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Missed Her. Stories by Ivan E. Coyote (Arsenal Pulp Press $18.95)
A decade ago, the second most enjoyable aspect of an Ivan E. Coyote performance was listening to the whispers in the audience, the hissed arguments- "That's a guy, right?";..."I dunno, that's a girl voice, man";..."No way. That's a young dude, dude";..."Well, he's pretty damn cute for a guy, that's all I'm saying";... Thanks to a solid rep built on four acclaimed story collections and a novel, those moments are rare now, but they were only sideshows anyway, quickly silenced by the compelling stage presence.
The best part was, and still is, watching Coyote work without a net; no notes, no fresh-from-the-printer book folded back with passages highlighted, no reading glasses perched on nose, no self-reverential Canlit delivery. She'd just start talking, like she was introducing the piece she meant to read, and before you knew it you'd been corralled into the story, saddled and ridden out the other side and still the only paper in sight was your bar tab.
Missed Her is the fifth round-up of Coyote's quirky provocative short stories. Normally, you'd think a writer whose short works are almost exclusively autobiographical would get repetitive, even boring, but normal isn't a word that gets much work in Coyote country. Neither is boring. The stories in Missed Her are as fresh and poignant as those in her previous four collections.
Growing up queer in the Canadian north was probably less fun than Coyote has made it seem in her early stories, but a strong sense of being different in some way is usually a big part of the core-programming of any artist.
Many of these new stories are about revisiting the north, no longer the young tomboy branded with a question-mark like an amateur tattoo, but as an established author, only to discover, among other family secrets, "that for all those years, in all those photographs of that little tomboy, there was only one member of my family wondering about me. And that was me.";
As always, she has a perfect-pitch ear for dialogue, especially the kitchen and coffee-counter talk that is humankind's update of primate social grooming. While academic creative writing teachers solemnly instruct students about the importance of "finding your voice,"; Coyote has learned that the real secret of good writing is to forget your own voice, try to fit in and listen to all the other voices around you.
At the family kitchen table, uncles clock in on the subject of her now published sexuality with unexpected and authentic flannel-shirt aplomb: Uncle John's "Sorry, kiddo, but I can't identify the moment we realized you'd gone to the dark side. We were just glad you weren't stupid. There's no cure for stupid,"; leads up to Uncle Rob's "Well...you can see why we wouldn't have thought much about it. There's lots of hetero butch chicks out there. Especially up here....Maybe a guy should have twigged due to your aversion to wearing a dress, but who cares anyway? I've always said, it's your soap and your dick, and you can wash it as fast as you want.";
On the surface, most Coyote stories are riffs on the politics and perils of sexual diversity, but at a deeper level they are about the nature of difference itself and the inherent ironies of living in a culture that pays lip-service to Individuality as a concept while persecuting the genuine individual in practice:
"A little gesture, something about my voice, or my hips, or my lips, that makes them take that second, longer, closer look. Some people don't care at all. Some ask if I am in a band, and are we playing in town this weekend. Some just don't like me all that much. And then there are those very few that want to kill me. Whether this is for being an effeminate or homosexual man, or a masculine or queer woman, I am never quite sure.";
What is sure is that senses honed by an awareness of being different, sometimes dangerously so, are part of the essential tool-kit for a writer. The above quotes come from a very short story, "Straighten Up,"; in which a chance meeting at a highway diner between a butch girl and a fortyish guy who was "probably handsome a few years ago"; talking about their un-butch little lap-dogs, souvenirs of failed relationships, takes a turn that is as sad as it is sinister: "He smiles, looks down at my crotch, slowly slides his eyes up over my chest and back to my eyes. It begins to dawn on me just what he wants to show me back at the rig. It probably isn't his Cockapoo.";
The misunderstandings and mixed signals of human communication aren't always threatening. Often they're just laugh-out- loud funny. In "Talking to Strangers,"; coming off a tour, exhausted, she starts getting cross-examined by a Pakistani- immigrant cab driver about morality and family responsibilities and goes into defensive dyke mode, only to find at the end of the ride that what he means by you people isn't quite what she assumed.
Coyote jokes about getting 'dumped in with the poets' on reading tours, particularly with slam-poets, who also rehearse their work like actors, performing from memory instead of reading. While this makes her unique enough among contemporary story-tellers to qualify for some kind of environmental award for saving paper, its more important effect has been to compel her to adopt an easily memorable, evocative but always clear and simple writing style, stripped of the tedious narrative pretensions of writers accustomed to finding their voices in the presumed silence of print.
