Wearing Dad's Head

by Barry Yourgrau

Brief dreamlike sketches deal with a safari in the suburbs, a mother struck by lightning, a cow wearing lingerie, and a visit from dead parents

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Writer-performer Barry Yourgrau is author of "A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane: Stories" (new edition, May '17). His other books of surreal brief tales include "Wearing Dad's Head," "Haunted Traveller," and "The Sadness of Sex," in whose movie version he starred.

Audio of story, "Honky-Tonk,"" from "A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane" is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKPPj...

Barry is also the author of a memoir, "Mess." He has appeared on MTV and NPR, and workshopped at Sundance Theatre Lab.

Born in South Africa, he lives in New York and Istanbul and travels widely.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many years ago when I first read this book of Barry Yourgrau’s collection of outlandishly imaginative surreal, fabulist micro-fictions, I thought his writing was too good to be true.

I just did complete another rereading and I can assure you – Barry’s book is, in fact, too good to be true. But, thanks to the blessings of the gods of our childhood dreams and our weird, hallucinogenic visions, we can read and appreciate his stories as well as marvel at his ability to turn a vivid, highly visual phrase.

Wearing Dad’s Head is one of Barry’s first published books and has a decidedly Freudian flavor, his mom and dad, especially his dad, having a predominant place in nearly all these wacky, sexually playful fictional snappers. I could write until I’m blue in my or my own dad’s face or my fingers turn blue and wash away in the bathtub à la one of Barry’s stories, so I will simply cite the opening of two of my favorite pieces.

UDDERS
I get involved in a game of strip poker. The others have somehow persuaded a cow to join in. The cow stands stupid and uncomfortable in the cigar smoke. My tablemates ply it with booze. It is decked out in a pathetic catalogue of bedroom apparel. Naturally it always plays a losing hand. It can’t manage with its garments, and everyone makes full use of the opportunity to handle it, in the name of assistance. I watch in disgust as a beefy bank-manager type fumbles with a lacy garter on the cow’s flank. His hands are trembling. “Will you look at those udders, will you look at those udders,” he keeps mumbling. His face is flushed crimson. ------ Here is a youtube video of Barry performing this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QeVu...

MAGIC CARPET
My father arrives on a magic carpet. “Come on,” he says. Sitting cross-legged together, we lift magically into the air. We glide over the backyard. Our rectangular shadow passes over the sheets my mother is hanging up. She rushes out from them to the back gate. She wave at us and, shouts indistinctly. I lean over, excited and scared, and wave cautiously down to her. She signals frantically for me to come back. My father gives a lazy, sardonic laugh and opens and shuts a fat, much-ringed hand in farewell to my mother’s diminishing, tiny figure. She dwindles to a speck.



As a nod to my love of Barry’s stories and encouragement for any reader of this review to write some of your own imaginative micro-fiction, here is one of mine relating to my own boyhood and relationship with my father:

PARADE OF THE PAST
It’s back again, the same old dream, the one where I’m standing on the sidewalk of Main Street in the small shore town where I grew up and haven’t lived in decades. The street is filled with water – I might as well be in Venice – and here they come as if in a bizarre Fourth of July parade, floats or whatever they are, motoring down the watery street.

First there is a gigantic turtle, every bit as large as a truck, paddling with its head and the top of its shell above water, carrying on its back a band of giggling kids in bathing suits. The kids are obviously having a blast and they all wave to me.

Next, there’s a float labeled “Dads”, where a bunch of blue-collar, middle-age men I recognize from my youth, including my own dad, are sitting in easy chairs, surrounded by beautiful blonde, tanned, bathing beauties. The dads smile and wave to me, knowing they’ve never had it so good.

This passes and the third float comes into view. Here we have the people who tried their best to make my life hell, including the eighth-grade bully, an overbearing buffoon manager and a sinister coworker. Their float is really done up – balloons, swan figurines, streamers, glitter and a banner that reads: “The Bad Guys”. They are all smirking and, like the kids and the dads, wave to me until their float passes out of sight.

What makes this dream all the more puzzling is that I’m standing there, trying to figure out if this is really a holiday parade or the normal flow of weekday traffic. I’m inclined to think it’s nothing out of the ordinary, because, unlike a real parade, there are no spectators lining the streets; quite the contrary, I’m the only one present.

