Jim Gavin (1)

56. Middle Men: Stories by Jim Gavin. A collection of short stories about young men who are struggling to achieve but find themselves coming up short. That might sound like a depressing premise but Gavin gives each story a little dose of oddity mixed in with the reality of underachieving. The stories take the reader all over California, from San Francisco, Hollywood, Riverside, and on the freeways.
In "Play The Man" a highschooler gets kicked off his basketball team because he's an average show more player on a team of future greats, which leads to him transferring to a mediocre school with a mediocre team where he can be the star player.
In "Elephant Doors", Adam finally gets a good job in show biz as an assistant on a long-running quiz show with a legendary host. He's been pursuing stand-up for years and getting nowhere, so he's happy to finally have a paycheck, a cool new friend and some tiny status, but he is always taken aback by the famous host's weird conversations.
The title story was what I was hoping for. Gavin was the creator of one of the best shows ever, Lodge 49, and in this story there's a lot of the surreal quality and unique personalities that ended up in the show a few years after this book was published. It's about Matt, who was adrift and depressed after his mom's death until his father pulled strings and got Matt a sales position in the plumbing supply industry. After a year in this job he has no interest in or talent for, Matt meets old-timer Larry, who pulls back the curtain to show Matt the movers and shakers in the toilet racket and explains how deals get done in such a cutthroat trade. show less

The men in Jim Gavin’s stories are lost. They’re unemployed, underemployed; or even fully employed but unable to grasp what life has to offer. They wander Southern California, “SoCal,” and eat at Del Taco.

In Play The Man, Pat Linehan’s life is basketball. He forgoes the things to which most teenagers feel entitled – including masturbation – in pursuit of the dream. When he realizes it’s not mean to be Pat feels “a miraculous sense of relief.” In Bermuda a listless show more twenty-three year old pursues a damaged musician a decade older, long after their relationship has run its course. Adam Cullen, a new production assistant on a long running quiz show is also trying to make it as a stand-up comic, with little hope, in Elephant Doors.

The title story is split into two parts. Part II: Costello is the best story in the collection and was originally published in the 12/6/10 issue of The New Yorker. Martin Costello is a plumbing lifer, an outside salesman whose wife died of cancer a year earlier. Like a true salesman, he continues to plug along, even if his heart isn’t in it any longer. In Part I: The Luau, Martin’s son, Matt, attempts to replicate his father’s success in the plumbing business and suffers his mother’s death more visibly than his father.

This is a nuanced collection, rich with detail, dry humor, and suppressed emotion. I took my time with it and took pleasure in each story. show less

I am almost certain that Del Taco was mentioned in all but one of these stories. Del Taco isn't exactly good food, if you are not familiar with it think Taco Bell. But now I want to eat at Del Taco even if it is sub-par mexican food.

This can mean one of two things.

1. Jim Gavin wrote a great book of short stories that happens to mention Del Taco quite often.

or

2. Jim Gavin works in Del Taco's marketing department and wrote a book of great short stories advertising Del Taco in what could be show more considered one of the most wonderfully abstruse marketing campaigns in history.

Either way, I am happy to have read these short stories, and know that if and when I eat at Del Taco I will think fondly of this book and not so fondly what I ordered to eat. show less

This is a terrific collection of stories about down-and-out men in Los Angeles. Almost all are failures, but this is not a depressing collection. It’s funny and offbeat. It reminded me very much of Matthew Klam’s Sam the Cat. The stories convey the struggles of these men, but what makes the stories work isn’t the plots but the voice, tone and feel of these pieces about guys who can’t quite get anything to go their way. They are either passionately pursuing some ambition or totally show more confused about what they want. But in both cases, the protagonists don’t seem defeated or even surprised when they world doesn’t deliver on any of their hopes or needs.

The seven stories in the collection are:

1. Play the Man – 30 pp - A boy obsessed with basketball and dreams of getting a college scholarship has to transfer to a smaller high school because he can’t get playing time at a school with a big-time program. But the lackadaisical coach and indifferent teammates at the new school make it increasingly difficult to remain pure and singularly focused on his goal. The coach, who doesn’t how to run a practice or manage a game, is particularly funny, as he seems to think his only responbility is to deliver positive encouragement.

2. Bermuda – 34 pp - - A brilliant story about an offbeat love affair. A 23-year-old guy who delivers Meals on Wheels falls for an equally directionless 33-year-old piano teacher. In their aimlessness they find a connection, albeit temporarily.

3. Elephant Doors – 48pp --A wannabe stand-up comic with fantasies of hitting the big time spends a few weeks as a production assistant at a game show, working at the beck and call of the crazy, self-absorbed host, who lectures constantly about Belgian history. Once again, the young’s man big dreams fall short.

4. Illuminati -- 14 pp – A failed screenwriter gets a bad idea for a script from an uncle who’s made a killing in the irrigation business and who has always watched out for his nephew and the young man’s alcoholic mother.

5. Bewildered Decisions in Mercantile Terror – 38 pp – A moving story about the relationship between two cousins – a man with bipolar disorder and a woman who’s made a success of her life in marketing. They were close as children, but as adults she’s been continuously stuck with the task of getting him out of the trouble he creates in his manic phases. After years of dealing with that annoyance, she begins to feel the connection drawing her back when her career starts to fall apart.

6. Middle Men Part I - The Luau – 28 pp – The first of this two-part series on a father and son who work in plumbing sales is about the son trying to start out in the business without any experience or natural talent for sales. Some very funny stuff as the younger man partners up with a veteran colleague for a day, making his rounds in a comically inept way and getting revved up by the older man for the big party held annually by the legendary kingpin of the plumbing sales business.

7. Middle Men - Part II – 29 pp – Costello – The second part of the story offers a moving portrait of the father’s lonely life as he carries on in the aftermath of his wife’s death from cancer. The rot and emptiness of his days are all symbolized by a dead lizard at the bottom of his pool that he doesn’t want to have to deal with extracting. show less