Songs of Vagabonds, Misfits, and Sinners
Songs of Vagabonds, Misfits, and Sinners (Ken Wohlrob, Bully Press 2010, 148 pages)
A book review by Lavinia Ludlow for Smalldoggies Magazine
In 2010, Bully Press released Ken Wohlrob’s collection titled Songs of Vagabonds, Misfits, and Sinners, a compilation about epic struggles to survive in a place as unforgiving as New York.
Overall, I could tell that Wohlrob put a lot of effort into crafting eccentric stories about vagabonds, misfits, and sinners, cancer, broken relationships, flashbacks, death, and dysfunction. I was, however, expecting more New York City gritty like that of Tony O’Neill and Arthur Nersesian, and less “Ramón’s desire for her boiled into the simplest of human cravings and he fought the urge to place his lips against hers. Instead, he whispered, ‘Adèle mi amor.’” That being said, Wohlrob’s softened edges bring reality to his fiction, making it easy to identify with his subjects' opinions and rationalizations.
He opens his collection morbidly with the mention of deaths and Tums. What starts as a hopeful new direction for his protagonist Tony in NON HO TUTTO IL GIORNO is instantaneously cut short with a freak accident. “Tony was still laid out on the wet pavement, his head bleeding onto the ground, mixing with the white snow, melting the chunks of rock salt that slowly turned a pinkish color. Above him, a field of bright blue. Soft, puffy clouds hung lazily in the air, almost motionless, as if they didn’t have to be anywhere at that particular moment. Those are Italian clouds, Tony thought. Blue blurred into bright white, the clouds absorbed into nothing.” This one paragraph can easily stand alone, written with such precision that it makes it easy to forgive the author's clichés, the way he intermittently interjects random details, his rough transitions, fragmented storytelling, all of which may have been Wohlrob's intent, I'm not quite sure.
Other stories read a bit smoother such as JOB IN WILLIAMSBURG. A reclusive and struggling artist is crestfallen when he sees his painting hung above MOMA’s urinals. THE METRONOME WINDS DOWN is an extremely difficult yet hard-hitting read. It highlights the life of Pat, a bill collector and husband to a dying woman. Caught in the middle of the “is it wrong if you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family” conundrum, it's apparent Pat's embezzling money to afford his wife a few more months of "time."
Songs of Vagabonds, Misfits, and Sinners consists of five short stories which highlight the lives and legacies of eccentric New Yorkers. Saturated with heart-heavy strife, Ken Wohlrob's collection can be found at Bully Press, an indie publisher located in none other than Brooklyn, New York.
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