy they cannot, literally, run away fast enough.

I am less enamored of the philosophical allegories of “The Stain” and “The Apartment.” In the former, a small cult-like community, living in the equivalent of a sensory deprivation chamber, notices a stain on the road and spends the rest of the story discussing what it might signify. The stain was not there the last time they looked, at least they don’t think it was there, but then they can’t remember how long it’s been since they looked out that window. In “The Apartment,” a man wanders around his apartment building—it looks like his apartment building—trying to find his unit, but he has become so isolated and his life so bland with the constraints of conformity that he cannot distinguish his home from any of the others. Although not heavy-handed, the lessons of these parables are obvious and might have been more affecting if delivered in more accessible settings.

Where Burch really shines is in the stories that begin as Carver and gradually metamorphose, or suddenly fracture, into Lovecraft, often with biblical references. It’s quite the cocktail. There’s the poor man who, upon learning of his brother’s death, succumbs to madness in “Sacrifice” and does just that. Tyler in “Unzipped” is a reassuringly typical teenage boy, mouthing off to his mother and worrying about girls, except for the zipper that appears in his chest one morning.

Burch has a sly, sometimes acerbic humor and an affection for his quirky characters that manages never to slide into indulgence. The individuals populating these stories (bless their hearts) are everyday people dealing with common problems. The alchemy occurs when these ordinary people are rendered extraordinary by deceptively simple yet evocative language that leaves you startled and then comforted, as if Burch has suddenly popped up with a mirror, showing us ourselves. We identify with these characters because they are us. The supposed banality of average lives is no less profound simply because it happens every day. Backswing is a distinctive and accomplished debut, and I look forward to the next collection.

[Meredith Jao · Rating 4 out of 5]

Milling around the 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival Book Fort, I was unaware that the man in front of me was the founder and editor of HOBART: another literary journal and the author of Backswing, the collection of short stories I held in my hands. After a disjointed encounter in which I asked for his recommendation, and Aaron Burch responded that he could not give out a recommendation at that time (as the book was his—a very modest man), I bought it and somewhat guiltily downed the promotional warm whiskey shot that came with the book, which I did not particularly want at eleven A.M.

This is not to say I bought the book out of guilt—Burch’s name has been popping up on my radar for some time, and after reading Backswing it became clear to me that this is a face everyone is going to and should know when casually milling around a festival. The characters in the book are racked with loss and deficiency, and attempt to transform themselves into something better, more hopeful—looking for redemption in their straying lives. Burch’s skill comes with his ability to hover in the moments that are most relatable and human, sometimes even commonplace—in “Fire in the Sky,” for instance: “We weren’t running toward anything, except a destination chosen at random because we could see it from a distance, and we weren’t running away from anything, except whatever was behind us.” Burch’s characters don’t know what they’re doing and neither do we. This much is clear in the first story of the collection, “Scout,” as the narrator’s wife is cheating on him and, after a stretch of built-up rage when he and his wife sit in silence in their garage watching Netflix in separate cars, he feels it best to take out his emotion with a club on a golf ball sweeper at the driving range.

This violence and unrest can be found in almost every story. In “Prestidigitation,” a magician slices open her arm and sews up the cut with her own exposed vein; in “Unzipped,” a boy discovers a zipper running up the length of his chest with no idea what lies beneath until his first kiss reaches beneath his shirt and begins to unzip it; all bodily, personal stories, all uniquely human. The characters often lose a part of themselves, quite literally— in “Flesh & Blood,” a young man named Ben falls from grace on his skateboard and creates a sizeable hole in his jaw, and the narrator of “Fair & Square” pulls out his teeth in the upstairs bathroom of a stranger’s house “to empty [himself] and start anew.”
Things are taken, lost, and sacrificed in Backswing, from simple household objects to teeth or part of a jaw. In “Church Van,” a man is so desperate for this sort of spiritual reunification that he eats the padding from his childhood church van backseat. After his feast, “he could feel every piece of the van inside him,” essentially consuming his own childhood in the form of glass when he starts in on the windshield. It is grotesque in the same manner as the boy with the zipper, but purifying in its own weird way.

Burch’s most intricate and successful instance of world-building is in “The Stain,” where young children who have been conditioned to forget language and the outdoors notice a blood stain on the street outside their window. They remember the word for “stain” almost instantly, but do not know how long ago they had forgotten it, trapped in one room for what is implied to be a large chunk of their lives. The perpetual unrest of “The Stain” is a frightening reminder of our ability to forget. In “The Apartment,” as well, a man stumbles around an apartment building he thinks is his own, but is unable to find his way home. Burch depicts the confusing jumble of life we all experience, but to a frightening degree.

