Home
Greedy Little Eyes by Billie Livingston (Random House $22)
Dark, as an adjective, is overused to describe literature, so let's just say Billie Livingston's ten stories in Greedy Little Eyes are the opposite of upbeat and she has devised a style of her own.
Invariably incorporating sexuality and alienation, her stories often appear realistic until they veer towards harrowing inventions-vividly wild yet cleverly constructed, confident and riveting.
In the longest story, 'Candy From a Stranger's Mouth,' the reader feels like a slightly changed person by the final sentence, but it's hard to describe exactly how or why this is so, only that one sees the world differently; askew.
Possibly the creation of these stories has some therapeutic effect on their maker-in the same way that Kafka had to write The Trial or Van Gogh had to paint, whether they sold their work or not-but that is secondary to their value as art and entertainment.
You wouldn't find Livingston's stories in The New Yorker. They are too 'edgy' to win mainstream literary prizes. They can be grim. No, they are grim. But they are also painfully poignant and often, underneath it all, rather funny... in a dark (oops) sort of way.
In a story called 'Did You Grow Up with Money?', a pubescent girl describes a thoroughly disreputable character named Money who is welcomed into the household by grossly negligent parents.
Money is always loud, always drunk, carousing with her father, making lewd flirtations with her mother, while stalking the narrator's sister, Beth, who is six years older. Beth goes berserk when she catches Money trying to defile her innocent sister; Money pins Beth to the bathroom floor when she retaliates, proving his invincible manhood, his power to ruin.
The two sisters successfully lure the loutish sexual predator, at night, to a river where they stand, scantily clad, siren-like, for a "party,"; until the narrator asks Money for a piggy-back. While Beth pushes her tongue into Money's mouth, the piggy-backed narrator feels the metal in her skimpy dress.
"I pushed myself higher on his hips, pulled the blade from its slot in the handle, and did what my dad took pains not to do every morning-dragged the edge hard into his throat.";
As the girls float the carcass down the river, Livingston's final sentence is impeccable:
"I held his hand, Beth asked me if I was cold, if I'd like her to wash my hair when we got home, and he let us lead him downriver as if we were taking him to safety.";
The title story "Greedy Little Eyes"; is about a young woman named Fern who hands out free samples in department stores and supermarkets. "Would you like to try a Lindt Swiss Milk Chocolate Truffle?"; she repeatedly asks. At night she has a series of "egg"; dreams about conceiving a child.
Fern knows she is losing her grip. Life is passing her by, and it's humiliating to boot.
While handing out samples, Fern is forced to talk with a long-unseen high school acquaintance with a baby in a stroller. Fern lies and says she is going to have a baby. She didn't plan this lie.
Fern becomes fascinated with a performance artist named Martin Flash who has gained widespread media exposure for announcing, one week in advance, that he plans to drive a steamroller over a rat squished between two art canvases.
Predictably, there is an hysterical outcry of public protest from rat saviours, schoolchildren and Life Is All Right [LIAR] led by a sanctimonious spokesperson who also likes to expose abortionists and murderers.
Fern is enamoured of the provocateur. She drives to the planned rat execution for art's sake where hordes of protesters want to tear Martin Flash to pieces.
Giving away the ending to one Livingston story out of ten is enough. Suffice to say there is a bizarrely romantic union between Fern and Flash, but not before the desperado Martin Flash is "slapped across her windshield like a scrap of paper.";
Like a bride and groom, Fern and Flash will get their fifteen seconds of fame on the six o'clock news. Earlier, there is a passage from which the title of this story and the collection has been derived:
"The problem with voyeurs is they think it's all about them and their greedy little eyes. They never stop to think about the exhibitionist. Ask any old exhibitionist you like, and they'll tell you: exhibitionism is by the exhibitor for the exhibitor.";
Try substituting the word exhibitionist with writer.
The story "Do Not Touch"; is less outlandish, but perhaps more satisfying as a construct. A relatively ordinary girl who works in a CD music store is flattered to be bedded, and invited to live with, a brainy arts critic for Canada's largest newspaper. "I should have known something was wrong when Thomas sucked back the better part of a twenty-sixer of Glenlivet before he could kiss me the first time.";
Soon feeling sexually rejected by the impotent Thomas, who is addicted to internet porn and chat rooms, the narrator becomes infatuated with a neighbourhood "watchmaker"; [jeweller?] when she sees the way he delicately handles the broken watches she brings him as an excuse to see him. She doesn't learn his name. She longs for him to touch her, to mend her, to make her tick.
She drives to the zoo east of Vancouver, off Highway One, where she watches a young mother ignore her own child in favour of reaching her hand towards a young orangutan. This woman ignores the DO NOT TOUCH sign and holds the orangutan's fingers in a reverie reminiscent of God touching Adam on the roof of the Sistine Chapel.
If life consists of a series of moments, as Borges has written in a poem, well, this strangely blissful union between a human female and an orangutan child through the metal mesh of the zoo cage in Aldergrove definitely counts as a moment.
"The woman looks back into the monkey's eyes [orangutans are not monkeys], tears sliding toward her jaw, and starts to sing, her voice cracking, Lullaby and good night... ";
As the human seeker of physical contact ignores the irate zoo attendant, the orangutan, in return, straining his hand to her face, instinctively reaches and touches her jaw, as though she is beautiful.
Okay, two endings.
Life is a carnival. Some like the genteel merry-go-round or the bumper cars; as a storyteller Livingston rides the Tilt-a-Wheel, gets lost in the Tunnel of Love and she rides the gigantic roller-coaster.
