Safe Return Doubtful

Dybek is a second generation Polish American born and raised in Chicago. This is a novel in stories, of his adolescent heroes with grimy urban backgrounds of the South Side of the city in the 1970s, the common factor being hopes and dream in adversity, not yet metamorphosed into nightmares.
This was my first experience of Dybek, and it wasn’t long before I realised I was in the hands of a master. Rarely have I read such a collection of what in effect are short stories with such consistent brilliance.
From the precise, it would be reasonable to expect dark and depressing reading, but Dybek writes with a stark realism blended with a curiously appealing playfulness; the darker he pluges the more vivid the images he conjures, and the more compelling the prose. Comparisons to Saul Bellow, Ginsberg or Dylan are not out of place. Some of stories have a quality to them that reminds me of Goya’s Black Paintings, prints of several I have around the house.

In my favourite, Horror Movie, 12 year old Calvin arrives home to blood all over the bathroom, and his mother missing. The old Puerto Rican lady upstairs tells him not to worry, but once alone, he is terrified by nightmares. The next day he sneaks into a movie theatre where he sees a surreal horror film and the old toothless usher offers to give him a gum job. On leaving the cinema it is like the neighbourhood has changed, he sees monsters, and the true squalidity of what’s around him. Its ‘coming of age’ writing as good as I can remember reading.

These are a set of stories that cover the spectrum of adolescent experiences, emotions and epiphanies, they are at times hilarious, stunning, and tragic, but always moving and compassionate.

A couple of quotations. From Neighborhood Drunk…

The summer we were fifteen, Dan discovered an old suitcase of his father’s liqueur miniatures. The suitcase had been on the back porch for years and it was like coming on a hidden treasure chest. They looked like jewels, exquisite shapes of glass glowing ruby, Amber, creme-de-menthe emerald.
We’d sneak back there on June evenings with the light out in the kitchen and Dan’s parents in the front of the apartment watching TV. I had a penlight and we’d study the labels before sampling. It brought the world into our lives as no geography book ever could. From necks narrower than a straw drops of exotic places burned on our tongues: Cognac, Chartreuse, Curaçao.

and, from Sauerkraut Soup..

In high school the priests had cautioned us against the danger of books.
“The wrong ones will warp your mind more than it already is, Marzek”.
I tried to find out what the wrong ones were so that I could read them. I had already developed my basic principle of Catholic education-The Double Reverse: (1) suspect what they teach you, (2) study what they condemn .