(also reviewed)
Order BOTTOM FEEDERS here
Kind of funny to think of Mr. Tibbs now. I can't remember a word he ever spoke, only his barbecue. He was a kind man, I know. He must've had kind eyes and a kind voice and a kind smile considering how often he invited my daddy and I out fishing, but I remember none of that. (THREE FISHERMEN)
If experience taught me something, it's that most things quickly lose their flavor if too many people love them the same way. The weight of success and expectations can make anything beautiful go sideways. For that reason, I am hesitant to share with you my latest discovery: the fiction of Cameron Pierce. I want his stories to remain my special thing, that place where only I and a few other adventurous readers can go, but it would be selfish of me. Pierce's short story collection OUT LOVE WILL GO THE WAY OF THE SALMON is, simply put, one of the best things I've read this year. I don't know what's up with short story writers in 2015, but they are seriously bringing it.
There are two different Cameron Pierces writing in OUR LOVE WILL GO THE WAY OF THE SALMON. A horror writer with surreal, fishing trip nightmare visions narrating his stories in third person and a quieter, simpler author for whom the act of fishing is both a complex prism and a source of allegories to filter the human experience through. I liked both guys a lot, but I preferred the latter. Not that Pierce's nightmare visions are unoriginal or anything, they WILL stay with you after you finish them and they would've been the turning stone of any lesser short story collection, but Cameron Pierce's fishing stories are something special. They're something I don't think anything but his pen can produce.
See, I'm no fishing enthusiast but many people have tried to initiate me to the sophisticated pleasures of the activity, I sort of understand what is theoretically beautiful and bonding about it. Pierce's story SHORT OF LUNDY, for example, pried a tender smile out of me because it explores the father/son bond without forcing any emotion or even clinging to the safe short of reality. It uses fishing as a bridge into a mythological universe. THREE FISHERMEN uses more traditional approach, but Cameron Pierce's understated sense of humor and keen observational skills make the story special anyway. I don't really know Cameron Pierce outside of his stories, but I'm pretty sure he has an understated sense of humor and keen observational skills. Great fiction will do that to you, it'll give you the awkward impression of intimately knowing whoever wrote it.
Remember, you chose this for survival. You never did this for the glory or the status or the money. No, you chose this so that next time someone tried to mug your ass or hurt your baby sister, you could fight back. Survival. (DROP THE WORLD)
Perhaps the short story that pried the uncanniest reaction out of me in OUR LOVE WILL GO THE WAY OF THE SALMON is DROP THE WORLD, the only boxing story in the collection, originally published in The Big Click. I can literally count on the fingers of one hand the number of interesting boxing/fighting stories I've read over the last ten years and the reason is simple: people are obsessed with the idea of winning. The romantic concept that boxing is a metaphor for fighting your demon and that therefore you have to win to make it worthwhile. Reality is more complicated than that and I can tell you from reading DROP THE WORLD that Cameron Pierce has intimate knowledge of boxing. It is much closer to the experience anybody will have stepping in the ring than 99% of what's out there and not less beautiful because of its realism.
The short fiction of Cameron Pierce caught me off guard. I though it would be good because editors ** often are crafty and experienced storytellers, but Pierce's mastery of understatement, nimble poetry and uncanny generousness help shape a powerful and thoroughly unique identity to his writing. OUR LOVE WILL GO THE WAY OF THE SALMON was a journey that moved me from many smiles to all-out laughter to the verge of tears at least once. I often speak against short stories because I feel they are written (and sold) for the wrong reasons, but Cameron Pierce has such command over the form that I could see him find success with it. Turns out fishing IS a prism through which you can filter the human experience after all.
BADASS
BADASS
* Which you'll notice is the author's ''thing'' if you take the time to browse his Facebook page for a couple minutes.
** Pierce is editor-in-chief of Lazy Fascist Press.
** Pierce is editor-in-chief of Lazy Fascist Press.
