Two books by Brian Ames

Eighty-Sixed: A Compendium of the Hapless

Word Riot Press, www.wordriot.org, 2004

Head Full of Traffic

Pocol Press, Clifton, Virginia, 2004

If his two latest short story collections are indicative, Brian Ames ’85 is a prolific writer of unsettling talent. Releasing both Head Full of Traffic and Eighty-Sixed: A Compendium of the Hapless in 2004, Ames packs 22-plus pieces into each collection. Granted, many of the works run only a few pages, but these are stories brief only in word length. Rich language and dense atmospheres are Ames’s literary tools, and he manages to convey entire tableaus in single sentences. “He doesn’t fully comprehend meter or rhythm, only understands the voltage through his cortex, manifested in sudden spastic knee bouncing, rapid articulation, back and forth, of his head.” And thus, the first story in Eighty-Sixed, “The Man Who Loves Jimi Hendrix,” is a harbinger of the rest of the collection. From story to story, Ames drastically shifts beats, not allowing the reader to predict what thematic notes he will strike next. This discordant quality drives the collection along. A writer sells fake anecdotes to addicts and drunks to recount during 12-step meetings; a modern-day Cyclops is stood up on his wedding day; Ajax, Hector, and Dionysus make appearances. It’s as if in many of these stories ancient gods and heroes are manifested as frail humans, unaware of their divinity. Guns and weapons also play a large part in Eighty-Sixed. In the story “Physics Package,” a man purchases a black market sidewinder missile and discovers it growing like a living thing into an intercontinental doomsday device. “Van found in this a powerful metaphor for coming miracles.” Dinosaurs, dodos, and other extinct creatures are illustrated on the book’s cover alongside a hapless human. Ames seems to be saying our continued existence on this planet is far from assured.

In Head Full of Traffic, ostensibly labeled a collection of horror pieces, Ames skillfully adds his own flair to the genre. In “Carnival,” a crazed carnie imagines an apocalyptic Midway. “Weeb staggers away from the Fun House, swivels that cornpone head when he hears tearing metal. Carriages of the Octopus rocket into space, occupants trailing one long scream. To his right, up against one of the Port-a-Potties, a carnie’s smacking a skank’s head with a ring-toss bottle. The glass slowly reshapes the skank’s melon with each blow, as if his head were fashioned from children’s clay.” The savage yet humorous prose sets an intoxicating mood until the reader, like Weeb, cannot distinguish delusion from reality. In many of the pieces in Head Full of Traffic, Ames relies a bit heavily on the horrific denouement to close the deal, as in “Istvan the Painter,” where a woman is ravished by the eyes of the title character, and realizes she carries his demonic spawn in a forced epiphany: “’Mama,’ it seemed to gurgle.’” Not as psychologically subtle an ending as in, say, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, but effective in what the piece is attempting to accomplish.

Overall, Ames doesn’t allow his spectacular plot elements to overtake the conflicts of character nor the line-by-line writing itself, which is always a hallmark of fine fiction. It’s obvious Ames is passionate about language, and between both collections he skillfully manages to entertain and disturb at the same time.

—Lee Minh McGuire ’03

Lee Minh McGuire is working on an M.F.A. in fiction writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.