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Buyer Beware
| Article
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20244 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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7 / 1992 |
1,869 Words |
| Author
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Brian McCombie
Brian McCombie's reviews and essays have appeared widely,
including in Newsweek, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews. |
I LIKE IT BETTER NOW
James B. Hall
Fayetteville, Ark: University of Arkansas Press, 1992
214 pp., $22.95
The short stories in James B. Hall's collection I Like It Better Now present a culture where people are looking for what one character calls "a pure state." The problem they face is finding such a place among all the potential disappointments.
As a whole, the stories suggest that our society--in the broadest sense--can't give us what we need beyond the material. Certain characters do find contentment and emotional stability, but only after discovering a purpose within themselves.
Those who succeed are usually working-class types. Of course, people from the middle class are looking for happiness, too, but are hampered by their reliance on a culture neck-deep in consumerism. Unlike their blue-collar counterparts, who seem to have accepted their personal limitations, the middle-class characters in these stories have ideas of success that have been shaped by advertising and the pages of House Beautiful. That they can't reach these goals leads to their disillusion.
Which is not to say that I Like It Better Now is an indictment of materialism. The people who gain some satisfaction in life usually do so within the context of their work. But, they've been able to find a balance between the demands of a commercial society and the dictates of the heart, though offsetting one against the other has its costs.
American Dreams?
Such a balance between society and the human heart has been destroyed in a story like "In the Eye of the Storm." Depford, an advertising copywriter, lives in the gray, steel-mill town of Gary, Indiana. His wife has recently left him because of his compulsive behavior, the storm of the title.
Depford, though, has had his successes at work, where he writes ad copy directly from the product while staring at a bottle of Sweet-Mo or an illuminated plastic worm for night fishing. Hapless Depford, however, feels compelled to purchase every item he writes copy for. His life functions smoothly enough when the items are small and relatively inexpensive, but, by the start of the story, he's
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