“The collected stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle” by T. Coraghessan Boyle (Granta, 1993)

Over 600 pages of stories from Antaeus, Fiction, Granta, Harper's, Paris Review, Playboy, etc

Descent of man

• Descent of man - Jackson Horne's partner Jane Good leaves him for a cultured ape, Konrad, who lives at the primate research lab where she works. Cuckolds are called horns, and Tarzan's friend was Jane, but I couldn't work out why the lab director's called Mr U-Hwak-Lo
• The champ - a food-eating contest is described as if it were a heavyweight boxing bout.
• We are Norsemen - The narrator's a Viking war poet. They go to America and find nothing useful. They go to Ireland and ransack a religious settlement. The poet's puzzled by a monk's reverence for a book, and burns it.
• Heart of a champion - "We" are the audience watching a Lassie episode that doesn't turn out well.
• Bloodfall - It rains blood. A house of party-goers wonder what to do. A flood begins. The rain stops. It all rots brown.
• The second swimming - Mao has his hair cut. A peasant, healed by a person following Mao's wise words, wants to give Mao a present of a pig, in person. A male table-tennis player whose wife cheated on him is told by her that it was because of Mao. Mao suddenly decides he wants to swim. The threads meet at the end.
• Dada - for the 2nd international Dada fair, 57 years after the 1st, an organiser gets Idi Amin ("Big Daddy") to attend, hinting that she'd become his 5th wife.
• A women’s restaurant -a man wonders about a women-only restaurant - its clients and menus. He tries to get in. He cross-dresses and succeeds, only to be thrown out. He considers surgery.
• The extinction tales - various episodes on the theme of extinction - a grieving lighthouse keeper finding a thought-extinct bird, the last passenger pigeon, etc.
• Caye - On an island of 300 people, Orlando's uncle has 32 kids, some now parents. He's shot dead and the narrator moves into his house with Ida.
• The big garage - B.'s car breaks down. He's given a tow to a giant, isolated garage/filling-station - thousands of cars; the filling station staffed by 8 girls in majorette outfits. He has to fill in long forms to progress, meeting people who's been overnighting there for days waiting for their cars to be mended. He tries and fails to escape.
• Green hell - A plane crashes in a jungle. 8 survive - a prof, a mime artist, etc., and lots of expensive cats with their carer. The pilot takes command. The carer leaves, finding a tribe who kill 2 of the survivors for him. The rest leave the camp. They're killed too, except for the narrator who's led back to civilisation and is keen to tell his story on TV.
• Earth, moon - While an astronaut is on the moon, his wife is struggling in a decaying house. When he returns he starts putting things right. He feels his waxen wings melting.
• Quetzalcoatl Lite - A rich collector tells of his quest to find Aztec beercans. He, his wife and his rival/friend Perdoo had gone on the trip. There was a fight about an unearthed can which turned out to be a Budweiser. He's by the rest of them, arrested, then is angry until Perdoo suggests that there's a beer brewed by Sherpas.
• De Rerum Natura - The inventor's operating on a sow, extracting from its womb a baby - his son, though he's infertile. He'd developed a cat that didn't defecate/urinate - it had made him rich. He invented a way of converting scrap metal to steak. His son developed pig features. The inventor became a recluse, displayed slides of a dead god. His house was set alight.
• John Barleycorn lives - A reporter is in a bar when a religious woman comes in, wrecking the place with an axe. He publishes an article against her type. 200 women barricade the newspaper's offices. He finds her first husband in a seedy hostel, and hires him to scare her away.
• Drowning - A young woman bathes nude on a deserted beach, falling asleep. She had modelled nude for fellow students, knowing the effect she'd have on them. 500 yards away, a bearded man walks into the sea. A fat boy, 23, watches her from a dune. Teased, he's become a loner. He strips, approaches the girl, and aggressively rapes her. Fishermen chase him off. He runs into the sea. A fisherman rapes her. The bearded man drowns. The fat boy gets home ashamed, but also excited that he's no longer a virgin. The fishermen go home. The girl is hospitalised.