So the next time you meet a clean-cut butch young fellow in a coffee shop or bar, check your presumptions and prejudices at the door, buy a round, put your boots up and swap lies for awhile. You might be talking to Ivan E. Coyote and you wouldn't want to miss her. 9781551523712
Review by John Moore
[BCBW 2010]
The best part was, and still is, watching Coyote work without a net; no notes, no fresh-from-the-printer book folded back with passages highlighted, no reading glasses perched on nose, no self-reverential Canlit delivery. She'd just start talking, like she was introducing the piece she meant to read, and before you knew it you'd been corralled into the story, saddled and ridden out the other side and still the only paper in sight was your bar tab.
Missed Her is the fifth round-up of Coyote's quirky provocative short stories. Normally, you'd think a writer whose short works are almost exclusively autobiographical would get repetitive, even boring, but normal isn't a word that gets much work in Coyote country. Neither is boring. The stories in Missed Her are as fresh and poignant as those in her previous four collections.
Growing up queer in the Canadian north was probably less fun than Coyote has made it seem in her early stories, but a strong sense of being different in some way is usually a big part of the core-programming of any artist.
Many of these new stories are about revisiting the north, no longer the young tomboy branded with a question-mark like an amateur tattoo, but as an established author, only to discover, among other family secrets, "that for all those years, in all those photographs of that little tomboy, there was only one member of my family wondering about me. And that was me.";
As always, she has a perfect-pitch ear for dialogue, especially the kitchen and coffee-counter talk that is humankind's update of primate social grooming. While academic creative writing teachers solemnly instruct students about the importance of "finding your voice,"; Coyote has learned that the real secret of good writing is to forget your own voice, try to fit in and listen to all the other voices around you.
At the family kitchen table, uncles clock in on the subject of her now published sexuality with unexpected and authentic flannel-shirt aplomb: Uncle John's "Sorry, kiddo, but I can't identify the moment we realized you'd gone to the dark side. We were just glad you weren't stupid. There's no cure for stupid,"; leads up to Uncle Rob's "Well...you can see why we wouldn't have thought much about it. There's lots of hetero butch chicks out there. Especially up here....Maybe a guy should have twigged due to your aversion to wearing a dress, but who cares anyway? I've always said, it's your soap and your dick, and you can wash it as fast as you want.";
On the surface, most Coyote stories are riffs on the politics and perils of sexual diversity, but at a deeper level they are about the nature of difference itself and the inherent ironies of living in a culture that pays lip-service to Individuality as a concept while persecuting the genuine individual in practice:
"A little gesture, something about my voice, or my hips, or my lips, that makes them take that second, longer, closer look. Some people don't care at all. Some ask if I am in a band, and are we playing in town this weekend. Some just don't like me all that much. And then there are those very few that want to kill me. Whether this is for being an effeminate or homosexual man, or a masculine or queer woman, I am never quite sure.";
What is sure is that senses honed by an awareness of being different, sometimes dangerously so, are part of the essential tool-kit for a writer. The above quotes come from a very short story, "Straighten Up,"; in which a chance meeting at a highway diner between a butch girl and a fortyish guy who was "probably handsome a few years ago"; talking about their un-butch little lap-dogs, souvenirs of failed relationships, takes a turn that is as sad as it is sinister: "He smiles, looks down at my crotch, slowly slides his eyes up over my chest and back to my eyes. It begins to dawn on me just what he wants to show me back at the rig. It probably isn't his Cockapoo.";
The misunderstandings and mixed signals of human communication aren't always threatening. Often they're just laugh-out- loud funny. In "Talking to Strangers,"; coming off a tour, exhausted, she starts getting cross-examined by a Pakistani- immigrant cab driver about morality and family responsibilities and goes into defensive dyke mode, only to find at the end of the ride that what he means by you people isn't quite what she assumed.
Coyote jokes about getting 'dumped in with the poets' on reading tours, particularly with slam-poets, who also rehearse their work like actors, performing from memory instead of reading. While this makes her unique enough among contemporary story-tellers to qualify for some kind of environmental award for saving paper, its more important effect has been to compel her to adopt an easily memorable, evocative but always clear and simple writing style, stripped of the tedious narrative pretensions of writers accustomed to finding their voices in the presumed silence of print.
So the next time you meet a clean-cut butch young fellow in a coffee shop or bar, check your presumptions and prejudices at the door, buy a round, put your boots up and swap lies for awhile. You might be talking to Ivan E. Coyote and you wouldn't want to miss her. 9781551523712
Review by John Moore
[BCBW 2010]
Submitted on November 10, 2010 in By David.
