Big Picture: Stories [Paperback]

From the author of Zulus, Watershed, and For Her Dark Skin comes Big Picture, a volume of short stories that deals with the quiet, almost unmarked instant where an off-the-cuff comment or a chance encounter alters lives in ways no one could have predicted. Typical is the pair of old friends whose relationship is transformed by the disappearance of a set of false teeth. Percival Everett's style is low-key and unassuming. It is not the flash of lightening, the peel of thunder, and the sudden downpour that swamps the lives of his characters that concerns him. Rather, it is the slow drip of time that finally wears a new path in landscape of their existence.

Rodeo riders and sensitive artistes pepper these disparate stories, some of which sing while others creak. Author of Zulus and God's Country, Everett is at his best when he reaches beyond the protagonist's self-study and gives other characters stage time. His strengths coalesce wonderfully in "Wolf at the Door." Here, the writer's descriptive acuity and storytelling panache have a real plot to hang on, and he captures the complexity of emotions when a father pressures his son to shoot a wolf the boy admires: "Hiram raised the Weatherby and lined up a shot. The wolf didn't move, his eyes were as unyielding as his father's. He squeezed off the round and watched as the startled animal had only enough time to change the expression in his eyes. The wolf looked at Hiram and asked why, then fell over dead.... Hiram turned to his still-smiling father and said, 'I hate you.'" This memory preys on the grown up Hiram, now a country vet who faces a similar situation when the locals needlessly stalk a mountain lion. This story is so captivating it's hard to believe the same writer could product a piece as dismal as "Cerulean." This, the collection's weak start, depicts a painter who does a lot of yogurt-eating and smug introspection about the creative process ("What's your relationship with the color blue?'). The two-dimensional girlfriend character seems to exist only to resuscitate the precious artist. Lines such as "I think I try to find spirits when I work" or "There's a lot of power in your work" typify the sort of thinly disguised self-praise permeating "Cerulean." Although this story caves in on itself, others steer clear of abstract self-preoccupation and make for good reading.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Painters' lives of quiet desperation, rickety Rocky Mountain relationships, and the unending difficulties faced by black men in white America make up the bulk of these nine stories (three previously published), as Everett (see below; God's Country, 1994, etc.) returns to familiar themes with his usual subtlety and eccentric comic flourishes. The painter in ``Cerulean'' breaks down when an encounter with an indigent makes him feel like a schmuck: as a result, he gives in to a long-suppressed urge to eat paint, which awakens his wife's latent hostility; the Denver painter in ``Dicotyles Tajacu'' has already lost his wife to a dermatologist, so he burns his latest work and hits the road for Laramie, along the way connecting with a stuffed wild pig missing an eye; the Colorado painter in the title story breaks into his D.C. gallery to rescue a major work just sold to someone he despises--and distrusts his new wife when she says she understands. The black bullrider in ``Turned Out'' has the strangest experience of a lifetime on a killer bull, while the black cowhand in ``Squeeze'' has too close an encounter with his one-legged friend's dentures, thanks to a racist prankster. Meanwhile, a rancher catches his wife cheating on him, then learns he's dying of stomach cancer (``Throwing Earth''). In ``Wolf at the Door,'' another rancher with trouble in his marriage and a love of wild animals struggles to find a way to reconcile himself to his life. The thematic and situational similarity in these modern tales of western woe provides continuity and some strength, but ultimately the reiteration keeps any one story from emerging from the pack. Vignettes nicely crafted, and eminently readable, but none worthy of superlatives. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.