Roy Kesey Reading Was Terrific!

Roy Kesey Reading a Success
by
John Koetzner

If you live anywhere north of San Francisco along Highway 101 and missed the Roy Kesey reading at Mendocino College, you will have to wait until spring of 2009 to see him again. He's at work on an historical novel about Peru.



In the meantime, if you have not gotten a copy of All Over, his short story collection, you will want to, because it delights, amuses, and even challenges the boundaries of fiction. During his reading at the college, he read only two stories, but that took over half an hour, and his Q&A took over another half an hour. Reading from "Interview," a story that has answers, but no questions, Kesey had the audience laughing at the way the narrator reveals his life and qualifications for a job. Needless to say, it is no ordinary job interview.

Another story that demonstrates Kesey's keen sense of humor and wit is "Hat," a story that can pass as a Zen fable or a metaphor for higher education. Either way, it is biting, funny, and revelatory.

Stephen King selected "Wait" for Best American Short Stories 2007, and it delivers in a Theater of the Absurd way as we witness the wait in an airport terminal. For anyone traveling with flight delays in contemporary times, its satire is not lost, and neither is its bittersweet resolution.

But Kesey's collection keeps one off-balance by the way it gives us the unexpected. We meet revolutionaries, a director with a dead lead actor, a therapist who doesn't want to give up his patient, a cop, dead cows, and a host of other oddball and yet ordinary things that keep us turning the pages. My personal favorites beyond the three titles already mentioned are: "Loess," "Martin," "[Exeunt," "Instituto," "Cheese," "Follow the Money," and "Triangulation."

A new voice in the world of fiction is always exciting. It will be fun to see how Kesey treats Peru in his upcoming novel. We'll look forward to hosting him again in 2009, or sooner should he decide to come back in 2008.

J.K.