Overview

Dividing these works between letters and stories, you get two distinct populations. The stories fit into a recognizable type, which is not to say derivative, but familiar. They are as much non-fiction as fiction, and as a corpus lean heavily to the autobiographical. Or anyway, that's how I read them, as almost a memoir. Certainly the stories centered around themes of vulnerability in a fraught childhood feel this way, as do the Cameroon tales, which are weird enough that they don't really need to be fictionalized. This is Flynn at his strongest, reporting with his characteristic blend of curiosity, haughtiness, and humor on just how childish his fellow adults can be. These pieces are smooth, articulate reads, and take the reader from one idea to the next in a way that is hard to put down (which is fine because they're pretty short), and have the effect of being ensorcelled by a charming, possibly slightly drunk dude. There's not a lot of sympathy here. Flynn the narrator does not have much patience for emotional incontinence or dramatic demonstrations on the part of his deuteragonists. If the reader comes away feeling morally challenged, it is not to dig deeper into his well of compassion for others, but instead to govern himself with more poise and dignity so as not to invite opprobrium from this faintly fatherly author. Of the clearly fictional stories, there is a strong satirical bent. Sometimes this works (the man emerging from his Y2K bunker into a world freshly shaken by COVID comes to mind) and are as funny and engaging as his autobiographical works. Others are less authentically-voiced and seem more to be exercises or play with some idea that has been nagging the author. But even these, while less memorable, can almost always be mined for smaller-scale bon mots, as Flynn's wit rarely leaves him, even when his more adult instincts sometimes do. In what I will term the ""letters,"" Flynn retains his wonted perspective: that of an observant, thoughtful, responsible citizen swinging wildly between amusement and frustration at the pettiness and affectations of his own species. Here we are rarely out of resonance with these swings. He has an eye for detail and consistently discovers comedic foibles in the most mundane of daily transactions. This is the voice of a stand-up with a strong background in literature, and a professional situation inescapably mired in the day-to-day vapidity of ""real"" America. His involvement in (willing or unwilling) and descriptions of the nitty-gritty of vehicle maintenance, medical self-neglect, livestock forensics, and firearm modification shows him to have such catholic interests that we readers are bound to actually learn something as we are amused. This is a rare treat.

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