John Gould

[First published in The Danforth Review]

Kilter: 55 fictions
by John Gould
Turnstone Press, 2003

John Gould's kilter: 55 fictions was nominated for the 2003 Giller Prize. "Fifty-five fictions?" you ask. Yes, there are 55 in this book's 205 pages, an average of less than four pages per story. So, it didn't surprise this reader that many of the stories feel like fragments, aborted beginnings, chunks of middle. Which can be just fine, if the writing is strong. And it is here, as the Giller nomination suggests. Gould's collected fragments add up to a sum that is greater than its parts.

Here is the opening of the first story in the book:

I liked it better back when my son was into stuff I could understand. Sex, drugs, rock'n'roll. Or rap, I guess you'd call it, Yo, mufo, kind of thing, the white boy's black dream. The big challenge in those days was to keep myself upright on the couch late enough at night to catch him creeping in, reeking of rum and Pepsi and Players Light, mauve hair all mussed up, buttons in all the wrong button holes. What would his mother have said? I'd ask myself.

"What would your mother have said?" I'd ask him.

In contrast to Christy's manly men, Gould's men are self-doubters. They are anxious. They are emotionally complicated, in that never-ending contradictory sort of way that cliché says is the singular realm of women (it isn't). If Christy tends towards Bukowski, Gould tends towards the Richard Ford of The Sportswriter.

For example, let's look at the story "Near-Death Experience." A mother is dying in hospital. Her daughter, Boo, and the daughter's partner, Jack, sit by her bed. The dying woman is asleep, semi-comatose, drifting towards death. The story begins with Jack wanting to ask the dying woman about her experience. As he explains to Boo: "How many chances like this does a person get?"

Jack whispers, "She's been where we're all going, Boo. Aren't you the tiniest bit curious about what she's seen?"

"No. And anyway, I know what she's seen. She's seen what she's always seen when she closes her eyes. She sees the inside of her head."

Later, Jack asks Boo what she would tell their child, if they had one, about "this" (death, the afterlife, belief systems).

"I'd tell her . . . I have no idea what I'd tell her," says Boo. "I'd tell her you can't believe anything, you can't count on anything. I'd tell her the only thing you can count on is the absolute, the infinite. Anything less than that is a crock."

Jack says, "The absolute? The infinite?"

"I have no idea. Mom, I miss you, I do." Boo takes her mother's hand, kneads a knobby joint between her fingertips.

"Near-Death Experience" covers barely four pages, and yet its subject matter is as large as can be: death, love, the infinite. It is also representative of Gould's other stories: the asking of big questions, the ambiguous answers, the focus on the domestic. The emphasis on small moments of truth: Boo will miss her mother, she offers the simple solace of touch.

kilter: 55 fictions was a worthy nomination for the 2003 Giller Prize. Some might find its tone of post-modern skepticism relentless. Some might wish the stories pushed outward, included more of the social context of its narrators, instead of keeping its eye inward on relationships. Sure, whatever. Gould's vision is his own, and in this book it is well realized.

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