Planet Smashing
Chris Robinson
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When Jupiter's Aligned With Mars by Bill Brown (Siren Song Publishing)
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Bill Brown's When Jupiter's Aligned With Mars pulls no punches
From the opening paragraph of Folly, the heartbreaking opening story of When Jupiter's Aligned With Mars, Bill Brown's fiery, unclenched writing captures all the aching longing and frustration of his characters:"During countless black and white afternoons, Tarzan slipped safe and glistening from crocodile-infested rivers, then wind-dried himself across the screen of Westboro Cinema. Even daytime scenes, filed as though by moon-light, cast an electric glow as Johnny Weissmuller wrestled lions, crocodiles, black dwarfs and stiffed my cock 'til it hurt."
Throughout this collection of short stories, Brown takes his characters (and readers) through the wringers of misery. His characters talk, fuck, suck and take a lot of crap as they find themselves confronted by the cold hard shrugs of existence. Their (mostly) simple desires are repeatedly beaten down by bitter and resentful people. As the daughter of what has to be the most vile person ever put down on paper says, "Families could pass down bitterness and despair just as easily as red hair..."
Brown's characters drift through life seemingly unable to connect with place or people. When they do find a bridge it soon collapses.
Nothing seems more difficult for these people than sex. Whether it's the first homosexual leanings of a boy in repressive 1950s Ottawa, glory hole blow-jobs in men's toilets, the relationship between a man and his Thai sex toy boy, sex encounters have an aspect of game-playing. No one just sticks it in and
goes to town. All sorts of codes and physical, emotional and mental games seem to be par for the course.Brown's writing is sharp and unpretentious. He has a strong ear for the vernacular (perhaps picked up during his years as a school teacher):
"Anyway, Ruth saw your darling Marco gawking at Kathy's tits in Geography. You know what that means. So go on, frig off."
It's a minor, unspectacular passage in a sense. It certainly ain't the poetry of Faulkner, but it is the poetry of the everyday.
Some readers will cringe at Brown's portrait of the underbelly of the Ottawa Valley, but so be it. If you can't accept occasional discomfort from life then you ain't living it.
When Jupiter's Aligned With Mars
Book launch and reading
@ Manx Pub
(370 Elgin St.)
Sept. 19, 5 p.m.
