salton sea

At the official book launch for George McCormick’s Salton Sea, I sit on a plastic chair in the Leslie Powell Gallery, a surprisingly neat oasis in the midst of a semi-deserted street in Lawton, Oklahoma. The gallery is comfortable and smart, if not elegant – happily offering a stay against the seepage of culture here on the southern plains. It occurs to me that this setting is appropriate for this inaugural reading. McCormick’s characters also struggle in futile wastelands, though they fail to fully understand their plights. Bayard Godsave introduces George, and he points out how the characters in Salton Sea are often “oblivious” to the way in which their surroundings affect them. But Godsave also points us to the “beauty in their ruin.”

The author stands behind the podium and acknowledges two guiding influences in his life: his mother, a librarian, from whom he gained the love of story, and his father from whom he learned to appreciate topography, and to read maps. These influences seem pertinent as George begins to read. This thought stays with me as later I would read and reread the entire collection. As others have noted, McCormick’s characters inhabit a western landscape though their relationship to it is often beyond their appreciation. They are dots on a map.

With something like boyish charm – yet with an all-grown-up-now voice of one who knows his craft, George begins to read his story “Birdy.” His manner seems to say: “Hear me. These characters have come through my soul. I have imagined them for you, and they are a lot like us.” Indeed, these are good stories. They exhibit control. They flourish with rich but understated characterization. Four of them were first published in respected literary journals. One of them, “The Mexican,” won a 2013 PEN/O. Henry Prize. “Birdy” displays lines like “the stink was sweet and awful.” This is the story of a would-be family man trying to sell pot to make ends meet. His less than powerful presence is routinely highlighted by phone calls with his wife who is concerned about their sick child. This is a story about money, about getting enough to make a happy life for an ordinary couple. Of course the drug deal goes unfulfilled, not in a clichéd, violent way, but in a weird confessional in which the main character washes the dishes and cleans up a bit in the apartment of Birdy, his contact who fails to provide the agreed upon money, and who is obviously in a worse situation than the main character. His impulsive cleaning of the place somehow rudely compensates for his own apparent lack of attention to his wife and daughter back in Bozeman, Montana. Readers feel the anguish of a man trying to be two places at one time and get away with it. Double lives divide us in half, don’t they? The story begins with the admitted failure of the main character: “these mistakes came from my hand.” And so we see the mock-heroic attempt of an ordinary guy trying in vain to make up for his sense of failure. With a sincere but quiet voice, George ends his reading. We all applaud. We recognize the necessary subtle vanity developed in his characters. Members of the audience line up to buy their copy of Salton Sea. I am anxious to read the remaining four stories.

I had heard George read a draft of “The Mexican” once before, so I was anxious to see its final form that garnered its prestigious award. As I contemplated my reading, I decided that this story should be required reading for every American. It is a story that represents not only our failure to understand, but our intentional manipulation of reality. The story is a simple plot. A worker on a train finds a Mexican hiding among a train-car full of oranges. Nothing more, nothing less. But in the eye contact of the two characters lies a history of political distrust, and more important, the ironic goal of what it means to be human. McCormick’s handling of this plot leaves readers profoundly affected. The peril of the lonely and vulnerable immigrant – desperate and now silently brought face to face with an ordinary American. What will he do? The story takes a marvelous turn. We see how “years later” this encounter becomes legend. How the solitary immigrant becomes a cattle car of Mexican steers that bust out and run wild from their boxcar prison. As the narrator tells us, “in the West what we love most are lies. What we love are images of a stampede, of animals running; of what we think are the right stories of stealing away.” I repeat. All Americans should read this story.

“DC” is the next story. It develops an everyday dilemma of whether or not to take a good job in Washington DC, or to stay put in small-town Idaho. Of course readers soon begin to realize that the move will never take place. The move cannot happen because the principal is forever defined by a place. The dream of bettering an economic situation dissolves into illusion before it is cancelled by the familiarity of logging trucks, estranged Mormon in-laws and a favorite barstool. The clever appeal of this story is the undeniable feeling that Orofino, Idaho contains the pulse of America – not DC.

The title story, “Salton Sea,” is set in Fontana, fifty miles east of Los Angeles where “there is no sky.” The story revolves around an oddity: an inland sea, a place where the narrator has “come to hate.” The mundane reverberates in this story. There seems to be no life, no color. The irregular community of Salton City mirrors the main couple of the story whose search leads only to futility. They are explorers who never find anything significant or useful, and wear themselves out in the process. The fifth story of the collection boasts my favorite line: “Montana winters are hard on women and machinery.” This story also presents my favorite title: “You are Going to Be a Good Man.” Like each of the five stories of this collection, this context demonstrates the futile present tense. Someday, in the undefined, vaguely imagined future, things will be better. Someday, there is the faint hope of change, but not only does betterment always seem to be just out of reach, it also seems to finally not be worth the effort. Maybe a redeeming irony of these stories lies in their mirroring effect they provide the reader. Maybe we should sense the precious importance of who we are now, in the contexts in which we find ourselves. Certainly all the stories use memory in significant and very interesting ways. Along with McCormick’s skillful use of memory, the domestic tension within these stories is gripping. It is a joy to read such masterful tributes to a flawed and common humanity.

Reviewed by Ken Hada, Ada, Oklahoma

George McCormick. Salton Sea. Noemi Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-934819-24-1.