Same Place, Same Things by Tim Gautreaux
St. Martin's Press, September 1996
208 pages; cloth, $20.95Reviewed by Nelson Taylor
Reviewed by Nelson Taylor Gautreaux's SAME PLACE, SAME THINGS is a collection of short stories about men, women, young and old, who are running from something, or to something, both physically and mentally, and end up finding something unexpected. Down on his/her luck in the Louisiana swampland and surrounding parishes, these country folk bumble through a number of often tragically humorous fiascoes until the pivotal point in which the main character has to make a decision, a decision of often unwinable or unbeatable odds. Said character must then suffer the consequences, which helps them define themselves in new, unprecedented ways. Although Gautreaux has a certain panache and flair for storytelling, it's sad one can sum up these stories this simply. The title says it all: same basic content, same character, same setting, same structure, same theme. Yet that is the glue which binds these stories together.Individually the stories seem rehearsed; as a package they seem to be an exercise. Gautreaux is too aware of the short story as a form, leaving him no room to stray from an apparently learned equation, which may be because Gautreaux teaches writing at Southeastern Louisiana University, finding himself a student of his own lectures.
Gautreaux is, however, a stylist. His language is fresh and lyrical, true to his back-country characters. He has an amazing ear for voice and dialogue that keeps these stories alive and his characters personable. Each story contains an element or two of surprise, which pushes the stories forward to unguessable endings. And the best of these stories contain a comic element akin to Southern Gothicism, the work of Flannery O'Connor, in particular.
The title story "Same Place, Same Things," is the first and best of what Gautreaux has to offer, which sets the structure for the rest of the collection. The story follows Harry Lintel, a rural pump repairman who makes his living by following droughts, which is rather ingenious, although at times a little too metaphorical. Nonetheless, for the most part the metaphor is finely wrought and executed enough to make this story resonate long after the first read, calling one to read it a multiple of times.
After being called to do service work by a farmer's wife, Lintel finds her husband draped over the engine of his truck, electrocuted. Lintel, whose wife has recently died, cannot tell the old woman about the death. He instead reports it to her closest neighbor. Gautreaux writes: "He wanted to put some distance between himself and the coming sorrow." And that too is why Lintel is a traveling repairman, putting distance between himself and his own sorrows, while also trying to help others along the long highway.
True to the twists that make these stories memorable, Lintel comes to understand that the old woman has killed her husband because she is lonely in her stagnant life. Not only has she killed before, but twice she has made her husbands' deaths look like accidents. She keeps searching for something new, and this time, Lintel is the old woman's newest fascination: "Must be nice to take off whenever you've a mind to," she says.
After Lintel confronts the old woman about the death of her husband, she admits: "Sometimes I think it's staying in the same place, doing the same things, day in, day out, that gets me down." She begs him to take her away from the misery. It's then that Lintel realizes that no amount of changing scenery can take a person away from loss and loneliness, it only prolongs it. Yet when the rains come and the drought is past, Lintel must move on in search of sun-baked earth.
Miles down the highway, Lintel finds that the old woman has stowed herself under the tarp of his truck's bed. Lintel offers to pay for the woman's bus trip home. But the woman, afraid to face her past, knocks Lintel out with a wrench. When he comes to, the truck is missing. And the story ends with words that echo profoundly: "She was a woman who would never get to where she wanted to go. He was always where he was going."
SAME PLACE, SAME THINGS, Tim Gautreaux's debut collection, has much to offer, much to be admired (beside his publishing record: Story, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Harper's). Although amateurish, the only thing standing between Gautreaux and writing truly original fiction is the act of redefining himself. Gautreaux must find other ways besides structure to hold a body of work together: the test for any writer. The collection is an achievement for a first book. Gautreaux's future is more than promising.
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