Greasy lake

• Greasy lake - 3 19 y.o. boys, slightly drugged and drunk, stop by a lake to tease a couple having sex. The man is aggressive. One of the boys kills him. More men arrive. The boys flee. One of them swims in the lake, finds a corpse. The man smash up the car and leave. The boys return. 2 young drugged girls appear, asking if they want to party. They drive off.
• Caviar - The narrator inherits his father's fishing business. He and his wife Marie try various quack remedies to childlessness. They hire a surrogate mother, Wendy, a 1st year med student, via Dr Sizz. Wendy moves in. After artificial insemenation, they have an affair. Wendy moves out, has a child, which she gives to Marie. But the narrator wants to marry Wendy. He goes to her hour and finds Sizz living there. She tells the narrator that they belong to different classes. He assaults Sizz, winds down by fishing. He catches a 6ft sturgeon, dissects it with the skill of a doctor, and finds 50 pounds of roe.
  [The most conventional story so far!]
• Ike and Nina - The narrator, working in Eisenhower's team, helped him have a few private hours with Kruschov's wife (they'd been infatiated for years) during Kruschov's visit to the States. The narrator (subsequently an academic) suspects that Kruschov found out, hence his change of diplomatic stance.
• Rupert Beersley and the beggar master of Sivani-Hoota - The narrator is a Watson-like companion to Beersley, who's called in to find out how the Nawab's 25 children are disappearing one by one. He accuses the wrong person and returns home. In fact, a fake wise man (who has a group of beggars in town) has taken them.
• On for the long haul - Bayard moves to an isolated farm with his family because he's scared of nuclear war. He thinks a violent psychopath, also fearing war/anarchy has moved into a nearby farm. He buys two rabbits for his kids. Coming back to his farm one day he sees the rabbits strung up, dead. He confronts his neighbour with a gun but he's not good with guns.
  [Another conventional story that seems rather average]
• The Hector Quesadilla story - An old baseball player continues so long that his son Hector Jr is old enough to be doing a PhD - literature. Hector's in a game that lasts ages - maybe forever - while his family watches.
• Whales weep - When 31, a male fashion journalist suddenly wants to see/touch whales. When, in a raft with a woman, he witnesses a whale rape, he finds himself naked. Maybe sex happens. Soon after, the woman broke up with her partner.
• The new moon party - a presidential candidate who's not doing well starts promising that he'll create a new moon. He gets in for 2 terms. When the bright side of the new moon is turned to the Earth it provokes a sex fever. After a week or so the moon is destroyed with a nuclear weapon and he has to resign.
• Not a leg to stand on - Calvin, wheelchaired, is staying with daughter Jewel and her 2 adult sons. They drink, have 3 TVs, etc. A german shop-owner woman accuses them of stealing soda. His other daughter tells him he should move to an old people's home. The shop gets trashed. Calvin discovers in the house a storeroom of stolen goods. He goes to the german woman, says sorry, but doesn't offer to provide evidence.
• Stones in my passway, hellbound on my trail - Dallas, 1938. A penniless blues singer is performing at a cheap event/party. He thinks back to a chance he had to make a record. He blew it - got drunk and lost his guitar on the way.
• All shook up - Patrick (29, a guidance councillor. His wife left him for another man) watches new neighbours move in - early 20s with a baby. The man's a budding Elvis impersonator. His wife (Cindy) tells Patrick that she'd had to marry. Cindy and Patrick start watching her husband's first, disastrous gig then leave early to make love. Young Elvis immediately discovers, and next day chucks his wife and kid out. She wants to move in with Patrick. He gets a phone call from his wife, who says she's made a big mistakes and wants to return. He says she can.
• A bird in hand - 1980. Worried that the arrival of 10 million starlings is a health hazard, Egon hired a man to play bird-distress sounds, then another to spray detergent from a helicopter and fire-engines. His wife Mai isn't happy - the birds will leave anyway. He starts chopping down trees. 1890. A rich US man dreams of importing all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare. After years of failure, one species seems to be surviving - starlings.
• Two ships - Jack (the narrator) and Casper had been anti-bourgeois school friends. Casper went to join the Army, planning to undermine it, became unhinged. Jack married Erica. Casper sent him long, long poems but they hadn't met for years until Casper returns home unannounced. He visits Jack. Jack starts packing.
• Rara avis - A strange bird - a stork? an eagle? - appears on a shop roof. Crowds gather. 6 weeks before, the narrator had been playing in an abandoned house with friends, doing naughty things. There was a fire and Janine died. The crowd begins to disperse. The narrator notices a red gash where the bird's legs meet and throws the first stone.
• The overcoat II - Akaky (mid-30s, single) is a loyal USSR citizen. He's made fun of at work because of his overcoat. He gets a new one from a tailor. His comrades begin to respect him - at last he's using the blackmarket. A colleague invites him to a dinner party for the first time, which he enjoys. On the walk home through Red Square his coat's stolen. He reports the incident, spending hours in the police station. His coat is shown to him. It was made in Hong Kong. He's fined, and the coat isn't returned. In the cold he gets ill and dies. Nobody misses him. The detective who wears the coat is mistaken for the First Secretary.

