Salvaging hope & redemption

The world is still reeling from the aftereffects of the sharp economic downturn last year. In America, thousands still lose their jobs everyday and those who have their jobs are struggling to keep them. Employers are using the economy as an excuse to cut pay and raise working hours. But in Michigan, the Rust Belt, the economy has been plummeting for years; the invisible poor have been struggling to stay alive. A part of the Made in Michigan Writers Series, Bonnie Jo Campbell’s American Salvage is an unapologetic collection of short stories that portray the lives of local people struggling to survive, to hold their lives together.[break]

American Salvage

By Bonnie Jo Campbell

Published by Wayne

State University

Press, Detroit, 2009

“American Salvage” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2009. Published by a small university press, it earned well-deserved fame for its gritty language and tough stories about tough characters. Campbell does not romanticize poverty or give it a melodramatic view. She states things the way they are, unadorned and economical. Her stories are tightly woven and do in a few short paragraphs what could sometimes take pages to do.

“The Trespasser,” which is a very short story, accomplishes in quick paragraphs the situation and circumstances of two girls. One has broken into the other one’s family home and used it to cook methamphetamine. The story jumps in scene with the family coming home to find the place in disarray. The point of view shifts to the girl who is escaping down the river on a stolen boat, paralleling and projecting into the present and the future what may await the two girls.

The second story “The Yard Man” is a phenomenon in short story writing. Campbell’s description of nature is bold and beautiful but never romanticized. It becomes an object of fascination, an odd captivation that begins to eat away at the yardman’s marriage and family life. He lives in a salvage yard, surrounded by junk that are thrown away by others and destroyed in the yard. Even the yard loses itself in slow process and nature overtakes the land. The yardman is fascinated by beauty, by the beauty of the snake that slithers through his life and scares his wife away. His life is constantly overrun by weed and wildlife while he is trying to patch things up so he can keep his family together. By the end of the story, he has chosen his path, and nature, indifferently, continues to race through its course.

“The Inventor, 1972” won the Eudora Welty Prize from Southern Review in 2009. The story is fascinating in terms of structure, pacing, plot and character references. The author freezes a moment, the moment when a rusty El Camino hits a thirteen-year-old girl and sends her flying in the predawn fog. The story progresses as we switch points of view from the girl to the driver and back. We are given each character’s back story and the events in their lives, which only the reader knows is intertwined because of Uncle Ricky. Campbell builds a whole story out of a single moment and fills it with rich details, details that are concrete and palpitating real.

“King Cole’s American Salvage,” from where the collection’s title is derived, is a lengthier and more complicated piece. It has the makings of a story as we would expect but with Campbell’s stamp of originality in language and structure, one thing leads to another before the characters find things have become serious. Despite the gravity of the moment, the characters find ways to go on. Campbell dares to go into scene in places where most writers would stay away from. She goes beyond the plot and takes us into the court, shows us the court events and back into the salvage yard. As a writer, she is generous that way. She gives us details that are necessary without wasting too many words.

Campbell’s technique in freezing moments and suspending time is used throughout the book. Often the first lines begin in the present before rewinding to memories and flashback images. The dialogues are gritty and the locals have nothing to hide. The author paints their lives as they have been: a young girl is preparing to shoot her uncle so she can have her life back; a young man who suffers severe burns before he can rethink his racist and sexist views; a wife-abusing husband who is trying to get his meth-addicted wife back; and a man preparing for the world’s end with chickens and survival manuals.

All of Campbell’s characters are broken many times by life, left angry, confused or vulnerable, before being able to find a way to hold on to redemption of sorts, rebuild their lives with what they have salvaged of hope, dreams, and loneliness.