Battleborn

Despite the title, there is no "Battleborn" story in Claire Vaye Watkins wonderful debut collection. Ms. Watkins imparts a two-fold meaning from her "made-up" word creating the perfect title. First there is the simple fact that all of the stories are set in Nevada. And Nevada's official state motto is 'The Battle Born State', as a result of attaining statehood in 1864 during the Civil War, Secondly, Ms. Watkins uses battle born as an organizing metaphor to highlight the tension between destruction and creation within both the characters and the landscape. Somewhat whimsically she has combined the phrase into one word, Battleborn, because she thought "it looks cool" and it does.

Undoubtedly the preponderance of reviews for Battleborn will show more include words such as gritty, stunning and powerful. All of which are accurate and appropriate adjectives. But it is the sense of place within the varied Nevada landscape that is the dominating aspect of these stories. From the bright lights of Las Vegas, to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to the Winnemucca Dry Lake Bed and the Black Rock Desert, to the clear, pristine lushness of Lake Tahoe. "We are who we are because of where we are." And it is this common refrain that is evident in every story and character within the collection.

Confined by their life's circumstance the characters are pushing against their existing life. These people struggle so hard to make just a small improvement, if they make any at all. I guess some people go through huge upheavals and changes in their personalities but most of the time they kind of ease their way forward, or backward, but that's what people are like, at least most of the people I know.

The stories in the collection are as varied as the landscape. There are untraditional stories about broken hearts and broken dreams, abusive relationships, gold diggers (of a couple of varieties), bunny ranches, and fireworks in the desert.

This is the coming out party for a new, important literary voice of the West. This collection is spectacular and Claire Vaye Watkins is truly battleborn and the real deal.

Note: This review was written June 4, 2012, yet never posted. show less

The grit in [Battleborn] is born of barren desert sand. The brutality stinks like the stale musk in the sealed up Vegas casinos, two days of body odor and three packs of cigarettes. To protect against the searing sun and the flashing neon, you must narrow the eyes in consuming these stories. But consume them you must – devour or be devoured is the pledge of Clair Vaye Watkins.

Hemingway said that a writer has to endeavor to just write one true thing each day. For some, that truth is dangerous, and Watkins falls into this category. All the stories here are sore and bruised affairs, bloody, either in the flesh or in the spirit. But they all ring of Heingway’s truth. The truth that must be midwifed in fiction, because reality is too show more stark, too close. The lost man, writing to another man whom he doesn’t know beyond the leavings of a car wreck on a deserted highway, finding the loneliness in his own life measures up better than that he imagines in the other’s. The young girl who contributes to the rape of her friend, finding release in the pain of another. A young man’s obsession with a whore that distracts him from the death of his friend. And the violence in an old west gold rush camp where a man fights to save his brother, learning that his own redemption will come at a cost.

Not every story in Watkins’ collection bleeds so openly like those. The book leads with a creative fiction riff on her father’s connection to Charles Manson, and it reads a little too close to promotion than the others, like an attempt to get the reader’s attention so they settle back and listen to her other work. A couple stories that focus on friends and lovers and wives and husbands feel much colder than the sizzle of the others. But on the whole, Watkins is a voice to be reckoned with. Read her, if you will, but hang on for dear life.

Bottom Line: Vivid and brutal, a force to be reckoned with.

4 ½ bones!!!!! show less

Even had I not already known the particulars regarding the real-life death of author Claire Vaye Watkins' mother, or how "Razor Blade Baby" got her name, I'm still positive Battleborn's opening sentence would've jolted me. Claire Vaye Watkins' gallows humor knows no bounds, and even though there's little amusing about suicide or the wild-eyed image of an impulsive Charles Manson abruptly "assisting" in a difficult delivery with a rudimentary scalpel, operating in unsanitary, squalid quarters out at some now abandoned and probably overly mythologized Death Valley "Ranch," I can't help but laugh, disarmed as I am by Watkins' deadpan delivery. A delivery that often zips with wit, hooks and puns. Fun puns you don't see coming, ones that show more wallop you, as in the first (and I think her best) story, "Ghosts, Cowboys," a fictive/autobiographical rumination on beginnings both personal and universal in the history of the wild Wild West.

"The curse of the Comstock Lode had not yet leaked from the silver vein, not seeped into the water table. The silver itself had not yet been stripped from the mountains, and steaming water had not yet flooded the mine shafts. Henry T.P. Comstock ... had not yet lost his love Adelaide ... who drowned in Lake Tahoe. He had not yet traded his share of the lode for a bottle of whiskey and an old, blind mare, not yet blown his brains out with a borrowed revolver near Bozeman, Montana.

Boom times."

Excuse me while I see stars and rise slowly off the mat.