My own world intersects with the protagonist of the story “Fire in the Sky” when he drives from Chicago through Indiana, alongside billboards advertising for “Krazy Kaplan’s” Fireworks. If you live in the Chicago area, you would likely recognize the allure of these signs over the Indiana border, where fireworks are legal to purchase. Maybe you, too, will find a piece of yourself in Backswing—a deeply personal collection of stories colored by adult loss, where forgetting is as violent as prying out your teeth and remembering is sacred.

[Joe Sacksteder · Rating 4 out of 5]

One thing I really admire about this collection is that, while the stories do generally divide into two categories – one of realism, one where some type of fantastical element takes over – the categories work really well together instead of seeming like we have two different books, or old stories mixed with new. Just when I want to say I like the stranger stories better (one reviewer likened them to The Twilight Zone, and this is a good comparison – I say, as a big fan of The Twilight Zone), a story like "The Stain," which is my favorite, I then recall "Flesh and Blood," which is perhaps the most workshoppish story in the collection, but is so poignant, mysterious, and wonderfully underwritten (despite its lenght). Like Eugene Cross's stories, these stories – rather than being based in an epiphany or an inciting drama/climax – often live in the seemingly dead space between big life events. These characters mostly realize that, instead of stasis being a resting and recuperative stage before bigger and better things, it risks simply becoming life itself, what's left of it.

***Read "Night Terrors" with a 103-degree fever if you have the opportunity; it'll scare the shit out of you and make you beg the attention the gods of your youth.

[Matt Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of short stories that ranges from the relatable to the surreal. The author demonstrates a lot of comfort with a broad range of subjects & themes, which was impressive. These stories contain a weird neo-americana feel that borders on satire. Bored suburbanites turning primal, strange dystopian Arks that lead to nothing, even dudes just drinking and playing night golf all give you the sense that these are archtypal stories with a bold new twist.

[Patk Siebel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Call it Suburban Surrealism, call it what you'd like, I'll call it brilliant. Burch explores the pre-millennial generation with acute accuracy—detailing young, self-conscious characters on the fringes of identity and self-discovery. His stories, undeniably American, his language, refreshingly Now, Burch is a writer whose enormous heart we are undoubtedly indebted to. 'Backswing' knocks it out of the park.

[Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the van-eating people, bleeding roads, persons contemplating self-mutilation, magicians, nosy neighbors, and so on, there's something very quiet and subtle about this book. It was especially good at developing a sense of dread and tension out of that apparent calmness. Even the weirdest stories still somehow managed to remain rooted firmly in the real world. Overall, an engaging read. Favorites for me were "Prestidigitation," "Flesh & Blood," "Unzipped," and "Night Terrors."

[Leesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liked this a lot! Flesh & Blood was my fave I think but I truly enjoyed reading all of them. I love reading abt fireworks and oldskool MTV and dates and skateboarding. And Burch's writing is heartfelt even when it could turn empty...when the characters are sad and/or searching. I dig it. Solid work, Burch!

[Caleb Michael Sarvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aaron Burch is a writer with a delicate sense of self. Every story in this collection balances its emotional weight in an off-set way, like those old toy eagles with the heavy beaks that you could rest on your finger without it falling over.

If you like Jeff Parker, Jason Ockert, Sam Lipsyte, then give Aaron a look.

[Ryan Bradford · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection of stories. Burch is really good at navigating between nostalgic tales of growing up, and experimental, cerebral ventures into horror. Surreal Americana, I'd say. My favorites were The Apartment, Unzipped and Night Terrors, but there's not a bad one in the bunch.

[Great Writers Steal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Burch's collection unites fourteen stories that are as powerful as they are entertaining. Writers may be interested to know that the book offers a number of important lessons in craft:

http://www.greatwriterssteal.com/2014...

[Rom Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific story collection! I thoroughly enjoyed reading Backswing. The characters in the collection are unique, complicated, and fully alive. The stories are poignant and wonderfully grotesque. "Train Time" is one story that shines particularly bright.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suburban unrest and body horror, sometimes at once. Dug it a lot.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stuff. I'm not sure what I expected of BACKSWING, but I knew from reviews by admired writer friends that Aaron Burch's work would be great stuff. The stories range from shocking events buried inside quiet nothingness to terrifying potential intensity building to a pensive non-ending. Nothing predictable. All very thought-provoking and well-executed.