Never a dull moment.
978-0-679-31324-3
[BCBW 2010]
Invariably incorporating sexuality and alienation, her stories often appear realistic until they veer towards harrowing inventions-vividly wild yet cleverly constructed, confident and riveting.
In the longest story, 'Candy From a Stranger's Mouth,' the reader feels like a slightly changed person by the final sentence, but it's hard to describe exactly how or why this is so, only that one sees the world differently; askew.
Possibly the creation of these stories has some therapeutic effect on their maker-in the same way that Kafka had to write The Trial or Van Gogh had to paint, whether they sold their work or not-but that is secondary to their value as art and entertainment.
You wouldn't find Livingston's stories in The New Yorker. They are too 'edgy' to win mainstream literary prizes. They can be grim. No, they are grim. But they are also painfully poignant and often, underneath it all, rather funny... in a dark (oops) sort of way.
In a story called 'Did You Grow Up with Money?', a pubescent girl describes a thoroughly disreputable character named Money who is welcomed into the household by grossly negligent parents.
Money is always loud, always drunk, carousing with her father, making lewd flirtations with her mother, while stalking the narrator's sister, Beth, who is six years older. Beth goes berserk when she catches Money trying to defile her innocent sister; Money pins Beth to the bathroom floor when she retaliates, proving his invincible manhood, his power to ruin.
The two sisters successfully lure the loutish sexual predator, at night, to a river where they stand, scantily clad, siren-like, for a "party,"; until the narrator asks Money for a piggy-back. While Beth pushes her tongue into Money's mouth, the piggy-backed narrator feels the metal in her skimpy dress.
"I pushed myself higher on his hips, pulled the blade from its slot in the handle, and did what my dad took pains not to do every morning-dragged the edge hard into his throat.";
As the girls float the carcass down the river, Livingston's final sentence is impeccable:
"I held his hand, Beth asked me if I was cold, if I'd like her to wash my hair when we got home, and he let us lead him downriver as if we were taking him to safety.";
The title story "Greedy Little Eyes"; is about a young woman named Fern who hands out free samples in department stores and supermarkets. "Would you like to try a Lindt Swiss Milk Chocolate Truffle?"; she repeatedly asks. At night she has a series of "egg"; dreams about conceiving a child.
Fern knows she is losing her grip. Life is passing her by, and it's humiliating to boot.
While handing out samples, Fern is forced to talk with a long-unseen high school acquaintance with a baby in a stroller. Fern lies and says she is going to have a baby. She didn't plan this lie.
Fern becomes fascinated with a performance artist named Martin Flash who has gained widespread media exposure for announcing, one week in advance, that he plans to drive a steamroller over a rat squished between two art canvases.
Predictably, there is an hysterical outcry of public protest from rat saviours, schoolchildren and Life Is All Right [LIAR] led by a sanctimonious spokesperson who also likes to expose abortionists and murderers.
Fern is enamoured of the provocateur. She drives to the planned rat execution for art's sake where hordes of protesters want to tear Martin Flash to pieces.
Giving away the ending to one Livingston story out of ten is enough. Suffice to say there is a bizarrely romantic union between Fern and Flash, but not before the desperado Martin Flash is "slapped across her windshield like a scrap of paper.";
Like a bride and groom, Fern and Flash will get their fifteen seconds of fame on the six o'clock news. Earlier, there is a passage from which the title of this story and the collection has been derived:
"The problem with voyeurs is they think it's all about them and their greedy little eyes. They never stop to think about the exhibitionist. Ask any old exhibitionist you like, and they'll tell you: exhibitionism is by the exhibitor for the exhibitor.";
Try substituting the word exhibitionist with writer.
The story "Do Not Touch"; is less outlandish, but perhaps more satisfying as a construct. A relatively ordinary girl who works in a CD music store is flattered to be bedded, and invited to live with, a brainy arts critic for Canada's largest newspaper. "I should have known something was wrong when Thomas sucked back the better part of a twenty-sixer of Glenlivet before he could kiss me the first time.";
Soon feeling sexually rejected by the impotent Thomas, who is addicted to internet porn and chat rooms, the narrator becomes infatuated with a neighbourhood "watchmaker"; [jeweller?] when she sees the way he delicately handles the broken watches she brings him as an excuse to see him. She doesn't learn his name. She longs for him to touch her, to mend her, to make her tick.
She drives to the zoo east of Vancouver, off Highway One, where she watches a young mother ignore her own child in favour of reaching her hand towards a young orangutan. This woman ignores the DO NOT TOUCH sign and holds the orangutan's fingers in a reverie reminiscent of God touching Adam on the roof of the Sistine Chapel.
If life consists of a series of moments, as Borges has written in a poem, well, this strangely blissful union between a human female and an orangutan child through the metal mesh of the zoo cage in Aldergrove definitely counts as a moment.
"The woman looks back into the monkey's eyes [orangutans are not monkeys], tears sliding toward her jaw, and starts to sing, her voice cracking, Lullaby and good night... ";
As the human seeker of physical contact ignores the irate zoo attendant, the orangutan, in return, straining his hand to her face, instinctively reaches and touches her jaw, as though she is beautiful.
Okay, two endings.
Life is a carnival. Some like the genteel merry-go-round or the bumper cars; as a storyteller Livingston rides the Tilt-a-Wheel, gets lost in the Tunnel of Love and she rides the gigantic roller-coaster.
Never a dull moment.
978-0-679-31324-3
[BCBW 2010]
Submitted on June 3, 2010 in By David.
