I am impressed

Kevin Canty writes with brutal honesty. He is the kind of author who enters characters' heads and talks for them instead of taking a sketcher's position. It is rather surprising that Kevin Canty is described (in another book though) as "...in the tradition of the works of Raymond Carver and Richard Ford...". In fact, I happened to read "Honeymoon" and "Rock springs" simultaneously, one in my office at daytime and one at home at night. The contrast of the two books is just as stark as the the background light. Truly that both smell like desperate and depressing. But Ford's desperation and depression come from the situation, a dark abyss, a dead end. The characters nevertheless hope for something good and bright. It is the gap between the narrated reality and the implied vision that fills the air with darkness that gradually floods over the witnesses - the author, and the readers who watch through the author's eyes. For Canty, the characters simply do not hope, but only desire. Without a third-party 's view, there is no sense of orientation, not a direction called "up" to which one can cast a look . All the darkness comes from the very inside, unpretentious, undisguised, escaping the shaping force of any norms. If one has to trace the tradition of Honeymoon, then maybe Camus. Canty nevertheless adds another layer to Camus: in beyond the mere blindness towards norms, Canty's characters are screaming "don't tell me what I want" and "don't tell me how I feel".

What really reminds me of Camus is the last story in the book "Girlfriend hit by a bus", which is actually the third story I read. The first two are "Tokyo, my love" and "Honeymoon", whose emotions are so imposing for me that fail to impress. I would have given up the book hadn't I read the "Girlfriend hit by a bus". This is almost a O'Henry type's story that operates over a crank, but the spirit is just to the opposite. It is devilishly interesting to compare "Girlfriend hit by a bus" with "The gift of Magi", with both trying to talk about love in a spark towards the very end.

As I read on, the other stories are less of the O'Henry type but still with that kind of grin. Nobody can fool Canty around. He writes about everything improper and let his characters fall freely after some vain struggling. He is peeling what is cultivated and revealing the primitive and the untamed. Nothing but dark, intriguingly dark.