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Review by James William Brown
"Author Turns Self Into Parrot, JFK, Titanic Survivor, Others." Though this might not be the headline in tomorrow's supermarket tabloid, it's a truer one than most. Author Robert Olen Butler has proved again what we already knew -- he has more faces than Mount Rushmore.
In Tabloid Dreams, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Good Scent from a Strange Mountain takes on a dozen new personas in as many stories. Each is described broadly by a tabloid-style title such as "Woman Hit by Car Turns Into Nymphomaniac," "Boy Born with Tattoo of Elvis," "Woman Loses Cookie Bake-off, Sets Self on Fire."
Although the stories in this wonderfully original and unified collection are laced with a fine sense of humor, they're no joke. In "Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover," lonely Ellen Bradshaw meets a spaceman (a.k.a. alien being) in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Alabama. Dressed in trench coat and hat, the spaceman has eyes almost as big as his head and little suckers at the end of his fingers, ". . . like a gecko."
Naming him Desi, Ellen begins her intergalactic courtship when Desi calls on her for their first date, wearing a tie with a design of Tabasco Sauce bottles. But funny as this story is, and it is funny, the touch is as light as that of Desi's many-fingered hands. We're there with the author at the end, solidly on Edna's side as she walks the field behind her trailer home, waiting hopelessly for Desi's return.
The parrot purchased by a woman in a pet store turns out to be her deceased husband in "Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot." Doomed to watch his wife's lover come and go (sometimes wearing only rattlesnake boots), the parrot knows that his life as a man ended because of jealousy. He wonders about other parrots, ". . . if somebody is trapped in each of them paying some kind of price for living their life in a certain way."
The pair of stories open and close this entertaining collection provide two versions of a brief but moving encounter between a man and woman on the deck of the sinking Titanic. In "Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed," an Englishman persuades a lone American woman that she must, against her inclination, get into one of the lifeboats. The woman herself in "Titanic Survivors Found in Bermuda Triangle," recalls straightening the Englishman's tie before stepping into the boat, ". . . and all I wanted to do was to be on that deck beside him."
The JFK who wants his Harvard cufflinks back in "JFK Secretly Attends Jackie Auction" has a less convincing voice than the first person narrators of the other Tabloid Dreams. But if tabloids are an unavoidable part of the culture, at least they can be credited with inspiring this imaginative collection of great narrative range. It could inspire a headline of its own: "Reader Loses Self in Tabloid Dreams."
James William Brown is the author of the novel Blood Dance (Harcourt Brace). He lives in southeastern Massachusetts.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.