[Aravindakshan Narasimhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My homage to this brilliant writer :

A man, a chicken and a broom.

A man rushes to an inn, trips down crashing on to the floor, instead of blood his hairs fall out, a composed chicken observing it coldly walks casually towards him and collects the individual strands dilgiently, and elegantly stitches to make a broom.
It sweeps the floor of the inn with it and through it he saw the world from then on. He was but a broom.
The bemused spectators went to lift the corpse as few lifted their hats to the chicken.
And one man remarked: Phew! He should have waited a bit longer to have had his first drink. Pity he can't drink anymore, the broom.

[Melki · Rating 5 out of 5]

The next morning, at dawn, I'm led out in manacles into the chill air and up the wooden steps erected under the jail wall. My knees keep starting to sag. I recognize my mother's large, festive sun hat in the throng of bloodthirsty early-risers. A manicured hand waves enthusiastically to me. I acknowledge it in miserable embarrassment, wiggling my fingers in front of my thighs. "Give 'em hell" I hear her cry. "Mom, come on -" I murmur. The hangman raises the noose. I feel its dreadful weight touch my shoulders. I gasp at the shock. A bouquet of flowers arcs into the air and plops at my feet. "For Christ's sake, mom!" I sputter. I look up wildly for her valediction. But she is gabbing away under her sun hat to a neighbor, pointing up at me with animated pride, as the trap door suddenly opens.*

I'm pretty sure that never in the history of short fiction have Mom and Dad been so thoroughly put through their paces. In Yourgrau's tales, besides the usual daily routines of sex, work and eating, parents get struck by lightning, gamely fend off pirates and nonchalantly transition into the opposite sex.

The stories vary in length from one paragraph to a few pages. If you've got an imagination and don't insist that everything you read stay rooted in reality, you'll probably get a kick out of these bites of surrealistic fiction. Though most of the tales are pretty whimsical, the stories dealing with dearly departed parents, whether they arrive via soap bubble for a quick visit or are seen during a more routine graveyard encounter, are really quite touching.

"When I get low," my mother says beside me, "I just lift up my eyes." She indicates the expanse of the heavens. "I gaze up there for a long, long time every night," she says. "The stars are my friends. Each one of them has a soul, you know. I've given them names." "I believe they already have names," I murmur. "Not my names," she replies. "That one over there, shining for all its worth, that's you. That big gleaming greenish thing near it, that's your father. . . ." "And which one are you?" I ask. "Oh, I haven't quite made up my mind," she says. "I'm up there all right. But it's a very special one, my particular star. Very special indeed, you can bet your boots on it." Together we scan the constellations. My mother exhibits a hand, wavering and pale. "I'm a star already, just look at me," she says.**

I love the idea of renaming stars after loved ones. After all, Carl Sagan says that we are made of "starstuff." I'll be looking for you in the sky tonight, mom and dad.




*From Traitors
**From Grass

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my lord, what a beautiful work of art. Hilarious, grotesque and poetic. One of those gems I tripped over in a used bookstore. If the cover (not the stupid one with the headless hat), first story, and title didn't sell me immediately (they did), then the last sentence of the author's bio on the back clinched it: "His reading act, performed at all the right Manhattan art haunts and beyond, blends literary stand-up comedy and surreal oedipal drama." WTF? Amazing! Also, the quote from Roy Blount, Jr. is very apropos (I hate that word for some reason, and use it grudgingly): "Reading Barry Yourgrau is addictive, like putting peanuts in your nose and they turn into these spaceships or something." I've gotta find his other two works listed in this book, based solely on their titles: "The Sadness of Sex" and "A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane"

[Jorgen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book!

I love that Barry is able to take the hidden impulses and embarrassments of everyday life and make them fantastic and hilarious.

I love his way of just starting a story in the middle in a way that let's the reader know exactly what's going on and where you are and what crazy rules the world has w/o going through as many words of exposition as the entire rest of the story.

For example, the story "Pirates" (my favorite), starts thusly

I am taken prisoner by pirates. They put me in irons but release me after I agree to join them.

Exposition done. Two sentences that bring you up to date with where you are and what's going on, and your off to the races for the rest of the 4 1/4 page story.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishing collection of surrealist short (and short-short) stories, usually told in first-person present.