Other times, however, I'm sorry to say, as in "Wish You Were Here," Watkins, rather than booming, is firing blanks. The story opens sounding more like an outline than polished prose. "It begins with a man and a woman. They are young ... They fall in love. They marry. They have a child." I suppose her staccato style throughout the story conveys an approximation of Marin's disjointed thinking, her confusion and anxiety she on the cusp of becoming a mother and how depersonalized, perhaps, her pregnancy is causing her to feel, especially in relation to her husband who, "Before bed -- when once he would have touched her -- he leans down and speaks to her midsection," but the start-stop choppiness of the writing itself, and not just the choppiness of Marin's emotions and interiority, are annoying without relief. The story, unfortunately, is one of the more irritating stories I've read. Marin feels (she sure feels an awful lot here) that the new tiny town she and her husband moved to in the desert recently, "with its city traffic whispering like the sea" (and what an unusually pedestrian, uninspired simile for Watkins -- "city traffic whispering like the sea") "tries too hard". I don't think it's just the town that is trying too hard in "Wish You Were Here." Thankfully, the majority of Watkins' stories are good enough they needn't bother trying so hard.

Case in point: "The Past Perfect, The Past Continuous, The Simple Past," in which all three delineated vagaries of the story title's "past," seeping out in the sordid lives of the characters employed by, or who manage, the Cherry Patch Ranch, Nevadan outpost of legalized harlotry, mere inches beyond the Clark County line where prostitution remains outlawed, flow and intertwine with natural storytelling ease.

Darla is Michele's favorite delicacy on the Cherry Patch Ranch's "menu". He's lonesome since his too adventurous buddy, Rienzo, went and walked off alone into a desert state park outside Vegas, where he was possibly tricked into walking just a little further, a little further, by some shimmering mirage of summer's triple-digit wrath materializing on the sand. Maybe if he'd carried water he'd have come back. Days later, when Rienzo still has not returned or his body been discovered, despite the diligent efforts of local search-and-rescue teams, Michele, rather than mope around his hotel room or play blackjack in the attached megacasino, arrives at the Cherry Patch. His Italian suit and accent make the ladies come alive as he enters. "Pick me, pick me". Instead, he drinks beer at the bar and Darla saunters over night after night, for a week. All Michele does is drink, consummating his grief over Rienzo's loss through chit chat rather than a standard, burger-and-fries equivalent, "suck and fuck".

Manny, the brothel's gay manager and bartender, develops a secret but intense crush on Michele, and so lets him sit at the bar all night with Darla rather than insisting he get down to the dirty and proper business of his brothel, like he'd demand of any other patron wasting his precious time schmoozing instead of screwing. "Army Amy" and her bulging biceps and colossal bosom could probably teach Michele and Darla a trick or two, no doubt envisions making bank with a lucrative mènage à trois, but Darla, wouldn't you know it (and my how Claire Vaye Watkins knows a narrative trick or two, turning her own as she plays some English-usage "pun and games" with the story's title and Michele's limited English usage comprehension) could be turning her last and most profitable trick ever on Michele, a cruel and platonic trick whose consequences may force Michele into making some forever-life-altering decisions he'd might not have made otherwise had he remained back at the casino awaiting news of Rienzo there.

Other shrewd tricks showcased in Battleborn are equally as nuanced and devastating. Like the bored, romantic notions that spur two teenage girls into making an impromptu pilgrimage from their humdrum Minnesota town in "Rondine Al Nido" to that dream's oasis, Las Vegas. To the decadent, megalopolis of the deluded and their delusions that, from an elevated distance miles away, appears like "a blanket made of lights, like light is liquid and the city is a great glistening lake." A lake of fire. Though in the naive eyes of "Our Girl" (could "Our Girl" be a disguised Claire Vaye Watkins?) and Lena, that lake of fire's nocturnal radiance is paradise awaiting, and not their impending perdition. For little do our two heroines know that they are in fact about to pass through the gates of hell on earth once they open the doors to New York New York. Can you blame them that they want to be a part of it, New York New York? Still, it's hard not to cringe watching Our Girl and Lena go down a casino escalator, buzzed and struggling to hold their booze, when they make eyes at four cute guys -- and of course they're angelic imps -- going the other way, up up up. Uh oh. Don't go, Girls (I want to reach into the book and stop them), please don't go up like that in your skimpy skirts in awkward flirtatious pursuit (awkward because that's not really them), for these bad cads (don't you know? can't you see?), besides lecherous pigs, could be cons! Or worse....

Our Girl and Lena soon regretfully realize that despite the iconic marketing campaign to the contrary, what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas, but follows you home.

