Horny - outstanding collection of Greg Boyd short stories, eighteen in number, available as both an eBook and audio book. I listened to the audio twice - these stories are that good.
Incidentally, the title story, Horny, is about a young religious fanatic who walks around his neighborhood strapped to a wooden cross and wearing a loincloth. He hates the fact he's always so damn horny. Oh, well, he can whip himself a few more times yet again when next he thinks of sex.
To share a tasty Greg Boyd taste, I'll recount one of my favorites from the collection:
BROWN PAPER BAG
The tale's narrator is a seasoned writer of fiction. I'll give him a name - Cole. On his way to the liquor store where he'll pick up a bottle of Scotch, Cole's eye catches sight of a brown paper bag lying under a tree by the sidewalk.
Cole can see the top of the bag is crinkled and rolled down so whatever is inside won't fall out. There's a bulge in the side of the bag, probably somebody's trash or something dropped by mistake, in all likelihood dropped by one of the students who lives in a nearby dorm or apartment.
Cole nudges the bag with his foot - sure enough there's something inside. He picks up the bag and opens it: five sheets of green notebook paper folded together into eighths and one side of each sheet is filled with writing in red ink. The top of the first sheet reads: "Assignment: Write a story about a brown paper bag."
Cole begins reading. A little girl in Iowa has a bad dream and walks downstairs to be comforted by her parents. But when she stands in the doorway by the kitchen, she can overhear Ma and Pa talking how there's gonna lose the farm 'cause they're busted.
At this point, since there's still no mention of a paper bag, Cole can predict the ending: the little girl returns to her room to gather up her marbles, yo-yo, a few coins and all her other worldly treasures in a paper bag and walks back downstairs to offer what she has to her parents. Ma and Pa realize - bring out the violins - love will see them through tough times.
Cole's thinking about this mawkish dribble when someone - a young woman - says, "Excuse me, but did you find those papers you're reading in a brown paper bag?" When Cole says 'yes' she gushes how she's a student in a creative writing class and that she was having trouble coming up with a story about a brown paper bag so she started carrying around an actual brown paper bag which inspired her to write the story he's reading. Finally, she asks (a creative writing student just can't help herself): What does he think?
Cole lets her know he was just at the point when Pa covers his face in his hands when (again, a creative writing student just can help herself) she cuts him off to say she's still working out the details of the scene.
Not knowing how to respond, Cole simply voices, "Sounds pretty good," and then goes on, "But why don't you just write a story about how you had to write a story about a brown paper bag and how you put your draft of the assignment in a bag which you lost and someone else found and how he had read it and so on? You could even write the story from my point of view. I could tell you what I was thinking about when I first saw the bag and why I picked it up."
She looks at Cole in a funny kind of way, as if Cole's the biggest dope she has ever met in her life. She remarks in words she hopes even a know-nothing bozo will understand that a story must be believable; it has to mirror life. And no one would ever believe the story he's suggesting she write. Besides which, she concludes, a story must have conflict to be interesting and there's no conflict in that story.
A few more exchanges and we're witnessing a full throttle argument as the student lashes out, "The 'other story' is nonsense, but you have to have some understanding of the principles of narrative writing to know why. Even if that story did have some conflict interesting enough to engage a reader, I can't see how it would ever reach a satisfactory resolution."
To which Cole retorts, "Nonsense or not, what actually happened, is happening, has everything that your farm saga has. And if you're at all honest with yourself you won't deny that it has conflict, a more fully developed and human conflict than that melodramatic crap you wrote during your lunch hour."
What?! You dare! She slaps Cole in the face and snaps, "You're an ignorant jerk. What do you know about conflict?"
What happens next and then next and then next will catch a reader completely by surprise. Brown Paper Bag counts as one finely crafted piece of wacky metafiction. And, to add to your reading pleasure, there are all those other fictional poppers collected here. American short-story extravaganza compliments of GB.
American artist and author Greg Boyd, born 1957
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