This morning on the train I finished the Vinyl Café book I mentioned a few days ago. I could have torn that thing apart in about an hour, but I was pacing myself, because the stories made perfect transit reading, and I didn’t really want them to end. At lunch I’ll probably march over to the bookstore and buy the next two in the series.
The best thing about Stewart McLean’s writing is that it’s not fussy. It’s conversational and relaxing. He gives a marginal and hilarious insight into the neuroses of his characters without tripping off into Woody Allen territory. Sometimes they’re purposefully uncomfortable, but thanks to his chosen genre – the short story – it’s just a pinprick of awkwardness and then you’re on to the next character, the next tale.
After completing a McLean story, my brain has this buoyant, minty-fresh feeling. It’s a lot like the sensation I get when I’ve read a book by Garrison Keillor or Stephen Leacock, or a poem by Ogden Nash or Heinrich Heine. No fuss, no muss, just a nice clean finish. Not like that sticky, gummy, tongue-fur-from-a-month-long-bourbon-binge sensation I get after taking another shot at Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’.
So I guess what I’m saying is that, if he hasn’t already,
I just finished ‘The Vinyl Cafe Diaries’ before New Year’s; it was really good, too.
I can’t read McLean without slipping into his voice in my head, with his odd little way of story-telling.
People tend to either love or hate McLean. I’m not a fan, personally, although that’s at least partly because I can’t stand his sing-song storytelling voice. But even his stories have never really resonated with me, which is sad, because many people think they are wonderful.
I don’t like listening to him on the radio at all, but I really enjoy the stories when they’re written down. It’s hard to make me laugh out loud, but he does it consistently and well. Also, this is one of the only books set in my exact geographical location that I’ve enjoyed. I guess ‘In the Skin of a Lion’ would be another but that took place way before the present time. Okay, and ‘Fugitive Pieces’ as well. But generally books set in Toronto make me grit my teeth. They just don’t feel like they’ve captured the mood of the place, you know?
Yeah, I get that way, too! When I’m sitting on the train, all of a sudden I start envisioning what the people around me are thinking or doing, but with a distinctly McLean-esque narrative running in my head.