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The characters
in Elizabeth Crane's short story collection, You Must Be
This Happy to Enter, inhabit a strange world. It's not
the dystopia of George Saunders, whose characters have little
chance of escape or redemption. It's more of a skewed utopia
where zombie wives and lonely women in love with nine-inch
men approach their obstacles with a buoyant optimism. They
are not just making lemonade out of lemons, but lemon pie
piled high with meringue.
Crane's
previous books, When the Messenger is Hot and All
This Heavenly Glory, share the frenetic fun tone of Happy,
but her previous collections leaned heavily on stylistic tricks.
In her new book, Crane has toned down the po-mo/metafictional
aspects of her stories, allowing the reader to relate to even
the most ridiculous characters and situations. Before, her
humor was more subdued, more like the humor of Donald Barthelme
or Donald Antrim—intellectually clever, but not laugh-out-loud
funny. Crane has figured out the trick of being smart, funny
and tender in this new collection.
The absurdities
of the stories mask the innate sadness and loneliness with
which her characters contend. And her characters, even in
their humorous despair, do their damnedest to make the best
of their ludicrous situations. In "Donavan's Closet," a woman
falls in love with the delicious lemon scent of her friend's
closet. She surreptitiously makes a copy of his apartment
key and spends her lunch hours sneaking into his apartment
and sitting in the closet. Eventually, hiding away in the
closet becomes an addictive behavior—she cancels plans
with friends and misses work, just to stay inside the cozy,
nice-smelling closet.
"Sally
(Featuring: Lollipop the Rainbow Unicorn)" is a story written
in a second person voice about a perfect altruistic punk-rock
super-heroine, but it quickly becomes clear that all Sally's
perfection is set up as a comparison to the much less perfect
"you" (presumably the story's narrator). But even "you" starts
to see that Sally—a grown woman failing at her attempt
to fly a kite in a park, but still laughing and having a good
time—is not perfect, and Sally's joy and comfort with
her imperfections is what "you" should take to heart.
Many
of Crane's stories use the emptiness of popular culture as
a stepping-stone for philosophical ruminations on the current
state of the zeitgeist. In "The Glistening Head of Ricky Ricardo
Begs Further Experimentation," a woman gets a magic TV, where
tiny actors are actually in her TV, and she can pick them
out and bring them into the real world, albeit in their tiny
form. Like many people, the character forms deep relationships
with the people who populate her favorite television shows,
forgoing genuine relationships and interaction for the fantasy
world of television.
You
Must Be This Happy to Enter is not a perfect book. Some
of the stories seem a little unfinished, and some jokes are
downright goofy (like an actor named Brad Brad-Brad from a
TV show called Sexy Doctors Sex It Up), but mostly
the stories in You Must Be This Happy to Enter will
leave readers with a nice warm glow.
(February,
2008)
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