[Dave Cullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an imagination. (The title is literal, not figurative.) A delightful read. There is nothing like this.

And it really develops as it goes, too.

[Janis Minton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary collection of short stories. Yourgrau is an alarming, exhilarating, hallucinatory tour de force, an uncmmon diagnostician of the curiosities of the human heart.

[Emily Detrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read anything that is more like dreaming while awake and conscious.

[Curt Barnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointment. The premise, short entries that recount or simulate dreams, was very promising—in fact it stimulated entertaining ideas of my own—but here, too many of them are no more than tableaux. Even with a short, short story you need a structure that leads somewhere, not merely stops. "The Revolt," for those who've read the book, I liked best; there is a kind of dénoument or climax. I've been reading, as it happens, several books of extremely short entries that include "The Book of Disquiet" by Fernando Pessoa, and the Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, and I respect the fact that you need to feel that even the briefest entry justifies your time. Many of these could have been written by undergraduates clued into the premise. I'm reminded that a recount of your dreams is usually something not even your spouse wants to hear. Dreams meander, that is what they do, and unless you're a stunning stylist, you'll land with a thud if you don't have a big finish. Someone here liked "A Man Jumps out of an Airplane," another Yourgrau collection; but I'll scan it in a bookstore before I endure another of these exercises.

[Michael Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barry Yourgrau's "Wearing Dad's Head" is a cross between waking up and remembering an absurd dream and watching a surrealist film by Luis Bunuel. It is made up of 40 short pieces that whimsically explore love, parental relations, and such creations as a cow dressed in lingerie playing strip poker. I really enjoyed the book, and while all of the stories don't quite hit the mark, most of them do. Recommended for fans of the offbeat.

[Michelle Solotar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yourgrau is a master of short, beautifully-crafted, imaginative stories that will pique your interest and inspire you to read more. If you are a fiction reader, do not miss this short, lovely book. That is also true if you are a writer, for Yourgrau's writing will motivate you to get moving on your own material. Although this isn't a new book, it is well worth seeking out. You will be tempted to rush through it, but take your time and savor this lovely prose.

[Thany · Rating 2 out of 5]

usually i dig super short stories but the staccato writing fell flat and there were too many loose ends left untied. meh.

**read in response to 2022 popsugar reading challenge prompt “a book with a palindromic title”** [this was a stretch, lol. “dad” was the only palindrome i had on my entire bookshelf…”]

[Jason Madsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book decades ago. My teenage mind at the time couldn’t comprehend just how ahead of its time it was. In today’s world of short attention spans, it’s the perfect book to be able to pick up and put down. I don’t know if it’s prose, poetry…or both, but surreal micro stories within are fantastic.

[Stacy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This reads too closely to the nightmares that I don't want to have.

[Peejay(Pamela) · Rating 4 out of 5]

An odd collection of short stories that feels at times surreal, alarming, and introspective. As if dreams have fallen onto the page from out of a sleeper’s head.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yourgrau is very accomplished and this collection was an indisputable link in the metafictional chain that begins with Kafka, includes Barthelme and Coover and--more recently--Ben Loory. These are early stories and a little repetitive and claustrophobic. He lacks the reach and range of Loory--but Loory no doubt stands on Yourgrau's shoulders, as does anyone who practices flash-fiction.

[tara bomp · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best stories are generally the longer ones. A lot of the shorter ones either feel too ridiculous for no reason or just aren't really that interesting. There are quite a few cool ideas though and when he stretches out his development of the ideas and relations between the characters are pretty nice. In general the mood is nice and given that the stories come pretty thick and fast you're never really left stuck on a crappy idea. There's too much that's pretty eh to give it a high score but if you enjoy surreal short fiction (very short sometimes - many of these are about a page long) you'll enjoy reading this. Pretty quick read too.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very weird and not in a good way. I've had this book on my shelves for a long time - it has a print date of 1987. Probably then, this book of very short stories was cutting edge and hip. Sadly for the writer, they didn't age well. It was a chore to get through them. I'd give it a pass.

[Dave]

Carol recomended this book.

[B.C.]

An interesting collection of surreal short-short stories.

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://5cense.com/14/360.htm

[JAMIE · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intriguing from start to finish. I love how the story is also told in short stories. Great read!

[Nathaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating collection of stories