[.ca] Blackouts (ISBN 0771016697)

An Avro Part Choir:
With Blackouts, Craig Boyko has not found his voice: he's found thirty - each distinct, rich, and resonant. As one of the other fourteen people who've read Canadian literary journals with any regularity, I've run into Boyko's prose and looked forward to this volume for a larger dose. It does not disappoint. As a body of work these eleven stories brim with heart and head (both libidinous and otherwise - The Problem of Pleasure discomforts as much as it delights). An auspicious debut! 4.5 Stars.

The latest, greatest messiah of the short story:
We get a new wunderkid every two years or so here in Canada . . . remember Timothy Taylor? I guess this is Taylor 2.0, or Alice Munroe for the hemp shirt set. Why do only 14 people subscribe to CanLit journals, as the other reviewer commented? And why are the same people who write the reviews also the ones who judge the contests who also graduated from the same MFA programme? Seeing the pattern yet? Hmmm. This collection is fine, being in turns generic (sci-fi substitute person story) and operatic (Stalinist learns to love life via classical music). Everyone says it's all incredibly inventive . . . I guess so, if you know many fourteen year olds who use phrases like 'textual condensation' in their convos. The showpiece of this collection, the $10,000 Journey Prize winner 'OZY', is about video games and childhood . . . and, wait for it . . . wait for it . . . mortality and lost innocence. Did you ever see the /Seinfeld/ episode where George cooks up all kinds of schemes to preserve 'GLC' for posterity, that his 'Frogger' score should never fade away? Boyko ripped off that episode. Wait for the softcover. Of course, like everything else that the Globe and Mail backscratchers praise, it's very very well crafted and workshopped. Bravo. If your goal in life is to be lauded by tiny journals from the Prairies, study Craig Boyko as he held an abbreviated Talmud in his hands. Boyko definitely know the prevalent aesthetic of our land as good as anyone out there -- which will guarantee a lot of appreciative fame, in the short term. Overall? Over time? Ahhh. Well, man, we can't produce a Kerouac out here in B.C., can we? But I have been told repeatedly that this is short story genius. Which it surely must be, if everyone says so? Then I suggest everyone buy up as many 1st editions you can, b/c Boyko must be destined for Bookers and Nobels and all the rest of it? Well, that's what they keep telling us, right? So why does his work push the limits of 'nobody cares'? People readily drop ten quid for anything touched by Seamus Heaney, right? Why, despite the overtime publicity industry (ooops, I mean 'reviews') which support Boyko, and others like him, failing to produce so few (if any) young writers of truly international capabilities? Japan can do it. Ireland can do it. Hey, even Iceland can do it . . . but Canada? Migrant tales of ghostly origins and bad accents of countries never encountered (see Boyko's version of 'Russia', qv). What I don't get . . . and bear with me here . . . hit the brakes on your PRISM pride for a second . . . if this stuff is as brilliant as everyone says, why does hardly anyone plunk down the coin of the realm for it? Why does it attract so little attention abroad? Don't answer now . . . have a long think over a coffee for a while, maybe pick up Marquez's "Leaf Storm" and see just how far behind we are in terms of literary skill. But forget what I said. This collection is brilliant. My eyes melt with jealousy, and my laptop does a dead cockroach impersonation in awe.