From 1982 to 2012, the themes in Kennedy’s New & Selected Stories
have remained consistent: meaning and purpose, good and evil, loneliness, alienation,
isolation, the endless quest for love, the domineering nature of fear itself and
the certainty that nearly all of us have a secret life that shames us. Men and women
in these stories are often seen struggling with inner demons and compulsions. They
routinely give into impulsive behavior while trying haplessly to mend their lives.
In most of the stories making up Kennedy’s powerful 2013 collection, human
beings (primarily men) are laboring to discover the point of it all, life, death,
happiness, sorrow, sex. Usually, their striving centers on finding someone
or some thing to love, but very often what they thought might enhance life,
ends up diminishing it instead. This is what happens in “Bonner’s Women.”
Bonner sees an old lover in a bar and feels embarrassed by the intimacy they used
to share. He wishes the affair had never happened; he wishes he had “stayed
home with his wife and children where he should have been” (257).
You should hear what they say
About you: cheat cheat cheat. (258)
Guilt is the aftereffect of Bonner’s betrayal of his wife. The sex he had
with his lover was nothing exceptional. But adultery itself is exceptional, at least
in Bonner’s mind. Truth is he now has the burden of a secret life that his
family must never know about. Consequently, instead of enriching his life, the affair
leaves a melancholy unease that persistently troubles him. Bonner thinks that people
go into love affairs telling themselves that “there is no such thing as cheating,
you only live once and must not rob yourself of the few small pleasures available”
(259). But what cheaters often find is a great smudge on their lives that will never
ever rub off.
Kennedy’s men invariably adore women and are quick to fall in love-lust. In
“Kansas City,” an aging Lothario named Johnny Fry sees a girl in a store,
a “hardbody in baggie jeans and flannel shirt” (273). He fantasizes
about her and about the possibility that she is the one he has been searching for.
“His entire life might deflect off this chance moment” (273). But ultimately
it comes to nothing and Fry’s heart is suspended in its own tenderness as he
moves on, ever longing for the woman who will fulfill his needs.
Story follows story exposing our illusions, while also embracing those same illusions,
accepting them for what they are—a means of coping. In “A Cheerful Death,”
Jastovic is determined to celebrate life despite the fact that ruin is closing in
on him. Jastovic is an income tax cheater and the FBI is on his trail. He leaves
for Las Vegas and high living, spending his ill-gotten gains. It’s a humorous,
ironic, on-the-run story of a man determined to be cheerful in a world full of fractured,
uncaring people. The cheater applauds the pure joy of simply being alive in a world
where the products of nature, whether human or otherwise, couldn’t be more
indifferent to him, couldn’t care less if he laughs or cries, feels pain and
sorrow, lives or dies. Cheerfully, he bears it all and cheerfully thumbs his nose
at the silence of the universe. It’s a funny story—if you like dark
humor.
Several tales in the collection deal with non-conformists addicted to exploring
the outer-limits of freedom. These are people not inclined to follow the dictates
of society, and most of them will always be on the edge, pushing boundaries, opening
up dangerous worlds of ideas, new visions, maybe even sick visions, and there will
always be an establishment trying to eliminate or muzzle them. Which is what happens
in “Landing Zone X-Ray.” An Army deserter named Danny is kept hidden
by his best friend for six months before he’s found and brutally taken into
custody and ends up in prison. The narrator thinks about never seeing Danny again.
Danny silenced, and now many years have passed and perhaps he’s dead:
How arbitrary it all seems. Danny’s life, mine. The fact that a nation, a
president makes a bad choice, thousands of people die violent deaths. ...I am old
enough now to glimpse that place up ahead where my days will end, a natural death
probably, although who knows? Perhaps I will be killed by someone shaped into a
murderer by poverty, misery, the chance turning of events. Or perhaps not. Perhaps
I will die as quietly as fall becomes winter, a withering. Fading. (338)
Kennedy’s title story, “Getting Lucky,” speaks to the linked motifs
of meaning and purpose. The main character is Lucas “Lucky” Bohannon.
