Jim Christy

[Review of Real Gone first appeared in Quill and Quire; review of Tight Like That first appeared in The Danforth Review.]

In addition, I was on the novel jury for the 2006 ReLit Awards and Jim Christy's The Redemption of Anna Depree made the final three short list at my instigation. I see now the book is selling for $48.95 on Amazon, and, gosh, I have no idea where my copy is.
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Real Gone
by Jim Christy
Quattro Books, 2010

Tight Like That
by Jim Christy
Anvil Press, 2003

Real Gone is a meandering novella about a draft dodger in the 1960s who moves to Canada. Written by one-time American Jim Christy, who relocated to Canada in 1968, the book reads like a memoir.

The narrator, also named Jim Christy, reconstructs a year or so of his life when he was in his early twenties, driving around America with buddies and girlfriends, contemplating the cruelty of bigots and the naïveté of hippies, getting arrested and drafted, deciding to flee north, and taking part in a murder trial.

Written in Christy’s customary plainspoken prose style, Real Gone presents a portrait of an America polarized between revolutionaries and racists. The narrator fashions himself as an anarchist and has no kind words to say about the crazies on either side. If he identifies with any group, it’s the black underclass. He has a deep knowledge of old time rhythm and blues, studies at a black college, and is the only white guy to attend a lecture by Muhammad Ali on the Nation of Islam. (Ali shakes Christy’s hand and hams it up for the cheering crowd while whispering in his ear, “What you doin’ here, boy?”).

Increasingly, Christy has no answer to that question. He attempts to go to Atlanta for the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral, dodging race riots along the way, but ends up in a North Carolina jail for being out on the street after curfew.

America, he concludes, has no place for the likes of him. Before he can leave, though, he’s called as a character witness at a good friend’s trial for murder. The trial goes better than expected, but the accused man is still convicted. Christy heads for Canada, and the book comes to a sudden close.

Ultimately, this slim volume is more first act than complete story. Canada, in this fiction, is the Promised Land, or at least not the Land of Chaos. Canadian readers may find this storyline comforting, but the mythology of the 1960s as the most important decade – and Canada as the Great, Sane, Liberated Place – is more than stale. Entering Canada, Jim Christy (protagonist) leaves behind the outrageous U.S., but this doesn’t offer the reader narrative satisfaction.

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In Tight Like That, Jim Christy's short story collection, the world is also lovely and freakish. My mother read this book before I had a chance to read it. She liked it. It isn't the sort of book I thought my mother would like. My mother reads Ruth Rendell. Jim Christy is closer to Charles Bukowski than he is to a British mystery writer. I think what my mother liked about these stories was their lack of pretense. Tight Like That presents fourteen stories about characters caught on the rough edges of society, but his characters are not caught in bitterness, nor are they presented as symbols of injustice and oppression. Christy tells worthy stories, honest stories, well-written stories, too.

Well-written in a plain style, it is perhaps necessary to say, since Christy's writing is the type that high-minded literary readers might distrust. The writing may appear naive, it may appear unaware of it connotations, but it is not (in fact, Christy often lulls the reader into expecting one outcome before revealing another). Christy's storytelling is keen-minded, clever, and always one step ahead of cliché. A bit like a British mystery writer, one is tempted to say.

The back cover of Tight Like That says:

The stories in Jim Christy's latest collection span time and space, taking us from the depression-era Deep South to the modern-day commute. Private eyes. Old drunks. Yuppies, hippies, and everyone in between gets the trademark Christy work-over. His characters inhabit a world where one wrong move, no matter how small, can set in motion the direst of consequences. Luckily, they don't let it get in the way of having a fine old time. Compelling, transforming, this collection makes you long for the days when a cup of coffee cost a dime, and dignity wasn't for sale.

I don't normally quote advertising copy in reviews, but here I make an exception because the above paragraph is an excellent summary of the book, though I have a couple of nits to pick.

First, "the trademark Christy work-over." Not having read any other Christy, I'm not sure what this means. No one gets too much of a "work-over" in Tight Like That. Hypocrites are poked and prodded, yes. Radical feminists, the unthinking rich, politicians, narcissists generally. Christy's narrators stand up for common sense, decency, and the protection of real human connection. Christy's characters are often manly men, men who work with their muscles, men more well-connected to their bodies than to their minds, but his men are also in touch with their feelings, though they aren't likely to abstract them; they aren't Momma's boys, or friends of Freud.

Second, yes, dignity, truly, is not for sale in Christy's world. But, overall, the tone is not nostalgic, as the back cover blurb seems to suggest. Christy's stories are locked in the present. They are fine, entertaining tales, written in language direct and rife with integrity. The hint of nostalgia lingers perhaps because Christy's storytelling may strike some as old-fashioned. Those seeking hipster credentials can look elsewhere. Those hip to be square can check out Tight Like That.

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