Bunch [Paperback]

In his introduction to this collection of thirty-two stories, Barry Malzberg describes David R. Bunch "not as a Jeremiah but as an earnest and self-sacrificial Mr. Fixit of the soul"(6). Nevertheless, I believe that there is something of the Old Testament prophet about Bunch. Bunch states on the back cover: "I'm not in this business primarily to describe or entertain. I'm here to make the reader think, even if I have to bash his teeth out, break his legs, grind him up, beat him down, and totally chastise him for the terrible and tinsel and almost wholly bad world we allow."


Bunch is a writer who knows that while we profess to be religious, we are motivated primarily by greed. We speak of brotherly love, but we constantly strive to get ahead of others and to kill our enemies. We speak of the blessings of peace, but bombs still fall and guns still shoot. We say that we are concerned about nature, but bulldozers still raze forests to erect shopping malls. Bunch's stories are Jeremiads in which he warns us to get our house in order before we dehumanize and destroy ourselves.


The problem with most message writers is that they focus on their sermon without polishing their artistic technique. Their stories are quickly (and deservedly) forgotten. Bunch is an exception to this rule. His stories are short and spare. Not a word is wasted, and every word is calculated to evoke an emotional or sensory response in the reader. Here is a representative sampling of passages from _Bunch!_:

Hilua was a long man, thin and metal-sharp. With a stomach as flat as a reptile's he sat at his copper colored desk in the State Building and had plans. He was number one.(84)

It was a speck at first and then a spot, and then a string, a snake, a rope! and then a long, long chain of little sausages, linked in black and spinning out in the high-up blue. The sky-train came on in, light on the air, long and spinning black, held up by something miraculous, or absurd, hovering in above the buildings and coming down when it chose in a cleared place, HUGE-- but landing lightly as a cloud would kiss a mountain top on a sunshiny day.(26)

At first I was scared the policemen would come. And there I'd be up in my poor little room kicking this head. So the extreme pleasure I would be getting would be tinged with fear-- not guilt, not at all-- but fear that sooner or later those big blue men would come on their leather-cloppy feet-- heel plates thundering, thick knuckles pounding, and say, "Who's that making all that noise? Like kicking a head? Who's it? OPEN UP!!" And there I'd be.(28)

A copy of an oil-soaked man strode quickly into a furnace that was all fire-glass sides, and as he exploded to cherry flame his teeth swept a white line of agony through barely parted lips, and when his hair vanished in sudden _poouf_ a grimace of utter pain suffused his death-built grin. (12)

These are not passages that were casually jotted down on paper. They are the result of careful polishing and revision. Even readers who do not like Bunch's stories remember their tight construction and their razor sharp style. Bunch's style-- a combination of capitalized and italicized words, inverted phrases, hyphenated constructions, exclamation points, and carefully chosen diction-- is as distinctive as that of Ray Bradbury, Avram Davidson, or R.A. Lafferty. He is one of the most original of fantasy writers.


Particular favorite stories of mine in this collection were: "They Never Come Back From WHOOSH!" for its almost whimsical satire of the status symbol; "That High-up Blue Day that Saw the Black Sky-train Come Spinning," for its look at the politics of fear and the Pied Piper legend; "Any Heads at Home," for its bizarre and comical study of nonconformity; and "In a Saucer Down for B-Day," for its absolutely original take on U.F.O.s.


Bunch was far too uncompromising and pessimistic to be a popular writer. It seems likely that only small presses will publish any future collections of his stories. But last night, I had a vision. I stood inside a temple in the twenty-fifth century. I saw a Holy Book open upon the altar before me. I could not turn the pages or even touch them. Atomic fire would have blasted me for such desecration. But I read a section written in letters that glowed with a hard, cold light: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BUNCH. Stranger things have happened.

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