We meet him in New York, where he attends an award ceremony and wins first place
at the National Magazine Awards. “Lucky” is on top of the world. For
the moment, things are as good as they ever get. The next day he flies home and
finds a party waiting for him, arranged by Lotte-Mia, the woman he loves. She has
been with him fifteen years. She is a writer also, but not as prolific and award-winning
as Lucky is. Throughout the party she is standoffish, doesn’t want to kiss
Lucky or even hug him. He doesn’t understand what has happened. Why isn’t
she happy for him? Everyone else is patting him on the back, shaking his hand, kissing
his cheek, offering sincere congratulations. But not Lotte-Mia.
At one point Lucky tries to get her to tell him what is wrong:
Lotte-Mia laughs—to his ear it seems a dark note—and looks at Bohannon
with a smile that is not friendly. “The little man,” she says, “with
the big ass,” and steps past him and is gone. (153)
When he wakes the next morning she isn’t there. Instead, there are four
handwritten pages whereon she has calculated that he owes her seventy thousand dollars
in back rent. She also says she wants him to put a bed in his office. Another note
follows days later in which she tells him to “Get Out.” Lucky tells
himself:
Things change so fast sometimes. Look away for a second and people who once were
bound by love are enemies forever. (156)
So what does “Getting Lucky” mean in this story? It could mean that
winning the big prize was lucky for him. But it could also mean that Lotte-Mia decided
she didn’t love him anymore and loathed that he won the award and decided
she would get him for it. He scours his mind trying to understand what
happened to her. Could his sudden fame and good fortune have made her so envious,
so jealous that she now actually hates him? Surely she’ll come back and tell
him. He waits. And waits. Finally she threatens him with eviction. So he finds an
apartment close by and rents it. He moves his furniture in. Gets drunk. But continues
to wait for her explanation. He ponders the meaning of it all, the purpose. Sometimes
things happen to us and we never know exactly why. He remembers Sophocles saying:
Do not think that you are in command. And if you start to think it, remember
how when you were in command you crafted your own destruction.
Did I craft this destruction? (163)
Kennedy’s stories tell us we are commonly alienated and easily segregated
and we often turn to what we call love and create of it a means of circumventing
our isolation. But love can’t save us. The ultimate insight that comes through
time after time is that no matter what we do, no matter how many churches or cults
we join, no matter what gods we make of charismatic figures who wish to control
us for their own ends, no matter what stone figures we worship or rituals we perform,
we are left with who or what we have made of ourselves. We are products of the baggage
we have acquired over the course of our lives. Some of that baggage makes us dance.
Some of it weighs us down.
Getting Lucky is bursting with the manic trappings of life, its humor, its
loneliness, its emotion, its terror, love-found, love-lost, love of love itself—which
is partly a love of being alive. There are no heroes in Kennedy’s stories. And no
philosophers who have answers. There are only human beings, you and I and others,
confused and full of questions, struggling to create a reality we can live with, while
clinging to illusions that support our survival. Without them, naked existence itself
would soon overwhelm us.
—Previously published in South Carolina Review
(Fall 2013)
is the author of six novels, and recipient of an AWP Award for Best Novel
(The Book of Mamie), a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Award for Favorite Book of the year
(The Altar of the Body), a Milwaukee Magazine Best Short
Story of the Year Award, a Pushcart Honorable Mention—and, most recently,
a 2013 Indie Book Award (Minnesota Memoirs was chosen as Winner in the
Short Story category).
Brenna’s latest books include a memoir, Murdering the Mom (Wordcraft
of Oregon, 2012), and a collection of short stories, Minnesota Memoirs
(Serving House Books, 2012).
His novel, The Holy Book of the Beard, which he says is one of his favorites,
was re-released in 2010 (New American Press). A New York Times review of
this book says, “It is loaded with all the ingredients of an underground
classic...it is nearly impossible to put down.”
Brenna’s stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Cream City
Review, SQ, Agni, The Nebraska Review, The Literary Review, The Madison Review,
New Letters, and numerous other literary venues. His work has been translated
into six languages.
www.duffbrenna.com