Mike Duncan Archives

$18/200 pgs

Call it original sin, or human nature, or whatever you like. Any way you word it, the human race is one of flaws and imperfections. We do everything in our power to present the best versions of ourselves, to bury objectionable motives and actions beneath a barrier of civility. In his debut collection of stories, The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, Adam Prince forces readers to explore this suppressed side of humanity. The characters in his stories are not villains; they are everyday people with their most unsettling thoughts and desires placed beneath a magnifying glass. What’s truly frightening about these stories is that the ugliness of the characters do not make them repulsive. Prince offers these men in a way that demands sympathy. Despite unforgivable faults, it is hard not to identify with these men, even to love them.

Take Ted Asmund- junior high school math teacher, socially awkward thirty-year-old, and inappropriately attracted to a young male student. The story is “Island of the Lost Boys” and begins with Ted fleeing his home in Tempe, Arizona, the morning after he attempted to kiss an adolescent boy on the mouth. Ted seeks shelter at his childhood home in Newport Beach. Without notifying his employers of his absence, Ted spends several days in California trying to clear his head. His environment also leads Ted to reminisce about his childhood, especially about an old friend named Cannon, Ted’s closest friend when he was young and didn’t understand what made him different from his peers. Ted recalls an uncomfortable conversation that underlines his problem:

One night Cannon and Rob were joking about how everything was in their pants. When the girl they’d brought over said she wanted another beer, Cannon said the beer was in his pants. And when the girl said they should put on something else to listen to, Rob said there was something else in his pants.

“Me too,” said Teddy.

“Huh?” asked the girl.

“There’s something else in my pants too. You should see, um, what it is.”

It was the same thing Cannon and Rob had just been saying, but the reaction was entirely different. “John, man,” said the girl- John was Cannon’s first name, and he had just started to use it- “John, man, you’re friend’s getting all creepy on me.” Continue reading →

Chamu Press, 2011.

376 pages/$17

Certain things in this world resist definite classification. Is Jello a solid or a liquid? Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Add to this list Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.’s The Orphan Palace. Is it poetry or prose? A novel or an epic poem? The book is divided into chapters, features a protagonist and antagonist, as well as a cast of supporting characters, and there’s a definite beginning, middle, and end. The structure, however, often appears much more like lines of verse than paragraphs of prose, like this passage from the first chapter:

“At the end of the block he turns around, looks back at it. Knows what he’s got to do.

Shivers.

There’s fire in his eyes.

Thunder.

The need to tumble outta here.

Heart says away.

Wind’s headed East.

Cardigan thinks that’away.

First step.

That speed.”

At times, Pulver’s style builds momentum and carries a rhythm, but it can also be choppy and disorienting. The reason behind this strange mode of narration is the history and mental state of the protagonist, Cardigan. As a young boy, Cardigan spent several years at Zimms County Home For Orphaned Children, where he and his friends became victims of the twisted Dr. Archer, a man who claimed, “We can cure madness with volts.” Cardigan remembers his experiences with the volts as “lightning,” “the fangs of the Hounds of Tindalos,” or “the mindless WHITE burns,” and the electro-torture achieves the opposite of Archer’s intended effect. Continue reading →

Mike Duncan

The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, by Adam Prince (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)

The Orphan Palace, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)