Margaret Wappler

Diligently pursuing the moment that hangs off the precipice of normalcy, dangling over the pit of banal, Frederick Barthelme smothers you with stories of near-this, almost-that in his collection of stories "The Law of Averages," some of which have previously been published in The New Yorker and GQ. After his stories drive you nuts, they will fascinate, repulse, then drive you nuts again. Barthelme is as addictive as bad TV, and please do take that to mean several things.

Kissing cousins with the stuff Jay McInerny, Bret Easton Ellis and others of similar ilk have written, the brand of glitter-eighties fiction Barthelme showcases in "The Law of Averages" rings both genuine and contrived -- a feat in itself, and not one unfamiliar to this school of writers. He arrives at this bizarre combination by writing in laser-precise, deadpan statements, embracing the utterly average with such fervor and relentless scrutiny that the stories manage to, oddly enough, transcend their binds and become exalted moments. After all, anything under a microscope will call your attention if you have even the slightest penchant for detail.

Barthelme often turns his magnifying glass to the home; often, it's one of those half-shabby, half-too-new apartment complexes that pock every small city and suburb. In the title story, he writes, "I hadn't been in an apartment project for a while, and I had forgotten the odd comforts of them -- being close to people in your economic bracket with whom you have almost nothing else in common, the community feeling even though you never talk to these people and only rarely see them."

In this story, Barthelme takes his love for the normal world a step further than usual, transpiring to: "This wasn't a fancy project, but under the cover of night it was gently transformed into a place of small mysteries -- elegant shadows cast by young trees on badly painted wood siding, the reassuring clicks and whines of air-conditioning compressors snapping on and cutting off... ." A place of small mysteries is where everybody lives in "The Law of Averages," especially Barthelme's fly-on-the-wall narrators.

You'd think, judging from all the meticulous inspection and measured delivery, Barthelme writes stories about cancer patients recovering, lovers reuniting, or even hellish passages in life. No. Keep those crises to yourself: He's more interested in the tawdry near-affair you had once with a student, the date riddled in awkwardness, the time you let some half-wit drive your car.

At his best, his characters are deftly portrayed, and they are always -- and not necessarily detrimentally so -- confusing and familiar. Each speaks in some sort of weird voodoo-sitcom parlance: vaporous half-sentences, but chock-full of the disposable pop-culture speak of the moment. In an exchange between a professor and the brother of a student with whom he's contemplating a love affair, the brother grants concession: "I mean, she's pretty, she's young -- all that time in front of her, all this stuff to learn. Listen, I understand you college boys. You got women out there in Kmart underpants, guys belong in the zoo -- you can't make much of that... I mean, if you're going to have a romance it ought to at least be lovely."

Funny, smart and eerily on target, Barthelme's dialogue helps to smooth the sometimes tiresome rigmarole of reading many stories that detail not only another relationship involving the younger woman/older man debacle, but also the burden of seeing so many stories smolder out after so much development. Whether it's wasted effort or not, Barthelme manages to subvert and frustrate all expectations. Call his particular post-modern bent admirable or vexing, but don't dare call it average. The Law of Averages
Frederick Barthelme
(Counterpoint Press, $25) (2000-10-26)

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