If the river was whiskey

• Sorry Fugu - A male restaurant owner wants to be reviewed by the tough one, Willa Frank, not the soft one. Willa appears with her usual eating partner. The owner isolates her, asks her why she eats with a slob. The owner cooks slobby food for him. Her favourite food is fugu - blowfish. It can kill.
• Modern love - He's 33. He starts going out with Breda. They take it slowly. She fears infection. She likes talking about tropical diseases. When they make love she insists that they both wear full body condoms. Then she insists that he has a full health check. She finally rejects him because he works for a shoe company, and feet are unhygenic.
• Hard sell - An image consultant has been flown in from the States to help the Ayatollah. The local interpreter isn't faithfully translating (perhaps to save the consultant's life). The consultant gets a US interpreter flown over. The consultant suggests getting rid of the beard and robe, and getting into baseball. The new interpreter's strong accent stops the consultant understanding the replies until it's too late.
• Peace of mind - Giselle sells domestic security systems by visiting people and scaring them with stories. A couple who buy are criticized by friends because of the cost and the fortress mentality. Giselle is scared by a customer who makes her stay for hours.
• Sinking house - When a wife's husband dies she switches on all the faucets and garden sprinklers. After 2 weeks the neighbours' garden is soaked. They ask that she turns things off. She doesn't. They get the police to turn it off. The female neighbour thinks she might switch all her water appliances on if she became a widow - but not for long because that would weaken her foundations.
• The human fly - "The human fly" asks an agent to represent him. He hangs off a skyscraper for a week or so, then on a DC-10 wing, then the axle of a lorry. He's gaining lots of publicity. The agent feels guilty about getting rich from a man risking his life, but the Fly is unstoppable. He tries to motorcycle over 26 trucks, and dies. The agent makes money from a TV cartoon series.
• The hat - Michael, 31, is one of 27 permanent (misfit) inhabitants of a mountain retreat run by Marshall, mid-forties. They both sometimes sleep with the young widowed barmaid, Jill, who has an 8 y.o. son. Boo (mid-forties) arrives with 2 men to kill a rogue bear. Xmas arrives, so do tourists and regular visitor Regina, who sleeps around. Michael is jealous of Boo's success with Jill. He hosts a New Year's Party where several people sleep (not him) around. The bear is killed. He later finds a hat which Regina claimed was valuable and stolen. It's cheap. He burns it.
• Me Cago en la Leche (Robert Jordan in Nicaragua) - Robert (see - "for whom the bell tolls"), 28, raised in Montana, is on a mission to blow up a US plane. He crosses the Horduran border with a few locals. He blows the plane up, with help, but his surprising lack of horsemanship means that he doesn't escape.
• The little chill - It's Hal's birthday so he returns home (first time for 6 years) to see his friends (40-60 years old). Jill (ex-nun, now single with triplets) hosts a party. Guests argue until the Italian car-racing boyfriend of Tootle (ex cover-girl now environmentalist) turns up and puts on dance music
• King bee - A childless couple adopted a 7 y.o. boy. He'd been trouble ever since his probation period was over - swearing, raping, obsessed with bees, trying to killing himself. When he was put away they moved house, hoping never to see him again. When at 18 he was released and he found them, says the woman was his Queen bee, and dies covered in bees, though he could have saved himself.
• Thawing out - Some old people have gathered for their annual leap into the freezing Hudson. Niana's the youngest by 30 years. Her 23 y.o. boyfriend Marty (his PoV) looks on. Niana's fat mother is among them. Marty's friend Terry tells him that girls end up looking like their mothers. Terry says he's seen Marty's mum heading to Bermuda with a man. Months later the couple holiday in wild Canada. He falls in the freezing water because of a communication problem with the guide. Later he goes with Terry to San Francisco. It's supposed to be a holiday. It ends up being months. He stops writing to Niana. He returns penniless. Niana has moved. He visits her mother. He turns up at the annual event, sees Niana, strips off and jumps in. She'd said it wasn't so bad and she was right.
• The devil and Irv Cherniske - Irv, 40-ish with 2 sons, meets the devil, who offers him a deal. He asks his wife about it. She sneaks off to meet the devil and disappears. Irv goes to meet the devil again. He's killed her. Irv gets rich. He starts donating to a church. 10 years later the Devil meets him and all his investments collapse and his house burns down.
• The miracle at Ballinspittle - While in Ireland, McGahee visits a statue of Mary that Nuala Nolan had once seen move. All the alcohol he's ever drunk appears, then the drugs, then women. He's unconcious for 2 days. Crowds gather. The Pope's on his way. Then McGahee disappears.
• Zapatos - An intellectual nephew of a shoe-shop owner is sent to buy 100s of imported shoes. They're all left ones so he gets them for almost nothing. Meanwhile, at another port, the uncle buys 100s of right ones. He becomes rich enough to become part of the government.
• The ape lady in retirement - Beatrice Umbo, a retired ape expert used to the wild, has trouble adapting to the city. She adopts an ape, Konrad, who'd been taught sign-language. A man offers to fly her over the city. She brings Konrad, who fights with the pilot. They're going to crash. She touches Konrad's hand.
• If the river was whiskey - Tiller is with his bickering parents on a lakeside holiday organised by Tiller's grandfather so his parents could patch things up. His father drinks, his mother nags. She tells her husband to go fishing with Tiller. Tiller takes the boat to a place where he hopes there are pikes. His father hooks a big fish. He wants it to be a pike. But it isn't. He realises his wife's going to leave him and will take Tiller too.

Some pieces are like Twilight Zone. The UK's Adam Marek is more SF, but there's an overlap in the earlier stories. China Mieville's short stories sometimes comes to mind too. I like many of the wackier plots, though some endings seem inconsequential. When (as in "If the river was whiskey", for example, or "The overcoat II") the plot's conventional I'm not so impressed. I like much of "All shook up".