Claire Vaye Watkins is an endearing author at home in the literal and figurative desolation existing in deserts and in hearts. She could just as easily have been the daughter of Edward Abbey as Paul Watkins, so attuned is her soulful bond to the eastern Mojave of California and Nevada, and to its hardy denizens surviving on the fringes. When Watkins is on, she's fireworks. A writer exuberant and exciting to read. When she's off (which is rarer), she's still interesting, even if the stories -- the aforementioned "Wish You Were Here" and one I didn't mention, "The Archivist" -- ultimately fizzle. Though maybe those stories will soar for other readers in ways they didn't for me. Regardless, Claire Vaye Watkins is generally good and going to be genuinely great one day. I can't wait for her first novel. show less

Gorgeous collection of short stories by author Claire Vaye Watkins, a gifted writer. Is there a common thread to the stories? To my mind it is all about the terrible parts of our lives and what we do to overcome it (or let it wash us away). Watkins is a wonderful storyteller, whether talking about the strain between husband and wife on a camping trip or brothers mining for gold. I was compulsively underlining passages and quotes in the book because I didn't want to forget any of it, so much of it struck me as truth, as life. All of the stories take place in the western U.S. in Nevada and thereabouts, and range from the 1850's to present day. Remarkable and lovely, I will certainly look forward to much more from this author.

“The mind is a mine. So often we revisit its winding, unsound caverns when we ought to stay out.” This is the insightful and beautiful writing of Clair Watkins in her first novel, Battleborn. Watkins work is profound and exquisitely written. She uses the land from where she was raised as the framework for her stories– the deserts of Nevada and Death Valley - a rural and harsh land. The terrain reflects her narrative; suicide, violence, neglect and sorrow permeate. Her writing is lyrical, yet unsentimental in its delivery. She has the voice of an old soul - one that has searched deeply and has come to the conclusion that there are no real answers to life’s mysteries, just stories.

I did not and could not finish this book. The rating is based on the parts I did suffer through.

Brattleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins is a collection of 10 short stories. Generally, I like short stories as they can be read in short time spans, usually offer very innovative writing and test the skill of the author in creating the story.

Battleborn received many 4 and 5 star reviews on goodreads.com. It has high praise from other writers and respected publications. Nevertheless, all of these were like a stranger offering candy to a child before kidnapping him. The child has been repeatedly warned and taught to refuse the candy, scream like hell, and run like the wind.
Unfortunately, I am not a child and I took the bait.
I give any book with show more good writing 50 pages before I turn away from it. The first 50 pages of this book included about 3 1/2 stories, none with a point, all with indecipherable and obtuse "plots," all with unlikeable characters, unlikable things, strange situations and no particular storyline. I can only offer deep-felt sympathy to a young writer with such bitter, unhappy and negative views of the world, hoping that her fiction does not reflect her own personal views of life.
After 50 pages, I had to decide what is worse: finishing this dive into depression or watching videos of Republicans saying supportive things about Trump, but “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” still leaves you damned.
I do have something positive to say: Never have I delivered a book to my trash bin with such glee, understanding once again that finishing something that you are not enjoying just because you paid real money for it only makes the wasted money a more pathetic loss. show less

http://wineandabook.com/2012/08/13/review-battleborn-by-claire-vaye-watkins/

"'Dudes,' Danny says, 'that was fucking beautiful.'
A laugh spreads across Jules's big bright face, ravenous the way a wildfire is. 'I know, right?'
I laugh too. These are my friends. These are the funny, empty things we do so we can be the kind of funny, empty people who do them." (page 257-258, Virginia City)

Battleborn has been my constant companion during my commutes for the past few weeks, and I'm actually pretty disappointed that I finished the book. I was floored by how talented Claire Vaye Watkins is...her short stories are practically flawless! Tight, incredibly thoughtfully crafted, richly descriptive...I have a feeling this is a collection I will read show more and reread for years to come.

A few standout stories (and it was hard to choose just a few!!!):

The Archivist The moving account of a woman as she, post-breakup, preserves her past and imagines her future. Raw and delicate at the same time.

The Past Perfect, The Past Continuous, The Simple Past An Italian tourist visits a brothel as police comb the desert for his missing traveling companion. The way Watkins chose to end this story was unbelievably perfect.

The Diggings Imagines two brothers as they travel West at the height of the California Gold Rush, and how their relationship changes when they fail to strike it rich. Watkins imagery and use of subtle metaphor in this piece was particularly striking.

Ghosts, Cowboys Addresses her own family history, which is a big a part of the history of the contemporary American West (her biological father, Paul Watkins, was an early member of the Manson Family, but never participated in the murders and ultimately testified against Manson).

This marks the first time I have ever said this: GO BUY THIS BOOK. NOW. WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING AT THE MOMENT CAN WAIT. BUY IT. You will thank me. Or wait until I buy it for you. Chances are, if we're friends, and you're a lit nerd like me, I'll be buying you a copy. But buy it anyway. Then you'll have two. So when you lend it to someone, and they fall in love with it as well and "forget" to give it back, you have a backup copy.

Rubric rating: 8.95 I can't give her a nine, because this is her debut collection...but you bet I will be keeping an eye out for more of her genius. show less