The Limit of Delta Y Over Delta X
by Richard Cumyn

Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton, NB Canada

Review by Norman Maynard

Rarely are the titles of works of fiction as intriguing as this; rarely do they so aptly describethe work inside. This collection of short stories by Canadian author Richard Cumyn updates, in a unique and engaging style, the old adage of "what goes around, comes around."

In the title story, Jimmy, an intelligent, rebellious adolescent, invokes a simple math formula - y = x2 - to describe his view of the complex relationship between men and women. As the title implies, this is not a static equation. What Jimmy is really interested in (as well as Cumyn), is the dynamic relationship between the two variables, and their co-dependence as one changes.

"Let's say that in this couple," Jimmy explains, "the way they function together is such that the male is dominant by a power of two. Assuming x = 10 as the initial value of the female, this fixes y = 100 as the initial value of the male." And when x grows to 12, y grows to 144. What happens, Jimmy asks, to the relationship between the two as the value for this change in the woman, this delta x, approaches zero? How does the male's dominance over the woman - so complete that he effectively arrests all growth - affect him? The answer, in mathematical terms, is straightforward enough, but when Cumyn translates that answer into human interaction, the results are often unexpected.

In the more successful stories, what "comes around" can be frightening. In "How Do You Expect to Make Your Way?" a child explores the world of aggressive violence, coaxing his neighbor friend into a place without escape. Cumyn describes this violence as a depressingly real combination of propensity and circumstance, enacted through the mechanics of carrot and stick, leaving the reader convinced of his own vulnerability. It is interesting to note that in both this and the title story, the perpetrating character gets his comeuppance through his own violent death.

For always it seems, Cumyn's justice resonates with the crime. "Shel Do the Right Thang" portrays a man who uses his professional stature to influence the lives of colleagues, his ex-wife and daughter - only to have that influence echo back upon himself, the waves amplified by their travels. In "The Sound He Made," the narrator describes a friend named Bam, whose undercurrent of violence has affected the narrator's life, from childhood to start of his own family. At the end of the story, Bam visits the narrator, undergoing a fundamental alteration that Cumyn describes with deft subtlety.

To be sure, Cumyn is not one-dimensional in his investigation of the repercussions of our actions, or of the change they affect in ourselves. Rather, like a cubist, we see it from all angles. In "Ladies Ball," a man tries vaguely to protect the territory of his memories, then revels in his wife's invasion of them. "Anyone for Anything" and "Waste of Skin" look at a peculiarly feminine method of psychological browbeating, from spurned lover and child's point of view, respectively.

We even catch a glimpse of a very backhanded dominance - and resonance - in "Mr. Denham," which illustrates how on occasion, unwanted intrusion into our lives can be beneficial. In all these stories, the author creates characters both believable and, and various ways, frightening.

At the same time, many of Cumyn's characters struck me as toys, wound up and set in motion for a particular effect. If you want to be entertained, set at the edge of your seat for a while, the bulk of these stories work wonderfully. What sometimes eludes the reader are the human emotions and desires that initially set these characters into motion. "When I Get Back from the Holy Land" is a short piece about two oddball characters, and the strange way in which they relate, which leaves reader, if not the characters, sitting on the roof. And when a man named Dixon begins having excruciating back pain, its causes - and ramifications - come across as a bit mundane.

There are exceptions. "La Gargouille" and "The Curve Ball," notably, are highly readable forays into the breeding grounds of human action. Ironically, in those aspects of story in which the body of Cumyn's work succeeds, these tend to suffer.

The promotional material on the back of this collection promises to give readers their "first chance to see Cumyn's idiosyncratic vision whole." This would appear to overstate the case while simultaneously selling the author short. To say that the author's work can be seen as a whole, simply because some of it has been bound together, implies a certain consistency to the voice that is not present in the range of the stories in this collection. Yet Cumyn does more than one thing well; his "vision," I should think, cannot be so easily labelled.

In some future story, it is quite possible (maybe probable) that all the elements will be combined - of plot, of motivation, of the ramifications of human actions as well as what motivates them. X, shall we say, will be added to Y. Who knows what limits the result shall surpass?