Pure Slaughter Value: Stories

by Robert Bingham

In his extraordinary debut collection, Pure Slaughter Value, Robert Bingham tracks the conscience of a generation that grew up educated, privileged, and starved for meaning. Bingham's strange sense of morbid fancy collides with a gutsy realism; the result is splendid a young man is seduced by his first cousin (or maybe it's the other way around) at her brother's wake ("The Other Family"); a bored couple plot to kill a man during their ski-resort honeymoon ("Marriage Is Murder"); a yuppie banker risks his whole perfect life for an affair with a junkie ("The Fixers"); an insurance-company bounty hunter tracks down walk-aways from drug and alcohol rehab ("Preexisting Condition"); and in the title story, an eleven-year-old boy is caught at the exquisitely uneasy intersection of the safety of childhood play and the pain of grown-up love and longing.These lean, potent stories are utterly original, and yet by turns recall Salinger, in their intellectual acuity, emotional depth, and wicked, dark humor; Fitzgerald, in their vivid chronicling of a new, restless social elite; and the work of "transgressive" writers, in their pervasive sense of the imminent possibility of danger and violence, even in the most civilized surroundings. Above all, the stories in Pure Slaughter Value mark the debut of a striking new literary voice--unsparing, bold, ironic, and true--that will haunt us for a long time to come.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe due to the yuppie culture, it reminds me a bit of Bret Easton Ellis's work. Still, there is something icy in the narratives of these characters that are subline.

[Adam Brunner · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Preexisting Condition" was my favorite story from this collection. James is some kind of insurance company bounty hunter, and his specialty is identifying lost-cause addicts and alcoholics whose wealthy families have taken out large policies to cover their indulgent, high-risk lifestyles. He catches them, reports back to the suits, and policies are cancelled. He works in Saint Paul, MN (my own home town), and circulates through a scene of addicts and alcoholics who have been in and out of what I can only guess is Hazelden -- a nearby rehab facility that the author's family had begged him to try. James's primary haunt is a tweaker pad dubbed "The Home for Chronic Inebriates" -- a clapboard house outside of downtown Saint Paul where junkies and drinkers, many of whom are insured by his "various employers," come to recover from their recoveries. No spoilers here, but the absurdity of this story creates just enough paranoia to make me wonder, does MY insurance company employ goons like this?

Changing gears a bit: There's a line from a David Bazan song -- "Dig my new solution for harnessing depravity" -- and that's exactly what Robert Bingham does with this collection. His characters are depraved, entitled, cruel, careless, selfish, self-destructive, insert your choice adjectives here. But let him into your brain and you'll slowly begin to empathize. Robert Bingham makes cowardly antiheroes somehow appealing.

His good friend Stephen Malkmus eulogized him with the song "Church on White," a reference to the cross-streets of Bingham's manhattan loft where Malkmus had frequently crashed on visits to the city. "Promise me you will always be too awake to be famous, too wired to be safe. All you really wanted was everything plus everything, and the the truth. I only poured you half a line." That last line is contested among people who care about these sorts of things, with most arguing for either "half a line," "half a lie," or "half alive." Malkmus would probably sing it differently on every take, but does it really matter? Each version is sufficiently haunting, just as Bingham's stories are.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re read this for the first time in like 21-22 years. Some stories just seem like lame sketches about over privileged d-bags - others had some action - best was Marriage is Murder about husband and wife who plot and fail to kill a jerk on a ski slope but wind up just injuring him and the girl is impregnated by him. Fun stuff !

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

very 90's...

[Kabir M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories were mostly hit or miss for me. Favs were Marriage is Murder, Bad Stars, & Plus One. I wish the one where the dude’s cousin tries to seduce him was sicker.

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

After being blown away by "Lightning on the Sun," I have to say I was a little let down with this one. I'm usually a fan of short story collections, but these were nothing more than momentary glimpses into the lives of privileged people hellbent on destroying their privileged lives. However, I cut Bingham a lot of slack due to the fact that he was writing about what he knew, what he lived, and the fact that his own self destructive behavior led to an early death, leaving only two published books in his wake. This book was also a good predecessor to "Lightning," obviously a sign of future things to come. Sadly, there will be no more Bobby Bingham books, though.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be honest, I didn't love this collection. I considered stopping after the first few stories, which were filled with thin characters doing mean things I didn't really care about. But before I could let it go, Bingham hit me with a story ("The Other Family") that I enjoyed. So I stuck it out. If I could give it two and a half stars, I would.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If David Berman wrote fiction, he'd be Robert Bingham. Too bad he liked heroin too much. While half the stories in this collection are drug based (induced), all of them are fantastic, portraying characters too afraid to grow up.

[Daisy]

In one of my old journals I mention that I read this. He was someone I knew as a child; his sister and I were friends and we lived in the same building. I read this after he died and now I don't remember anything about it.

[rinne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The language is crisp, and every page explodes for me. This is very refreshing because it seems to me like Oscar Wilde the man came alive and became harsher, more sarcastic, but knows that some day he will spiral out of control...

[The Nike Nabokov · Rating 4 out of 5]

the east coast bret easton ellis maybe? it's unfortunate that he does not have a long career ahead of him...this was near perfect.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really great stories here, also some not-so-great. Averages out to three stars but the book is definitely worth reading.

[Tatiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

lived by the sword, died by the sword. great book - on the edge.

[Chris]

This sure was written in the 1990s.