The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Acid by Edward Falco
Brian Evenson

Edward Falco. Acid. Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1995. 193 pp. $25.00; paper: $14.95.

Winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction, Acid collects a number of straightforward, sometimes gritty, realist stories. The stories are generally spare but not uncomfortably so, containing characters and narrators that range from single fathers struggling to raise their children, to a five-year-old who walks around with his hand on his penis, to a drug smuggler.

The strongest story, “The Artist,” shows a man making an uncompromising break with his past. “Tell Me What It Is,” about the collapse of relationships, and “Acid,” about the middle-aged owner of a religious bookstore who is with a young girl when she chooses to drop acid, are quite strong as well. Some of the later stories in the book, such as “Georgia O’Keeffe, Vision,” are less strong, and a story about the requirements of flight telegraphs its easy and obvious solutions, but there is generally more good than bad in Falco’s stories. “Smugglers,” though it might work a little too hard at being gritty, ends very strongly. Indeed, one of Falco’s strengths is his endings; it sometimes feels like he spent more time crafting them than the rest of the story. Indeed, some of the endings are strong enough to redeem stories that, though they have a great many good points, founder a little bit. The endings are often Carveresque in terms of the way they gather up a story, and Falco is best with them when he ends with a sense of flight or at a point of tension. One difficulty, however, is that Falco uses the same strategies in nearly all of his endings and, because of the frequent repetition, the strategies become less convincing.

Hard edge and all, there remain a great deal of hope and a certain amount of redemption in many of the stories. Despite an unblinking eye for the way we compromise our lives, one never gets the sense that Falco has lost his faith in human nature. Through work that is uneven at times, Falco does manage to go far into conveying a sense of character and of feeling that is often elided in contemporary literature. These are interesting stories and reveal a writer who shows at once talent and promise. [Brian Evenson]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Acid by Edward Falco Brian Evenson Edward Falco. Acid. Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1995. 193 pp. $25.00; paper: $14.95. Winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction, Acid collects a number of straightforward, sometimes gritty, realist stories. The stories are generally spare but not uncomfortably so, containing characters and narrators that range from single fathers struggling to raise their children, to a five-year-old who walks around with his hand on his penis, to a drug smuggler. The strongest story, “The Artist,” shows a man making an uncompromising break with his past. “Tell Me What It Is,” about the collapse of relationships, and “Acid,” about the middle-aged owner of a religious bookstore who is with a young girl when she chooses to drop acid, are quite strong as well. Some of the later stories in the book, such as “Georgia O’Keeffe, Vision,” are less strong, and a story about the requirements of flight telegraphs its easy and obvious solutions, but there is generally more good than bad in Falco’s stories. “Smugglers,” though it might work a little too hard at being gritty, ends very strongly. Indeed, one of Falco’s strengths is his endings; it sometimes feels like he spent more time crafting them than the rest of the story. Indeed, some of the endings are strong enough to redeem stories that, though they have a great many good points, founder a little bit. The endings are often Carveresque in terms of the way they gather up a story, and Falco is best with them when he ends with a sense of flight or at a point of tension. One difficulty, however, is that Falco uses the same strategies in nearly all of his endings and, because of the frequent repetition, the strategies become less convincing. Hard edge and all, there remain a great deal of hope and a certain amount of redemption in many of the stories. Despite an unblinking eye for the way we compromise our lives, one never gets the sense that Falco has lost his faith in human nature. Through work that is uneven at times, Falco does manage to go far into conveying a sense of character and of feeling that is often elided in contemporary literature. These are interesting stories and reveal a writer who shows at once talent and promise. [Brian Evenson]

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