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Show i DAILY THE UTAH CHRONICLE T LjJL X JLJ 8Mi!ig.tii'(ii"mirJife.iii i in res rN 0G0OGO mnifieaiSa v . . Breathtaking . NEW COLLECTION OF SHORT Eloquent, eamteaf sncj semi time si heartbfeaking -- r r'i 0)s rraRt ' Dr. 6000 00n SAN FRANCISCO CHROMfCLE STORIES PAINTS MANGLED OF AUTHORITY PO RTRAI JAMES GARDNER Chronicle Feature Editor Scar Vegas and Other Stories Tom Paine Harcourt Brace 215 pages $13.00 paperback In a collection that juxtaposes a n Marine Corps general with a luckless caught in an urban legend, Tom Paine chisels a notch for himself in contemporary American literature. Scar Vegas and Other Stories brings together work from Paine's quick burst of published success. First seen "in magazines such as The New Yorker, Story, Harper's and Playboy, the pieces here work together to reveal an immensely talented and relatively new writer. The most remarkable aspect of the collection what may in fact make Paine a really big name someday is the reeling in of so many disparate voices. The wide breadth of scope, both in characterization and geography, is amazing, Romanian refugees, a nepotistically appointed West Indies mayor, zxi apolitical anarchist punk, a corporate raider stranded at sea, and a misplaced bus driver stuck in the middle of Desert Storm are just a few characters lost in the verbiage of Paine's quirky stories. Most of these stories are told in the first person, so Paine has had to make drastic shifts in Voice to' convey all these roles! He has a good ear, too. In most of these pieces he's done a fine job of tapping into the speech rhythms and diction of his characters. Accordingly, most reviews on Paine place his talent for colloquial speech in the foreground. cross-dressin- g ex-co- ' . .. l- BeKaS lx.t,,- - r-- , rff- - J JE 2c5 JJ.:' rf IV vwpr fill i tfcW!f!i"ifl, Chronicle 1 "- v-P- i ff!Ss 255 - l&L -- - - ' if Editor9 People always complain that life is hard. These people are right. One fact that is often neglected, however, is that life is also very expensive. Let's just sit down and face the facts people. Only a few of us will y l.T.., L J SlPDQ ever get jobs that allow us to buy ail of the things that we want. In fact, it would be amazingly fortunate if any of us managed to earn enough for' that second home somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. Money does- - CHRONICLE FEATURE EDITOR n't grow on trees. The fact that its been said a million times doesn't make it less of a fact. . But before you begin to hang your see SUCCESS, page JAMES GARDNER These stories are intended to stand on their own. But what careful reader isn't tempted to sec connections spun through even the most disparate, fragmented chunks? Who doesn't try to find a unified theme? So if these stories do have one common thread it would have to be Paine's blunt jab at power structures. And the types of power structures Paine is willing to address are manifold. In the gritty "The Mayor of St. John," he pokes literal structure of hicrarchal at the straight-on- , government authority. And in the gender ambiguous "Genera! Markman's Last Stand" he looks at the more abstract structures implicit in dueling ideologies. What's interesting, though, is that Paine isn't always poking at those at the top. Sometimes the underdog is the blundering fool in Paine's prose. In the piece about the apolitical anarchist punk, "The Spoon Children," for example, Paine brings to life participants in a factual event, the 1996 anarchist convention in Portland, Ore. The convention-goer- s are portrayed not as activists vision or purpose, but rather as a bunch of with freaks in attendance just to spray paint circle A's on walls and break stuff. So the oppressed here are just as ridiculous as the authority figures depicted in the collection's other stories. Whenever someone is moved to defend the canonization or assumed genius of Shakespeare, usually in response to those advocating a multicultural oyer eurocentric curriculum the mammoth pen lof critic Harold Bloom comes to mind the apologist invariably brings up. the Bard's amazing breadth. Shakespeare, they say, can script the colloqui.il see POWER, page ' ' lll' U.Ml ETTvT''V F ? 10 ' - a SC 4w4rS-- C i Sj51 1 10 JGARDNERCHRONICLE.UTAH.EDU " 581-704- 1 fMff3' fXS 4 1 |